I'm much more of a fan of DVD as a format than I was of VHS. VHS never really looked as clean, it'd degrade over time, and there's the whole pan-and-scan thing with letterboxed tapes being much more rare. One thing, however, that VHS had -- being an early technology that was rapidly embraced by consumers -- it provided a medium for many small movie houses to get their product out there.
Recently, I've actually sat down and watched more of the Disney Live-Action Comedies From The 1960s Or Thereabouts (The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and The Gnome-mobile) than most people my age. Or, rather, a lot of people my age have seen these films (and more of them!), although not so much recently. Most everyone else has seen these films when they were much, much younger, and probably on local television stations in the middle of the day, when nothing else was on. Or perhaps, they watched them on beat up videotapes rented from small video stores – the ones with the white cases and the Electric Mickey logo before the film. This is closer to how I saw them – mainly on tapes borrowed from the library (and only one of them had the Electric Mickey, along with a Disney Channel trailer after the film with a bunch of edited together clips, including Zorro and Condorman!). The library copies are probably close enough to the video-store style of obtaining these movies you might remember -- just with more tracking problems.
Coming home from work this morning was very strange. As I neared my house, a seagull started squawking at me. Really loud, like a siren.
The day before, there were two such seagulls, so it sounded like a car alarm. One would do the long, loud squaaaaaaakks, and the other would do the clipped series of bursts.
