I got sucked into Deadwood on Sunday. I've now become accustomed to cranking out a half seasons of HBO Go on the weekends, carrying my open laptop computer with one hand to various rooms in my apartment, relishing the experience of an unbroken story, and in the end wondering where the first six hours of my day went. Truth be told I did a lot of other things while watching Deadwood; I cooked breakfast and futilely pawed at my guitar and then ate breakfast and checked my Facebook. Deadwood was the compelling background noise I needed, and later if I find I'm lost somewhere in the plot I could go back whenever I wanted.
When I left my apartment at around 4 I didn't plan to end up walking out of the last Blockbuster on Earth with two DVDs in a bag. My original destination was Coffee Bean and my original purpose was simply to be a human being in the outside world, if only for an hour or so. I strolled through my apartment complex towards Wilshire, and I remembered too late that the Coffee Bean I thought was on Wilshire was actually in the opposite direction on 3rd. So following a tried and true method of finding a coffee shop in any major city, I simply walked in one direction until I came across a Starbucks, which took all of four minutes.
With my white chocolate-whatever in hand, I stepped around a homeless woman counting her change and back onto the sidewalk. Then I saw the sign, the dying company's name written in big yellow letters, and I thought someone had forgotten to take it down. But when I turned onto La Brea and peered through the window I found ten or so people browsing through the aisles. EVERYTHING MUST GO, EVERYTHING ON SALE commanded a banner hung over the doorway, and a flip chart counting down the days until the end read "47 DAYS". I didn't have much else to do, and I was intrigued by the prospect of a good deal.
Jaw-Achingly Mediocre
Inside was gloomy, emptying. The walls were essentially bare, with no movie posters and decorations of any kind. The two employees, a guy and a girl, acknowledged me noiselessly as I entered. They looked to be about my age and, when not dealing with the customers, their eyes were glued their phones. There was a point when it benefited them to chirp "Welcome to Blockbuster" or something as customers entered, but now I suppose that time has passed.
I gravitated towards the XBOX games first. Not much to say about these. The pickings were slim to say the least. NBA 2K11 and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, identified with masking tape labels, were the highlights of the woeful selection. I didn't even glance at the Blu-Rays since I don't own a Blu-Ray player.
The DVD section was the most depressing. The rack had been picked clean; the shelves had decayed into a historical record of Hollywood's trash sequels (Mean Girls 2), flops (Pluto Nash) and generally bad ideas (I've never seen so many copies of MacGruber in one place). Horror films, per usual, were the worst offenders. They had an entire section to themselves, each featuring a possessed Caucasian child or lazily-conceived monster. On the price labels $12.00 had been crossed out for $8.00, and then $8.00 had been crossed out for $7.00; in the horror aisle there was a special handwritten green sign that simply read "Some Exceptions Included" (read: "Make Us An Offer"). Another section nearest the register housed DVDs without boxes. I thought this was similar to how supermarkets put cheaper items like soda and candy near the check out line so people will buy them impulsively; it was surreal seeing What to Expect When You're Expecting beside Casablanca share a $3.00 price tag in the bargain bin. I kept walking through the aisles over and over again looking for some hidden gem. Eventually I grabbed a copy of Attack the Block (OVEREVERYTHIN), only minimally scratched, and, inexplicably amongst twelve copies of a Jack Black film I'd never heard of called Bernie, I found Beasts of the Southern Wild. After I had completed the transaction and was halfway out there, I turned back towards the two employees; they looked at each other with hopeful grins. "Two more! Yay!" beamed the girl with the black pixie cut, despite their looming unemployment, offering her male counterpart a small fist bump before returning to whatever she was watching on her phone.
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There was a Blockbuster less than five minutes from my house in Maryland; like seemingly all closed Blockbusters the sign is still up. As kids my sister and I ran like maniacs through the aisles, astonished at the number of selections and salivating at the sugary snacks. We would run until we simultaneously collided into whichever parent drove us, and argued loudly, as we still do, in favor of our choice of movie and the candy we would share. It mattered a lot more then because once we picked a movie we were stuck with it; that was our Saturday night. And, whatever we decided on, we watched more intently, without checking our social network, and stayed up to finish it even though we were succumbing to Dominos-induced food coma. These days if the movie sucks all you have to do is adjust in your seat, click the exit button, and try again. Or just throw on Deadwood and pass out. It's so convenient.
BLOCKBUSTER > EVERYTHIN.
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