Here we go. Another diatribe about the value of nostalgia and how old things are —get this — still cool.
We get it, man. Go drink a sustainably sourced cold brew in one of your secondhand knit sweaters and tell us more about how Berkeley is “actually really underrated.”
How this all started
Earlier this week, I acquired a VHS/DVD combo platter.
After that last article, I realized I did not own a Red Hot Chili Peppers album, so I went down to the record store to correct that.
They had a 180 gram copy of Californication. I won’t pretend to know why vinyl weights matter, but heavier is apparently better. Vinyl is body positive.
There’s an ambience to my local record store which suggests nothing has fundamentally changed in the roughly four decades since it’s been open.
I won’t name it so as not to dox myself, but there’s a welcome dinginess. I suspect the paint is lead-based. It’s a tableau of an analog era.
When I needed copper wire for my desk speakers, one of their (many) 50-plus-year-old employees ambled over to a dust-covered corner. The area is swarmed by shelves spilling over with various audio supplies.
My guy cut me a Yao Ming-sized length of wire for free and provided unbothered wisdom about setting the speakers up.
It was not a quick process, and that’s not a complaint. Every veteran of that store moves at exactly one speed. There’s nothing you can do to alter their rhythm.
As I was going to check out this time, I saw a pile of “Free With Purchase” items, featuring a wealth of VHS tapes. The jewel, as evidenced below, was a 1990 ESPN blooper reel narrated by Chris Berman.
The other one is a warped copy of NFL Total Impact 1997, which, from what I’ve gathered, is a compilation of NFL quarterbacks running for their life over a dramatic narration uttering “THE QUARTERBACK…” every 15 seconds.
Those VHS sleeves scream quality. I was thrilled. Now I just had to acquire a VHS player.
Securing a VHS/DVD player
As you might imagine, VCRs are not in great supply.
The last VHS player was produced on July 22, 2016. That we have an exact date for the death of the VCR is as unnerving as the fact that it happened a half dozen years ago and no one really noticed.
When I looked online, the majority of listings were somewhere in the $250 range.
Instead, I took my talents to Craigslist and found a new-ish one from 2013 that also played DVDs. In a McDonalds parking lot, I haggled my way down from the steep figure of $85 to a much more palatable $80.
There was a real rush to getting home with such an outdated piece of technology, then quickly realizing I didn’t own a single RCA cable and the only store in the area that might sell them was closed.
But the following day, I headed over to an electronics store just before closing and acquired my cables from a helpful man who, if this was 2006, would assuredly be managing a Game Stop.
After I got home and set it up, I threw in the Berman blooper reel. It was everything I hoped it would be.
The commentary was flawless. It had the rhythm of an America’s Funniest Home Videos compilation, but narrated by your fun, slightly drunk uncle with limitless sports knowledge.
There was a curiosity to that tape and era that exists in stark contrast to our jaded present.
All Berman and ESPN needed back then were some funny horse names and fog.
(Timestamped, below, for your viewing enjoyment)
The soundtrack, VHS date overlay, awareness from the track announcer, Berman’s pacing and comedic rhythm?
It’s an impeccable production.
Stumbling into a local video store, and what I bought
In a stroke of fate the following day, I was heading home from physical therapy on a route I don’t usually drive and saw a sign for $1 VHS tapes and $2 DVDs.
It was an old-school video store, which I will also avoid naming.
I cut over three lanes of traffic without any regard for human life, missed the entrance and parked behind a sketchy massage parlor with aggressive towing signage in their lot.
Calling the record store dingy feels disrespectful after spending an hour at the video joint.
They’ve been open for 38 years and still have a well-stocked porn selection tucked tastefully behind a wall of VHS yoga tapes and a sliding black curtain.
Had I known I was going to write about this, I might have stepped through that void, if *only* to regale you folks with some of the titles.
I may have been the first person in that store in days. There was not a sign of life for the first few minutes I was in there.
It turned out it was run by a Bronx-born Yankees fan in his 60s. He knew the ins and outs of the building a bit too well and had become part of the store. They’d both seen better days.
If my friends at the record store are deliberate in their movements, this man was the lead paint drying on those walls.
There was a legitimate 40-minute window between the time I put my couple dozen tapes on the counter and the moment I actually walked out with them. Apparently, most of the DVD cases did not actually have the DVDs in them, and had to be painstakingly searched for in the bowels of the store.
In that span, I rescued my car from the tow-friendly lot next door, hit a couple U-turns, parked again, and did a 10-minute radio hit that began with an Aaron Rodgers ayahuasca question.
The other employee in the store, who arrived halfway through my visit, had steampunk-style goggles with a Woody Harrelson, “Natural Born Killers” red tint to them.
He had… opinions. In particular, he was VERY upset at how “woke” Disney movies had gotten. The new Spiderman was good, though. Big Tobey Maguire guy.
Eventually, I escaped with my haul (and my life), broken down below, for a grand total of $58:
VHS
Heist
Jerry Maguire
Good Morning Vietnam
Private Parts
Sleepless in Seattles
When Harry Met Sally
Santa Fe Stampede
Pure Country
Clear and Present Danger
U.S. Marshals
Great Moments in Baseball History: Record Breakers
Basketball Bloopers and Dazzling Dunks
NFL Total Impact 1997: Quarterbacks Under Fire
Sports Blooper Awards
DVD
Glacier National Park
Platinum Comedy Series: Steve Harvey
Chapelle’s Show: Seasons 1 & 2
The League: Season 1
Jackass Number Two
Bad Boys II
Seven Pounds
Two for the Money
North by Northwest
Borat
Wedding Crashers
Office Space
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
Napoleon Dynamite
Austin Powers: Goldmember
Rudy
SportsCenter Year in Review: 2006
2010 World Series: Giants vs. Rangers
Goal II: Living the Dream
NBA Street Series: Dunks!
Rollerball
I was robbed of a vintage Dave Chapelle special, but was rewarded with the first two seasons of Chapelle’s Show for free.
I also found a Steve Harvey standup gem. Among the myriad superb bits in the special is perhaps the best O.J. Simpson joke of all time.
Living the analog dream (getting to the point)
Now I had my setup.
Armed with the limit-ed potential of my new acquisitions, and buzzing from the asbestos lining the VHS covers, I lit up a CBD joint… because actual weed has become too potent. I can only handle the mids I smoked in high school.
I threw on a DVD copy of Rollerball that I’d been waiting to watch for months. It was two hours of James Caan (rest in peace) at his most James Caan, kicking ass in leather and rollerbades.
It was excellent. I turned the lights off and had little desire to distract myself from the movie.
So what’s the grand point I’m bloviating towards?
That old, analog technology makes you work a little bit harder.
You can find just about anything on YouTube, streaming, or some Baltic variation of 123Movies.
But when you throw in a VHS or a DVD, it is innately a little arduous.
And because you’re not using a laptop like I usually do when I watch movies, there’s less of an impatient urge to do anything else.
It reminds me of the Friday movie nights my parents used to set up in my sister, Jordan’s room. 90 percent of the time it was one of the Shreks, The Lion King, or Spirit (the horse movie). The Emperor’s New Groove was in the rotation, too.
I’d pretend I was too cool for it, then sit on the floor of her room, as if I wasn’t about to watch the entire movie with my sisters.
There are also the memories of summer camp days when counselors were shorthanded and had us watch A Bug’s Life or, if we were lucky, Stuart Little.
But the fondest memories are of watching The Iron Giant with Mimi, my grandma.
We’d spend the day at Chuck E Cheese, hit up Blockbuster and return home to a dozen Dunkin’ Donuts on the counter from Pa, my grandpa. I recall washing those donuts down with enough Orangina to make my gums bleed.
Nostalgia is probably the most compelling thing about a VHS/DVD player.
It’s the smell, the little crackle and flickering, the objectively shitty quality. Clicking on an HBO Max title doesn’t quite have the same life to it.
(As an aside, if HBO could, for the love of god, figure out their interface so you could rewind 15 seconds without the entire apparatus collapsing, that would be SUPERB.
I’m trying to repeatedly watch — in high definition — the scene in the Sopranos when Furio knocks off a doctor’s hat and says, “You gottaabeeeonaaa youhat” like a leather-wearing, coked-up version of Mario. )
Sure, playing a VHS tape is a pain in the ass.
Want to rewind? Get a grip.
But there’s a ritualistic value to putting that clunky hunk of plastic in the player, listening to it warm up as the spool starting spinning. While there’s nothing advantageous about it, the process demands for you to be present.
That experience has a glow of inconvenient familiarity that’s worth reliving.
Thoroughly enjoyed reading this - so refreshing coming from someone your age - and the nod to Mimi and Pa is just icing on the cake 😊
Thanks for including that Steve Harvey gem. Make sure you get checked out for lead paint positioning please. And consider submitting this article to Mindful Magazine - it’s a perfect -albeit no longer practical- practice of presence.