Blockbusters

CHAPTER 11 isn't bankruptcy, but it's close to it and the fact that Blockbuster has just filed for it should make all of us late 30s/early 40s stop, breathe in and take a moment.

Another slice of our childhood is about to go down the pan.

The video is probably the defining item of our generation. My older brother -- nine years senior ot me -- might have had the LP, but we had Apocalypse Now on VHS. And Ferris Bueller. And...oh gawd, Porky's.

And we had a membership card for the video rental shop. Some of which we actually paid an annual membership for.

Ha!

Blockbuster has been living on borrowed time for an age now. Its the digital age, already. And cinema is cool again. Who needs to have a collection of a hundred plus DVDs at home? Who needs one?

Hollywood can't sell us a DVD of everything it produces... can it? Our tiny little flats and houses are already stuffed full. We want our cupboards back and really, are you saying to me that I need my own copy of all the Jason Stathams?

Actually, I've never watched fewer films than I do now. Or less television. I'm extremely picky, read a vast amount more, and would rather spend an evening cooking a fantastic meal and drinking a bottle of red wine than sitting on the sofa with a bucket of nachos/Butterkist watching a double bill of The Exorcist and Saw IV rented for over three quid each at the local Blockbusters.

RIP the DVD shop.

RIP vast dusty collections of discs in plastic cases bought for extortionate prices and now utterly worthless.