Death to Videodrome, Long Live The New Flesh

I used to work in a video store in Boulder, Colorado. It was long enough ago that we actually charged customers a membership fee to rent movies from us. Oh sure, you could rent from us if you weren't a member, but that would cost you extra. "If you're going to be renting just one movie a week, you'll pay for that membership in less than a year - and you're probably going to want to reserve a movie on those special evenings or holidays - only members can reserve movies." It was a hard sell, but I made it work time after time.
For the longest time, my store was second place to a truly great video store just down the street, The Video Station. There is a scene in "Clerks" where Randal leaves the video store he works in to go to another to rent a movie. The Video Station is where I would go with my room mate to get movies that we really wanted to see. After a few years, we were able to get the owner to buy just about any film that we wanted to see, based on our assertion that we could "put it out every night for a week." With a certain amount of intimidation and charm we were able to do just that. Still, on our day off when we needed to see something and we didn't have it on the shelves of our store, we headed to Video Station.
Then came the dark times - the Clone Wars for the video business - when chains started opening up and little stores like ours began to feel the pinch. A Blockbuster opened up equidistant between our store and the Video Station. They didn't charge membership fees, and they opened their doors with more tapes than we had. Then our owner sold us out to a guy who was looking for something to do to escape his job as an attorney. We became part of a franchise. We were even asked to wear uniforms. It stopped being a really cool job and became a "name-tag" job. And little by little, Blockbuster began to eat away at our customer base. "I can get it cheaper at Blockbuster." "They don't charge me late fees." "They've got more movies." None of these were true, necessarily. We matched their prices, and they were unrelenting in the collection of late fees, and we actually had more titles than Blockbuster - they just had a kerjillion copies of "Top Gun" or whatever the hot movie of the month was.
So our video store went out of business. We sold our inventory, cleaned our shelves, and I went off to move and repair modular office furniture. I vowed never to set foot in a Blockbuster video store. I moved to California. I got married. I became a teacher. I had a son. I broke my promise only once, when went to the Blockbuster just up the street and I purchased a copy of "It's A Wonderful Life" the day we bought our DVD player. Today when I ran past that store, it was closed. The shelves were empty and there was a great big dumpster out in front, filled with video store detritus. It seems that Blockbuster Incorporated had been losing money to places like Wal-Mart and Netflix, so they closed stores and cut jobs so they could make a profit. Again, don't weep for them, Blockbuster is still making money. The kids in our neighborhood who had jobs there will have to find something else to do with their spare time, and I'm glad to have digital cable hooked up to my TV. And there are now three Blockbuster locations to serve you in Boulder, Colorado. Video Station is alive and well, and on your day off you can pick up a copy of "Teenage Catgirls in Heat " (Malachi recommends it).