Rewinding to the Best Days Of Our Lives

In 1987 I landed a part-time job at a video rental place (named, without much imagination, Video Place) in Crystal City, Virginia.  I was just finishing up college, looking at graduate schools, and wondering if my long-time college girlfriend was ever going to be interested in moving on to the, umm, next step.

That was a great job.  The store was a little hole in the wall in an underground mall, next to a liquor store and directly across from a Waxie Maxie's (where my exclusive contacts managed to hook me up with a copy of Zelda II just in time for Christmas for my eight-year old nephew.)  We rented portable VCRs and even sold a Goldstar on occasion (I'll probably have to do a few years in purgatory for that) but mostly we rented movies and music videos, $2.49 a night and a $1 fine if you failed to rewind (a fee I'm pretty positive we never once actually imposed- unwound tapes went into the car-shaped rewinder behind the counter.)  We watched a lot of music videos -- Tears for Fears (Songs from the Big Chair,) Genesis (Visible Touch,) Janet Jackson (Rhythm Nation,) etc.  We spent a lot of time assembling display stands- the one for Throw Momma From The Train included a computer chip which let you hear Anne Ramsey bleat "Owen loves his Momma, Owen loves his Momma" when you pushed a button, and some of us employees came pretty close to murdering the kids who would push it 100 times while their parents picked films off the shelves.  We always had customers who wanted us to give them the displays when they were ready to come down, and we were generally willing to do so- except that the ones for Disney films remained the property of Disney and had to be returned to the studio.  I sold 400 advance copies of E.T.  and won a television set for selling the most 4-packs of Kodak VHS tapes (turned out that the blind guy who purchased most of them was a bootlegger who finally got nabbed by the feds.)

One summer the prudes who ran Northern Virginia came down hard on video stores and our company decided that we could only show G-rated musicals and Disney films on the store monitor- we didn't have much selection at the time, so we watched Calamity Jane and My Fair Lady pretty much every day until we were ready to go insane.  Fortunately our regulars found it obnoxious too, complained, and we got back to music videos and PG films by Labor Day.  I used to be able to lip-sync An American Tail. 

I remember the Stock Market crash of 1987, the time volunteers for the Hart-For-President campaign tried to cut a better deal on bulk blank tape purchases, and the day my manager brought in his recording of Buster Douglas upsetting Mike Tyson and showed it for a crowd of people who were perfectly willing to be late to work rather than miss the ending.  I remember the 30 days we tried to be a TicketMaster outlet, and how the machines never worked.  I remember calling in credit cards to get authorization codes, and the time I had to stall an irate crook because the operator told me to hold his card until the police could get there and take him down.

In 1989 I became a manager, and moved to a downtown DC store.  I was robbed at gunpoint twice, and on another day opened bright and early in the morning to find fingerprint dust everywhere- my assistant manager, closing the night before, had been robbed.  I remember catching numerous would-be shoplifters and failing to catch many, many more.

In 1990 the owner of our 7-store chain decided to sell out, which meant the inventory had to be liquidated.  I turned out to be a pretty good salesman, so I was sent from store to store running close-out sales.  When I closed the store back at Crystal City I sold every single VHS tape we had available but one- a copy of Satisfaction ("starring" Justine Bateman- come on, Liam Neeson was in it too, and it wasn't THAT bad..)  One guy bought every Disney movie we had- about forty tapes- for $200.  Hope he enjoyed them.

In 1991 I left the video rental business for good, got my graduate degree, got married (not to that college girlfriend- she left for grad school without saying goodbye in 1988 and I never saw nor heard from her again) and moved to upstate New York.   I didn't know it at the time, but I had spent four years in an industry that was staring oblivion in the face.  In the following decade other chains would vanish, replaced by RedBox and Netflix and other online services, and the idea of puttering around a store trying to pick out a tape to watch on the VCR that night suddenly seemed as quaint and archaic as Drive-Ins.  Want to buy a movie now?  That's what Amazon is for.

Anyway, here's a heartfelt salute to an age that left us way too soon- and I think left us all a little poorer with its departure.  For every awful customer who didn't seem to understand that "OPEN 10AM-7PM" did not mean "OPEN 6:30 AM- 7:30 PM" or thought it was perfectly ok to call every fifteen minutes to ask if a certain film had been returned and could we please hold it for him, there were far more fun regulars and great co-workers and overall good times.  Even the robberies were fun after the fact.  So goodbye Erols, goodbye Blockbuster, and especially goodbye Video Place- your contribution to my life and American culture in the late 20th century deserves more recognition than I can give you in this little blog.   Every now and then, I'll rewind a tape in your memory.

In the Future, these guys will be Greeters at this same Walmart

1.  Isn't it great that the black family in this ad have made choices that the white people in this ad approve of?  And the black family looks so happy about it- I bet they run home and tell the neighbors how the awesome white workers at Walmart gave a big geeky thumbs-up to their ridiculous spending spree.

2.  I'm impressed that two twenty-something white guys working at Walmart are actually enthusiastic and optimistic about the future.  I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be, were I them.

3.  When sneakers are equipped with jet packs ARE available, you can bet the place to buy the cheapest version will be at your local Walmart.  Of course, by then, it will probably be the only store within fifty miles of your house anyway.

Campbell's salute to Moms

What do moms dream of?  Nah, it's not a life beyond diapers and bag lunches and homework and cleaning and being a handmaiden to the Guy Who Made All This Possible.  It's how to be "more fun."

Apparently the "answer" to "how can I be a more fun mom" is to be found in the wisdom of a Wise Kid (he's wise because he's got a beard and lives on a cloud or a mountain or something, get it?)

No, mom can't dance- but she can use a can opener.  And we all know how much kids love soggy canned noodles, processed chicken cubes and salt-infused broth, don't we?  (Jeesh, when I was a kid I liked Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup- when I was sick and couldn't keep down anything else. When I was a normal, healthy kid with a normal, healthy appetite?  Yuck.)

So mom can change diapers, bag lunches, help with the homework, keep the house spotless AND heat up cheap soup.  Boy, was she a catch.  Not especially fun- but a catch nonetheless.

Wait- adults actually drink this stuff?

When I was fifteen, sixteen years old my friends and I would occasionally ditch school.  We'd hang out at a house where both parents worked and do what aimless kids who just didn't want to go to school that day did- played cards, watched tv, listened to music,  and drank really cheap, nasty-tasting whiskey.  That whiskey was Southern Comfort.

I don't remember much about those days, but I do remember the whiskey.  We drank it because it was very inexpensive and one of my friends had an older brother willing to buy it for us.  We sure didn't drink it because it tasted good, and I can honestly say I never acquired a taste for it.  I've never cared for whiskey in general- I have about a quarter of a bottle in the freezer right now from a party in 2007.  Always figured that if I found myself drinking it, something had gone terribly wrong in my life (not sure why I didn't drink it back in August of 2011, when a LOT went wrong all at once- maybe I forgot it was there.)

Anyway- somewhere out there is a photo of me sitting on a front porch with several of my friends, surrounded by empty bottles of Southern Comfort.  Good times- but not because of that awful whiskey.  In fact, I can't imagine why anyone with more than a few bucks would choose to spend it on that swill.

Dawn Dishwashing Liquid Commercials- the more things change....

1.  "Women will happily act as waitresses and dishwashers for their fat lazy families, if at least one person in those families expresses bs throwaway gratitude in the form of a toast or compliment now and then.  Because women are vapid little handmaidens programmed to serve."  I hope Uncle Charlie's heart explodes before this Little Woman gets a chance to fry him up some of his favorite chicken.  Tool.

2.  "Your mom's almost here?  The dishes aren't done yet- tell you what, get your worthless ass in her and you do them while I greet here, dickwad.  I know you've never done this cleaning-dishes thing before, but I'm sure with a little practice you'll get the hang of it."

3.  "See, honey?  I'm doing you a FAVOR by 'letting' you do all the dishes- they keep your hands wonderfully soft.  You are so lucky to have all those dirty dishes to yourself- I wish I could find a way to keep MY hands creamy smooth and young-looking.  Well, sucks to be a male, I guess!"

Universal lesson:  Whether it's 1973 or 2014, cooking and dishwashing is strictly women's work.  Ugh.

(By the way, I don't think that woman in No. 3 ever leaves that kitchen- it's so disgustingly clean, it's practically gleaming- I think Adrian Monk would happily move into this house.  Why are kitchens in these commercials always look like germ-free laboratories and not places where people actually do any cooking?)

Another Point of Personal Privilege: Nitpicking "Pretty Woman"

Back in my salad days (no, I don't know what that means either- I just know it's used in situations like this, so there you go) I used to manage a video store in downtown DC.  It was a fun job (when I wasn't being robbed at gunpoint, which happened twice- you get used to it) in which I got to watch a lot of good movies and (it being the 80s) even more really bad ones.  For every E.T. and The Verdict there were many, many more Look Who's Talkings and Police Academy flicks.  But hey, it was a job which involved watching movies, and it paid my way through Graduate School.  So no complaints here.

Pretty Woman was one of the biggest hits of 1990, my last full year working in the video rental business.   It is also one of the most ludicrous, disgusting piles of maggot dung ever assembled by Hollywood.  I could write many pages about how it basically plays out the Beautiful Clean Hooker fantasy which had already been hashed out in countless movies and television shows long before this putrid mess hit the big screen (I don't need to remind anyone my age that Brooke Shields, Phoebe Cates, and Jane Seymour- possibly the three most stunning women of the generation- all played prostitutes at one point in their careers.)  Instead, I'd like to just skip all that and take a moment to just laugh at one scene which always really bugged the hell out of me.

When Julia Roberts' prostitute character meets Richard Gere's businessman character, he's driving a Lotus and looking for directions back to his hotel.  Gere hires Roberts to get him there, and then strikes a deal for her to come up to his penthouse suite for what she figures will be a quick, lucrative toss in the hay.

So she gets to his room, which is of course massive and lavishly furnished.  Gere orders champagne and strawberries, but instead of realizing that this guy could be an easy mark and clearly has money to burn, Richards acts as if she's kind of anxious to get out of there (wait, this makes sense compared to what happens next.)  Gere then suggests that to ease her mind about all the opportunities to get screwed by other total strangers she may be missing out on, he just pays her to stay the night.  And here's where it get really stupid.

Roberts replies "The whole night?  You couldn't afford it."

Um, seriously?  Lotus-driving, penthouse-dwelling, champagne-and-strawberries ordering businessman "couldn't afford" a hooker for the evening?  You don't want to think this over before making that statement, Julia?  Not even for a moment?

Guess not, because when Gere insists that she name her price, she replies "Three hundred dollars."  Which he accepts, instantly (no duh.  I seriously can't believe he doesn't burst out laughing- or begins to wonder if this woman has a problem she's not telling him about.)  Three hundred dollars? For an entire night?  What did Roberts' character usually charge for her normal hour or so?  $20 and car fare back to the alley?

And Gere's quick acceptance doesn't teach her a thing about negotiating- the next day, he asks how much she'd charge for entire week, and she comes up with the figure $3000.  Jeeeeeeshh......for the 1990 version of Julia Roberts?  Come on.....who wrote this dialogue?  At LEAST add a zero to that figure, PLEASE.  I know it's 1990, but give me a break.

By the way, did you know that the original ending for this flick had Gere dumping a devastated, sobbing Roberts- who goes right back to being a prostitute?  Proving that, briefly, the writers intended to infuse a LITTLE reality.  Maybe they should have stuck with it- because "rich guy buys beautiful woman on the cheap" should never be the "feel good romance of the year," ever.  Not even in 1990.

Because you were "raised" to be helpless- here's your Hyundai

I guess the message here is that this kid would have had his skull smashed in, badly burned, and basically mauled in a hundred ways if Dad had not been standing right there to keep him from doing really awful damage to himself.

The more disturbing message is that by doing so, Dad raised an obtuse knob who as a young adult is living as if someone will always be around to pull his ass out of the fire just before it touches him- or before he uses it to do injury to someone else.  This kid with is cruising around in a two-ton vehicle fully capable of ending someone's life in an eye blink but lets himself get distracted by the cute girl with the cell phone*- but no problem, now his car will remind him that there are other people on the planet before he kills them with his Learned Asshattery.

An even more disturbing message- Hyundai thinks it's audience will think it's kind of cute and endearing to watch a little boy come within an inch or a second of being really badly hurt, over and over again.  I mean, seriously- that brick wall looks deadly, and crashing into a grill filled with white-hot coals?  That's years of reconstructive surgery.  Not really anything to chuckle about.  And I don't even have one of these little mammals.

*Why does Cute Girl have a cell phone?  Does this seem a bit gratuitous to anyone else?  Is it that the makers of this ad couldn't conceive of a girl walking along without a cell phone in her hand?  Or did the Extra hired to play the girl refuse to put hers down for her 2-second part?