VHS

One of our DVD players is on the fritz so rather than moving the working one back and forth between the bedroom and living room (or just buying a new one) we got the old VHS player out of the closet. My 10 year old son was like, "What's that?" to which I responded, "It's what the dinosaurs' watched movies on..." Watching VHS tapes is like time travel without all the worries that your mom would fall in love with you and then you and your siblings would vanish while you played the guitar. (Doc Brown warned us all...)

After watching Goonies for the first time, Tobyn asked to see the deleted scenes and special  features. (He wanted to know why they cut the giant octopus scene.) I tried to explain that there were none and because he believes very little of what I say these days he asked me to show him the tittle screen to prove it. I wish I could have captured the look of confusion on his face when I told him to rewind it.
Mine will be the last generation to know anything about video rental and record stores. My first job was at a video store that was right across the street from a Blockbuster. Oh how I felt bad for those corporate schmucks. We could play any movie we wanted (rated R only after 9pm) and even though they were the big bad chain, we made twice the amount of money because we had a porn section in the back and they did not.

We had a few tapes already but for fifty cents a pop at the good old local thrift store, our collection grew slowly. It grew slowly because every time we go to look they added more and there is no rhyme or reason to where they put them so I compulsively have to organize them based on who's in the movie. It's a sickness I know...
Some movies we had to get (Gotcha and Running Man) and others were just for fun (Ace Ventura 1&2).

As I've mentioned before we do not have cable so when there is nothing on the few channels we do have, we now stick in a video. Last weekend it was Willow and I had forgotten how cool that movie was for it's time. Tobyn loved it and has asked to watch it again (twice). He was reading the cover and said: "Well no wonder I like this movie, it was written by George Lucas!" How fun it is to be a child discovering the world one George Lucas film at a time...

Last night we put in The Wizard Of Oz. I loved this movie growing up and still love it to this day. The first thing Tobyn said was, "Is the whole movie in black and white?" Not wanting to ruin the big Oz reveal, I lied and said it was (this is why he believes me almost never.) The version we bought came out in 1989 as the Fiftieth Anniversary edition so it did have a few minutes of extra footage at the end. It's so amazing that this wonderful film came out in 1939. 

Now I'm in search of more movies with little people in them, just to keep the streak alive...