What iTunes Can Really Say About You

I didn't want to make this an ultra-personal blog, but considering I never write in it anyway (i'm busy watching tv and stuff), I'll do just that.

I'm a little anal about my mp3 collection. I've had mp3s for about 10 years (pre Napster! does anyone else remember Scour Media Agent?) and through about 4 hard drives and 3 iPods. I love love love the metadata on each song and how you can track things, and make smart Playlists, and blah blah blah. I go through this kind of shit all the time, fine tuning the data and making new playlists. It's just fun for me.

Anyway, one of the most basic measures of an mp3 collection is the play count. I thought it'd be interesting to take a look at some of my top played songs as of July 4th...

#1 - The Will of One by The Protomen - 44 times

I love this song, but I'm pretty surprised it's the most played in my library. The Protomen are a band dedicated to playing a rock opera about Capcom video game hero, Mega Man. It's a hell of a lot better than that sounds and was my favorite album of 2006. But still... number 1? I would have thought a They Might Be Giants song would be up there...

#2 Ana Ng - They Might Be Giants - 39 times

Yep. That one doesn't surprise me at all. Probably my hands down favorite song of all time.

#3 - Pokemon - TV Theme - 35 times

I could justify this by saying that not only does this song have great music that puts me in a good mood and gets me excited about boring shit or that the cheeseball lyrics make me smile and I know all the words or that I genuinely like Pokemon, but you know what? Go fuck yourself. This is a jam.

#4 - Snakes on a Plane (Bring It) - Cobra Starship - 34 times

Kind of depressing that this is on here really (and I stand by Pokemon still). I listened to it A LOT in 2006 when SoaP was the rage. It's a catchy song but not really worthy of this vaunted spot.

#5 - From the Ritz to the Rubble - Arctic Monkeys - 32 times

Another no-brainer. Love love love this album and this song and Arctic Monkeys in general. They get a lot of backlash considering the considerably gushing praise they got when this album dropped, but they're one of my favorite bands so either accept that or go read some other blog. I am kind of surprised that I bet That You Look Good on the Dance Floor isn't in this spot, but it only pops up at #17, the next highest Monkeys song on my list.

#6 - The Fallen - Franz Ferdinand - 32 times

I don't LOVE Franz Ferdinand. I'm a fan, yeah. When their first album came out, I listened the shit out of it. Then their second one came, the one this song kicks off, and I was largely indifferent. THEN I saw them live and they rocked the shit, particularly this song, which is a most excellent track 1 to a mediocre/good album. Still, I did a play list of songs that I never have skipped (like once it comes on, I listen to it to the end every time) and this was the number one song in terms of play count and least times skipped. Weird.

#7 - Batman: Stage 1 - The Advantage - 30 times

I love Batman, I love Nintendo, I love covers of Nintendo songs. Not a lot of logic to this one. Just a great background tune to any activity.

#8 - Bust A Move - Young MC - 30 times

I also love late 80's and early 90's rap. This is just a damn good song and I am fairly sure I can sing it from start to finish. I think that's why I played it so much. Never know when that will come in handy. Incidentally, this whole album is pretty good.

#9 - Talk to Me - Stephen Lynch - 29 times

A comedic song about masturbation. I just think its catchy. Fun to sing along with in your head when you're walking down the street.

#10 - Tarzan Boy - Baltimora - 28 times

Um. I have no idea. I like this song. Weird that its so high up though.

#11 - This is Halloween - Danny Elfman - 28 times

The opener of The Nightmare Before Christmas, the best musical ever. And I only barely like musicals.

#12/13 - Kickapoo and The Pick of Destiny by Tenacious D - 28 times

Wouldn't make sense if the D didn't pop onto at least the top 15. These are the starting and closing songs respectively of their movie, which was only a decent flick, but had a stellar soundtrack.

#14 - Long Long Way From Home - Foreigner - 27 times

#15 - Nightrain - Guns n Roses - 27 times

Both self explanatory.

Thats all I got. It's late.

The DVD Collector's Lament

If I had to pinpoint my biggest vice in this world, it would have to be my love of things. I really, really like to buy things. I especially like to get a good deal on the things that I like. I like to display the things I own and promote conversation concerning my things. It's not that I brag about my things, it's just that my things are an essential part of my being, and I'm vain and like to talk about myself. I am a gestalt of the things I own, and the things I own are pretty friggin' sweet.

But of my many things, the two biggest and most important are my two most sprawling and massive collections: my DVDs and my comics. Comics are great, but not what I want to talk about here. I'm sure there will be plenty more of that down the line, believe me. Today, I want to talk about my DVD collection. I can't really recall a day in recent memory where I haven't had a DVD on for at least some portion of my day, and there certainly hasn't been a week since I began working where I haven't purchased a DVD. On Sundays, the first thing I do is grab the paper, pluck out the Best Buy and Circuit City circulars and check out who has the best deals for what DVDs. In a nice way, I'm a DVD collector, but in a not so nice way, I have an unhealthy problem when it comes to buying DVDs.

The greatest problem with my collection lies in the fact that it takes time to watch a DVD, often 10 hours for some of the better special editions with commentaries and such, yet it's a relatively spontaneous process for me to buy them. ("UHF is only $6? Yoink!") I have a fairly large and growing collection (which you can peruse virtually, here) and I simply don't have the time to watch anywhere near the full amount of content on these DVDs. So, there are a lot of DVDs that I have, but have never watched. That seems strange to me, the rational being. Case in point, a few weeks ago I was reading a list about the best comic book movies ever, and a little remembered movie called "The Rocketeer" graced the list. (I didn't even know it was a comic.) I remember when the movie came out my older brother was a pretty big fan of it and when we subsequently went to DisneyWorld in 1992 or so, The Rocketeer had breakfast with us at one of those character meet and greet meals that Disney does. (Chip and Dale were there too, how cool is that!)

Anyway, I hadn't seen the movie in a good thirteen years, barely remembering what it was about aside from a rocket pack, Jennifer Conolly, and a lot of Nazis. The discover that Terry O'Quinn, Lost's John Locke, played Howard Hughes in the movie ignited within a burning drive to possess "The Rocketeer." I like comics, I like Locke, I like the episode of "Arrested Development" where George Michael gets a rocket pack. Ipso facto, I like "The Rocketeer" (Yes, this is an accurate representation of how my brain works.)

Now, the Rocketeer came out in the very early 90's and had been released in early 2000 as a bare bones DVD (meaning 'special features' that include "Brand New Menus!" and "Theatrical Trailer!" an albatross for serious DVD collectors as myself). It was older and pretty obscure, and that means it was hard to find and it was expensive. Not markedly so, but if you don't buy a DVD at Best Buy or Circuit City, you're overpaying for it, and they didn't have it. So I bought "The Rocketeer" at an overpriced store for about $16. (I actually got it in a sale that was buy 2 for $25; the other movie I got, "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm" is a favorite of mine that I had long wished to own.) This extremely boring and long-winded story about "The Rocketeer" culminates in the following punchline: It's been about a month, and I still have not watched the damn movie.

And this is something I was getting borderline crazed about. "I must buy 'The Rocketeer!'" crazed. Then I got it, suffered some mild mockery from my peers (to the tune of, 'Why would you buy a Disney movie from 15 years ago?' to 'Dude... The Rocketeer?'), and it's been sitting under a pile of other DVDs for weeks now.

And this wasn't a one time thing. When I was a freshman in college, I distinctly remember one weekend when my parents were up. The common thing to do with my parents was to go to the mall (I wonder how I developed my love of spending...), specifically to Target. Target often has sales for DVDs that are either so old that no one who buys DVDs wants them ("The Apple Dumpling Gang?") or were so hyped that they really over-ordered them and misplaced the demand ("SWAT?"). They're usually ten bucks or less, which is a big fucking blinking light to a DVD collector that says, "Hey man, this is cheap." Now, I'm a pretty big fan of Steve Martin, or at least his earlier work and not so much "Cheaper by the Dozen 2." One of the sub-ten-dollar DVDs at Target on this particular evening happened to be "Roxanne," a late-80's retelling of the play Cyranno de Bergerac, with Martin in the Cyranno role with an obnoxiously long synthetic nose. I've long remembered this movie for one of its best lines, where two schmucks are making fun of Martin's character on a tennis court. He approaches them and says, "Boy, I really like your shoes. I like them a lot, but I wouldn't want to be in them" then proceeds to beats them up. Or maybe he walks away. I don't remember.

Where was I going with this? Oh, right. So I'd seen "Roxanne" in high school, when channel 11 would play it constantly along with Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn's "Overboard." It's a funny, sweet little romantic comedy. At least I think it is. You see, the last time I saw it was back in those high school days. I bought it at Target that day with my parents (or more likely it was bought for me, thanks Mom and Dad) fully intending to watch it, and now it's four years later and I still have not.

The list of my unwatched DVDs balloons from there. I own all six "Leprechaun" movies, but have never watched "Leprechaun 2." I got the "Batman- Legacy" box set for Christmas, and still haven't' touched "Batman Forever" or "Batman and Robin" (maybe that's a good thing, though). I bought the complete run of the short-lived TV show "The Flash" earlier this year and didn't make it past the first disc (of seven). I have "Ghoulies" on DVD from a bundled eBay purchase, and have still never attempted to watch it. "Mom and Dad Save the World?" Damn Wal-Mart and it's dirt cheap DVDs...

I don't really have a point here except to highlight the fact that sometimes my desire to fuel my collection eclipses my common sense. I'll close with one more DVD related anecdote that is actually about a friend of mine, not me., though we do have the same name. Just last week, for the first time that I've ever noticed - and I watch these kinds of things diligently - the big two electronics giants (Best Buy and Circuit City) were selling a large swath of DVDs for a scant $4. I'm the guy who bought "Bedazzled" for $20 when it first came out, so DVDs for a fifth of that is a big deal. My friend and I swarmed to the hallowed halls of DVD sales and began to stock up. All told, I only bought two $4 movies, and one $7 movie, as well as a $15 Gamecube game. That put me in the red for $30, which is a pittance to what I sometimes drop. My friend however was much more taken by some of the better sales (and I would have been too if I didn't already have the DVDs involved). Let's just say in addition to $4 DVDs, "Futurama" sets were on sale for $20 each (and usually sold for more than double that) and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" sets were $22 each (not as large a drop, but still a great buy).

All told, my friend dropped roughly $100 in one night, lamenting it immediately since he was trying to save money for his new apartment. I, being a good friend, consoled him by telling him that it'd be ok and that he now had countless hours of phenomenal entertainment. Still, I was the one playing devil's advocate encouraging him to buy them in the first place.

Anyway, the next day I get a message from him saying roughly the following. "Man, I got home last night. I didn't even know what I had bought. It's a blur. I'm looking in the bag and I'm like, "Black Sheep?" What the fuck?"

I love a good DVD sale, and in all honesty, not joking at all, as soon as this is published, I'm off to Best Buy. This week "American Psycho" is $4, and I almost bought it last week for $10. In a way, I'm about to make $6. In another, more accurate way, I have an unhealthy DVD problem.

As a final note, the whole reason I started writing this is because I just received a whole buttload of free DVDs. Where I work, on occasion we get some freebies from a distributor that we are friendly with, and I am the second one to get picks. Today was the jackpot, by far, with a number of DVDs for TV shows I actually like. What's that, free copy of Rodney Dangerfield's "Ladybugs?" You want to come home with me? Absolutely.

There's a wonderful spot for you, right under "The Rocketeer."