Hello World

So, I’ve been tagged by a neurotic Alaskan. I’m not big on memes, but this one is a bit meatier than most, and it gives me an opportunity to talk about myself, so I’ll give it a shot. My mandate is to give you five strange habits I suffer. To narrow it down, I’ve decided to limit myself to one topic–DVDs.

1. I love commentary tracks, especially for comedies and television shows. The commentary tracks on the Arrested Development DVDs are hilarious and interesting and revelatory. The commentary for Futurama is generally excellent–they have Matt Groening, a few voice actors, as well as a producer and a writer or two, commenting on every single episode–and I bet it’s good on the Simpsons discs too. Although it’s not always great (I was disappointed by the commentary track on the Super Troopers DVD), the commentary track can often be more memorable than the film itself. The commentary track on the Rounders DVD is filled with interesting trivia about poker, acting, and Hollywood. And the commentary for Old School is hilarious. It features the director, Vince Vaughn, Luke Wilson, and Will Ferrell, and I’ve probably watched the movie with the commentary on 4 or 5 times. That DVD gets my highest possible recommendation.
2. When I was a little kid, I used to fall asleep to books on tape–at one point, I probably could have recited The Jungle Book or Winnie the Pooh in their (presumably abridged) entirety. It was always easier for me to fall asleep with a familiar story in the background. I guess this messed up my brain such that I associated the sound of voices with falling asleep. Eventually (probably when it was no longer “cool” to listen to children’s books), I switched to music–even when I had a roommate in college, I usually fell asleep with my mp3 playlist going. Well, once I got a television and had my own room I switched over to watching tv. It turns out that commercials are pretty distracting, however, so for the last few years I’ve been falling asleep with a DVD playing. Usually, it’s a television show (I’ve probably seen the beginning of every episode of Sports Night a dozen times, and the end of every episode less than five times), but sometimes I’ll work my way through a movie over the course of a week or two. Right now I’m going through all four seasons of Futurama, episode by episode, with the commentary track running. This is my second time through.

   Interesting sidenote: a few years ago I stumbled upon the cassettes that I used to listen to. I popped one in and started listening, and found that I could still mouth most of the words as they were spoken. And yet I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning. The mind is a mysterious thing.

3. I own a lot of movies. For a while, I used to buy at least three or four a month. And then two things happened: first, I noticed that I almost never actually watched most of my movies. And second, I made the obvious decision to join Netflix (see below). I’m not sure exactly what I was thinking when I began my brief but fervent DVD-buying binge; although I liked movies, I wasn’t a huge cinemaphile, and it’s not like I grew up with a sizeable VHS collection. I think I liked the idea of building a collection. Even now that I use Netflix for most of my movie-watching, I still buy a DVD every month or so. I do the same thing with books, but somehow it doesn’t seem so strange to hold onto hundreds of tomes that I’m not likely to flip open again anytime soon. And I certainly do the same thing with music–what the hell am I doing with 10,000 songs in my iTunes library? So I guess we’re talking about a larger character issue here, not a minor quirk.
4. I am the ideal Netflix customer. This isn’t quite true, at least not from the company’s point of view–their ideal customer would maintain a subscription but never bother to actually rent movies. But in terms of people actually following their business model, I think I’m way up there. I watch a movie or two a week, I try to be assiduous about rating the movies I return, and I have a queue of over 400 movies. At this point, my use of the service is instinctive–if I hear or read something interesting about a movie, I head over to the site and add the movie to my queue. This means, on the negative side, that I generally forget all about that movie and when it arrives a year later I don’t necessarily feel like watching it (apparently in April of 2004 I wanted to work my way through Marlon Brando’s ouvre). But on the plus side, I’m catching up on the astonishing number of “classic” films that I’ve never seen, as well as getting a chance to check out movies that aren’t good enough to buy. Overall, Netflix has been a real boon for me, and, in the highest compliment I can give a commercial enterprise, it’s really changed my life. In a minor, trivial way, but still. That’s not bad.

   One caveat, however–my mail slot here in Boston isn’t quite big enough, and the mailman occasionally breaks a DVD trying to stuff the envelope in there. This isn’t Netflix’s fault, but it’s annoying, especially since sooner or later they’re probably going to flag my account as problematic and expel me from the service. So there is that.

5. I can’t think of a fifth strange habit, so I’ll finish up with assorted trivia about my DVD collection.

   I own both the original and director’s cut of Donnie Darko.

   I own Braveheart, and love it, but haven’t watched it or any other Mel Gibson movies since he went crazy.

   I own all three Matrix movies because I loved the first one and feel a strange duty to support the series, but MAN did the Wachowskis ever screw up that franchise.

   DVDs I bought without having seen the movie/show first: Family Guy; Sexy Beast; True Romance; Once Upon a Time in the West; Boondock Saints; Mr. Show; Swimming Pool.

   DVDs I own that I bought without having seen the movie, and have still not watched: Once Upon a Time in the West; Swimming Pool.

   Music DVDs I own: The Best of the Blues Brothers; The Old 97′s Live; The Show Must Go Off (Reel Big Fish); Stop Making Sense (Talking Heads); some awful Bloodhound Gang tour thing that I will definitely never watch again.

   The worst movie I own on DVD is probably Rush Hour 2 (featuring Hotal Rwanda star Don Cheadle!), but the one I’m most embarrassed about owning is definitely Moulin Rouge.

And there you have it. I have very strange habits related to DVDs. I’m not tagging anybody, but if you feel like being introspective and need an excuse, you can blame me. Actually, I encourage you to take part–it’s interesting to find out people’s secret neuroses.