The Be Kind Rewind

It supposed to resemble a movie ticket, back when those
didn't require you to take out a second mortgage to buy one.

Did you ever hear that song by Bob Dylan, The Times They are a-Changing. For people like me, you can best identify it as the song at the beginning of the Zack Snyder's Watchmen. Anyway, in the song the mumbling crooner states, "There's a battle outside/And it's ragin'/It'll shake your windows/And rattle your walls/For the times they are a-changing." It makes for a nice tune and some nice visuals, but I don't think Dylan always got it right with this one. change doesn't always come at the point of some revolutionary upheaval. Sometimes change is not a great battle. Sometimes it is nothing more than a whimper and a faded whisper. Such is the case of Blockbuster video.

For the younger readers, Blockbuster video, was a video renting store. (A queer and anecdotal establishment that people of the future will view with the same bewilderment and disgust that we view France's 18th century game of cat burning, or the fad of pole-sitting from the 1920's.) It was first started in Dallas, Texas in 1985, founded by a database manager. He set up a huge warehouse in Garland and began franchising out his store with the idea of customizing each store to hold video rentals that best suited the neighborhoods they were in. The idea took off like a Saturn V rocket. In 1987 the company even won a law suit against Nintendo and was allowed to begin renting video games, a revolutionary concept for the time. Blockbuster, somewhat unscrupulously, spent the late 80's and early 90's buying up any rival video rental company they could find and turning their stores into Blockbusters. Ironically, in 2000, they passed up on buying a little known video rental company called Netflix, for a steal price of $50 million. Unfortunately, like a Saturn V rocket they also eventually had to reenter Earth's atmosphere. They came crashing down just as unceremoniously, only to be deemed outdated and put on a shelf in a museum. Though, Blockbuster tried to start offering mail-rentals to compete with Netflix, by the time video-streaming came along most people had forgotten the rental giant faster than betamax. (I think that was some kind of health food from the 80's.)

Blockbuster, which at one point was a giant in the entertainment industry, slowly faded away and the industry changed from rentals to streaming. That little known company, netflix, stayed ahead of the curve, and has since come to dominate the market. It was not a raging battle, but a quiet transition from one place to another. Now people can now get the same service they got from Blockbuster at their corner supermarket through a red machine which they don't have to pay a monthly membership or late fess.

So imagine my surprise when I learned that Blockbuster still existed. The last one I ever found was that "creepy one" down the shore that stayed open through a combination of pity and black magic. It turns out that after Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy they were bought by Dish Network, because fad-entertainment companies should probably try and stick together. Yet, my discovery seems somewhat bitter-sweet as in the same article which I learned about Blockbuster's continued existence I was also informed about its impending closure. As Alanis Morissette would say, "It's that coincidental."

Why do they all look so happy? Aren't at least two of
these people loosing their jobs very soon?

On November 9, 2013, the last ever video was rented from Blockbuster. It was rented in a store in Hawaii and fittingly was, Seth Rogan's This is the End. Now this raises several questions in my mind. Like, does this man now have to return the video when he is done watching it? Will he be charged a late fee if he doesn't? Why would anyone rent This is the End? Did he rent it ironically? Does that mean the last video was rented by a hipster? Do they have hipsters in Hawaii? Do they ever get ironically sacrificed to volcanoes because they are "virgins"? Was that last question culturally insensitive to the proud people of Hawaii? Why is my shoe wet? Regardless, Blockbuster has now ended all store rentals and will close its remaining 300 stores by early January 2014. You can, however, still access Blockbuster.com, though given the current business climate it more or less now stands as a sad gravestone to a place that was so much a part of people's lives twenty years ago.

I think I still have my Blockbuster Rental Card somewhere. Much like my library card it got shoved to the back of my wallet, swallowed up in the leather abyss of forgotten dreams and old insurance cards. As a kid of the 80's, renting a video or even a video game was the highlight of my short-lived life. The possibilities seemed endless and every decision was weighed with the appropriate gravitas that one might give to a decision on where to attend college or where to go for dinner (What are you in the mood for? I don't know, what are you in the mood for? Anything I guess. How about, pizza? No, I had pizza for lunch. But you just said "anything.") And as much as you think i would be sad or even nostalgic at this moment in history the truth is that I see the tale of Blockbuster, more as a sign of the times, and a cautionary tale of how quickly business that we once could not live without can get left behind in the name of progress.

Blockbuster was a great place to have around in its day, but ultimately it failed because of its inability to adapt to the times. I can't find a lot of sympathy for a business who cannot see the writing on the wall. They were slow to adapt, slow to follow, and even slower to lead. (My friends and I call that the Ralphie's Plan, but that's a story for another time.) As Dyaln said, "Don't stand in the doorway/Don't block up the hall/For he that gets hurt/Will be he who has stalled." Now, much like America Online or those nightmarish Ferbie toys, Blockbuster video will belong to a very distinct and ancient time of my personal history, and I'm okay with that. It's time for us to move on. VHS tapes are long gone. There is no more reason to rewind, no more reason to look back and feel bad for the technologies of our past. Soon enough, DVD's and even BluRays will go the way of the walkman. That's the way of life, the circle of technology. So hold on, because the only constant of the future is change. As Dylan reminds us, "The slow one now/Will later be fast/As the present now/Will later be past/The order is/Rapidly fadin'/And the first one now/Will later be last/For the times they are a-changin'."