I'm converting ... my videos to DVDs

I did it. I did the DVD thing, the Third-Thirds-DVD-thing: I sat down with the VHS videotapes and now they’re being converted into DVDs.

It was the carpet that pushed me over the edge. Of course, that’s what it’s been doing with everything. The pile of videotapes is in a crate that sits on the carpet. If the carpet has to go, I have to face the videotapes.

Videotapes come in several sizes. Big cassettes which have been copied from little cassettes. Uncopied little cassettes and even tinier where-did-those-come-from-what-are-they cassettes. While the little cassettes have no labels, they’re still first generation, which is a good thing. To watch them, you have to put them in the adapter thing. First one in got munched. Now I know how to use the adapter.

So I had to sit and watch. Unfortunately, last week I finally donated the pile of dust-covered remotes for things we didn’t own anymore. Hmm, one of them must have been the remote for the VCR….

I have a friend who said, when her daughters were grown, that she still saw herself as a mother of young girls. I know how she felt. Going through those videos, I remembered that bond and I craved it. Craved it. I was like a long-sober addict who still feels the biological pull years later. When that little girl in the video spied me in bed, she giggled and ran under the covers to cuddle with me. When she put on dress-up clothes and pranced around like an actress possessed, I marveled at the world she inhabited. Even later on, when we were filming her science experiments and had to do a dozen takes because things weren’t working and she was in such despair but then it FINALLY WORKED, I knew our family was a team.

The most dramatic thing about those videotapes? How much laughter they record. You can’t watch hours and hours of people laughing and enjoying each other’s company without being affected. It’s like that guy who cured his disease watching funny movies. I got in the car, drove to Tim’s workplace, and kissed him.

You don’t take videos of making beds, vacuuming, cooking dinner. You don’t take videos of watching TV, mowing the lawn, going shopping. No videos of laundry, being bored, writing to-do lists. But to see all of us laughing and enjoying, telling stories and laughing, ice-skating, swimming, riding waves and laughing. The camera operator always laughed at what he or she was filming; you could hear it. All that laughing! The laughing was contagious.

Studies have shown that Facebook makes people depressed. They look at all those fun, happy things other people are doing and get bummed out. But the videos were of US! We were looking at ourselves having a terrific time. Yes, some of those videos were taken during times of unemployment, stress, fatigue. But despite that, we were still laughing – there’s evidence!

Maybe watching videos for so many hours is like brain-washing. There I am, kind of negative and harassed about carpeting, and I spend six hours watching laughing videos. You can’t come away unchanged. I am resolved: I will add more laughter to my days and appreciate all the people who are part of that laughter.

At the same time, it’s bittersweet. Time has passed. I discovered the oral history tapes I’d made of my mother in 1997. She was thrilled to be filmed, needed no prompting to tell me of her grandparents, her parents’ immigration, her life growing up in Brooklyn. This is the woman who now can’t remember the beginning of a sentence by the time she gets to the end. It made me want to fly to New York and watch these videos with her.

The videos just keep on giving. Pulling out the camera back then meant it was a special occasion and made it even more special. (It was before iPhones, before oppression-by-camera.) Watching the tapes this week has been such pleasure, such happiness. Taking them into Karl at Action Video was such a treat, too; all that personal attention! Now, when the DVDs are ready, I get to share them, to spread all that laughter around to my extended family. I can hardly wait. I bet we laugh.

A DVD Junkie?

I am a DVD-aholic. I don’t quite know how it happened, but it definitely only made its appearance in my Third Third. Now, friends and I trade DVD recommendations as if it were some drug transaction:
             “I just finished the last season of X, and I need another.”
     “Okay, I’ve got one for you. I just discovered Y, and it runs for five seasons.”
             “Oh, good, that’ll hold me for a while.”

My first third didn’t include much television even though my father was part of the original color TV engineering team. We had the occasional family gathering after supper, but homework or play always came first. I remember Shirley Temple’s Storybook and Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. The Tab Hunter Show and Dr. Kildare were big, on account of my huge crush on both their stars, but mostly television was a take-it-or-leave-it attraction. I actually bought my first T.V. set just to watch Roots, and barely turned it on afterwards. During the parenting part of the second third, television was again low interest, never even on when the child was awake.

So why, in my Third Third, do I keep a constant supply of DVDs on hand or on request at the library? I’m watching series on DVD that I never watched on television. Some of it is the absence of commercials – hallelujah! – but most of it is my willingness to enter the vegetative state. Why is that?

Maybe it started with Lost, and that was before my Third Third, but it was really good. There’s no way I could have watched that on regular broadcast T.V., waiting a week to resolve the cliffhangers. It was so eerie and unsettling, Sophie and I would stare at each other, terrified, and cry, “Another episode!” When she recently introduced me to Orphan Black, the exact same thing happened. Into the wee hours.

But those are like special occasion events. That couldn’t explain why I line up all the new seasons of NCIS, White Collar, and Big Bang Theory (although I have grown quite attached to the characters). And there is NO EXPLANATION at all for going through 15+ seasons of Midsomer Murders in which there are precisely three murders per episode, a major jolt when one episode had four.

Discovering Dr. Who counts as a major event, and Tim actually made his lone venture to the T.V. set when I found Foyle’s War, but it’s my unrelenting quest for new material that surprises me. Robin turned me on to New Tricks, and I in turn turned her on to Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. Judith and I both liked Leverage, and then I discovered Crossing Lines, which I’m now telling everyone else about.

We don’t have cable T.V. and the only Netflix I ever had was those free 30-day trials. Then Sophie told us she was allowed to have one other account on her Netflix (“Parents”) so now I can even beat the reservation lines at the library. Whole new fixes have opened up!

Sometimes DVDs are beyond frustrating. If a new season is out, you have to time your holds at the library so Disk #3 doesn’t show up before #1 and #2. And if you are eagerly settling down to watch Star Wars Episode I The Phantom Menace, and it grinds to a halt with a powerful skip, you have no choice but to return it with a note “unwatchable, please repair.” And then hope you get it before #2’s hold expires.

So what’s with the DVD preoccupation (hoping it’s not as bad as an obsession yet…)? Part of it is just a desire for empty-headedness, like reading People at the hair salon. Part of it just goes to wasting time. And yes, some of them are just so incredibly interesting, and yes, I cried and cried when Rose Tyler was separated from Dr. Who, and when David Tennant regenerated.

Friends and I trade book suggestions all the time. Movies, too. So maybe the DVD recommendations are just another way of sharing, not like drug addicts getting new fixes. Maybe I just have too much puritan in me about T.V. watching. Maybe it has nothing to do with being a time-wasting Third Third blob.

But if this works the way the games blog did – where I got all sorts of recommendations for new games – I will be delirious. Just remember, I can’t handle scary. Extra points for multiple seasons.