Over the weekend my wife and I visited her 93-year old grandmother in Memphis. I’ve been lucky to know her for over a decade; it’s always life-affirming to have an interaction with “Geems,” and this time we were on her turf. She is bright and effervescent, perpetually getting up from her couch to show me something curious from her many shelves, while often mystically segeuing from one colorful conversational detail to another. She lives in a large assisted living tower with a massive atrium. It’s a special, gentle mood permeating the wide open inner space. I sometimes imagine living there one day.

Grandma is also a kind of class president for her community, continually coordinating this or that resident activity, from game nights of jigsaw puzzles and bridge, to themed dinners, or, and, importantly, managing the (very) local library of books and movies.

In fact, she recently came to lead the collection of materials – and in no time the project expanded. It now occupies a second, formerly unused corner lobby. Word has very much gotten around, library donations are accepted. (It’s not clear to me if there is a lot business for borrowing materials – I hope so.)

When a new resident moved in weeks back, part of the situation was that she was coming into her modestly sized new apartment with several large boxes of DVDs. She didn’t want these according to Grandma, and hoped the center would. (I don’t know, perhaps they either meant too much or too little. They may have belonged to her deceased partner.)

Grandma temporarily fostered the donation in an unused part of her own apartment. As head librarian, she had agreed to “go through them,” identifying best fits for the library. But upon Tara and I’s visit, she’d wearied of the DVD project. She couldn’t see herself adding titles to the DVD section; there were already more than enough and some of these seemed like ill fits to the community she knew. “A lot of alien movies.”

She offered, Would *we* take some of these movies and shows off her hands? Did we like any of them? Take any you want. We were making her life easier, and no one would miss them.

We left with hundreds of DVD shows and movies. She even gave us a yellow tote bag to carry them (not pictured).

Here is a picture below.

I haven’t watched a DVD in my home, in like, at least two years, maybe more. I do still have a Blu-ray player from like, 2019, in a cabinet downstairs. It uses an HDMI connection, right?

Look, unless we are at an AirBnB in rural Kentucky, when we entertain ourselves, we stream. AMIRITE? Just as the Romans did millenia ago! I mean, it’s a part time job perpetually trying to keep up with the latest, greatest streaming content via Netflix, Paramount+, AppleTV, YouTube Premium, Max, Hulu and others. My DVD life? It’s so 1996-2010.

And even within the streaming lifestyle… I don’t know when I’ll have (or make) time to stream the big Oscar-winner from last night, Anora. Which I do want to see, but it’s not in the immediate urgent list in my head. I have even less of an idea of when I can sit down with my newly acquired 11 seasons of M*A*S*H* on DVD (256 episodes). But I am curious; the critics have never waivered on the quality of that show, and how it essentially created “the sitcom.” Something like, the last episode of M*A*S*H* was the most viewed TV of all time? Anyway, I’ll let you know when I get there.

Further included in this assisted living bounty are larger DVD mini-collections (see the pic’s right bottom corner and just above) – which each have fifty films. These are titled “Sci-Fi Invasion” and “Family Classics.” I figure these must be bootlegged from some third world entity; or maybe all of the films on here are so antiquated they are, in fact, in the public domain? Interesting. Just the sheer utility of entertaining we are talking about (!) hah. I’ve heard of almost none of these. Yet, I can’t help but think – how much time, money, staff, and energy were spent those many decades ago.. on 100 separate movies? I’ve got to at least wander in out of respect.

Upon my …(ahem) transition, one day, someone will go through my stuff, my media, my (mostly) books. It may be the nearby Catholic thrift, it may be eBay users, it may be a store like McKay’s (giant Nashville used bookstore) where a clerk decides most of these aren’t worth the shelf space they’d take up. Send them outside to the free books bin. But the ubiquity of content. So, so much. Episodes, sequels, prequels, re-makes, outtakes. Something, somehow, will move my non-streamed content forward. I sometimes consider how this will go.

Further… Last night was the 2025 Oscars. I know it didn’t win big, but I genuinely think A Complete Unknown is outstanding and is about countless mid and late 20^th century sociological and popular artistic dynamics. Further, I found The Brutalist to be sumptuous on numerous levels; the storytelling, technical shots/scenes, and filled with emotiona,l penetrating moments. And these were just made in the last two years?!? Wow.

But… how do the humans of 75 or 100 years from now approach these same films? Will they be in some 50 film collection?

Will there be a 123 year old man, like in this episode of The Attentionist, who is a keeper of the flame for a film such as The Substance? Will that man be me?

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