I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA!

A SHADOWY FLIGHT INTO THE DANGEROUS WORLD OF A MAN WHO DOES NOT EXIST!

Happy Columbus Day everyone, except for those of you anti-colonialism/anti-"imperialism" types, in which case, have a angsty white-guilt-filled "anti-Columbus Day". (Which reminds me, what does it list "Columbus Day" as being in the Concordia Student Union handbook/agenda this year? Ah, it's just blank...)

Yesterday was Canadian Thanksgiving, and I didn't feel like blogging (I wrote the Christopher Reeve bit before I went to bed on "Sunday" night); I just played Hydro Thunder on the Dreamcast a lot; god damn, that one is harder than a lot of serious racing games. The problem with Canadian Thanksgiving compared to American Thanksgiving is, although I think Canadian Thanksgiving is held at a better time of year in that it doesn't really get eclipsed by all the Christmas stuff in stores, it's on a Monday, so anyone that has to be somewhere else on Tuesday really has to celebrate it on Sunday and spend the actual holiday itself travelling back home. Both my sister, who lives in Ottawa, and my brother, who lives in Toronto, were out of our house in the early afternoon. American Thanksgiving is on a Thursday, towards the end of the week, so that most people, except for those who work in retail, get a long weekend and don't spend the actual holiday itself worrying about getting somewhere the next day.

My brother in Vancouver, John, took advantage of a special Thanksgiving weekend deal and flew to, of all places, Los Angeles for just $90 Canadian round-trip (must have been on WestJet). He knows people there, so he didn't have to spend money on a hotel; not bad. My mother was a little surprised to get a phone-call from L.A., and I imagined him being chased around Los Angeles by gangsters, just like Larry and Balki in that very special episode of Perfect Strangers I mentioned the other day.



Speaking of John, I got my birthday package from him today. I was expecting maybe one Super GALS! DVD, but I guess he couldn't find any in Vancouver. But... uhh... he did spend a bit too much on me; I got not just the Knight Rider season one boxset, which I jokingly mentioned on the phone as something I wouldn't mind getting (which is true, but I didn't actually expect him to get it), but also Sledge Hammer! season one. Have I ever mentioned my problem with box sets? Oh, wait, I have, but maybe not here. Well, that thing I wrote once at AnimeOnDVD.com is a little out-of-date; anime companies have not given up individual disk distribution for most titles, and companies like ADV Films really have brought down the price of boxsets, both due to an increase in size of the anime fandom niche and probably partially due to ADV wanting to attempt to offer a more reasonable price for boxsets to undermine the sales of bootlegged Chinese-made "Region 0" anime sets which are still too rampant on the Internet, especially on eBay (yes, you still pay around twice as much as you would for a bootleg set, but at least you know you own a legitimate product). Only a few anime titles are available only as overpriced sets (like the older Ranma ½ seasons). And most American television series boxsets, with the exception of Star Trek and The X-Files, are incredibly low-priced; a few years ago, I never would have thought it possible that you'd be able to get full-seasons of sitcoms for $30 U.S. or less and full-seasons of hour-long drama shows for $40 U.S. or less. I can see how DVD is undermining the market for syndicated reruns (though I still watch reruns of shows I own on DVD, since I'm often too lazy to put a DVD in the drive).

Anyway, my other problem with DVD boxsets is that I'm just getting a bit too old for marathon screenings of more than three or four episodes of anything at one time, so, anytime I get a set like these, I watch a couple of episodes, put the set on the shelf, and then I feel bad that I'm procrastinating watching the rest because it's such a daunting task.

Thanks, John, but, really, you shouldn't have.

posted by Steve Brandon @ 4:59 PM