Watching the World Wake Up From History*

* Can't believe I just quoted Jesus Jones.

If you're a nerd or someone who loves them, you probably heard that as of yesterday, GeoCities is under construction no more. To bring the rest up to speed, GeoCities was an online community that was a precursor to blogging, enabling any slob who could follow a few simple directions to have a free website. Of course the quality of those websites were laughably Ye Olden Internette Style: cheesy bright colors, flashing words, animated GIFs of happy faces doing things, rampant abuse of Comic Sans font (and isn't it all abuse?), and lots of under construction signs. As users switched to blogs and other platforms, GeoCities became a ghost town of abandoned websites, lingering on unnoticed for years. Parent company Yahoo! announced earlier this year that the service would shut down.  

Although no one thinks they look good anymore, the websites still make up part of the history of the Internet. It would be wrong to let all those pages just disappear. Get a load of some GeoCities sites, helpfully preserved at Internet Archeology. On a personal note, some of my first writing on the Internet went up on a GeoCities site that I'm happy to see go, but I've included a sample below. 

A more gradual exit is being made by the video store. It came to my attention yesterday when the Blockbuster I pass daily was festooned in GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE banners. I'd suspected it was coming when a few months back I got coupons with every rental, which kept me coming back until the coupons ended, and then last week I noticed stacks of cardboard boxes inside the place. Our previous video store, Hollywood, closed suddenly not long after we moved here, and an even closer Blockbuster had closed before we arrived, still standing empty. After work yesterday, the soon-to-be- ex-Blockbuster was swarming with students eager to spend disposable income on video games and movie posters. I stopped in, since I can't resist a clearance sale, but there wasn't one thing I wanted. Now, with cable, I don't need to own DVDs. In general, with the ubiquity of Netflix, the whole store felt excessive and unnecessary even when it was still in regular business. It was sad.

(Here comes the bye-cracky "I remember when video stores were cool" part:) When I was a kid, going to the video store was a treat. I would beeline for the back left corner, the horror section, just across from the curtained back room of "you know what" kinds of "bad people" movies (with no inkling that I would one day work in a porno office that produced such titles as Purely 18). Every time, I'd pick up the box for The Hills Have Eyes and look at the ugly guy from the Motley Crue "Smokin' in the Boys Room" video with the pointy-shaped head, and not rent it. It was the heyday of '80s slasher flicks such as I Dismember Mama, April Fool's Day, The Slumber Party Massacre. I was typically not allowed to rent these titles, so my only hope was sleepovers hosted by permissive or clueless parents. In the case of the abhorrent I Spit on Your Grave, I had to wait til college for that one to pollute my eyeballs, and much later for the nauseating Last House on the Left.

The point is, the video store was a place we went to to linger and select what was most appealing and leave for home feeling like we had a prize. The anticipation of the experience was totally tied up with friends or family and soda and pizza and Tato Skins and orange cheese popcorn and comfy couches or sleeping bags in the near future. It was not the same as going to see a movie in the theater, but a similar ritual. Where is that ritual headed? At some point, will movies just get beamed into our mind's eyes? I know that a segment of cultural critics always claim that every new technological advance has ruined something else: VCRs ruined going to the movies, etc., but meanwhile movie-going still exists. I'm just saying...some things do disappear. Video stores and record stores unfortunately seem to be casualties of these "advancements."

Anyway. Here's that piece from my first website. (By the way, nowadays an encounter like this would end a lot sooner.)

Silent Fight with a Deaf Mute  

          Sometimes I make ravioli for dinner, and providing I'm not going to be smooching anyone, I make a dressing of olive oil and raw garlic, which is quite delish but results in the most phenomenally bad breath you can imagine. Teeth-brushing, gargling with Listerine, and mints barely make a dent in the garlic's lingering presence; only time carries it fully away. So after one of these ravioli sessions last night, I went over to my friend Kim's apartment and tried to keep a considerate distance, keep a candle between us, talk in the other direction, etc. Over the course of a few hours I had three beers and left with maybe a *slight* buzz.

On the way home, I was leaning on a pillar on the subway platform at 14th Street. A little man came up to me, leaning in close, and gestured at his folding subway map, pointing and looking questioningly at me and making little hummy sounds so that I realized he was a deaf mute and was asking whether he could get the train to Bleecker here. Yes, I nodded. He was grateful for the help but visibly repulsed by my breath, scrunching up his face and shaking his head no. Then he pointed to me, did the universal gesture for drinking (jerking his fist with thumb out toward his mouth as a bottle) and then mimed someone being ridiculously staggering drunk and then pointed to me and shook his head "no."

"No, I'm fine..." I said, shaking my head.

He vigorously shook his head no and again did the town-drunk-style mime again, this time pretending to be me falling into the path of the subway and the train coming and me getting decapitated. Shook his head no again, and gestured that for him, one drink, OK, two, OK. lots (like I apparently always have) NOT OK! I will fall into the path of the subway and get decapitated. Not just that, but he gestured to his torso. what did that mean--someone will steal my kidney?

I felt the need to explain my perhaps misunderstood stench. I took out an envelope and wrote GARLIC.

He wrote, CAREFUL, underlining it multiple times. I nodded that I was fine, and he wrote, GUM.
ALREADY DID, I wrote, getting annoyed.

then he wrote, BEER EVERY NO, underlining it, and pointing to the CAREFUL again. I had the impression I was talking with a spirit through a Ouija board. I was also getting pissed, and tried to gesture him away that I was fine. He gestured that I was pretty, and I thought, Nooo shit. lucky me. The insulting deaf mute thinks I'm hot.

He continued showing me through gestures his certainty that I was a flailing drunk and was about to get decapitated. Not only that, but while drunk I was also going to pass out and wake up knocked up.

"Beh-by" he squeaked out, desperately trying to warn me.

PLAY NO STOP, he wrote.

OK, BUT YOU DON'T KNOW ME, I wrote, angrily.

NICE TO MEET YOU TOO, he wrote.

(!!!!)

AGE YOU, he wrote.

OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER, I wrote.

42, he wrote, pointing to himself.

I LIKE YOU NICE GOOD he wrote, and i just kind of gave a "Yeah great, whatever," look and looked away.

Then he gestured for me not to be scared of him, that he's a good guy--thumbs up. He took out a small paperback with some kind of affirmation title like Here is the Help You Need, and on the inside back cover he'd written two phrases. He showed me the first one, covering the second:

I AM SERIOS WITH YOU.

And then the second, I AM NOT STUPID. (Apparently he had to claim this a lot.)

I tried to ignore him as he continued pointing at me doing his impression of me as the staggering wasteoid, with my inevitable dual dooms of pregnancy and decapitation, and when the subway came I eagerly went to take a little step towards it, still a good three or four feet away, and he quickly held me back, thinking he had saved me from certain death. (I wonder how he supposed i lasted five minutes in this world without his direction.)

Of course he tried to squeeze in next to me on the train but was forced to sit across instead. I carefully studied the ads, avoiding eye contact. At Bleecker, he pointed at me and at his head, like, BE SMART, and I did the same--saying to him, no, YOU be smart.

   
           
 

Comments

[jason]

Thank goodness for internet archeology! I wonder what ever happened to my first geocities page? I'm nostalgic for it already.

I don't even have the address written down anymore.

Ironically, it looked similar to that piece of paper from the deaf mute, oddly enough (but with smiley face gifs)

[Alicia]

We often talk about classic video covers from the video store like The Man With One Red Shoe, Big Business, Career Opportunities, Cool Blue (Woody Harrelson), Ants (naturally), and Rabid (that cover was the most nightmare-inducing thing of my childhood). The video store experience was such a big part of growing up. I will miss it.

[Alicia]

Just thought of another one:
"Just One of the Guys" with the football helmets on the boobs. Classic video cover.

[Kitty]

This post made me laugh on so many levels, and in the end, all I am left with is this:

I loved Jesus Jones!

[Kevin]

Hard to forget Ants. What was the one that lit up when you pressed the monster's head?

Also, "Feelin' Up"

[Colleen Kane]

Thanks Kitty!

I don't remember the Ants cover, but I think I have a preview for it on an old VHS (in the big box!) of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.

There's always all the "pile-on" comedy covers, a la Meatballs, Cannonball Run, etc. where they're like, let's get a Mad Magazine artist to illustrate everyone in the whole movie piled on top of each other!

[Alicia]

That's very true about the pile-ons!

Here's the Ants cover(took a long time to find it online -- if you want to buy the movie new it now features a much less memorable cover without ant-covered jugs):
http://cineschlocker.com/images/wanted/wanted_ants.jpg

[Colleen Kane]

HA! Guess our store didn't carry that one, I would have remembered that. Wonder how many viewers of this cover managed to be turned on despite the jugs being crawling with ants.

[Alicia]

Probably everyone who saw the cover and still rented it.

One last VHS cover memory for the road: the "Angel" covers with the school girl by day/hooker by night photos.

[Apollo]

I never really had a video store that I loved so much that I was sad to see it go. Record stores, on the other hand, I've lost too many to count.

I guess I just always associated video stores with national chains and big corporations (and, for a while in high school, a paycheck).

[fthats.wordpress.com]

Oh Cokane - you can bring out the pathetic nostalgia in anyone! My first site was through geocities and called "Junked Blunts" (sadly, not a joke). From what I can remember, the home page was that illustration of Hunter S. Thompson from Fear&Loathing...colored in some pre-photoshop program and saved as a blinking gif. Another image was tiled behind it, probably something obscure and black & white.

So now I just tried to see if Junked Blunts still existed, gasping for air somewhere out there...

"Sorry, the GeoCities web site you were trying to reach is no longer available."

Thank god.