GARAGE SALE SCORE

Earlier today, I stopped by a garage sale down the block from my home, and managed to double the size of my indefensibly small DVD collection with the purchase of Blade Runner, Enter the Dragon, and Annie Hall, each one a genre-redefining classic in its own right.

The guy was asking $3 each for the films, and $1 for the hardback book I wanted. As a reasonably experienced market haggler, I know better than to simply fork over the asking price. Here's how it went:

ME
How much for these?

HIM
Three bucks each for the movies, one dollar for the book.

ME
I feel kind of bad not haggling with you over this, but $10 seems so reasonable.

HIM
We can pretend to haggle, if you want.

ME
Okay. How much do you want for these?

HIM
Ten bucks.

ME
Rrmm, how about ten bucks?

HIM
I can go down to ten bucks.

ME
Sorry, I'm out of here.

HIM
Okay, okay! Ten bucks, ten bucks.

ME
Fair enough.

fin

Upon returning home, my first move was to watch the cavern fight scene in EtD where Lee takes on, like, fifty uniformed flunkies, dispatching them in various creative ways, using first only hands, feet, and orgasmic facial expressions, and then a succession of weapons, culminating, of course, in his Free Nunchaku Clinic, three astonishing minutes of film which are probably responsible for more self-inflicted backyard injuries than any others in cinema history.

Thence to Annie Hall, where I skipped forward to relive one of the formative experiences of my cultural life: The Marshall McLuhan scene.

I was thirteen, had nothing else to watch, my parents had rented Annie Hall the night before, there it was on top of the TV. I knew who Woody Allen was, but nothing more. I knew he was supposed to be funny. With a resigned sigh, I took the cassette out of the box, pushed it into the player, and plunked down on the couch. There were the opening credits, which would eventually become as familiar and comforting to me as an old blanket, then cut to this nerdy dude talking right at me in heavy Brooklynese about life, relationships, and old women in the Catskills. Heh, pretty funny. When it got to the doctor's office with the redhead kid as young Alvy ("The universe is expanding!" "What is that your business?!!"), I started to get into it, yeah this was definitely worth watching, but when it arrived at the scene were Alvy pulls Marshall McLuhan from behind the easel in the theater lobby to confront the pontificating pinhead behind him in line, the film achieved a state of sublime funniness for me. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I had a religious experience there and then.

The fact that I had no idea at that time who Marshall McLuhan only proves the brilliance of the gag.

Later, tonight: "If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes."