"Hi my name is Chris and I'm a Starwarsaholic."
"Hi Chris!!"
I called up my friend Brian (the coolest cat who ever played cello) and he came by here last night about 11:20. He was wearing his "Revenge Of The Sith" t-shirt (the black one with the "Return Of The Jedi"-style lettering) and at the last minute I opted to wear my full Jedi costume with robes, cloak, lightsaber etc. We took my car to the Wal-Mart on Wendover Avenue in Greensboro and waited with about 30 other happy campers for magic hour to hit.
People loved Brian's shirt (it looks very cool) and my costume. Some kids wanted to touch the lightsaber... uh-uh, no doing: only people I trust in a big way tough this lightsaber. This is the most special lightsaber ever made, at least to me: it was my own design. I made it in my Dad's knifeshop. I took it to Star Wars Celebration II a few years ago where author James Luceno admired it and Paul Ens of StarWars.com said it was "amazing work". This is the lightsaber that Roy Ackland from WGHP played with off-camera and made the sounds as he pretended to be a Jedi (later during that morning's show it won admiration from Brad Jones and Cindy Farmer). They all loved the story of how I used this lightsaber to propose to my wife. This lightsaber started the biggest chapter of my life... and it's going to play a part in my funeral at the end of it. By now you get the point: a person has to be very, VERY special to me if they want to play with my lightsaber.
(Geez are there connotations too scary to think about in that statement or what?!)
We hung around a bit and talked with a lot of folks and then at 12:01 they started selling them. The guys at Wal-Mart had too few of the widescreen versions on hand as opposed to the pan-scan so they had to make another trip to get more widescreens before we got to the register. But about 12:10 Brian and I got there (he waited to use a gift certificate later today at another store to get his) and I was given the silver box that might has well have been the Holy Grail to a longtime fan like me.
It's still sitting here, unopened, with the shrinkwrap still around it. I like to let things "linger" a bit before tearing into them... 'specially some new bit of Star Wars coolness. Between yesterday and today I've been having one massive StarWargasm (I made that up before the Special Editions release in '97) and I want to let it stretch out a bit.
I may feel different when I'm 80 or 90 and still this way but in the meantime: it's nice being a 30-year old guy who still doesn't know how to grow up :-)
2 comments:
Om eBay I sold my Sopranos DVD (season 4), Sanford and son (seasons 1 and 2) and a couple of rare out of print cult movie books (I bought a box of 75 copies of that book off of eBay years ago for around 30 dollars. I've long since made my money back, with a handsome profit, selling these books one by one. Now, everytime I sell one of these books, it's clear profit)
Then I turned around and used that money to buy (off of ebay) DVD's of season one of the tv show Happy Days. I know that Happy Days is the epitomy of "Jump The Shark", but the first couple of seasons, before it "jumped the shark", are really great. Bought it for 15.50. Shipping is 7.00, (the seller is in Hawaii which accounts for the large shipping price. Hey, I saw one ebay seller who is in the mainland, selling the same exact item, and his shipping price was 10 bucks!).
At my local video store, the Happy Days DVD was going for 40 bucks. So I saved some money there.
Also bought, on DVD, One Hour Photo starring Robin Williams. They have that for sale at my local video store at the mall for 9.99, but I resisted the urge to buy it. It was a good thing I did because I got it cheaper on eBay. Found that out when I got home from the video store and logged onto ebay. The purchase price was 3.99, and the shipping price was 3.99, so I bought it. (there was another seller who was seling the same movie for one penny, and a 5.99 shipping price with only one bidder on it, but the seller had too many negatives for my comfort)
Also got the 1981 horror film Madman (on DVD). I saw that originally in the theaters when it first came out. In early 1999 I bought, for a hefty price, the video of that movie off of ebay. It was a well worn former rental and it was a prized collectible by horror movie fans because the movie was out of print. That is, at the time they werent putting it out on video anymore. They did once somewhere around the 1980's, and then stopped, and as a result the movie became a hard to get item. Almost a couple years went by and I needed to raise some money, so I sold, in Dec. 2000, on ebay my videotape of Madman. If I recall, it sold for a little over 40 bucks. I originally bought it for 20-30 bucks, so I made a profit. And its a good thing I sold it when I did. Only months later, in 2001 the movie would be put out on DVD! And better yet, the DVD would come with a commentary. So, how much did I pay for it on DVD, brand new? 7.78 + 3.99 for shipping. total: 11.77
Also, I bought Goodfellas on DVD. I taped that movie off of cable tv, but that tape is getting kind of worn what with my playing it all the time. I once went to the video store (this is before I owned a DVD player, so I'm going back almost a year and a half), looked around to see what kind of tapes they had on sale. They had Goodfellas on tape. Better yet, it was in widescreen. The version I taped off of cable was fullscreen. But the price was about 22 bucks. I had the money on me, and debated with myself whether or not to spend that kind of money on a single video. I decided against it. A couple weeks later I went on ebay and found a widescreen videotape of Goodfellas. I was up against a second bidder. I put in my bid, a couple days later he put in his bid, and outbid me. I immediately put in another bid topping him, but a few hours later, he came in and topped my bid. So I realized that if we went around like this back and forth, we would be driving the price up, so I let the opposing guys bid stand (a little over 6 bucks) untill the last few seconds of the auction where I sniped in my top price of ten dollars, and beat out the other guys bid by one single penny! (his top bid turned out to be 9.99, of course one does not know the bids until the end of the auction). I can just imagine the gnashing of teeth by the other bidder when he came online and saw what I did!
Now, they have had Goodfellas out on DVD since 1997 as I understand it, but they more recently came out with Goodfellas on DVD again. The first time they released it, there was no extras. And it was a flipper disk. That is, one half of the movie was on one side of the disk, and to see the other half, you had to take the disk out of your DVD player and flip it over to see the rest. This new version is not a flipper disk and it has tons of extras including two commentaries.
The cost of the 2 disc Goodfellas at my local video store was about 23 dollars on sale. The cost of buying it off of ebay was 13.00 + 5.00 for shipping.
And lastly I bought the book: "Make Your Own Damn Movie!: Secrets of a Renegade Director" by Lloyd Kaufman. Kaufman is the guy who founded and owns Troma studios. He worte another book before this one called "All I need to know about film making I learned from the Toxic Avenger". I liked that book, which is why I bought his second book off of ebay. The cost? 3.49, with shipping it came to 7.24
So in all I traded in my three DVD sets and two books and got in return three fantastic DVD's and a fantastic book that I cant wait to read. And I still got a big chunk of money left over.
So you got Star Wars on DVD, huh? ;-)
"and got in return three fantastic DVD's and a fantastic book"
Whoops, I meant 4 DVD's and one book.
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