RETRO BLOG: Now I Have Too Many Shelves

A long long time ago, in a blogaxy far far away, I mentioned that I intended to sell a very large movie collection I owned. This movie collection had a lot of movies. It had 548 DVDs, 19 blu-rays, and 135 seasons of various low-to-high quality television programs. It was disgusting. They were all over the place. I had movies crawling out of the sink and pouring out of my gutters. Golly!

Clearly I had a disease. What disease? Being too awesome to realize I owned too many movies. Then I got married, and my wife said, “Jay, you need to sell all of your movies right away. No man of mine will have such a large collection of unnecessary films on hand. You will be too busy doing everything I say to watch movies anyhow. Now go mow the lawn you wanker.” I bet you thought I was making that up until she said her trademark insult. Also, I realized I didn’t really need any movies, and I tired of buying all the movies, and I never watched the movies, and blah blah blah, I’ve explained this before. I’m here for a different reason right now. This blog has a different thesis statement then some other blog. I’m here to let you know that last weekend I had a garage sale. I put the last remaining movies out for the public (yech…the public, they are so much worse than us) to peruse and buy.

I initially tried to sell these movies for one whole dollar each. I thought that to be a fair and reasonable price for a movie. I thought wrong according to the public. The first woman that came into my garage to look at my stuff said, “I want to buy a movie for fifty cents, is that okay?” This woman, who stood right next to a sign that said, “Movies are one dollar, stupid lady,” started to get her coin purse out of her miscellaneous items and wallet purse. I said, “No. Movies are one dollar, stupid lady.” She bought a movie anyway. This illustrates something for a different blog that I learned about garage salers over those two days: They are cheap and crazy and quite wonderful people: except for the ones that smoke cigarettes. Again, I can’t elaborate on any of that because that’s a new thesis statement for a new, unwritten blog. I really need to stay focused on my current thesis for this new, half-written blog (as of press time).

Okay, so what I like about selling movies as opposed to buying movies: People are buying movies for a reason. They want to tell you those reasons. One guy who bought almost every bad comedy I’d ever purchased told me he’d had a rough few weeks and needed some laughs. People bought movies because, “they’d forgot that movie existed but remembered liking it as a kid.” People bought movies because, “My kids should see this movie.” People bought movies because movies are great.

For whatever reason, people bought movies. For whatever reason, a lot of the movies they bought from me were SO BAD. I really owned a lot of terrible movies. Too many terrible movies. Why did I own these movies? Why did I buy the Punisher starring Dolph Lundgren? Why did I buy Jason X? Why did I buy EVERY SAW MOVIE? There are no reasons for doing those things. There are no reasons I needed to buy every sequel to something or every movie starring a certain somebody or other, but I did. The fact some of these movies sold, was wonderful.

I even sold Glitter. Also, I owned Glitter:

Copyright owned by no one. No one will admit owning this copyright.

Definitely the person with the worst taste on planet Earth came to my garage sale and bought the following two movies: Southland Tales and Going Overboard. I could write so many sentences describing how bad those two movies are, but you’d complain about this blog being too long. Instead, I’ll let you watch both movies and then feel your eyes bleed when they give up on ever seeing anything good again. Take that word haters! Now you have no eyes. These blogs don’t come in brail either. That’s impossible. The Internet hates the blind.

I’ve done a great job elaborating on my thesis I never stated. On Saturday morning of the garage sale, around 10:30am, I had roughly 18 movies left. Really it was 16 movies and 2 TV shows, but really we’ll say 18 movies because it’s easier to type. At that point, I’d lowered the price to $.50. A mere pittance for a king! A Hispanic woman entered my garage around 10:45am. Garage sales are just like real life. She immediately walked over to the movies. She said, “Oí que había varias películas para la venta.” I said, “I’m not fluent in Spanish, nor do I know if your English-to-Spanish Google Translated sentence is correct. Do you mind if we speak in Spanglish?” She said, “Yes, Senor. That would be bueno.” I said, “Excelente. Wooto wooto.”

The woman flipped through the 18 movies and said, “I’ll take them all.” Then she looked closer. Then she strained her face. Then she said, “On second that, I don’t want these ones.” She took out Sarah Silverman’s Jesus is Magic, Tenacious D: The Masterworks, Clerks:The Animated Series, and Caberet—the Academy Award nominated film that actually almost beat the Godfather for Best Oscar. I asked, “Are you sure?” She said, “Si. I’m certaino.” I chided her for her poor use of Spanglish. She paid for the movies and walked out of my garage. What did the woman who evidently does not like alternative comedians from the late 90’s buy? Only Glitter and Mean Streets and Ordinary People and eleven other movies that made total sense buying in one purchase.

Thesis proved. That was a great, concise blog. Also, if you’re curious, I think I lost $7,939.75 on this brief foray into obsessive movie collecting. That’s probably on the low end. I could be driving a fancy car by now but instead I wasted my money on booze, bitches, and box office.