Another loud voice in the Internet wilderness

about buying a pregnancy test from the 99 cent store.

"Talladega Nights for $1.99?!! Get outta my way!"

I was not really planning to go out on this dreaded day. But since the Daily News and Post are jam packed with 8 essential vitamins and shopping circulars, how could I resist?  I pretty much have the bachelor basics right now at the house so there’s not a whole lot I’m wanting for.

Of course to listen to my friends, you’d think I was some kind of dinosaur. I have yet to get a smartphone. Partly because I don’t want to spend the money. Partly because I like being able to give Sprint the finger every time they dare call me and try to get me to renew my contract. But mostly because I’m afraid of the damned thing becoming obsolete 5 minutes after I buy it.

And then there’s the TV.

I bought a 46″ TV and immediately after putting it up got grief because I did not run out and get an HD box.  Like I was rubbing two sticks together to start a fire in my kitchen to cook or something. Anyway now every time this thing freezes up or skips ahead while being paused or pixelates for 30 seconds I curse the names of my buddies Kiko, Vine, and that I-don’t-know-shit-but-I-gotta-jump-on-the-bandwagon-and-be-a-pain-in-the-ass-too Amby.

Now the new thing is why don’t I have a Blu-Ray player. As you may know I worked in the video industry for quite a number of years and have seen formats come and go. Blu-Ray is going to be around for quite sometime, at least until they figure out a way to improve bandwidths, download speeds and make memory storage really cheap.  (I know, I know I haven’t gotten into the whole Black Friday thing yet. Bear with me this is a rant after all) I’m not jumping into it until the prices of new discs come down.  I’m not running around and trying to replace my entire movie collection all over again.  A friend of mine keeps repeating this mantra-“Why don’t you buy a PS3? You can play your DVD’s and games on it!” First off its 300 bucks. Since I’m on involuntary hiatus from the workforce I’d rather pay the rent and criminals from Time Warner and ConEd first.  Secondly I don’t play with my PS2 enough. Why spend 300 bucks  to get a machine that will as Jaime describes my PS2 “Looks like a CSI crime scene when you pick up the memory cards and controllers there’s so much dust on it!” And there’s no guarantee the old PS2 games will even play on a PS3.  Some models will play games others won’t. Unfortunately the ones that will are older and hard to find. And I ain’t buying anything off eBay before you even go there!

Anyway I was talking to my cousin Thomasina about my successful Thanksgiving Turkey whilst perusing the Target circular and saw that they had a 2 terabyte external hard drive on sale for 69.99. 50% off! Since my current  external drive is nearly full of family/friends pics, music and por….er, ah, documentaries, I’ve been obsessing about a new one.  And since it was only available in stores (I checked Jimi!) I had no choice but to brave the savageland that is Target 225th st. That place is nuts on the weekend anyway, never mind a holiday shopping weekend.  Having worked on the retail frontlines and surviving many Black Fridays I knew the key was to stay focused on what I wanted and not let myself get distracted from the mission at hand.

I got there about 11:15 am and noticed the cops outside along with the barricades. My Spidersense tingled a little as I approached the entrance and immediately upon entering regretted not bring my camera. At the front of the store where the shopping carts usually are there where two huge pallets filled with one of the Black Friday specials-$1.49 Bath Towels.  It was like the fucking Fall of Saigon around those pallets.  I risked losing my hand and reached into Rugby scrum of old Hispanic women (those viejas are no joke!) to cop one of the towels. It was a little rough. But I’m sure with a some fabric softener, the texture would improve. Since I’ve got more towels than I need, I put it back and got back to the mission at hand.

As I turned around I was confronted with a  traffic jam of people with carts trying to go eight different directions at once.  Many of whom were a species I hate more than conservative republicans and obnoxious Met fans- idiots just standing in the middle of chaos either staring off into space or obliviously talking on the phone. Having seen this on a daily basis walking to work through Times Square I thought about using the old Jedi mind trick to get through. (Waves hand: “You WANT to go this way And YOU want to go that way”) until I realized these people have no minds and it was a waste of time.  So I waded into the lemmings scruffling along like Zombies.

I shuffled along and within two minutes went off mission. There was a $5.00 gift display in the Men’s section! Ooh,a gadget bag! An iPhone accessory set! A remote control holder! A grooming….NO! I WILL NOT BE DISTRACTED! I got back on track only to see a display of $1.99 DVD’s most of which I had. However I did spy Will Ferrell’s Talladega Nights and thought “oh hell why not?$1.99?” and grabbed one. No sooner than I did that I saw another cardboard display rack (and for some reason thought of my old Virgin VP Stephen Hamilton looking at it and shaking his head in disapproval. Virgin did NOT do cardboard standees. Strange the things that pop into your head sometimes.) Anyway I grabbed a 12.99 Big Bang Theory 3rd Season DVD off it and suddenly everyone around me started to chant “spend..must spend…”.

I shook off this delusion and once again set back to the task at hand. As I  got to the electronics section I noticed it was blocked off with barricades and I would have to walk around like Lewis and Clark until I found the entrance to the line. I waded through the Zombies and it took all my superpowers to resist some of those specials ( “You don’t need that you have a vacuum!” My inner voice was working overtime.) I got to the entrance and saw how out of it some of the employees were.  They were listlessly standing there when a guy whom I ‘m assuming was a supervisor barked at them to ask people what it was they wanted.  These drones are standing around with their head up their butts and I can’t get a job?

Anyway the overseer, I mean supervisor gave this one woman a laser stare and she asked me what I was looking for. I told her external hard drive and after a brief pause (which upon reflection I’m not sure was either exhaustion or dread) told me to follow her.  She walked me to a rolling cage where there was an employee guarding the treasure. Western Digital 2 TB external hard drives.  She held it up and I said “That’s it!”. I reached up to take it and she pulled it back. I had two choices : I could either buy it there in the department on the 30 person deep line or buy it at the front of the store.  I much to her dismay chose the latter as she would have to accompany me and the drive to the cashier.  We lucked out as she saw a small line at the second checkout we saw. We got on the line behind some guy buying sweatshirts and tighty whitie  underwear. As she passed the drive the cashier asked her what time she got in.  The woman replied “3:30 AM. They got me working 3:30 to 3:30 today and 4AM to 2 PM Sunday. 12 Hours today and 10 Sunday.  I swear if they try to do that to me next year I’m gonna have kill someone.” I told her I’d chip in for bail money if that happened and got a chuckle out of her.

I proudly bought my purchase home and called my cousin Thomasina to let her know I made it home alone safe and sound. Then I realized something. That copy of Talladega Nights? It’s  a Fullscreen copy! Pan and Scan? OH hell no! That’s like going to buy Chocolate milk and realizing its skim milk inside the bag when you get home.

I kinda feel like James Tiberius Kirk right now –

Wish me luck on my return trip Saturday.