2004-02-26 - 10:35 p.m.

...Or how I learned to stop worrying and learn to love pop culture.

I put off buying a DVD player for ages. I was pissed off that The Man was making me shell out for this new medium when I didn't see anything wrong with the old one. I didn't like the idea of paying twice as much for a film, just for the dubious extra feature of hearing the director mumble "uhm, this is the bit I shot in my mom's basement" over the top. I'm not the sort of person who puts sugar on cornflakes. Videos were my thing - I've got hundreds of the fuckers and the thought of them being made otiose made me tut with rage. With the masochistic zeal of the luddite I stayed true to the format I had first fallen in love with, ignoring the ever more explicit advances of the preening, sliver hunk in the shadows. What did I care if the picture was sharper? I rather like the fuzz and crackle of old tapes - it reminds me that I'm watching some alien relic from Hollywood's sock drawer. When Dalton's cleaning up the Double Duece, it's not the screen ratio I'm concerned with.

I love videos. I can even understand how they work. Not like the mysterious shiny discs, with their single hole. I admired the durability of videos - long after the CD swept to power in the music world, videos ruled home cinema. That some slimmer, more expensive pretender to the thrown should usurp my queen was extremely troubling. I'm an analogue type of guy. I care not for rigid boundaries and precision timing. As the digital tidal wave crashed, I didn't want my beloved video-tape swept off its rock. I particularly liked the idea of ex-rental tapes, with their lovely big chunky boxes and stronger tape. Even better if they didn't get sold in the shops. This is the only reason that I own Deathstalker. It had the most amazing cover - the sort of lurid, mysoginist Sword & (sauce)ry artwork that Sadam Hussein was fond of. It was the sort of crappy film that DVD wouldn't dare consider, and all the better for it. It's one thing spending a couple of bucks on a crappy film for some cheap thrills, and another to squander the greenbacks on a medium that considers itself above the trivial. What I mean is that I resented the in-built snobbery that came with DVDs almost as much as the pressure I felt to buy one. Why should I do what THEY want? I reserve my right to watch my shitty films without having to wade through an afternoons worth of bonus features and discarded fluff!

But... I soon realised this one man war was futile. There was stuff coming out on DVD that video wasn't going to get a sniff of. Someone even made a documentary film all about They Might Be Giants with loads of "extra features" and "bonus footage" of "early live material" - the three words that are like kryptonite to any self respecting/abusing fanboy. Shit, I'm only human... So, I forked out for a mulit-region beast and set about clicking on the "confirm order" button on numerous websites for all the pleasures I'd been denying myself. Fairly soon into my DVD ownership I began to see what an immense fool I'd been. Why in god's name had I waited so long for this wonderful toy? Readers, you cannot begin to imagine my joy as I navigated the main menu of Gigantic: A Tale Of Two Johns. The simple tapping of a rubber button brough forth a smorgasboard of delectible treats, each menu option an oyster yeilding a pearl! Videos could never be this glamorous! All my fears about not being able to rewinding or fast-forward properly had been allayed. With DVDs, it becomes irrelevant. The medium enhances the art and vice versa. It's wonderful. I've found that music is better served than films on DVD.

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