I might repeat ramblings from an earlier post, but I still need to get these feelings from my chest.
I was in Walmart the other day. No, I don’t shop there regularly, and in fact, I try to avoid shopping there whenever I can. However, my one weakness has been Garth Brooks and his ridiculous exclusive contract with Walmart in selling his music. Garth Brooks is one of the rare artists that actually owns his master tapes, so after his contract with longtime label Capitol Records expired, Garth signed with Walmart.
I didn’t think this would affect me too much considering he did accounce a long retirement from recording new music, but he released a CD box set that included an album of unreleased material, which I bought. Okay, that’s the last of it. Then he released a DVD box set featuring concert footage, music videos, and the never-before-released “Live in Central Park” concert, which I bought as well.
At Walmart, I went to go buy DVD copies of the 2-disc editions of 300, Blood Diamond, and The Departed for $9 each. That’s the only reason I shopped at Walmart because Walmart tends to have DVD sales below the wholesale price, so the company actually loses money before they treat DVDs as loss leaders to entice shoppers to buy more things while they’re already in the store. Best Buy and Circuit CIty do it as well. I never buy anything else, so I don’t fall into their trap.
But while I was looking for the DVDs, I noticed the Garth Brooks album so I decided to look at the 2 CD, 1 DVD set, and noticed that every music he’s ever made are on the DVD. Well, what was the point of that DVD box set I was made to buy last year? GRRR.
It would be nice to have two copies of the music video DVD collection, but man that sucks. I must note that I don’t have to shop at Walmart to buy the album. I’m looking at Amazon.com, which sells it for $11.99 as well. Hmmm.
I’m still on the fence about this.
I do want to hear those four new tracks… Sometimes I hate Garth Brooks.
I’ve posted this before, but I just got a beta account to NBC‘s Hulu venture. I must say the video is pretty crisp, so I might actually start using it when I miss recent shows. In my opinion, this type of service works best with miniseries like Tin Man or only shows that don’t sell enough DVDs to make releasing them worth while. I think a lot of people would like to have access to older shows, and hey don’t necessarily need to be remastered or at least not in any sort of Criterion Collection-type manner.
Access is key, especially with shows and other content that wouldn’t see the light of day otherwise.
Below is an embedded video of that really funny SNL short “Lazy Sunday.”
Here’s a cool article about the average day of Disney CEO Bob Iger.
Quote from Sports Night:
Isaac: “Someone holds the copyright to ‘Happy Birthday’?”
Dan: “The representatives of Patty and Mildred Hill.”
Isaac: “It took two people to write that song?”