Since before the sun rose on the crisp dawn of recorded history, back when time still had those boogery crusts in the corners of it's slitted eyes, man has questioned the universe around him. What are those scintillating lights that sparkle in the deep blackness of the night sky? What is this rumbling thunder that gnaws uncomfortably in my belly several times a day? What was that big, slobbering thing with great rows of teeth that dragged Earl into the bushes?
We question. We challenge. We inquire.
And myself, as a card carrying member of that long lineage of tireless ponderers who throw back the warm, fuzzy security blanket of complacency and direct the spotlight beam of wonder directly into the squinting face of my reality, I ask this.............
WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY DO PEOPLE *DO* WITH RENTED MOVIES!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!!??
Whew........ easy, boy........ deep breaths now.........
Maybe it's just me. Maybe not another single soul on this whirling rock stops to think about this problem. Perhaps this is just a side-effect from all that mercury I played with as a child, or the fact that my mother would occasionally let me chew on flakes of wall paint to soothe my jangled nerves. But whatever the reason, I notice these things, and they gnaw at me.
I want you now to think of the life of a video tape. Not a video tape that is owned by a household with several children, perhaps a dog, and maybe even a large goat that has a passion for munching on inanimate objects that lie in it's path- those tapes are on their own. I am talking about the rental tape, those black boxes of joy and happiness that come into a 24 hour period of a person's life for a few odd dollars, and are then sent back into the void from whence they came. What happens to them on these short journeys from the shelf to the video drop-box?
I often think of rented tapes of being majestic and wonderful things. They sit and ask for nothing, yet they will be selected, plucked, and whisked away to far off places on interesting and wondrous quests, depending on which direction of the compass their human companion (for that 24 hour period) decides to take them. Ah, I imagine them sitting side by side on the shelf in the video stores, whispering to each other about their amazing travel adventures. Imagine "Gladiator" sitting next to a recently neglected "Gone in 60 Seconds", bristling with excitement as they see "The Phantom Menace" being returned after a three day late charge!!! What stories he would have to tell about where he has been and what he has seen!!!!
It all seems a bit silly (it's right up there on the wacky-meter with Judges wearing robes) but I need this little bit of silliness to force it all into making some kind of sense. How else can you explain how these things take a beating, if they are not accompanying people on grand campaigns?
I'll rent a video, and I'll notice the overall condition of the thing. Ok, if the movie is a copy of "Meatballs" that hit the shelves of the first video store that opened twenty-whatever years ago, I'll expect it to be slightly worn and a bit threadbare around the edges. Makes perfect sense to me. But how can you explain a tape that has been on the shelves only a few weeks, making me possibly the third or fourth person to rent it, looking like it was strapped to the back of a soldier who stormed the beach at Normandy during World War II? Battered and beaten on the outside, with a tape that looks like it was yanked out and used to rope calves in a traveling rodeo. In the words of Robert Plant, "and it makes me wonder".
These items, these nifty little rectangles of fun and merriment, they LIVE, they EXIST, they are HOUSED......... in protective boxes. When not in those boxes, they lie protected deep in the bowels of a machine, for away from where anything can harm them. *WHAT* can possibly happen to a videotape during the FIVE OR SIX SECONDS it spends between the case and the machine?!?! Are there homes out there where great beasts with leathery wings and gaping mouths filled with razor sharp teeth hang from the living room ceiling, their acute hearing at the ready for the sound of a rental case being snapped open so that they might swoop down in a great rush of air as Mom makes her way from the table to the VCR with an unprotected copy of "Babe", it's soft underbelly invitingly exposed, and pluck the tape from her hands only to fleet away and rend it in a large nest made from the innards of videotapes that have been ripped out in a chittering frenzy?
(sigh) It makes me shake my head, and type lengthy run-on sentences to boot.
*FREE DIGITAL UPGRADE-
It also seems that videotapes were merely the first victims in what will prove to be a long line of wounded. These days I find myself renting more and more DVDs. These items seem to be suffering the same fate. Recently, while renting a copy of the grisly sci/fi-horror epic "Pitch Black", it seemed to me like the DVD looked as if it had been around since 1973. The playing surface (that's the underside, for you pinheads out there) looked as if it has been used to dig a grave in rocky soil, and even the center hole had great chips and gouges taken out of it, with a long crack working it's way in from the center to the playing surface.
HOW can this happen? Again, like with videotapes, these objects have only a few scant seconds of time where they are not housed in something protective, be it case or player. It hardly seems like enough time for them to get DIRTY, let alone hacked and mangled. And so, in an attempt to give my wandering mind some peace, I give you now a scenario that MUST be taking place somewhere in the world as you read this. Only in this way can I try to explain this great mystery........
Settling down for an evening of couch-cuddling, Homer and Tilly are going to watch a rented copy of "Police Academy 9: Homicide Hilarity". As Tilly adjusts her popcorn bowl, Homer removes the tape from it's high-impact plastic sheath and starts the long journey to the VCR. Suddenly and without warning, the door is kicked in by a man wearing a turban (I am stereotyping here, so sue me) and brandishing a large scimitar. With cat-like reflexes from working the deep-fryer at King Burgermiester's Grease Palace, Homer fiercely hurls the tape at his assailant, pegging him squarely between his eyes. By ripping out great handfuls of video media, Homer can keep the man tied up in a rocking chair until the authorities arrive. The tape is eventually returned to it's shelf, and when I try to sit down and watch "Police Academy 9: Homicide Hilarity" myself, it's virtually unwatchable, and I rant, kick furniture, and must eventually be removed from my home and put under a doctor's supervision.
And that is just one of a million possible scenarios. The rectangle (videotapes) and the circle (DVDs) are perfect shapes for 1001 applications! Perhaps Little Jimmy needs one more wheel for his go-cart, and with the memory of "Toy Story" still fresh in his mind, and the knowledge that it's a 5-day rental, he cleverly bolts this DVD onto his contraption, and off he goes down his steep driveway of rough cobblestones. Perhaps a videotape is the perfect shingle spacing tool for a barn roofing project. Perhaps people just don't give a tinker's damn.
Me? I'm holding onto my silly little fantasies. Perhaps I'll make a movie about it someday?
Dr. Torgo