Ah, the good ol’ days of yesteryear—when “streaming” meant awkwardly contorting yourself to peer through the window of a video rental store, desperately trying to spot that elusive new release. Remember the sweet smell of musty carpet and stale popcorn wafting from the aisles of Blockbuster? They say nostalgia is like a fine wine; we just took it straight from the box and chugged it like we were prepping for a late-night dance-off with the entire cast of “Star Search.”
Let’s take a moment to remember the thrilling experience of carefully choosing a VHS tape to watch, knowing that you could only rewind it using a pencil if your family’s VHS player was older than you. The true challenge was trying not to pick a flop, which was like playing roulette with a movie cannon, hoping you wouldn’t get stuck with another John Travolta teachable moment. You know, “Look Who's Talking” was fine—once—but as for the sequels? That was enough to invoke a post-traumatic VHS disorder. Ah, but we persevered.
Of course, nothing was like that pure, unadulterated joy of discovering an obscure title, especially one you couldn’t remember hearing about. Who had the audacity to suggest “The Last Dragon” had any redeeming qualities? If by “redeeming,” they meant it gave us the perfect party to recreate Bruce Lee meets Prince at a karaoke bar, then sure, your point stands. And if you didn’t rent it, you’d be stuck watching whatever was on network TV, which means yet another round of “Dancing with Dorks” or, God forbid, “The Battle of the Network Stars.” It was the Universe’s way of telling us we weren’t ready for “Friends” yet.
Now we flash forward to the future—where our devices are smarter than we ever were, serving us up artisanal content tailored to our most obscure interests. Gone are the days of VHS, and for that matter, “picking out a movie” has been replaced by the infinitely soul-crushing experience of scrolling endlessly through a library of digital choices that hurt our brains like Friday’s Dungeons & Dragons session after a few too many Jolt colas. Thank you, nostalgia, for keeping me on this existential hamster wheel, spinning so fast I can almost hear “Take On Me” playing in the background. So here’s to you, VHS—may your rewinding times never be forgotten, even if your tapes are now holding up the leg of my mismatched coffee table.