Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

I finally joined the twenty-first century last week, at least in part. Actually, it wasn't so much myself that did the joining; it was a friend of mine who, in the face of mounting frustration that I had not yet joined in this particular way, finally said "Oh, the hell with it" and signed me up himself.

He sent me a DVD player.

I had been holding out for a player, waiting for the price to come down; and then, now that the price has in fact come down, other economic factors reared their ugly heads to still keep me out of DVD-heaven. But this friend, who has been a DVD-nut for at least two years now, got tired of nagging me to buy a player and put up his own hard-earned cash for the thing. The only downside was the timing of the machine's arrival: late in the afternoon on Friday, when Syracuse was in the midst of receiving a large snow storm, and I had literally returned from a forty-minute drive to Blockbuster and the public library (which is usually no more than a ten minute drive, if I hit every red light in transit) on roads that had not been plowed since the last snow storm. So, I had to wait a day to get a DVD so I could test the machine, a time period during which I had to endure the machine itself, taunting me from inside its box.

The first DVD I rented the next day was the biggest film that I missed last year: Spiderman. (My review is pending, probably tomorrow or Thursday.) Satisfied that the thing worked, and amazed at the picture quality, I rushed out the next day and bought the anniversary edition DVD of Singin' In The Rain and rented the DVD of Princess Mononoke. Today I rushed out and bought The Phantom Menace (which I am convinced is the single most unfairly-maligned film in history) and Rob Roy, a truly great film that was overshadowed by sharing a release year with Braveheart, a greater film also set in Scotland.

So here I am, a new DVD fanatic, all because of a guy named Matt whom I have known longer than any person in my life who isn't a blood-relative. If he had a blog, I'd tell you to go visit it. And if he'd finish his own novel and get the thing published, I'd tell you to buy it. As it is, I'll just tell you to root for the Philadelphia Eagles, the Duke Blue Devils, and when college football starts up again, the Penn State Nittany Lions.

(Now I gotta get the TV fixed sometime. The color's been off for a year and a half -- it doesn't render greens and yellows correctly. It's always something.)