It’s been a long time since Jo said direct movie quote. Let alone one from Clerks. I actually didn’t like Clerks the first time I saw it. I hadn’t had a job with real customer interaction at that point, so it didn’t resonate with me until after I’d actually been in the shit. The movie that changed my mind about Kevin Smith was Mallrats. In many ways Between Failures is much more similar tonally to that film than Clerks. Although, as I often say, Empire Records is probably the closest of any film to being a near match altogether. I forget who directed it at the moment though… All three of those movies feature businesses that are no longer staples of American culture; A record store, a movie rental store, & a mall. They exist in some form, but nothing like the ubiquity they enjoyed in the 80s & 90s. I’m sure there are even new readers from time to time who have never set foot in a movie rental store. As time goes on I expect that will be more and more common. Assuming new readers ever find my work, but don’t get me started on that. Even at the time I started making Between Failures rental stores were in the early stages of their decline. I remember renting DVDs via the post with Netflix. In fact there are probably blogs where I mention it before we got good enough internet service to actually stream movies. Record stores are always going to exist, but not the way the corporate ones did in the 90s. Music aficionados will keep the local specialty shops open forever, but we’ll likely never see the chain dedicated music store ever again. That’s not a terrible loss or anything, but at the same time an uncurated music store allows for a type of browsing that you can’t experience in our algorithmic world now. A vast sea of CDs that you can just pick over is better in some ways than whatever youtube thinks it can get you to listen to for increased attention time.
Movie rental is sort of similar in that no service allows you to look through titles at the speed you could just walk down an aisle. Maybe someday technology will allow us to browse at a decent speed but it can’t do it now. Plus there is also the algorithmic meddling to take into account.
Anyway, the world changes & I remember old times. Nothing new there. Do I long for those times? Not expressly. In some ways though.

One thing I don’t miss is not having anyone support my work. I very much enjoy the fact that so many people do through Patreon and other things. I would like to have more people do that very thing, so I am mentioning it in case someone new, with expendable income, and a tolerance for my rambling might be enticed. Am I the ultimate salesman? Possibly.

Posts authored by Jackie

2442 Unfortunately You Need Them.