The gift of “The Thing”!

My family shares a special gift, we like to call “The Thing”.

Now “The Thing”, is an ESP/telepathic/prophetic type of gift that relates purely to music and movies. Which happen to be 2 of my very favourite things!!!

This gift belongs to my sisters and I (could also be with extended family members, let me know guys!). And like all good family gifts, it has taken root in G1, with G2 & G3 starting to show very promising signs.

I’ll buy a song on iTunes, or hunt one out in my playlists that I feel like hearing, crank it out at home (or in the pool), and next thing you know we’ll be driving somewhere and Boom! It’s on the radio!

And I’m not talking top 10. These can be songs from years ago, just ones that I’m thinking of at the time! My eyes will widen and I’ll turn to my girls on the back seat, point at the radio and go;

“Hey!!! It’s “The Thing!!!”, and they’ll go “Hey! it is!” , and Dan will go “Hey? what the hell are you talking about”.

But only because he doesn’t have “The Thing”, and he’s jealous.

My middle sister and I will be discussing bands or songs, she’ll stop mid sentence, stare at me  intently, then inch over and turn up her kitchen radio! Boom! The songs playing!

“The Thing”, we’ll mouth in unison.

Same with movies. We’ll hire one or download one, watch it, next thing, Boom again! It’s on TV!

Whilst the thing is a super cool gift, it’s not very practical.
Mostly it makes me go “bloody hell, I just wasted $7 on an a movie”. Tack on the late fees as I can never remember to take it back and were down $14!!

Growing up our local video store (Retravision) was half electrical gear and half videos. What exactly was up the other end I don’t remember. There always seemed to be a mower, and the odd kitchen appliance, but the kids generally stuck to the video end. (Eventually there was a shelf for CDs!)

Anyway there was a big box in the middle of the video section, which was 3 walls lined with movies. (Face out, not spine out, it was a very small shop). The box in the middle was full of cheap rental videos, the ones on the wall being about $3, the ones in the box lets say $1.50 (I really don’t recall, my brain says wall videos were $5 but that seems a bit excessive for the 80’s).

The difference between wall and box videos was that box videos had been played on TV. So once a wall movie had been on the Tellie, free for all to see, it’s worth dropped by half and into the box it went. All well and good for regular folk. But those with “The Thing”?, well you get the picture.

You hire an expensive, popluar wall video after browsing through the cheap box & finding you don’t really want to watch Turner & Hooch for the 10th time, next thing. Boom! Overboard is on TV.*

 I love “The Thing” and think if properly studied there could be a future for it in the tech world of tomorrow, (Beyond 2000 as it were). Imagine being able to think of a song & it plays, or think of a film and it comes on!?!  Very cool.
As for now, I’m going to buy some pop corn, sit back and wait for Overboard to come on!

Some of my childhood favourites that I kept, sitting with their new tech movie pals! Adrian Mole and Bloodbath and the House of Death. He he he! Great movies.

*Overboard was a huge favourite at our house. The main attraction, aside from Kurt and Goldie’s hilarious dialogue, Goldie’s shoe rack and the awesome little Pee Wee Herman impersonator, was the very cool see through squishy blue video case! Does anyone remember that?