the circle of media.....

I saw The Little Mermaid after it had been released to video in 1990. A few of my friends rented it for one of our Friday night escapades and I was skeptical. Mostly we just sat around eating Cheetos paws or TMNT Crunch-a-bungas with lipton coconut iced teas in bottles (all of this is now extinct) watching The Naked Gun, every single time, so I was annoyed that the routine had to be messed with, especially for an animated Disney film. I didn't really allow Disney in my life until FINDING NEMO, so I was the sulky, complaining one when we got together to watch this. Of course, I ended up loving it, watching it over and over, and buying the soundtrack (ON TAPE), learning the words to every song and playing them on the piano nonstop. I would listen to the soundtrack when I got ready for school in the morning. WHAT A DORK.
This all came back to me last night as we received it as a netflix selection. My little guy (who is almost 3) sat next to me eating popcorn and was super into the eels (flotsom and jetsom?) and the butchering French chef. I had to stop and consider the fact that Christ, almost 20 years ago, I was watching this with my friends, and now I have kids who are seeing the things that I saw for the first time. My life is going very fast. It's funny how films and songs take on a new meaning when you start explaining what you were doing the first time you experienced them and remembering the little random things in your youth..!
On another related note, I had a different, more unpleasant Little Mermaid experience in the spring of 1998 when Disney released some commemorative VHS version of the film. I was working at the Kenwood Blockbuster Video where they allowed people to preorder the movie. Usually the new release shipments came in on Monday's delivery, but this shipment was huge, and came in the previous weekend. We normally had to prep the boxes, call the people who ordered them, etc., etc., so everything would be ready when they were officially released on Tuesday. One woman called to ask if the films were there. Some dude who was a little dim told her, "Oh yeah, we have them here, they're back in boxes, we just haven't taken them out and prepped them yet." and said for her to come on down. It happened to be POURING rain that day, and this blond haired, sopped woman comes bouncing in with her huge umbrella, ready to pick up her copy earlier than anyone else. The manager, unaware that the other guy had told anyone this had to sit there and try to explain why she couldn't have it and how the dude misinformed her blah, blah, blah. The woman sat there and just yelled her head off, bitching about how she walked up there in the rain, told her daughter she would have it tonight, would have to go home and explain this all to a six-year-old, how she was letting her down, it went on and on. The manager was finally just standing there at a complete loss as to what to say or do next so she just said, "ma'am, I'm really sorry," And the woman just snarled and said, "YOU SHOULD BE." and spun around on her heel and stalked out into the rain again.
The next day she came back in and I gave her $10 in goodwill rental credits and she was my best friend for life.