I ain't got time to re-run, death's a-comin'

Yesterday I took my VHS collection to a donation center along with my VHS player. I know that even 2 years ago, pawn shops stopped paying for tapes. Even DVDs were only a buck a piece. I took that price then because I needed to get food that month and sold 50 DVDs for 50 bucks. I’d probably spent about $750 amassing that collection. There was regret at the time, but not a lot. I had gone through my collection, and they were DVDs that I wasn’t planning to watch again.

Yesterday, though, I got rid of my VHS collection, with tapes that I’ve had for 20 years, without batting an eye. This included the last copies of the original Star Wars movies before Lucas THXed the shit out of em. The Godfather movies, and a whole bunch more. Wife told me to make sure to write down the ones we should get DVDs of. My response, what’s the point, we’ll have to move to BluRay eventually and DVDs will be useless.

But beyond that is a huge difference in life.

As I’m approaching 35, I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on the main differences between my 20s and my 30s.

Back in my 20s, I thought nothing of watching Reservoir Dogs 30 times. Likewise for Star Wars, Being John Malkovich, Three Kings, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and the list goes on. I spent a lot of time with the movies I loved. I would fall asleep to movies as a regular part of my sleeping habits.

Maybe it’s age, maybe it’s just the proliferation of Internet services like Netflix and Hulu. I’ve had cable for about 1 year of my adult life, so videos were a pretty big staple of entertainment until technology caught up. But I think it’s more than that. I loved watching movies again and again. I read books a few times even though I wasn’t teaching them.

These days, I can’t stomach the thought of watching something again unless I’m also watching with Wife who has not seen it (like Doctor Who). There is simply too much good, awesome stuff out there now to be spending time re-running things. And the phrase “holds up to second viewings” is just insane to me. Why does that matter when there is so much more to read, view, see? I did break this twice. I watched Battlestar Galactica twice. It was not as good second time around even though I consider it one of the best Iraq commentaries via sci-fi ever devised. I also watched the last season of Lost again – It got better once I knew why I should care about the secondary lives of the characters.

Is this an age thing or is it that so much more is available than there is time to watch it. It seems that there wasn’t much TV worth watching in my 20s except for 24 (first five seasons anyway). Now I’m trying to keep up with a ton of shows that are all really really good.

The other big thing that changed between my 20s and 30s? Naps. Oh my God, I have fallen deep in love with good naps.