November 14, 2010

  • Busby Berkeley, Bruce Campbell, Hugh Laurie, Jackie Chan, and more

    Each Tuesday, all summer this year, a man named Larry would show up at the Felony Flats flea market with a load of stuff for sale at ridiculously low prices.  First time Greyfox mentioned him to me in one of our phone conversations, he was semi-ecstatic about the videos.  Larry was selling VHS for 25 cents and DVDs (plus the occasional Blu-Ray disk) for a dollar each.

    He said he was selling out so he could move Outside (if you’re not from Alaska, you might not know that “Outside” means anywhere but here) and that he had several storage lockers to empty.  From the variety of items he was selling, and the fact that his huge stock of video included many duplicate titles, I inferred that he had probably bought some lots at auction, or else he’d been running a rental locker business and was liquidating abandoned items.

    Greyfox bought tools, clothing, kitchen utensils, and various household items from Larry, but by far his most numerous purchases were videos.  Greyfox is a film fan and has a limitless need to be entertained.  His preferred genres are horror and sci-fi, both of which categories fall near the bottom of my own list of preferences. 

    Early in our relationship, my darlin’ soulmate, spouse and partner in crime declared us to be the Mr. and Mrs. Jack Sprat of just about everything.  For example, back in the day, when I was getting loaded a lot, my drug of choice had been meth, while Greyfox never met a central nervous system depressant he didn’t like.

    We don’t disagree on everything, of course.  In the entertainment realm, all three of us: Doug, Greyfox and I, are fans of George Carlin, many martial arts movies, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, and probably many other things we’ve not yet discovered.

    But I digress.  Greyfox would occasionally call me while Larry was there and read a few titles that didn’t interest him over the phone so that I could say yea or nay to them, but it would have been cumbersome and time consuming to run through the hundreds of titles he had on hand on any given Tuesday, so the bags and boxes of video Greyfox acquired ran heavily toward his own tastes.

    Doug and I got into Wasilla twice last summer while Larry was at the flea market.  Together, we bought well over a hundred titles of our own choosing, and have barely begun to view all of them, much less the even more numerous titles supplied by Greyfox.  My son and I both prefer interactive entertainment, so we watch far fewer movies than Greyfox does.  Greyfox also watches broadcast TV, while Doug and I use our TVs solely as monitors for game consoles and video playback.

    I think that was another digression there.  My intention was to mention some highlights from our summer’s acquisitions.  Most outstanding was the first two seasons of House MD at a dollar each, which led to, first, the online purchase of a discounted two-pack of the third and fourth seasons, and finally to a full price DVD of the fifth season and Blu-Ray disk of the sixth season.  I’ll be buying the seventh season as soon as it’s available, too.  I’m hooked.

    There have been several excellent animated movies we all enjoyed, including Over the Hedge, Meet the Robinsons, Ratatouille, and Monsters, Inc.  Incidentally and tangentially, several of my friends have told me that I am much like the character Remy from Ratatouille, and I’m still trying to figure out if they’re saying I’m a rat, a fine cook, good at pulling people’s strings, or what.

    That was definitely a digression.  I’m also tempted to digress from the “Larry videos” to bring up an excellent TV series, and another mini-series we acquired elsewhere and enjoyed greatly:  The Lost Room and FireflyFirefly was part of the yard sale acquisitions after the neighbors from hell moved away, and Doug ordered The Lost Room on recommendations by his friends.    Among titles from Larry’s bounty this summer, some that we’ve all enjoyed included the Grindhouse duo from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, and The Fast and the Furious:  Tokyo Drift.

    Our latest biggest pleasure and surprise out of Larry’s stash is Bubba Ho-Tep, a genre bender and transcender, “redemptive Elvis mummy film.”  See it, if you haven’t.  You won’t regret it.

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