Reading:
a book.

Yesterday after work my dad and I went to the library to check out some books (of course), and I made a fascinating discovery: the library has videos! Lots of videos! Old videos! Fabulous videos! Musicals! Classics! Pretentious european art films! Eisenstein! Oh! Joy!

This was especially exciting since I had been looking for older musicals for a few months now, and couldn't find a rental shop that carried them anywhere. Living in pseudo-suburbia (okay, no, let's face it, even city-centre Mississauga is suburbia. I try to deny it, but we all know the truth.) is sucky for many, many reasons, but the movie rental scene is truly the worst of it all. Within ten minutes' drive from my house there are only three rental stores: one Blockbuster, one Rogers Video and one really cheap corner store that only ever has a maximum of ten decent films, all of which I have seen. So when I tried to find some musicals last month when Meaghen broke her leg (oh yeah, did I ever tell y'all that?), I made the rounds.

At Rogers Video, I had been expecting to find at least a few older musicals. Maybe Singing In The Rain, or some Fred and Ginger films. They used to stock all sorts of great tapes, musicals, old televisions programs (Sister Wendy Beckett made me laugh), and a huge section for british series. But then the new management came in, and so did DVDs, and they purged a lot of their best tapes to make room for new stock. So when I went in to find some dancing and singing oldies, I found that they had nothing made more than 25 years ago. Not even Godfather Part 1. Ridiculous, I thought, so I went to ask at the counter. The kid there told me they had Moulin Rouge and Stomp. I promply left the building.

Blockbuster didn't seem like it would be any better. It's a newer store, so I doubted they'd have the more obscure films, but I thought surely they would have some classics. But no, nothing at all. They were even worse that Rogers, since the new arrivals section took over 3/4 of the shop and the rest was filled with kids' movies and things like American Pie. No thank you.

But now I know better! To hell with renting, they just over-charge you anyway! I'm going to the library for all my movies from now on. Free renting, and better selection. This week I perused the A-B section and borrowed An American in Paris, and Broadway Melody of 1936. Oh baby, I'm going to be dancing at my desk all week long.

Previous

Next