Thursday, December 12, 2013

For Your Viewing Pleasure


My new favorite YouTubes are retail/restaurant training videos. This one for Blockbuster is from 1990 and takes us back to a magical time of videotape rental, baggy pleated front khakis, and VCPs. If you're like me, you might ask, what is a VCP and why would I want to rent one from Blockbuster? Well the VCP is apparently like a VCR but doesn't record. I feel pretty certain that everyone else just referred to those as VCRs regardless. But you could rent one if your personal VCR was being repaired!

Anyways, this video is mildly annoying but still a poignant reminder of the past to me. Sure, I can still find a brick & mortar location to rent movies, but really that whole experience is dead as a dinosaur to me. If I can watch practically any movie or tv show instantly at home, why bother? I'll just remember fondly my trips to the neighborhood Videojack, whose smell I still recall (sort of a mix between the video tapes and nacho cheese). Eventually they introduced a computerized catalog, which of course seemed pretty awesome at the time. RIP Videojack; the last building you occupied near me is now a dentist.

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