I don't know abut you, but one of my biggest weaknesses is movies, I love them. I watch them, I collect them and sometimes, I talk about them. As bad as I am, I don't compare to this fellow I knew on the job who carried a movie fact book with him in his pocket. Anytime a movie was discussed he would pull out this very think book (It was kept in a side pocket in his sport jacket) and quote the facts about the movie we were talking about. The funny thing is he never had much else to say and was usually very quiet. I sort of got a reputation for knowing all about movies, but the truth was I have a flawed memory that sometimes gives out under pressure. An example of this was the time I walked into a back room and there were many of the higher up bosses from my job sitting around a table with my direct supervisor who said, "I just bet everyone $10.00 each that you could name the elephant in Gunga Din". After that I wasn't too popular with my boss. The funny part is I remembered the name as soon as I walked out of the room, is was Annie. I had said something stupid like Sue.

When VHS tapes came out, I was in my glory. Here was my chance to collect all the movies I ever wanted. I started buying movies and recording movies off of the television. Soon the buildup of tapes became unbearable. I had my own home but still, I couldn't fill the rooms with video tapes, my wife wouldn't appreciate that. Another problem was that they took up a lot of room. It didn't happen much but sometimes a tape would break and jam up the player. That would always break my heart. Another yjomh that I found out that really hurt was that the tracking in some of the machines was different ,so tapes that I had recorded earlier with a different machine didn't work very well, if at all, in a newer machine. Then dvds came out. Wow, I thought, this was great. Dvds didn't take up as much room because the cases were about 2.5 times thinner than vhs tapes. They didn't wear out because they were read by a beam of laser light. In the beginning the drawback was you couldn't record but that changed quickly.

Now I happily went along buying dvd movies. I didn't really record movies much anymore. This went on for a few years then. guess what? I began to run out of room again. I had dvd movies in book cases, on shelves and stacked on desks. This just wouldn't do, how was I going to remedy this? After trying to figure out how to solve this problem and still keep my collection I heard of an idea that someone had that was so simple I couldn't believe that I hadn't thought of it. Before I tell you what I did, let me first tell you that I keep a database of all my moves in Lotus Approach. Each movie can be searched for by title, actors, record numbers, directors and type of movie, so I just had to figure out how I could keep them lined up by record number. I purchased 3 zippered cases that have sleeves that hold 208 cds or dvds. These cases are called cd wallets. Each page has 4 pockets on each side with a type of black felt paper to protect the active side of the dvd. I numbered each pocket with the record number of the dvd from Approach. I then inserted the dvds by record number into the cases and threw away the dvd cases. I can now store over 600 dvds in three cases. This many dvds would have taken a good deal of space in my den to store if they were still in their original cases. I had finally solved the space problem.

By the way, I kept a few dvd cases so when my kids come over and borrow movies I have something to put the disks into.

I had a good dvd player but it was on the old side, so when I got the chance to buy an apex for only $29.00 at a holiday sale I grabbed it. Apex is a cheap brand but it has some redeeming qualities. It seems to play anything. A few different movies that wouldn't play in my other player ran fine on the Apex. Another thing that it does that the other player didn't is show jpeg photos. If you put a cd or dvd full of jpegs into the dvd player it creates a slide show and you just sit back and watch.It plays back recorded shows or movies without having to do anything to the disk. What I mean by that it if you recorded a movie or show and put the dvd into the player, it creates a menu for you to click on to start viewing. It was quite a buy. The picture quality isn't bad either.

Its funny what you learn collecting movies. I used to think that Hollywood made the most movies, then I found out it was India. Boy did this surprise me. Another thing that surprises me is the amount of remakes that is made of a particular move. A classic example of this is The Alamo. The first Alamo movie was an ancient silent movie. I don't know how many remakes were made but I know of four and I am almost willing to be there are a few more. The problems with many of the remakes is that they are worse than the original. Anyone who has seen the version of The Alamo with John Wayne and then seen the last version knows what I mean. The acting was not as good, the cast not as famous, and the movie looked like it had a comparatively lower budget. The same has to be said of the remake of Rollerball and Alfie to mention a couple. If you can't make it better, why make it at all?

In my old age I don't really discuss movies much anymore, although I thought of putting a movie review section on this site and reviewing some of the movies I saw but for now the idea is on hold unless a lot of people ask me to do it. By the way, I had some hard time getting rid of all the vhs tapes I had. Where I live the garbage men are very particular and didn't want to take them. I finally managed to throw out a few at a time for a long period of time and got rid of them. The major complaint from the garbage men was that the trash bag was too heavy when you put tapes in them. I never exceeded the weight limits and even went way below but you can't fight city hall. All you can do is remember this at Christmas time and I did.

So now when I have some free time on my hands, I kick back, take a dvd out of one of the folders, pop it into the dvd player and enjoy watching my movie on my 60 inch television with my home theatre sound system. It just doesn't get any better than that.