The Great Inventory of Movies Memory Project

Twilight of the what now?

I just had a fascinating conversation with my local video rental clerk (what's that? you subscribe to Netflix? Well, you are killing your mom & pop rental place, if there is still such a thing where you live, you jerk).

Anyway, the last time I was in I happened to rent something I had previously checked out but never got to see, so there I was renting it again, and the clerk mentioned that I had gotten it before (nice little bit of added value, right Netflixers? The nice customer service guy being helpful? And it's kind of nice to impress the clerks with your awesome selections, you know, in that old way that we all strove for when people still bought albums in record stores from hipster record store clerks). So it occurred to me later that, for him to know that information they must be keeping a constant record of everything I've ever checked out (!), which is a very compelling issue for a lot of reasons. I'm a personal-privacy loving librarian, mind you...but, you know, I'm more excited about the prospect of getting to realize 10 years of movie watching history (rather than arguing with them about protecting my right to privacy by not keeping records like that).

You see, keeping a list of every film I've ever watched is something I've always wanted to do (OCD), but never have. There are lots of questions I have related to this issue--like which Shaw brothers kung-fu movies have I actually watched, & which ones have I only thought I've seen? That's a hard one, seeing as pretty much every single one of them have basically the same premise (guy's family is murdered/guy doesn't know kung-fu/guy gets his butt kicked/guy learns kung-fu/guy goes looking for vengeance/guy gets vengeance/credits). So I thought my record-keeping laziness had caused me to permanently miss out on the opportunity to document my movie watching habits this past decade...but then I says to myself, "Hey! They've been doing the work for me all along!" So I went in this afternoon and asked, & sure enough: there's this huge list, covering years of patronage and multiple layers of evolving interests and tastes (for better or for worse--mostly worse, I'd say) right there on the screen!

The only problem? This place is using some kind of DOS program with an interface that looks like it was designed for the Sega Genesis system, so...they can't print it or email it or give me this coveted info in any non-monumentally-hassling fashion. And so my Great Inventory of Movies Memory Project (GIMMP) goes unrealized.

But! The consolation? The nice hipster clerk felt bad about the whole thing & did at least tell me what my very first rental was, circa 1999: Twilight of the Cockroaches, a Japanese-made "cult classic" that seems to be some sort of pre-cursor to Joe's Apartment. Huh. I really have no memory whatsoever of seeing this film, which is kind of anti-climactic for the purposes of this story, but it seems kind of perfect too, right? I'll never remember all the movies I've ever seen that reside in that primitive video game of an info management system, so it's totally appropriate that I don't even remember the first. I will say that it probably set the tone for my erratic, thematically unfocused approach to film consumption for the last 12 years.

So the mystery continues, and I guess that's fine--in fact, I kind of like having to search my mental Rolodex every time I try to remember which kung-fu is new to me and which isn't--in a way I'd hate to peel away that haze of mystique. So thank you, Wild & Woolly Video, I'll try to keep those late fees a-comin'.

My Awesome Dream Business Plan

And when I say "dream" I mean literally--I dreamt that my husband and I started an awesome new business. Finally! My dream time is paying off (rather than digressing into nonsensical nightmare scenarios and quasi-Freudian non sequiturs). This business would fill a niche market that is not currently being taken advantage of: music purists who need personal documentation delivery and small appliance repairs. That's right, folks: we have a large and comprehensive collection of vinyl LPs, a value-added personal document delivery service (birth certificates! social security cards! credit report scores!), and, while you wait, my husband can repair or replace frayed power cables belonging to your well-used small home appliances (waffle irons! blenders! coffee grinders! ETC.!). A super-useful customer-oriented service provided by us for you, the consumer!

So come on down to Records Records & Re-Cords, LLC!

"New" Stereo!

Oh, boy readers: we've hit Memorial Day weekend yard sale pay dirt here at MM! In a recent trip to the lovey Germantown/Schnitzelburg neighborhood we discovered an offer we couldn't refuse in somebody's front lawn: an entire stereo dream-system that made all our analog dreams come true in one fell swoop! A cherry JVC set up (complete with really nice after-market speakers) that includes a CD player, a record player (pictured above) and a double tape deck! Although the tape deck needs some repair, everything else is in perfect order and ready for action! Oh boy!

Perhaps I should explain my enthusiasm to the modern, digitally-inclined music listener: I've been pretty disenchanted with the current-generation listening equipment landscape for some time now. Despite a well-publicized love of The Old Ways, I jumped (enthusiastically) into the digital pool along with everyone else: computers, MP3s, CD burners, iTunes--the whole she-bang. My conclusion (after a series of digital heartbreaks)? I miss magnetic tape!

The beautiful complication of making mixed tapes has been romanticized (ad nauseum) in the last decade or so, sure, but you know what? There is a good reason for that: burning a CD is so impersonal, so thoughtless, so...easy. You don't have to stress over thoughtful little variables like transition time between songs and the A side/B side issue. It seems like cheating to have your entire library of songs laid out in front of you in neat little lists, you can drag and drop your way to a perfectly timed mix, with no worries about too many or too few songs--your computer will tell you if there's enough room, eliminating the embarrassment of cutting off a song before it's over (or worse: that awful dragging silence on the end of a side when you left too much blank tape after the last song, your bad planning irrefutably exposed). Not that I think anything worth doing should be complicated/difficult, quite the opposite, actually: analog just works so reliably; digital stuff is too easily controlled by Apple and DRM and other mysterious, legally nebulous abstractions that just get in the way of being creative with your own things. LPs never tell you you can't record songs from them--it's a grooved plastic disc with exactly zero hidden BS to screw with your desire to make a soundtrack for your roadtrip.

I've been thinking about regressing back to the early 90's, equipment wise, for quite a while (the real clincher came last year when my computer crashed and iTunes informed me that I could not recover any of the songs that I had already legally purchased from them...). There is no ethereal, fleeting quality to analog--there is no data to be lost or corrupted, no finicky little lasers, no rebooting, no delicate touch screen technology. My stereo has needles, levers, dials, buttons and switches--it makes reassuringly cantankerous noises that let you know it's working.

I found all my old records in storage, and I realized I had a single of Eat It by Weird Al Yankovic--I had actually forgotten that I owned it! I listened to my records all day yesterday and it was great! Soon I'll get the tape deck up and running and then the real fantasy comes to life: mixed tapes! My end-game plan is to add one more piece of past-present equipment to my arsenal: a portable tape player, so I can take it camping and listen to music while sitting around a fire and looking up at the stars...can you imagine? I've done this many times with a CD player...but never the same one twice. My point being that CD players are so sensitive to moisture that one overnight trip, even a rain-free one, is usually enough to kill them dead. I've gone through more CD players than I'd care to count this way, always with the same result no matter what precautions I take--condensation always finds a way. But those old tape players we all threw away a decade ago? they still worked just fine, even after being dropped down stairs, dragged through mud, kicked around and generally disrespected.

We can have it all, my friends, we just have to go back to the eighties to get it...who's with me?