One of Today's Purged Objects

It's 1981. I'm working as a manager at a record store. RECORDS. Our store also has a video rental club. We have about 200 movies in our selection. They are kept under lock and key in a glass-front display case. There are round openings in the glass, large enough to put your hand in to turn over a video to read the back cover, but too small to pull the movie out and steal it.

When people decide on a video to rent, one of us goes back there with our little silver key to retrieve it.

Home video is new and fresh and freakishly exciting. You can watch a movie of your choice whenever you want. In your house. My God. You can even pause it to go pee.

There are many discounts available to those of us who work in the store. Promotional records, big employee discounts on brand new videotapes. Discounts on excitement.

It is time to make a commitment. I will buy some movies. And, oh! Some concert videos! Duran Duran, The Tubes, Def Leppard. I will have my own utopian society in my apartment. But first, the big decision.

Beta or VHS?

I research. I watch both formats. One is obviously superior to the other. I decide. I start collecting movies. They are expensive. It doesn't matter. They're glorious, luxurious videotapes of many of my favorites. Blazing Saddles, Time Bandits, The Go-Go's in Concert (shut up), Annie Hall, everything Monty Python I can find. I buy them all.

In Beta.

5 years later, Betamax goes the way of the Edsel.

And even after the evil VHS is made obsolete by the DVD, I carry those Beta videos around in boxes every time I move. Way into the future. All the way to Phoenix.
And I become aware of the extent of my ass-hattedness.