I forgot to mention something kind of funny that happened yesterday while I was at Media Play. I was browsing the largely denuded DVD racks, looking for anything that might be worth buying, when I spotted a little film that brought back a lot of memories, an obscure B-picture from the early ’90s called Robot Jox. (“Two men! Two machines! Too wild!”) I reached for it with one hand, while turning my head to speak to The Girlfriend. “Hey, honey,” I said, “Look at this. I ran this movie when I was a projectionist at Movies 9. It only played for a week or so, and I think I was the only person who ever actually watched it.”

Suddenly, a voice said, “Yes, I think you probably were.” It turned out the guy standing next to me with his arms full of clearance-priced DVDs was none other than my former movie-theater boss, Cal Gunderson. Small valley, eh? I still see Cal from time to time — he manages the Megaplex at Jordan Commons for local magnate Larry H. Miller now — but it’s been a while since our last encounter. I’ve been lucky enough to have had a number of good bosses over the years, managers who would go to bat for you when you need someone on your side, folks who are friends as well as supervisors and who know when to draw the line between the two, but Cal was one of the best I’ve known. Every time I see him, I feel like I ought to say more to him than I do, to thank him for something, although for what I’m never quite sure. I get the impression he doesn’t recall my name anymore, but I am greatly pleased that he still knows my face and recalls my somewhat questionable — or at the very least eclectic — taste in movies. After all, it’s been about fifteen years since I worked for him. But then he probably hasn’t had many employees who actually see, let alone kind of like, movies like Robot Jox.

I probably should’ve bought that DVD while I had it in my hand…

It was unseasonably warm in Salt Lake yesterday, more like the first of April than the end of December. I was walking around downtown with my coat unzipped and sweat gathering beneath my arms. I wished I’d worn a lighter jacket; still, the sunshine was a pleasant change from the fog and bitter cold of the last couple weeks.

My company’s Christmas luncheon had wrapped up about a half-hour earlier. I imagined most of my co-workers were already miles away from the city center, eager to finish their last-minute shopping, or to get home so they could start enjoying their holiday plans. I, on the other hand, felt no desire to be anywhere in particular. I didn’t feel like going home, and I sure as hell didn’t want to go anywhere near the malls. As for getting started on the holidays… well, the truth is that I’ve been pretty indifferent toward the Christmas season this year. It all seemed to come up too fast, like a squall materializing out of a clear sky to ruin a nice day’s sailing.

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I received the following via e-mail this morning. It may or may not be all that funny, but given the week I’ve been having at work as my project managers try to push everything on their agendas through the mill before our Christmas break, I find that any little bit of levity is outlandishly effective. In other words, I laughed hard at this, so I thought I’d share:

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Huh, this is interesting: according to an article in yesterday’s Trib about the Media Play situation, MP was one of the first specialized big-box stores (as opposed to more generalized big-boxes like WalMart and K-Mart) to arrive in Utah, preceding Best Buy, Circuit City, and Barnes and Noble. I either didn’t realize that, or had forgotten it. Big-boxes are so common these days, it’s hard to remember the way the landscape used to be without them.

And here’s another little factoid: the first MP opened here in Novemeber 1993. It seems like they’ve been here a lot longer than that, and now I find myself struggling to remember where I used to go for all my media needs. I used to buy CDs at a locally-owned shop (now unfortunately defunct) called Tom-Tom Music, but I’ll be damned if I can remember where I bought my movies — Fred Meyer, maybe. Which, by the way, was acquired not too long ago by the Smith’s grocery-store chain and became Smith’s Marketplace, a move which did not impress yours truly. But come to think of it, a lot of the Fred Meyer stores used to be Grand Central stores back in the ’80s, before they were bought out themselves, and I didn’t care much for that change either. I remember that my friend Keith had a theory at the time that communists were attempting to demoralize we Americans by buying up all of our familiar stores and giving them new, lame-sounding names. And so it goes in the land of corporate takeovers and brutal retail attrition. I only wish someone knew what to do with the big empty buildings after the businesses fold, instead of leaving them to rot…

I’m hardly an advocate for national chains and big-box stores, but I have to admit that I’m pretty bummed about the impending demise of Media Play. I learned that the book, music, and video stores are going out of business when I dropped into the West Valley City location yesterday to do a little Christmas shopping and saw big red clearance-sale posters everywhere. (FYI: if you live near a Media Play, everything in the store is currently 20-40% off, and those prices will no doubt drop even lower as the final day approaches.) I’ve spent a lot of money at these stores over the last ten or fifteen years; a sizable chunk of my extensive VHS and DVD collections came from there, and not a few of my toys and collectibles, too. In recent years, I’ve increasingly done my movie-and-music shopping online, which makes me as culpable for the chain’s failure as any other factor. However, on the occasions when I do visit a brick-and-mortar retailer, I prefer Media Play to any of the other options here in the Salt Lake Valley. Media Play’s biggest local competitor, Best Buy, may have lower prices, but their DVD selection is consistently inferior; they usually stock hundreds of copies of the hot new releases, but it’s tough to find even a single example of the older films and offbeat stuff I’m often looking for.

In addition, I don’t care for the atmosphere inside Best Buy stores. The tall alleyways in the movie section are claustrophobic, and some idiot is always volume-testing the stereos with the most annoying music he can find. These stores are very much designed for the hip, young, and attention-deficit-disordered among us, with lots of flashy, shiny things that I imagine are designed to overstimulate the senses to the point where you don’t notice your wallet flying open. Or something. I guess I’m showing my age, because I’m far more comfortable with Media Play’s lower-key approach, their bright, clean lighting, and their chest-high display bins that let you gaze out over a sea of merchandise to the other side of the store, if you wish. It’s an atmosphere that encourages browsing, and The Girlfriend and I have often enjoyed a pleasant hour of wandering in between dinner and the beginning of our movies. The clamor-and-din of Best Buy, on the other hand, makes me want to run in, grab some specific item, then get the hell out. I guess this is just one more thing for me to gripe about when I start boring the kids about all the ways that life used to be better when I was their age.

For the record, all 61 Media Play stores will be closed by late January, displacing some 2000 employees in 18 states. Happy New Year, people.

The title of this entry is pretty self-explanatory. Here’s yet another of those uncanny South Park-ized versions of my friends:

 

Again, I have no photo of Cheno handy for comparisons. Sorry. However, it looks pretty good to me, and Cheno himself says the only thing this little guy is missing is “a really tired, ragged look (how I feel).” Maybe the next version of South Park Studio will give us the option for “fatigued.”

I didn’t even realize that yesterday was Pearl Harbor Day until late in the evening when I caught part of a locally produced documentary about the experience of Utahns during World War II. Like the anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, it seems like Americans are not making as big a deal over this date as we used to. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention yesterday, but I really didn’t hear much background noise about the Day That Will Live in Infamy. There were a couple of articles in the Trib, but no big fold-out maps, no front-page photos, nothing splashy or eye-catching as in years past. No primetime TV specials, either, and only a cursory mention on the 10 o’clock news. Perhaps, as I proposed in regards to JFK’s death, the country is finally moving on. After all, the Greatest Generation is fast dying out, there seems to be nothing new to say about the event that began its war, and, perhaps most significantly, we have a new, more recent national tragedy to commemorate. As cold as it may sound to the older folks who are still among us, I’m willing to bet more Americans these days care about and feel a connection to the events of September 11, 2001, than December 7, 1941, or even November 22, 1963.

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Another Simple Tricks reader and personal friend of mine has had a go at the South Park Studio program I linked to a couple weeks back. Mike Gillilan, whom I’ve known since our mutual good ol’ days at the movie theater, sent me his new avatar last night. Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo in the gallery for people who don’t know him to compare this to, but trust me, it’s a pretty good likeness:

If you want to review, my South Park-ian alter ego is here; The Girlfriend and Cranky Robert are here. This is getting to be pretty fun — soon everyone in my life will be looking like foul-mouthed cartoon children, bwa ha ha!

A couple years ago, The Girlfriend and I thought it would be fun to build a gingerbread house together. Yes, I do know what a disturbingly sappy mental picture that forms, redolent of the nostalgic nonsense parents like to tell their children about the simple pleasures of their ancient youth. But it really was fun, and the project actually turned out fairly well. Our walls stood, our frosting icicles were properly proportioned to the house and appropriately delicate-looking, and our gumdrop bushes were delicious, er, that is, they looked nice. The only thing that didn’t quite work as we’d hoped was our frosting snowman, which refused to stand upright and ended up slumped over and rather tired-looking, like it was the end of the season and he was just about to succumb to the warming sun. (We dubbed him Melty and, oddly enough, grew so attached to his pathetic, blobby little form that we saved him after the house itself was gone; he now sits on a little shelf in Anne’s kitchen.)

As proud as we were of our one-room gingerbread shack, however, it was nothing compared to the amazing exhibition of baked-good architecture that was recently chronicled by a Seattle blogger named Jeff Barr. The exhibition was a benefit for the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation; I think my favorite among these gingerbread landscapes is the recreation of London’s Tower Bridge. Go check it out!