Music.

I know I didn't have the SEC shorts one because whenever we're doing somebody on the feed, it's me and the internet.

Yeah.

Me against the world, pretty much, with the internet.

Just stressing out the feed.

And it didn't work, so.

Mm-mm.

But yeah, Joey's here.

Hello, everyone.

Because Shane's back to school.

Yep.

Bye, Shane.

And Joey dropped out just to be here.

Yeah.

We appreciate that.

But Joey is the person that's always been recording stuff, in case people don't know.

Yeah.

He's tall.

I mean, just you haven't seen him if you've been watching.

They're getting a face to the voice.

He's like the Wizard of Oz.

I was upstairs watching TV with Grandma.

And occasionally I would yell something downstairs.

Yeah, like, shut up!

We can't hear murder, she wrote.

Can I please come hang out?

No.

No, Joey.

So today, speaking of watching things on the TV, today we're discussing a pretty significant piece of nostalgia that unfortunately no longer exists, or maybe fortunately, because it depends on how you look at it.

And that is the video rental store, of which have gone by many names, especially around here.

We'll get into that in a second.

But the evolution of the video rental store, it started in the late 70s, 80s, I guess.

And at the time, I remember it was pretty dominated.

I didn't pull statistics because this isn't that kind of podcast, but it was the market share between the big chain, which I think out of the gate was Blockbuster, and the Mom and Pops had a pretty significant hold of the industry.

And it stayed that way up until about the mid-90s, but especially where we live, and I'm pretty sure that'd be the same throughout the rural South, is that Mom and Pops dominated that almost entire amount of time.

For a very long time.

Yeah.

We got a blockbuster around here back in like 2002.

Five to four.

I was off to college when I came back and I was like, oh, it's fancy now.

And then a few years later, the market entirely crashed on.

Well, we had the Video Express.

It's technically a chain, but it's a smaller chain.

Movie Gallery.

Movie Gallery.

It was Video Express originally.

Oh, yeah.

And then Movie Gallery, I guess, bought Video Express.

Yeah, out of Dothan.

And they ended up buying like Hollywood Video too, I think.

I think so.

Yeah, out of Alabama.

They became a big player.

But it was like a smaller chain.

We did have one of those.

Which was great.

Yeah, we did have one of those in our area.

And you did see those were like one of the first ones, I think, at least in Alabama, to be popping up in areas that weren't big enough to get a Blockbuster.

Yeah.

But it still had a little bit of a vibe to them, a mom and pop vibe.

They weren't like a Blockbuster vibe.

Going into Blockbuster to me felt like.

Corporate.

Yeah.

Very corporate.

Like everything's real clean.

It doesn't, nobody smoked in here.

It was as close to like a movie theater experience.

Yes.

Right, you know, it's like right under that.

Yeah.

Yeah, and they also had, like, they had deals with the movie studios, unlike the Mama Pops where you had to go out and buy your own movies.

Blockbuster, you know, the movie studios would give them the movies, and you had to give them a portion of your rentals.

So they was able to have a much larger stock.

And they did have new releases would be like a whole wall.

Yeah, which was awesome.

That's where you go straight to.

Oh, I remember the— Oh, yeah.

I remember me blown away by, like, the video game section because all the mom and pop ones, they never had a lot of video games.

They cost them a lot of money to have video games.

I don't know if they ever had anything past Nintendo.

See, it's PlayStation stuff, Xbox.

Yeah.

But not a lot.

But, yeah, that's the big change started taking over, and by the time they really started to dominate the market, it started falling apart because you had two big competitors that popped up around the same time, Redbox and then Netflix, the old school Netflix DVDs in the mail yeah they'd mail you the movie which I did I loved it as soon as that became a thing and different packages where you could get one two or three or something like that yeah they really capitalized on the cassette to DVD market because once DVDs started coming out in like 96 97 Netflix was there quickly you know the first DVD was, Nope.

I think it was Twister.

I think that makes sense.

I think so too.

Because we went crazy when Netflix started because we got like Chicken Run, Gladiator, and Twister all in.

I've already seen these movies, but my dad's like, hey, they got special features on these things.

Me and Joey lived together at the time, and we was getting so many just obscure documentaries and stuff.

Like stuff you would never find in a black movie.

You finally get to see movies that you only heard of.

Yeah.

You know, there's like a myth of a movie or a legend you didn't even know existed.

Yeah, we'd be getting faith to the death.

That's one thing that Blockbuster was different about the mom and pops was they may have a whole section of a new movie, but they didn't have like this weird B movie, horror movie.

Yeah, no.

That you'd find like at a mom and pop.

They would have maybe five or six of them and they would have them for 30 years.

Yeah.

I remember I remember some of them Plain as day Looking at them I'm just looking like One day I'm gonna rent that thing Yeah The boxes were so memorable They never came I never got it Yeah, Pretty sure that's how I got into the Leprechaun series Yeah Yeah It was That was prominent I can picture Plain as day In movie gallery Where that section was Just the old faded boxes I've ordered it At all costs Yeah he was too scared If anyone look in the boxes No You just like Spooky Walking right past Why would anyone rent these devil phones?

You know, you didn't have the internet or whatever, so you couldn't look up a trailer to see if you wanted to watch it or not.

So you would rent a lot of those movies based on the cover of the box.

I remember reading the back of the box.

Yeah.

That's weird.

Let me get this synopsis right quick.

Yeah.

I don't remember renting a lot of movies as a kid.

I mean, I'm sure there were some here and there, but there were probably just stuff that I already knew all about and seeing trailers for and wanted to rent.

And for me, video games.

Like, I got an allowance every week.

Thank you.

And it was like $5, and then that paid pretty much exactly the cost of renting a video game for whatever, well, three to five days or whatever.

So every time, and I would be renting the same games.

I could have bought them five times over.

You ever go renting one of those mom and pop, and the video game is like a one-day rental?

Like, I can't do anything.

Yeah, what am I supposed to do?

Yeah.

These days, you're screwed because now you have to install the games.

Oh, it would take the entire day.

Yeah.

I don't even know how, like, we were talking about like Redbox and Netflix taking over, But, you know, for video games, Gamefly stepped in.

And Gamefly is absolute trash.

Yeah, that never took off, really, did it?

They did for a little while.

I feel like in the late 2000s, once Blockbuster, like those had pretty much all gone.

Or it was really hard to find one.

They really stepped up because there was nowhere else to rent games.

Redbox, around that time, started.

And to me, Redbox was still better than getting them from Gamefly.

Because Gamefly, you'd never get what was in your queue.

They'd be the dumbest things.

Red box is an unfortunate one.

It had a short run in the scheme of things.

It came at the best time and also the worst time because it came when Netflix was mailing them out.

Well, this, you went to where you could just go get it.

Yeah.

Kind of went back to the rental thing.

It's very cheap, what a dollar.

Yeah.

And you can keep it as long as you wanted, really.

And return it to any red box.

You're just going to have to pay for it.

Which is great.

Any of them.

And but at the same time it was kind of the end of dvds yeah so i mean they only had a run of like a few years the business that big that's not long i love that too you had that red box app you could pull up and see like tell it what movie you're looking for and it would tell you what machine it's in and it would hold it for you yeah i never did that red boxes came in clutch when we go to like vacations in like weird off the map spots and you see a dollar general with the red box blank.

Yeah, okay, we're covered.

They thrived in vacation areas.

I'm surprised they didn't try to keep those moving there.

Now, I will say you go to some places at the beach, like the grocery store, you can see some mom and pop.

Video rental boxes like red box those probably still still rolling i bet yeah probably so i don't know it uh yeah that all that all collapsed and we just lost our red box here i was out there watched them take it down it was it's been this year did they finally take the box yeah i was i had to go into walkers for something and i watched them they were like moving the box it was there for them they just abandoned them they did for a long time how it was it i think it was the dollar general on corners too i think it's still there yeah so if you had your red box it would i would have been the time if you know they were shut down to go just rent as much as a box you could have i may or may not done that at a few video stores yeah i was about to say that was the reason we had here in summington that i can remember three big ones we had we had one that ironically was like right next door to us where we're at right now yeah but they used to be down the road here by the mexican restaurant my mega hits yeah we had another one that was Down right over here that was like half tanning beds, half movie rental.

And then we had movie gallery.

But yes.

But I think for us, it was all about which one do I not have late fees at was the one I'd be renting for.

I remember video hits charged more than anybody for late fees.

Yeah.

I had $100 racked up.

I stopped using them and I don't remember going to movie gallery much.

I feel like we still owe movie gallery money to this day probably.

Oh, Randy that ran it, man, would call your parents.

Be like, hey, you got to come take care of this.

You serious?

Y'all ain't renting nothing else.

I seen him throw a guy out one time.

Plus, he come in looking at movies and he goes, you never returned a VCR to me, buddy.

Oh, it's a VCR.

Yeah.

It's probably $300.

It's a Joe Max pawn shop, buddy.

And you mentioned it earlier.

You know, back in the day, I can remember where nobody really owned a VCR because they were, it was like $500 to buy a VCR at one point.

Yeah.

So you'd have to, you know, rent the VCR, I don't know, like five bucks, or then you'd get the movies for a dollar or something.

So that was kind of like your whole— I don't know why I remember tapes being $2.50.

Yeah.

It was like the going rate everywhere was $2.50.

The rental fee?

Yeah.

And then right when it ended, it was about five bucks, wasn't it, somewhere around there?

Well, I remember like right at the end of Blockbuster, their movies were like $5 to rent, but you could be right across the road at the Redbox and with the same movie for a dollar, or you could go to Walmart and buy it for like $15 so it's like yeah just buy it yeah so it never really it stopped making sense to even go to Blockbuster Blockbuster lost me when they started making new releases like $7, instead of $5 that's crazy because as a kid, as a kid $2 is a lot of money mm-hmm it's still yeah we may have put Blockbuster out of business in Sarah Land Alabama in college.

Our freshman year?

Yeah, it was our freshman year.

My buddy who ended up being my roommate, my sophomore, junior and senior year, he lived next door to us and worked at Blockbuster.

He was from Op.

He just went to college there and was looking for a job and Blockbuster was hiring.

So we got a job there.

And they would give their employees, like, they would encourage them to rent what's about to go out, like on, I think Tuesday was new.

release day.

So, and they would get them in the store like Thursday or Friday before, and they would encourage all the employees to go take these new ones home and watch them, become familiar with it because we want you to help rent it out.

And so he would take as much as they would let him, and then we would burn those DVDs.

We would make bootleg copies.

Yeah.

And we had about 300 bootleg movies.

Yeah.

I know very well about that situation you're talking about too, because...

You also ran a bootleg movie.

My good friend, Kobe, worked at movie gallery over here forever.

Yeah.

Forever.

Pretty much from the beginning to the end.

And one of the great things we would do on Monday nights when he would get off work at like 10 o'clock or something, we'd meet at his place.

He'd bring home the new release that was coming out that Tuesday morning, especially if he was going back to work the next morning.

Yeah.

So we'd watch it before it came out.

That was always a blast.

Man.

Doing that, getting to see it early.

I did that with the with the Netflix I mean I had that DVD recorder Yeah and I would get like three at a time and record them all and put them right back in the mail so I could just get more and I have a stack of DVDs.

At home still, that I recorded and never even watched because I was just doing it so quickly I'd record them and put them right back in the mail.

Yeah, I remember that burner, yeah.

How was they shipping stuff so fast?

Everything would take you a week to get, but Netflix would, you would put a DVD in the mail and then the next day you're getting your other one somehow.

Like, what's going on here?

They opened up distribution centers everywhere.

Had to have been everywhere.

Yeah, I don't, I don't, I'd be curious to know how many they had at its peak, but there was one close to here.

I was trying to remember where Miami Mobile came from, either from like New Orleans to Pensacola, I think.

Really?

It wasn't that far.

Yeah, that was, the turnaround was insane.

It was ready for you.

Yeah.

I'll tell you what they didn't have, though, and that's the great things you find at the mom-and-pop places that were, you know, just trying to make as much money as possible.

And they had no rules to play by.

Yep.

It's the Wild West.

Tanning beds.

Oh, yeah.

It's a 50-50 shot in Walker County, or probably most of Alabama, the mom-and-pop place is going to have tanning beds.

And tanning lotion.

everything oh the whole thing is some accelerator if they were open now they'd be vape stores oh no doubt they would no doubt that'd be pretty nice get yourself a movie and a vape a vape yeah popcorn flavored vape yeah i feel like somebody's left a vape down here again this really doesn't match the set aesthetic i think is that what this is right here is this shane still yep that's shane that is a game boy i know what is this a patron how do you what do you should try it we can facetime him real quick and be like hey shane i've never done a vape why do you do this first time for everything i can't even why is there a usbc charger in it hey just push a button and start sucking on it that's what she said and then pulse see if we still had movie stores, they'd be able to show you how to work that and tell you about the movie at the same time.

You probably could watch movies at home.

What is that?

Why is it all...

Take a pull on it.

It's like a constellation on the side.

Yep.

Oh.

Whoa.

That's got so many lights on it.

I bet that's got Wi-Fi.

You're calling Shane right now, baby.

Yeah.

I feel like I'm signaling somebody's home planet.

I mean, this is, I don't know, it's like crop circle lights, 34 and 20.

I don't know what that...

And for all you vapors out there, help us out a little bit.

Yeah.

Shane, comment.

What is this?

Yeah, how do I, yeah.

Tell us how your vape.

Pulse.

What's the difference?

What's a close, what's a pulse?

We don't know.

I've never vape before.

Always do it.

Oh.

That came out, that just goes.

That was a lot.

It was.

That is, that's the fruitiest nonsense I've ever tasted.

I'd smell it.

What?

That was incredible.

That is.

You look like you took a cinnamon challenge or something.

Yeah.

I feel like it just huffed in a bunch of just the ashes at the bottom of a fruit loot bag.

Dude, if you would have took a real hard pull off that, it would have hurt so bad.

Oh, God.

What is the point of that?

You're a cool kid now, Matt.

He's going straight to the gas station.

Hey, give me one of them.

He's hooked already.

Hey, we forgot to tell you, just one puff gets you hooked, man.

What flavor?

The fruitiest one you got, man.

All the fruit.

Got banana cream pie in there.

What is my lipstick?

He's got nicotine right there.

Do you electrocute yourself?

I guess.

I don't.

You just uploaded all the information from that thing into yourself.

That's why the constellations are on there.

Fill the stars and see them too.

Officially the first thing that I've ever smoked that had a USB charging station attached to it.

He's seeing all those spots now.

First and last.

Yeah.

I feel like I, yeah, I'm getting an internet signal now.

I'm receiving a fax right now.

Oh, man.

Yeah, gas station.

Gas station rentals.

That's one.

You said you got a place that was like a shelf of movies, a gas station.

That was me.

It was near my grandparents' house, and we would go.

It was like a gas station.

And as soon as you walked in, there's like a little bit of hallway to the right.

And they just had a shelf on that wall that was probably from here to that wall over there.

And they probably had the same movies for the whole time they were there.

They might get a new release like three months after it came out.

But we'd go there and rent movies and, you know, we've seen the same thing all the time.

I'm sure we watched every one that they had.

That was kind of the strangest place.

Get a loaf of bread and a movie to rent.

Yeah, that's when you're in, even in the smaller years, because Cordova had that series one stop was where we did a little sample of the podcast.

We did.

We released that one day.

But yeah, they had a whole wall of rentals.

That's kind of a perfect example of what we're talking about.

Yeah.

Tannenbeds.

And great story.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He had about five or six tannenbeds in there and one wall of rentals.

And remember, he told us a story about he actually had the police like put out a warrant for somebody for late fees.

He said someone still has an active warrant because of that.

Yes.

Yes.

Because of late fees.

Could you imagine like getting picked up right now and it wasn't for, oh, you didn't return a VHS tape of Jerry Maguire.

Bagger fans.

Yeah, the legend.

That was D.D.

times.

So this was just a few years ago and they still were written movies?

No.

Oh, no, no.

He still had a warrant out for a woman.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like from the 90s.

Yes.

Yes.

He wasn't letting it go.

It ain't like you got to look far in Cordova.

No.

That person's probably dead.

Probably.

Most likely.

Yeah.

That's stealing DVDs is a gateway, they say, into harder things.

Cordova, downtown, before the tornado demolished the entire city, there was a video store down there that was so cool.

It was like real dimly lit.

It had some neon lights in the front with posters hanging up.

And it was like one of those real small, like narrow alley or what would you call that?

Real, real narrow, long building.

And it had shelves on each side.

And that was pretty much it.

It's like a hallway.

But it was so cool in there.

And there was like some like stoner metalhead working in it.

It was so sick.

I love the mom pop stores never change the posters out.

Like once they put a poster on the inside, like sometimes I guess they might change the, if they had any on the windows outside, but like the ones that were like up on the walls, those things never changed.

Uh-uh.

I vaguely remember renting my Super Nintendo games underneath the poster of the ref.

Really?

Starring, what is his name?

Oh, redhead.

Carrot Top.

That's the one.

Chuck Norris.

Yeah, yeah.

That's the one.

Anyway, yeah, it was Under the Riff, and then What About Bob was next to it.

Oh, yeah.

What a classic.

That's a good one.

Yeah.

Never change the posters.

All the mom and pop ones was always two letters, like M and K.

Yes.

Something like that.

Yeah, every time.

And they would change.

You'd have a fallen out, and one of the letters would change.

You got a divorce, yeah.

She got the tan in beds.

You got to.

Yeah, there was a, I feel like around here it was Mad Libs of you have to include either video or hits.

But you can't be, we already have video hits.

We already have hits.

So you can be mega hits.

Mega hits.

You can be video express.

Yeah.

But you got to be one.

It had to be some like superlative adjective in front of video.

Yes.

Mega video.

You know, my parents actually owned a video store at one point, and it was Video Corner.

There it is.

What else was it there?

Before that, yeah, it was initials P&M.

Oh, evolution.

Yes, those old things.

Did they have anything weird other than videos, Trent?

No.

Oh, did they?

Well, they did have the weird back section at one point.

The back section.

I have it here, too, the mysterious.

That was before the tanning beds.

It's, you know, they were still in salons at that time, I think.

Yeah, that's back when you get in on your back porch and cover up with baby oil.

Yeah.

You know, tanning bed.

No tanning bed.

Turn a rock 99 on in the morning, just be out there.

Get that tinfoil out there.

Just cooking until the kids got off this bus.

My question is, going into the adult section, did they use a beaded curtain?

I don't remember.

I think there was just— I feel like right here that was law.

Yeah.

I think there might have been just a curtain or maybe it was a door, but it was— This is out on the beaded curtain.

Yeah, I don't really remember.

I wasn't touching Andrew's.

I was going back here, too.

You can hear it rattling.

But I always thought it's funny because they, you know, there was a lot of guys that would go back there and kind of look down hoping they wouldn't see anybody that they knew or whatever.

But there was also people that would come up and ask, like, my mom or dad, like, questions about it.

Like, so is this one, you know, have this or whatever?

Or is this one better?

And, of course, if you know my mom, she was like, you know, I'd have no idea.

Yeah, I don't like that.

Let's hurry up and get this transaction.

Yeah, hang on.

Let me get my son, Joey.

Why would you ask this lady working?

That's crazy.

I don't know.

I think Joey just comes out from behind one of the shelves.

That's a good one.

I can answer you.

I was like eight, and I'm like, yeah, I've seen all of them.

Yeah, I've seen all of them.

Y'all are old enough.

What was the lot going in there?

I never went in one.

No way.

In the, like, the dirty section?

Yeah.

Nah, man.

Yeah, I don't have that much courage.

The time I was, well, the time I was old enough to rent one, they had already pretty much did away with them.

Yeah.

I mean, I think, like, movie, or video hits had, like, Playboy videos and stuff.

Yeah, I remember those.

They didn't have anything, like, the back section.

Dude, that would have been so embarrassing to walk up to the counter with one of those movies to rent.

I think one time I was, after I turned 18, I think I was gonna do it.

just for the heck of it.

Yeah.

And I went in there and like a friend of my mom or a mom of one of my friends is working there.

And I was like, yeah, I'm not going to do it.

So I never did it.

She knew what she was up to though.

Yeah.

I was like, oh, I'll rent Titanic again, I guess.

Yeah.

For the 10th time of the week.

You get two cassettes when you rent that one.

Yeah.

You sure did.

Yeah.

Two for prizes with one.

I was just thinking about the adult section curtain at the place I rented from.

It was like in the very like up near the register to the left.

And so it was like in the middle, back middle of the store.

You had to walk kind of past the register to get to it.

It was very obvious.

Like, you're making a...

You're, like, on stage, basically.

Well, you know, looking at the dirty videos.

You know if anybody's going to steal a movie, it's going to be one of those.

Yeah, and these guys were, like...

They, people that own that shop, they were like the people that just assume everyone's a criminal, basically, or trying to scam them.

They also had a bird.

I don't know what kind of bird.

It wasn't a parrot.

It was a parakeet.

It smelled and it would just squawk.

I remember that.

Yeah, I hated that bird.

Like it was around here?

It was around there?

Yeah, it was the guys that used to be down there by Los Reyes and then they were next door before they shut down.

Yeah, he had bird.

You know what else?

One time I was looking at movies and stuff and there, you know, I had all those little side rooms uh with tanning beds and stuff in them one of the doors was cracked and there's just a full bed in there that doesn't surprise me what's going on there that is right there's been a few times around a tanning bed no no no because there's been there's a few places right here i won't name any names but you could do some research and find them in about 30 seconds after i tell you this but they they like specialize in retro video games yeah but they also dabble in other stuff like pokemon or whatever that's the kind of thing you'd expect from that crowd but you know every now and then i get on my old school video game kick and i want to hunt down some you know n64 cartridges so i'll pop in one of those places and i'll open the door and go in there's nobody there like not a soul and then somebody will emerge from the back all sleepy eyed i mean there is a there is a smell of body odor before you see a body well those people that own those kind of things and work at those, they like to take naps.

I think they're living in there.

Probably.

I think I've been in a couple where, oh, you also live here, don't you?

And that's unfortunate because I know there's no shower in these commercial units.

Yeah.

No, they're not.

Well, it's already hanging out at home with all that stuff they have collected.

Why not move it to a store?

Yeah, and commercial rent is cheaper.

Yeah.

You can sleep here if you want to the store.

You can sleep here if you wanted to.

Yeah, I've tried.

But it's haunted and the rats and there's just too many variables too much really.

Yeah.

It gets spooky.

Do you remember when they would have the, not quite full-on dirty movies, but have some nudity and stuff in them, but they would have the covers over them out in the main section?

Yes.

Man, I'd wait till my mom would go around one section.

I'd sneak over there and pull them back and look at them.

There's some boobs or something under there usually.

But not even like just cleavage, really?

No, boobs, naked ones.

Oh.

Yeah, I've seen that before.

Oh, at the video rental store.

Not in the adult section.

No, just that.

But you would see that smaller one for sure.

And they were in those big old boxes like they used to come before the...

That would be an extra gigantic box.

Yeah, what else is in there?

You know, something else that they used to do is, if there was an actor that was now pretty famous, and he was in a movie like 15 years ago, and he was in it for like five minutes or two seconds or whatever, they'd put him on the cover of it, and you would think you'd get in a movie with like George Clooney in it or something.

You remember that weird Robert De Niro movie I had like that?

Yeah, yeah.

He was not even in it, was he?

Well, they edited him out of another movie and put him in this movie somehow.

I don't know how they legally got away with it, but they would like, but he was on the cover.

Yeah, they put him on the cover and they took like some scene out of some other movie and then put it in that movie.

You know, Netflix does that to you now.

They have different like art for every movie, multiple different kinds, and they will change it based on what they think you are most likely to click on.

So if you just got finished watching a movie or series with a certain actor and it's like that Rob De Niro thing, like if they're in that movie or series, even though they are not a main player, it's just maybe just a small part, they will put them on that picture because they think you'll more likely to click on it.

Yeah, they love this guy.

There's a movie that kept popping up on Netflix called Grizzly 2.

They came out 1982, I think.

And it says, you did watch Grizzly 1.

Yeah.

I don't know if it exists, But it says starring George Clooney, Charlie Sheen, and Laura Dern.

And so I was like, I'm just going to watch this just to see what it is.

And it's a sequel?

I guess.

And so the movie opens up, and it's those three actors walking through the forest.

And, you know, George Clooney's playing like this, you know, kind of a, you know, drunk, hippie type of guy.

And they're all, like, joking around.

And Charlie Sheen's, like, a quiet guy.

And anyway, they're walking through the forest.

And the grizzly, who is like 18 feet tall, you know, attacks and kills them, like within the first two minutes.

What?

Really?

Spoiler alert.

Yeah, so that's their whole— And the rest of the hour and a half is just following the bear around.

Yeah.

It's no dialogue.

It's just bear wondering.

Laura Dern as the grizzly bear.

Yeah.

I bet it was called Two Grizzly Probably Not Grizzly 2 Oh yeah.

Forgot Two Grizzly Did any of y'all ever Rent from the library I didn't know I didn't know That was a thing Until way later I had to get I got To Kill a Mockingbird From the library At one point Was that a movie?

Yeah Yeah They probably had the book They probably had the book too Yeah They did Oh I'm sure they did I discovered We had an NES Like, After the fact Like My first console Was a Super Nintendo but we got a Nintendo later but it was like you couldn't find the games to rent at that point but I found them at the library so I was all the time getting some NES games.

Yeah, they would rent stuff like a dollar usually.

Yeah, I mean it was either free or it was dirt cheap because I could get just about whatever I wanted and it was great.

Yeah, I didn't even know that until I was like 30 years old or something.

I feel like they had two Super Nintendo games and one of them was Paperboy which was the best.

I played the crap out of Paperboy.

It's the most frustrating game.

You know, even now you forget that you could take advantage of like at the library because you could get like audio books.

Oh, they got a ton of those.

Yeah.

Just at the library instead of having to pay for, you know, Audible or whatever, you could, there's like a ton of them you could get at the library.

If you ask nicely, the staff will just read you the book too.

Yeah.

You can go there and use their internet and look up weird stuff.

Look up whatever you want.

Anything you want.

America.

And you reminded them that your tax dollars paid for this library.

I used to.

When I lived in Tuscaloosa, I would go to the library a lot.

I seen some people down there looking up some funny stuff.

And I've seen some wild stuff.

Yeah.

I watched the evolution of a library.

I would go to a mobile lot where they eventually, because it was downtown, they would, eventually all the computers were turned outward.

So like every, but like that didn't stop some people.

Like he was like, all right, there won't be any privacy now.

The screens will face out towards the public and maybe that will stop them.

No, it did not.

And these were all, man, there's probably 30 in this room and they were all side by side and did not stop anybody from doing anything.

No.

Crazy.

No.

I would say that at Beville when I was taking classes there.

This was like in the late 90s when the internet was just getting to going.

And kind of the same thing.

I mean, people being there just looking up some wild stuff.

And then you'd go in and do your work on a computer and stuff would be popping up as, you know, stuff that looked at before.

And like, oh, my goodness, I'm going to get caught.

Pop-ups.

Yeah, I get stuck on it, too.

There's a good episode.

Old internet things.

Yeah.

Pop-ups.

That's dangerous.

Yeah, it is.

Dangerous path.

All right.

We got a little more to go here, but we're going to take a quick break and then jump back into it.

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It's just us.

This episode of Hootin' and Hollerin' is brought to you by Hootin' and Hollerin'.

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Go check it out.

Hootinandhollering.com.

You might need to take a hit of the geek bar.

I don't think I'm good with that.

We'll have that Fruity Pebble Smoke.

We'll save it for Santa Claus.

You get that popcorn, man.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't want that.

Although I love popcorn.

I do, too.

For the movies.

Speaking of popcorn, one of the many things that you could find at one of the big box chains was, was candy and popcorn.

Cotton candy.

You could get you could get that too.

It was all by the checkout counter.

It was.

And they would sometimes later on they'd have like toys they'd have all kinds of stuff.

All kinds of stuff for kids to waste money on.

You could never get that.

Hmm.

When the Rugrats movie came out the movie gallery had Reptile bars.

Oh my God.

Really?

Yeah.

See that's the that's the tie-in mom and pop stuff were missing out.

All I could get there was like maybe a pair of fake Oakleys for $5.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

But that was pretty sweet.

I gave them that.

Get yourself a tan.

Orange slices.

Orange slices.

Boy, I love orange slices.

The sugar-coated gummy oranges.

Oh, those things.

That's a bit like, my mom's like, where were you getting riddles from?

I got you some fruit.

Fresh fruit.

We got fresh fruit for your movie.

Drake's parents are like, come on down to the basement to the video store.

It's your movie.

It's your movie.

Got some orange slices and nanners down here.

Whoop, whoop.

Got to put this mustard on first.

Lather you up.

Oh, and the big thing I feel like that really did the mom and pops dirty because there's no way they could compete with this was the guaranteed availability that like Blockbuster.

I don't remember if the other ones were doing.

I'm sure they eventually started doing it.

But I remember Blockbuster like we're guaranteed to have this movie when you come in.

That's hard to do.

Because they'd have the whole wall of it.

Like it would be the one movie.

Yeah, it would be.

And I think those were probably one day rentals too, I feel like.

I think so.

Yeah, because that's how they're making that work.

You can't keep it out forever one of the ones I used to go to, you could reserve a copy like when it were released like you could put your name like on a sign up sheet and you would be oh that's dirty like they'd hold it for you until you came to rent it that's the same as a Netflix queue yeah yeah, Man, remember that feeling when you would call, you would call them and see if they had something and they had it?

And they did.

And you'd get there.

I'm on my way.

Hold it for me.

They'd be like, I'll hold it for 15 minutes or something.

Yeah.

I'll be there.

I'm coming.

I remember that.

At one time, you know, there was probably four video rental places in this area.

At least.

So you'd go to one, and if they didn't have the movie, you'd go to the other one just hoping, and you'd go to all four of them.

No, my dad, we were one and done.

Really?

Even though you'd find something else.

You'd be waiting, and you'd see people return their tapes.

Oh, yeah.

You'd be like, is that it?

So, like a movie gallery, and then they'd put it in that deposit box thing.

You'd run over that little bucket and be like, is it in there?

I've done that so many times.

Yeah.

Because a movie gallery, you could go to the inside box yourself.

It literally went to a bucket.

Yeah.

You look in it, and there it is.

I miss the most, I think, the smell of a video rental place.

I can't describe.

It's toxic plastic, I'm sure.

Yeah.

It's the VHS State Plastics.

Yeah, it smells good.

It's somewhat similar to a library in a way.

Yeah.

It smells like steel paper.

It had that seal that you put over the box because you take the actual video out and stick, like, a styrofoam up in it and, you know, wrap it with that plastic.

Wait, what now?

Yeah.

So, like, you know, it's wrapped in plastic.

So, the ones that be on the shelf.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The gun in the box.

I'm imagining the smells probably from people having the rental, like, the boxes in their car, which is 90s plastic getting hot.

It's breaking down.

The microplastics that were just, like, you're breathing in as you walk in the door is probably insane.

Oh, when you get an older movie and that plastic cover would be, like, torn or just super dirty.

Yeah.

Or it has definitely been in some smokers' houses and it's got this nice tint to it.

Yeah, big clear boxes.

Yeah, they weren't very clear anymore.

They had a nice, like, yellow, orange.

Scratched up so bad.

Yes.

And that would be the same hand we'd reach in and grab our popcorn with.

Oh, yeah.

I don't even care, buddy.

Oh, my God.

I didn't even think about that.

The nastiness.

We, also, the big box stores were great at, like, you had the TVs playing in Blockbuster that had, like, movie trailers going constantly.

I feel like they also had some that were dedicated, like, showing you what the video games were, but you still couldn't play them, but at least it showed you.

Better than looking at the box art, spinning around looking at three screen grabs of the game, and that's all you got to go on.

Yep, yeah.

Those big giant TVs hanging from the wall.

Yes.

Could fall on your head at any moment.

Yes.

Man big box chain but I never really got to enjoy them I didn't it was never a thing for me by the time they came around they were available to me we were stealing our movies now from a blockbuster employee to me they, looking back it wasn't as fun as the mom and pop no no not at all because the mom and pop you were going on like a treasure hunt basically just looking around you know instead of blockbuster you went straight to the movie you wanted and, you know maybe look around see what else was in The mom and pop ones, they know you.

Yeah.

They know what you like.

You know.

Like, here, I got you a copy of Willow.

Like, some of my favorite movies, like, still to this day from my childhood, those came just because I looked at the cover and was like, well, it might be pretty good.

Yeah.

I'd get it and rent it.

Yeah.

You could rent something you never even heard of and it ended up being good.

Like, you never saw a trailer for it on TV or anything?

Mm-hmm.

It was like a straight to VHS.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's what I was saying earlier.

You know like with the mom and pops i mean you would you would have all these crazy movies that you would never even find you know you had to really sell you with that cover yeah it'd be like a movie poster i feel like i got from the video game side i got tricked way more like there were some games that i never rented because the box art looked stupid and then like later on in life i discovered oh this game is freaking sweet why does the box suck so much yeah but then i I would rent some.

Vice versa too.

Yeah.

And very much vice versa.

Yeah.

They got real good art guy.

He's really fancied it up, but you take home E.T.

on Atari.

Nope.

That's always good, too.

But, you know, you had that because that would keep you from going spending all your money on a game that you didn't know if you would like or not.

So, you could at least test it out, you know, by renting it.

When you started renting video games at video stores, you could at least go test it before you had to buy it.

Because there ain't no return in a video game.

Same with a movie, I guess.

But, yeah, once you break that plastic off of it.

Well, you know, back then, too, like with movies, there was nowhere to buy movies.

It's not like Walmart wasn't really selling movies like that.

Yeah.

And there was that place in the gallery, Suncoast, used to have, you could go buy all kind of cool movies.

But you had to see them in a theater or rent them.

That was it.

That's what I was going to bring up earlier when, you know, with my parents, when they owned the store, yeah, you couldn't go to the, you couldn't go to Walmart and buy them.

You had to go they went to this warehouse and would buy them and they were ridiculous they were like over a hundred dollars a piece jeez whoa you know and so that you could only get like one copy maybe two if it was like you know super popular movie it'll take forever to make that money back on rentals yeah it would but uh but that's how it was and then i guess somewhere like in the early 90s you'd start seeing like big blockbuster movies would okay you could own this one for your home for 20 bucks.

But they would still do, but the rest of them you still have to go buy them like, you know, for commercial use, which was a ton of money.

Yeah.

It used to be awesome when they would have like Blockbuster would even put their old stuff in a bin or something and sell it.

Yeah.

That was always great.

Oh, yeah.

And when they closed down, they would sell them for super cheap.

Oh, man.

We bought so much stuff.

I get it.

When we first started doing trivia nights over at Tallulah Brewing and it was like a 90s night or something.

It was one of the first like theme nights i'd done and i was just getting like the dumbest prizes i could find i went to the thrift store and found thrift store that had a bunch of blockbuster tapes like it was in the blockbuster clamshell case oh really vhs tape in it in great shape and i bought like a bunch of those for you know pennies and gave them away and then as prizes and then coming to find out now they are like that's worth some money really get a blockbuster clamshell so heads up if you've got any like laying around that you thought it'd be fun to grab when they went out of business, If you still got your Blockbuster ID card.

Oh, I know.

I got that somewhere.

Those are worth money on eBay.

I wish I had.

I don't know where mine's at.

Do you know there's still, I think it's in Oregon, there's still a Blockbuster open?

That was a closed?

Yeah, it closed this year.

Oh, my brother went to it.

Netflix even tried capitalizing on Blockbuster, because it made that show, and it sucked so bad.

Oh, yeah.

It was about the last one, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think Blockbuster started before Netflix ordering DVDs through the menu like that.

There's, I don't know if you've ever listened to the podcast Business Wars, but there's a few episodes about the Netflix and Blockbuster battle.

It's really good.

Yeah, because I had a subscription to Blockbuster, and I switched to Netflix at some point.

What was that called?

Do you remember?

I don't.

They had a funny name.

Like, not a funny name, but it had a specific name for it.

Yeah.

But, yeah, Netflix basically was better at that game than they were.

Yeah.

If you've got one of the original Blockbuster cards, then you've got probably close to about $10 right there.

If you've got one of the later ones that were like laminated, you've got maybe $5 there.

But still, those were worthless.

Absolutely worthless.

And that will just go up at value with time.

Yeah.

Hold on to that.

Pretty cool.

If you used to own a Blockbuster and still have like a ton of those somewhere.

Oh, yeah.

You can make some money.

Good.

I bet that person's probably unloaded all their blockbuster stuff if they have.

But like pieces of like signage and display stuff from the store, that stuff gets pricey too, depending on what it is.

Some of the things that they didn't have, I guess you could find at mom and pop places that were great.

Like the rental punch card.

Yep.

Drake, you mentioned that.

Mm-hmm.

Just punch cards in general are gone.

It's not a thing.

Now you got to download a stupid app.

Yeah.

And get points that expire.

Forget it.

Way too quick.

Yeah.

Punch cards are exciting, man.

Heck yeah.

I'd be like, ooh, I'm on a nine, and it's Friday.

I'm going to go get me a video game, and that's that 10th punch.

I'm going to get me a free movie.

Yeah, get two things.

And then they'd be using like a standard old hole punch, too, and you're like, I could just go back home.

I could do this at home.

Yeah.

SoundShop had one.

We could have totally cheated the system.

Oh, yeah.

There was like a music note or something like that.

Yeah, I can't duplicate that.

I don't know what you got.

I can't remember.

I don't remember like they'd be using a basic one that had me thinking and I can just go home and do this myself.

Or a Star one, which I never, still don't know where they could be getting those at.

I may or may not have taken a Zacto knife and, Carved some things out and some of them before.

Come over there.

My punch card's full and it's just jacked up.

Yeah.

Like a bunch of squares.

What was wrong with that thing that day?

You were in a 10 movie since last night.

Since I saw you an hour ago.

That's pretty wild, Eric.

Yeah, I don't remember you coming in.

It's just me that works here.

Also, I don't remember ever getting, well, you know, not going to Blockbuster a lot, but then the recommendations from employees who, I guess that would be Joey at your parents' store.

Were you walking around giving them recommendations?

No, I was too young at that point.

You probably still had some recs for them, though.

You just didn't want to watch Muppet Treasure Island, I guess.

Probably.

Their loss.

It wasn't very good around here because I remember just like, it seemed like either some teenager or some middle-aged lady who just didn't care about movies.

They were just working there.

I've already told you, lady, I've watched Still Magnolias.

Yeah.

But occasionally you would run into that guy, you know, if there was, you know, you rented one movie and he'd be like, okay, if you like this movie, you're going to love this other movie that you may have not heard of, you know, but that probably.

Kobe at Movie Gallery was.

Yeah, Kobe was good.

He'd tell you what's up.

Yeah, and there was another guy.

I can't remember his name, but he was.

Yeah.

He was about that same age, same time as Kobe, and he would be real good at recommendations and stuff, but that was always cool.

I never went searching for recommendations.

Yeah, I don't remember ever getting any at all.

I usually showed up knowing what I was looking for.

Yeah.

For the most part.

I feel like recommendations would come from, like, other kids that were looking at the video games that I was looking at.

And then they would always recommend something that I was not allowed to play.

Oh, there's always a weird dude, too, that wants to, like, stand beside you and tell you about all the movies.

Like, that does not work there?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's like, hey, you ought to watch this, and it's just something terrible.

My God, I'm not watching that.

Sir, I'm not watching an Italian foreign film.

Yeah.

Go back to the back room.

Yeah.

Go back and take care of the parrot.

Man, this one is true for me for some video games, but renting the equipment to use the actual video or video game that you wanted to rent.

Yeah.

An ordeal.

An expensive ordeal.

I feel like it was $20 or $25 to rent the Sega Dreamcast for like two nights or whatever.

Yeah, me and my buddy rented a Genesis, I remember.

Man, and the guy that we were renting from, I feel like he would already assume you're going to break it.

He'd be so mad renting it to you i just feel like why is why are you in this business man why are you a lot of work yeah he already knows he's like he's losing that money yeah he's got he got mad at me a bunch i didn't have a dvd player until i was like 19 or 20 maybe no probably even older like it was mid 2000s like we just didn't have a dvd player at home and but i had my grandma's computer in my bedroom, like my junior and senior year that played DVDs but didn't have speakers.

I'd plug headphones in and watch them on the computer screen.

Why was your grandma's computer in your bedroom?

She moved in with, she was living somewhere else and then moved in to our house and then I just kept the computer in my room.

Oh.

Yeah.

I hope she never got it back after you had it.

I took, nope, part of college, and then it died for a multitude of reasons.

But yeah, I would watch DVDs, and that little Dell computer DVD, CD-ROM sucked.

If it had the tiniest scratch on it, it wasn't going to play.

That's not going to read nothing.

And I would get mad.

I'd put it back in the box and bring it back up here and be like, it's scratched.

And after the third movie of doing that, the dude got real mad.

I was like, get your DVD player.

I'm like, sir, I don't even have a DVD player.

I'm just putting it on my, spinning it on my finger.

Choke's on you.

It's on grandma's computer.

Yeah.

That was a big problem with Redbox.

She didn't really get to look at it until you just spit it out to you and it'd be like scratches all over the mouth.

Boy, I've got nasty ones out of Redbox.

Yeah.

Redbox was the worst.

The quality.

I've still never seen the movie Mud starring Matthew McGonaghy because I'm pretty sure the rental of mud I got for the Redbox had been coated in mud, literal mud.

That's not good.

Like I could not get, so I have no idea.

Yeah, that thing was the nastiest.

Like, how did the system not catch that?

Yeah, they don't.

It was bad.

We rented a PlayStation one time.

It was right before Christmas, and I was pretty sure my parents were getting this one for Christmas.

And we rented a WCW Nitro, and it would freeze, like, in the opening menu every single time.

Oh, my God.

Like, I wasn't old enough to think, oh, it's probably scratched.

My dad would come.

He came in and looked like, this thing's scratched.

So he took it back and got us another game.

And sitting there, I was like, this game sucks.

He goes, well, that's what you got.

He's like, I spent this much money for this to rent this and got this.

I'm like, well, my friends are coming over.

They're not going to play this.

Yeah, sometimes with the movies, you could fast forward past the messed up part.

Yeah, you could skip it.

It'd be okay.

But games, it was just.

You're screwed.

You're done on games.

Man, you, and.

Also, the VHS tape, you'd be getting all them rentals in there.

You got to clean the VHS head.

You got to do the little cleaner tape.

Yeah.

Man, some of them, you could adjust the tracking all you wanted.

It would not fix it.

It still sucks.

Man, I got one.

One time, somebody tried to record something from their TV on that VHS tape because it just flashed into like, it was some rent.

I can't remember what it was, but it was a TV show.

It just cut out like 30 minutes of the movie.

Yeah, you could do that.

You could plug those little holes up at the top.

You could put tape over them and record over them.

Also, man.

That'd be a funny thing to do.

I wish I had thought of that back then.

You know, you're talking about earlier, you know, weird guys making recommendations to you.

There was a guy I went to school with.

He was kind of like the, you know, the school bully, but then he grew up and then life was pretty hard on him after school.

But I'd always seen that video hits.

And he'd see me going in and would ask me, hey, I don't have a license.

Could you rent one from me and I'll bring it back tomorrow?

And, of course, you know, I'm not going to do that because you'll never bring it back.

Then he beat the crap out of you.

But then I would see him like that all the time.

So I'd go rent a movie and I would just like drive on by because I didn't want to deal with this guy.

He's just always there.

It's like Jay and Silent Bob hanging out the front of the movie store.

Everybody else trying to get an adult to get him alcohol.

He's like, hey, rent me a movie.

Yeah, it's not even an adult movie.

It's just, yeah.

Or one time I was bringing movies back and he's like, oh, can I get this?

And I'll bring it back or it's too late.

I'll just take it and watch it real quick.

Sure you will.

You look degenerate.

If you read him that movie and then you go back outside, he'd be like, so can I come over and watch this?

Yeah.

I also don't have a VCR.

Or a TV.

Or a TV.

Yeah.

I was like, that's why Chris Hansen exists.

Yeah, for sure.

However, as great as the era seems in retrospect, there were still lots of inconveniences.

With both Mom and Pop and the big chain at rental stores, leading, of course, not rewinding your tape and getting charged a fee for that.

Oh.

Sucked.

Be kind, rewind.

Yeah.

Man, they was not going to.

I'm not going to.

As if it was so much trouble for them to stick it in, the tape rewinders they had.

They didn't want to do that.

And those things rewinded so fast.

Yeah.

They had like five of them lined up on the counter.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They were like 50 times faster than your VHR.

Now, before they, a lot of them had it.

I could kind of see it because you'd have to use a regular VCR to rewind it, and that took forever.

It seemed like, but still, I mean, it's...

I'm risking it eating up the tape and spitting it out.

I want to rewind it for you.

Oh, yeah.

You ever get one home and somebody hadn't rewound it?

Yeah.

It does suck.

They were not kind.

Oh, tell me who had it last.

Let me know.

I don't know what's worse, though.

I mean, really, the biggest problem you have when you rented a tape that could be wrong with it, the most frequent problem, is that.

But I feel like when you got to the DVD time the most frequent problem is this thing's scratched yeah but you may not realize that scratch is there until you're like an hour into the movie yeah that sucked then it's over for you I would much rather have oh I guess I gotta rewind it you know it'd be a funny trick when you rent a VHS tape back then.

Like fast forward to the big climax of the movie and just stop it right there so when somebody puts it in they see the big twist or something hey you know what that's kind of on them employees too because they had the rewinders.

Yeah.

Yeah, they should have caught them.

But for a long time they didn't.

They're like, he's talking about they didn't have those for a long time.

They just really relied on everyone else to rewind them.

And I may be remembered this wrong, but it seemed like it took like 20 minutes to, or a long, like a long time to re, like if it was all the way at the end to.

It took a long time.

Rewind it to the beginning.

Yeah, and you're trying to get out the door to catch them before they close.

And some of them places, man, you could return it before they close, but some of them would give you a deadline of like 24 hours from when you got it.

You rent it 3 p.m., you got to bring it back at 3 p.m.

That's crazy.

I think some of them, even if you got it late at night, they would want it back by 3 p.m.

Just so they could, you know, have time to rent it again.

Rent it again.

Yeah.

Oh, and then, of course, never updating the stock they have.

I thought that was way more common in the places that didn't have a whole lot of room to rent the videos, like the gas station places.

You only got one wall.

Yeah.

Somebody never brings one back.

That's it.

Empty space forever right there now.

Of course yeah rushing your rental back before they close especially mom pops didn't have the dead gum return slot oh yeah you gotta go when they're open that sucks some of them you have to stand there while they're checking in yep oh yeah yeah i'd still remember that the walking in you got to go around the booth and you just drop it in the bucket or put it on the counter walk around go back out yep yeah that's a little loop-de-loop insane sniffing in all them Plastics.

I miss it.

Taking a look at the tanning beds.

Yeah.

Big old roll of Playboy Bunny stickers.

Just be covered in them when you leave.

These are free, right?

All over my shirt.

Just got one from Walmart, too.

Yeah.

Oh, this getting the wrong movie behind the display box.

Oh, my God.

I know people had to do that on purpose.

You're talking about like not just...

Not just grab it and take it to the counter, the wrong one, but you went home with the wrong one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I feel like there were some places that would put the actual videotape behind the box.

For a long time, yeah.

But then there were some that, I guess, where they were getting stolen a lot, they would, they'd put something, like you bring the actual video up to them and then they pulled it out from behind the counter.

Yeah, Blockbuster would have a thing that, it would have like a plastic thing that would go up there if it was rented out.

Yeah.

And say, check back or something like that.

Yeah.

I remember I went to, I was at a friend's house, and they had never seen the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

So, he went to, I think, movie gallery or whatever.

He's like, okay, we're going to, you're finally going to see this masterpiece or whatever, and get home.

And it's like the sequel with Matthew McConaughey.

No, no.

I'm like, what is this?

Golly.

Some dummy put it behind there.

Yeah.

Is that a DVD or a VHS tape?

VHS.

Man.

Yeah, a lot of them would put, they would only have sequels and stuff like that, not the original.

Yeah.

Because it had been too long since it came out or something.

Right.

Some places wouldn't have any older movies.

You'd have to buy like a special edition or something that they didn't want to spend the money for.

That's what, when Blockbuster was big, when the DVDs came out, that was always aggravating because they would have just the Blockbuster version of the movie.

So it didn't have like all the special features and commentary and all that stuff.

Just a rental version.

Yeah.

That sucked.

Yeah.

Okay.

No good trailers on it or nothing.

Right.

It's just the movie.

Just ads for Blockbuster.

Yeah.

Y'all forget your popcorn at the front desk or whatever.

If they brought back, like, video rental stores, I don't know what that would look like, because I don't even know how we would watch the video now.

But, like, would you go?

Yeah.

Would you just go once to check it out, or would you try to make it a thing?

I'd make it a thing, probably.

I hope so.

Like, how do we do that?

Like, how is, because do you even have a way, like, if I gave you a DVD right now, could you go home and watch it?

Yeah, I could watch it on my Xbox.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, Xbox.

I have a DVD player somewhere.

boxed up.

Yeah.

The last one I bought was about this big.

It was like just big enough for the DVD to go in.

In fact, the other day I was thinking, hey, I want to watch this particular movie.

I forgot what it was.

And I was looking through all my streaming services and it wasn't anywhere like, you know, happens a lot.

I'm like, well, I have it on DVD or Blu-ray even, but, you know, I just didn't feel like going digging out the DVD Blu-ray player, so I just didn't watch it.

But yet I've kept all of that.

I mean, I still have every single DVD.

I just donated probably $200.

Really?

Yeah.

Like the whole case, the box, the whole shebang?

Everything.

See, I took them out like five, about 10 years ago and just took the DVDs out and stuck them in a binder and then got rid of the boxes because that was insane.

That's a lot of, it takes a lot of space.

I had a giant tub and it was just, it probably had $200.

But then you consolidate it down to just a binder.

Yeah.

But then again, like I've done that and yet I have not pulled one back out of that binder since I stuck them all in.

Well, I did that with my cds you know and i regret not having the case that jewel case man yeah i don't care about the dvd one but the jewel case for the cds it eats me up because i got rid of all of those things yeah i kept some dvd cases but not the cds no that sucks see like y'all remember the bookshelf i had in the old podcast room that was full of the dvds and stuff we just now put those in like totes, two or three months ago.

Yeah.

Like, just to get them out of the house because we weren't watching them.

Yeah.

I kept probably 10 DVDs out of all those that I had.

I'm real leery about it just because of how I've seen, like, Disney VHS tapes, like, in the original cover, in the original boxes, how much they're worth.

I'm like, maybe DVDs will be like that one day.

Kind of a hoarding tendency, but...

VHSs are a lot of, you know, you can sell your money if you...

Hard to have certain ones.

DVDs won't quite be like that because they last for much longer where VHSs tear up.

Yeah.

So if you get a good VHS tape, it's worth some money.

Yeah, check for mold and stuff in the VHS tapes too.

Yeah, you was telling me about that.

Yeah.

I didn't even think about that.

Yeah.

Well, like the ones on the shelf there, I went through a phase where I was snagging them off eBay.

And, you know, there's a lot of them that are pretty cheap, but there's a few that are hard to find that, yeah, they cost you some money.

The horror movies are expensive.

Yeah, and it's a lot of, like, the Star Wars stuff because they've, George Lucas has gone back and like even edited the originals.

So if you like pull those up to watch on Disney Plus, you're watching like what he wanted it to look like.

And so he's changed so much and made it bad.

So if you got the VHS tapes or the DVDs that have the OG version of the original trilogy, those are worth money.

This is the only way to watch them.

I have that somewhere.

Yeah.

I've got the case and I also got the DVD set But the DVD set is, you know, he went back and put Hayden Christensen's face on Darth Vader, you know, stuff like that.

Yes.

And in the cantina, you got that CGI pig lady singing.

I know she has something.

Miss Piggy?

Yeah.

Somebody in the comments.

Star Wars fan already typing the name out right now for us, but go ahead and let us know.

I know you know what her name is.

Go ahead and tell us.

What is it, Joey?

I don't know.

Disappointed.

it was just pig name of the band, It was the Cantina Band, wasn't it?

Was it?

I think it was just that.

Was it Max Rebo or something in that thing?

No.

Or something else?

I can't remember.

Oh, no.

You know a little more than you're letting on right now.

Because of a trivia night, Star Wars trivia night, and that was a question, and I thought it was the Cantina Band.

And then I had like two or three people come up, actually, they have a name, and it's, and I was like, how do you know that?

And then they, but I like, I asked the question, but I already turned my brain off because I don't want to know the answer.

Yeah.

It was, I should have phrased that different as like, you shouldn't know that should have been the way I said that not how do you know that because I don't want to know how you know that stuff like that though most definitely don't they don't mention that in the movie, but somewhere along the way it got named that I remember like George Lucas was talking about somebody would come up to him and would ask him about this certain thing, and he had no idea what they were talking about because it was just like you know fans you know created it or they you know they were books written afterwards the books is the big thing yeah because he had no Right.

I don't know how much hand he had, but he wasn't writing the books.

Yeah, so, and I was, I always loved the movies, but I never got into the books, so I don't know a lot of that stuff, because they're only named that in the books, or, you know, stuff like that.

People who read the books, they read and rave about how good they are.

They, yeah.

And I'll take their word for it.

I will, too.

I can't read.

I never learned.

Honestly, it's overrated now.

I mean, just, your phone can read everything to you.

Yeah, just read it to me.

out loud, please.

If we learn books on tape at the library.

That's what Joey's doing.

He's getting books on tape in his Walkman.

Used to get them at the Crackle Burdle.

Yeah.

No, it used to be like 12 cassette tape.

Yes.

Oh my God, yes.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And it would cost like $100 or something ridiculous.

It's awful.

Did anybody and your family ever get the Bible on tape and you have to listen to the Bible?

I was about to say the only book on tape I ever had was like a children's Bible.

It'd be like Charlton Heston reads the Bible.

We weren't really a Bible on tape kind of family.

We unfortunately were at times.

But we did have Tybo.

That's worth something.

Oh.

Mm-hmm.

Billy Blanks.

We had, we were a Richard Simmons family.

Oh, yeah.

Nah, we trying to get a little combat in there, man.

Yeah, but that's pretty, Richard Simmons pre- Billy, Billy, was it Billy?

Blanks.

Billy Blanks, Tybo?

Tybo.

Tybo.

Yeah, Richard Simmons was like late 80s.

Yeah, he was way before that.

Sweating to the oldies.

Sweating to the oldies, man.

And you know what?

I enjoy it.

I like oldies.

I have appreciation for that music now.

Might as well sweat to them.

He was sweating.

Oh, my God, he was.

Phoring sweat in that hot pink tank top of his.

Yeah, boy.

That curly hair.

Yeah, he got that little fro.

My mom, when I was a kid, my mom had a group of friends that they would get together, like, in somebody's garage or whatever and put Richard Simmons in.

They would all, like, have, like, an exercise class.

I tell you.

Aerobics.

Hey, nobody that I've ever, you know, I don't watch a lot of aerobics tapes, but.

Not anymore.

No.

So, nobody gets you more fired up or seems like he was having more fun than old Richard Simmons.

He really got into it.

Yeah, he did, man.

Rest in peace, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Pretty sure.

You see the whole thing where Pauly Shore is trying to make a bio picture?

Yeah.

He stars as Richard Simmons.

He would be the perfect person for that.

And they made like a little short, you could watch it on YouTube, but like a little short movie, like five minutes, just to kind of, I guess, sell it or whatever.

But his family Richard Simmons family like refuses to give up the rights but he's saying he's gonna make it anyway so I don't know I'm not sure you can do that there's a whole story about him like disappearing for a while yeah he was being held captive supposedly by his housekeeper there's a podcast I was about to say there is what is it called I've listened to it I've listened to it too it's, It's pretty interesting.

It is interesting.

He's like trying to contact him the whole time or something like that.

Yeah.

It's good, man.

But I think he's kind of come out and said that didn't happen, but that could be, you know, with his housekeeper there beside him.

Yeah.

Yeah, tell him it didn't happen.

Right.

Or he developed Stockholm Syndrome.

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe.

Yeah, it was kind of crazy.

Yeah, he was like a recluse.

And then before Richard Simmons was the Jane Fonda, she did it before.

Yeah.

My mom used to teach, they called it dance aerobics, and she did it at the Somerton Community Center over there.

Somebody, I remember the local channel, Channel 5 or whatever the local channel was.

Somebody would have the aerobics.

Really?

Some big things.

Step aerobics, all that.

We'll never do that.

You'll see that.

Isn't the big thing still just like spin classes?

Yeah.

Outdoor yoga?

Zumba.

Zumba.

Zumba still a thing?

I was going to say Zumba died.

Zumba was like the end.

They replaced aerobics.

They listen to music and stuff when they do spin classes, right?

Aren't they playing music?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So this still exists, but you're not dancing.

You're on a bicycle.

No, you're not dancing.

We need to bring back.

Zumba, you be dancing, boy.

Yeah, yeah.

We need to bring back more of that.

But Zumba was always like techno or like, wasn't it like a salsa, Latin?

Zumba?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Something with some rhythm in it, man.

Yeah, it was too much.

I want some oldies.

Yeah, you want to sweat.

You get out there and do some sweating.

You need Richard Simmons.

top to some, you know.

Is that his name?

That sounded weird.

Richard Simmons.

Yeah.

Old Dick Simmons.

Yeah.

Jeans cousin.

That's what I call him.

Jeans.

He would wear those little bitty shorts, striping shorts, too.

I got into it.

He was.

He was.

He loved his job.

Oh, he'd be crying, man, and just like, he changed people's lives.

I love that it was Richard Simmons and then about 20 years.

Pretty significantly overweight people behind them.

It'd be about 15 women and maybe five men in the back.

They're all big ones.

They don't even need the oldies.

They're just sweating.

Yeah, really.

The studio lights are on.

Yeah.

You're already sweating.

You know, he was overweight.

Sweating to the walking.

He was like 300 pounds.

Yeah, yeah.

He was big, yeah.

And lost a bunch of weight.

That was good.

If I'm going to watch a workout tape, I want them to look like me.

I want to be sweating as much as everybody in that video is sweating.

He would be getting that boy.

I don't want Suzanne Summers and her little leotard.

I want I want Richard Simmons surrounded by 30 fatties looking just like me out there just dying.

Yeah, we're going to do this together.

Trying to breathe while listening to the Pointer Sisters.

That's what I want.

Yeah.

Bring back Sweating to the Oldies.

Somebody.

Pauly Shore.

Come on.

That's where we get, that's how we get the business going.

We start a video rental service and we only offer original videotapes that we've made.

That's the plot of a movie.

Come rent our movies.

Was that Jack Black in, what's his name?

What's the name of that movie, where they had to recreate all the movies?

I think it was Be Kind Rewind or something like that.

Yeah, they destroyed all of them or something.

Exactly.

So they had to remake them.

That is a great concept.

That is a classic.

That makes no sense to kids today.

They're like, why would you do that?

That's stupid.

Kids these days, they'll never understand.

You couldn't buy a replacement nowhere.

No, you could not.

It was so bad that you had to make an entire movie to replace it.

Many of them.

Well hey that's that's all we got for this here episode hope you enjoyed it hope it inspired you to go out and rent something even though you can't so we just we just created it an itch that you can't scratch there sorry about it yep so yeah hope you enjoyed it if you watched this episode check out the audio version if you listened, that's great but do you know you can see our faces whenever you want on YouTube go check it out you can see Matt Vape yeah you can watch me you have to see that big old puff of Froot Loop smoke here, That was fun.

That's probably going to kill me.

But yeah, so check that out.

Hootinandholler.com.

You can find all that and much more.

So yeah, we'll see you in a couple weeks.

Take care.

God bless.

Tell your mom when we said...

Be kind.

Rewind.

I knew it was coming.

I knew that was going to be the one.

Yeah.

It was too easy.

I was hoping for that.

You would squawk like a bird and then be like, that's the bird from the video.

You got late fees.

It would be like, it was so hot, bitch.

It would scare the bejesus out of me.

I'd be like, I wonder if Marvel let me rent Mortal Kombat.

My mega hits.