Going to the Video Store

From Zanecorpwiki

I used to go to the video store with my father all the time. I remember it was this little independent place... the kind of place that had to add a porn section to keep going. Really, just the archtypical video store that one sees remembered so often in indie films. They had these chunky wooden a-frame shelves with like five or six rows of video all facing out. It was next to a Highland (where I got my Nintendo) appliance at the end of an old going-out-of-business mall that had a Weiners at the other end. I think the video store outlasted them all and I was truly sad when it finally closed.

I must have been 10, 11... maybe a little older when we started. We got Conan, and then followed it on with Red Sonja. Was it every weekend? Friday night maybe... huge thing of super-buttery popcorn. Sometimes chips. Fritos were Bullet's favorite food in the world. On the couch, my Dad in his chair. Mom popping her head in from time to time. Clash of the Titans, Jason and the Argonauts. Anything with dynamation.

I remember dynamation... I knew it was just stop motion but I was so impressed with how ambitious it was. The craft of it all. Same with the Jim Henson movies... Dark Crystal. Labrynth.

There weren't so many movies back then. It got to the point where we'd seen most everything. I always wanted new sci-fi, and when it was good, it was my favorite... though at the moment the only titles I can remember are Cocoon and this classically terrible film "Star Crash". I think that was really the movie that turned me onto films so bad, they're good (fun).

Never did much horror, though I remember specifically combing it as we went through the other sections.

I don't remember much comedy either... which seems strange. Not that I didn't like comedies, but it wasn't what I remember my Dad and I watching.

Speaking of porn, I remember checking out one day and glancing over to see the guy before me renting "Butterman's Big Tit Adventure" and "Ewoks Battle for Endor". I don't remember it specifically, but we must have rented the star wars trilogy (the real one) from there.

I think my friend Justin may have been there that day. I don't remember anything we watched together, but I do remember bundling in and out of the Bronco. When it was just me, front seat. When Justin was along, you had to fold the sat forward and climb in back.

I'm thinking I also got "Empire of the Sun" from there. I think I saw that when I was like 14 and loved it. It's the first drama I really remember. It touched me. I need to see that movie again sometime.

It's the old myth-action films that really stick with me though. Beastmaster! In my memory, there are like a dozen Conan movies.

I always felt awkward with the sex scenes. Seems silly now, because they were never explicit, and my parents were cool, but I was so... aggressively not-prudish-but-something-like-it that I remember thinking I should feel awkward watching this. They'll think I'm weird if I don't. Not that it wasn't hard to be awkward, I was 10 and had strangely enough internalized a very puritanical attitude towards such things. Not that I disapproved of them at all, I just thought "This is not for me. I shall be chaste." What a weird kid I was.