"So I may have gone a teeny tiny bit overboard this time..."

So this week's future purchases post has its roots from the trip to New Hampshire (NH) with the SO during the holidays.  I think I should first go into the future purchase and why it should be deemed worthy.  Then I'll get into the juicy details of what went down as the "DVD Overload Fest Winter '08" (yes, it was so crazy that it deserves its own title for what was pulled off in just a week's time).

What purchase could be so good to deserve future considerations, yet not good enough to fit into my collection until now?  Well, it stems from probably the coolest class I have taken EVER.  A little course that only went for a month but easily could have gone for an entire semester and it would still not be enough (although in hindsight, it will probably be helpful on not depleting the bank account).  "Staking Out the Sopranos" was a course in undergrad that took a look at The Sopranos and how it compared/contrasted with the image of gangsters we see on the silver screen.  Throughout the course, we watched the first two seasons of the hugely successful show and mixed in a few select gangster movies that are deemed classics and yet portray the gangster as it was relevant to that era.  Of course, we had to start with the REAL classics.  Those would be Little Caesar, Public Enemy, and White Heat.  These were followed by The Godfather, The Godfather II, Goodfellas, and Donnie Brasco.  The course really energized my interest in the genre, and since that time, I've been slowly collecting the movies on DVD (let's not get started with The Sopranos, although they did put out the entire series in one package...).

How this ties into my story is while over holiday break in NH, I was in Borders and saw White Heat.  I've already checked Borders' website and the DVD is not found near me.  Anywho, I saw White Heat and it was on sale for $14.99, PLUS the store was taking 30% off all DVDs and CDs that day, so it would have cost $10.49.  You're probably saying to yourself, why would that matter?  Well, if you know anything about NH, you know it has no sales tax.  That's right, NO SALES TAX!

Therein lies the whole logic for DVD Overload Fest Winter '08.  What got the snowball rolling was the deal the SO and I made to buy each other Christmas gifts while in NH because of no sales tax.  Well, I couldn't exactly do that, as we weren't going to be in NH until after Christmas, so I ended up buying some gifts for her (and having to tell little white lies to avoid her knowing the order from Amazon was for her - she loves the story... basically, I told her I ordered Mamma Mia on DVD for her Mom, even though I already knew SO's bro bought it already, so I said I would give it to my Dad cause he liked the movie, but it actually was a copy of Wall-E for the SO... and yes, I got more than just that for the SO...and she loved all the gifts... I think...).  

What I had planned to ask for while in NH was to get a few DVDs (of course) and so we ended up going to Best Buy the first full day we were in NH.  Ended up getting Burn After Reading, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, and Seven.  The DVD tally was at 4.  Pretty respectable, and some decent choices.  So Clone Wars was panned even by Harry Knowles, but I felt not paying sales tax was a pretty good compromise (and technically I didn't buy it, the SO did, so my Star Wars cred is still intact... come on, I even have "The Holiday Special" on DVD, of course I have to get Clone Wars - almost anything is better than "The Holiday Special", but I'll save its review for a future post).

So where did this go from a very respectable Christmas gift to Overload?  Probably stems from my advisor.  You see, for the past 3 Christmases, he's been giving those of us in the lab $75 gift cards to Borders.  Usually I'll save them until I would think of something to order on the website.  I would take it one step further and go through Borders' Amazon page, just so I could get Amazon's prices (which almost always are better than Borders).  At some point in 2008, Borders ended its deal with Amazon and had its own separate website (which at first was not only confusing but slower than Family Guy's tangential scenes - you know what I'm talking about)

Family Guy - Peter VS The Chicken - Round 3 - Full Fight @ Yahoo! Video

So I was less than thrilled about that prospect.  But then I got to thinking (before I received the gift card this holiday season) that if the SO and I went to NH, I could use the card in NH and avoid sales tax!  It was brilliant.  $75 spent on DVDs and none of it going to sales tax (okay, I'll stop drooling, but you gotta say that's pretty freakin' sweet!)

And that's how it went to Overload.  In the middle of our week in NH, the SO needed to get her driver's license renewed, so we had to head to Concord for that.  Luckily, there's a Borders there.  At some point, the SO and her 'rents wanted to go somewhere else but I was still in the middle of making important decisions on how to use the gift card.  The SO's rents didn't think I could spend an entire hour deliberating, but I proved them wrong because when they came back to get me, I had just made up my mind (but barely).  After looking at the Gangsters Collection Warner Bros. put together, I was torn.  There were 6 movies, but I only wanted Little Caesar, White Heat, and Public Enemy.  But I didn't want to use my entire gift card up on one collection.  I saw the deal with White Heat by itself but I thought I'd wait to buy all 3 gangster movies I really wanted some other time (tear).  In all, I bought 3 DVDs (Batman: Gotham Knight, Snatch, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and His Girl Friday) and 4 CDs (soundtracks to Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith... I know, AWESOME!).  So the DVD tally hit 8...

So coming to the last day of our trip, the SO and her Mom wanted to get some clothes from the mall, so I tagged along and hung out in Best Buy.  Bad decision... While I was waiting on her, I thought to myself, "Self, you just bought His Girl Friday.  You know how much you love Cary Grant, why not get another of his movies to start a collection?"  And I said, "Okay."  Long story short, I left Best Buy with 3 DVDs: North by Northwest, King Kong, and Field of Dreams.  All solid picks, I might say, and fine additions to the collection.  DVD tally at 11...

But the trip to the mall didn't end my DVD spending.  Blame the SO's bro and his girlfriend (SO Bro GF).  They weren't sure what to get me for Christmas, so the SO told them I love DVDs, so they got me and the SO gift cards to...Barnes and Noble!  So of course my logic is, "There's no sales tax in NH, so I must buy DVDs here!"  And so I decided to really have my Cary Grant collection together, so I bought 3 more DVDs: Arsenic and Old Lace, Bringing Up Baby, and Little Caesar.  So, the last one isn't Cary Grant, but it did help my gangster genre collection, and therein lies my new obsession to complete my gangster DVD collection.  If that's the case, I need to get White Heat... and a few others.  But that's for future "future purchases" posts.

And that's how I'm able to tie this entire diatribe together.  Sorry for the length in this post, but it was a tale that had to be told.  In all, the DVD tally from a week in NH stopped at 14 (probably because we had to leave... the SO had to get back to work, and my wallet was burning from the money flying out!).  

Because of this ginormous (giant and enormous - put together!) purchase and the size of my collection, I wanted to let you, the reader, decide something very imporant.  At the rate I'm going, 1 DVD per week would take 370 weeks, or over 7 years to complete.  Should I keep at this rate, should I watch 1 DVD a day, somewhere in between?  Let me know in the comments, and I'll let you know what is decided.  Either way, it'll drive the SO crazy we have to watch all of my DVDs (Hehe!)  Later!