Newest in my venture to watch my movie collection in alphabetical(ish) order. To see other posts in the series, click here.
When the world started to shut down because of COVID-19, I decided I wasn’t going to write any articles on it. There’s so much information out there it’s pretty overwhelming, and I didn’t want to add to it. I’d prefer my blog be something people can read to get away from the pandemic.
Then I decided to review my movie collection in alphabetical order. Seeings as the third film in the queue is 12 Monkeys, I wondered how I’d manage to write about it without tying it into what’s happening in the world today, what with it being about the aftermath of a pandemic, and all.
Turns out, due to a purely technical issue, I needn’t have worried.
Y’know how DVD player instruction booklets say to make sure the player is empty before moving it? Well, the last time I moved, I forgot those directions and didn’t check. And once I got settled into my new place, my DVD player started acting up. When I put a disc in and closed the tray, it would pop back open, often several times before it would finally stay shut and engage the disc. My player was fairly old by this point, so I shrugged my shoulders and assumed age was the problem.
Age wasn’t the problem. I discovered what was many months later, when I decided to watch 12 Monkeys, and it wasn’t in its case on the shelf. Something in my brain clicked and prompted me to remove the cover from my DVD player in search of it. Sure enough, there was the disc, crammed at an angle into the space between the back of the tray and the back of the DVD player. The reason the tray wouldn’t close properly was that it was bouncing off the disc in its way – and scratching it all to hell in the process.
The movie actually still plays fairly well. Well enough that I saw one bit that made me chuckle in relation to the current pandemic. (Brad Pitt’s character, Jeffrey, says that to be a good citizen, one has to be a consumer and buy a lot of stuff. The first thing on his list of examples of what to buy? Toilet paper.) But there was a fair amount of skipping and digital static, and a couple of times the player just gave up and spat the disc out.
So learn from my mistake, and check your DVD player for discs before moving it.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this completely out-of-date and mostly useless PSA. Please join me next time when I test the theory that toothpaste can be used to fix a scratched DVD.
The View From the Handbasket 