Berryfest Day

One man, one boy, and one girl approach the counter with all three Star Wars movies in hand.  Father looks to son and says, "I think we should play rock, paper, scissors to decide between Star Wars and Berryfest Princess"  Son looks horrified.  Father laughs.  I say, "I think you should go with Berryfest Princess," and sneak a glance at the daughter whose eyes are brimming with some raw emotion.  There is sadness there for sure.  Father laughs at my joke, but I do not smile.  I think she wanted that movie more than Star Wars, and my heart is breaking.  She will learn this lesson a million times, I think, the notion that her desires are not as valuable, are, in fact, a joke.  When she marries (and she will), she will have to fight to have her voice be heard as equal to that of her husband's.  And she will think this is normal.

Then it occurs to me that maybe I'm reading too much into this brief encounter, and I wonder what the hell Berryfest Princess is. 

Meanwhile, I'm putting prices on movies that used to be for rent but are now going out for sale because the management needs to earn some quick cash, and doing this feels like I'm a cartoon mouse sawing a circle around the floor under my feet.

The Special Relationship

I'm holding copies of Twilight: Eclipse in my hand and am amused that some of the customers who have been harassing me for months wanting to know when this movie comes out would probably offer me some strange amounts of money if I could just let them take it home TODAY!  What would probably pain these people most is how little I care.  I don't even hate the phenomenon like some people.  I just don't give a single solitary neuron about any of it.

I do get a kick out of seeing doofy, vaguely chauvanistic men lambasting it.  When the movie came out in theaters, I overheard a guy say something about how it was giving little girls unrealistic expectations about the world and romance and this would lead to problems with men later in life.  Things like this kept falling out of his mouth, but what he was really saying, at least it seemed to me, was, "I am threatened by women having a fantasy life that doesn't include the same things I value in my own fantasy life." Dude was there to rent The Dark Knight.   I checked his history and it was the third time he'd rented it.  I tried to point out the irony of this to one of my co-workers who stared blankly at me and said, "Dark Knight's a better movie."

Best first post ever.

A man who I used to suspect was a child molester just returned the copies of Breakin' AND Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo that he rented in all absolute earnestness, informing me that he wanted to show them to some mysterious "she" who had recently gotten "into" break dancing.  A few more words exchanged and I realized with a sickening dread that this "she" is also a "young" and, on top of it all, a "young" not related in any way to Mr. Breakin'.  And as I wondered why on earth this grown man avec beard wished to help a young girl viddy both Breakin' AND Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, I began to think about how much the world needed this very blog.

And then he asked me the same fucking question everyone else asks.

"How's business?"

Fuck you.