Market Night for June 3, 2013

You Can't Print That!

I regard Redbox as little more than an automat that dispenses nothing by shitty sandwiches.  I will hand it to its creators, though:  they understand the dictum "location, location, location."  You can't walk past a Redbox without stubbing your toe.  Until we can have movies parachuted down to yus, we all risk the loss of our feet.  Such is its ubiquity, I'm certain there's one at the entrance to the White House.  Plus, it's red, redder than a snapper.  If you can't find a Redbox in ten minutes, you're too old and you're from out of town.

Yes my dear friends, Redbox is the cigarette machine of the Information Age.  I'd argue that the contents of the cigarette machines of yore are more wholesome, but I don't like picking fights on social network sites.  You know that!  In brief, the Redbox is a great concept executed very poorly for a guy like me.  And no, that guy isn't waiting for  "Emmanuelle in Space," Volumes 1-7 to return.  Sheesh, what an audience!

Like I said, notwithstanding your entertainment proclivities and demands, you can't avoid Redbox.  Every time you go to Walmart, you bump your head on it.  I'm surprised it's not equipped with a sensor that trips a chip that contains phrases such as, "Ooh, I'll bet that smarts!" or a thousand other variants, the same chip used in one of those mouthy new Hallmark cards that go over well in Peoria.  But a couple of weeks ago, after rubbing my noggin and kicking the machine and stubbing my toe, I struck paydirt.

My wife and I love Jim Gaffigan, the comedian who rose to fame dissecting Hot Pockets and their manifold iterations of vile.  The love is such that I don't feel like discussing it at length here; indeed, Mr. Gaffigan deserves a dedicated post.  My wife and I were, at once, stunned and delighted when we spotted his new release, Mr. Universe, in the display, sandwiched between all manner of crap.  A truffle, if you like.  We needed the laughs something bad that night, so we began to search for it.  Naturally, Mr. Universe was not available; in fact, after exhausting every possible search scenario (and we're both librarians, mind you), we discovered that it wasn't even in the damn box.  Such was my paranoia that I began to think that this particular box was bent on destroying me, in the manner that Hot Pockets destroy their consumers from the inside out.  And after I bumped my head this time, Redbox laughed and dispensed an actual shit sandwich.  

Usually, the first thing I do upon entering the store is get a drink of water.  The Redbox in question is located near the bathrooms and water fountains at the grocery store where we shop most often.  I need not state that the machine's placement betrays evil on the part of everyone associated with it.  

The tortures inflicted upon and the indignities visited upon me as I used Redbox are legion; I've enumerated merely a few above.  In time, I've come to learn that this particular machine does not possess an intuition of its own.  No machine does.  Machines can't do anything without human input, and that includes what looks to be accidentally dispensing a shit sandwich - machines don't know I hate shit sandwiches because they can't know I hate shit sandwiches!  So, there is a simple, sane explanation for the machine's "behavior."

Billy Barty is inside the HEB Redbox waiting for me.  

It makes perfect sense:  

1.  Wonderful, that it is, I hate Redbox.
2.  The creators of Redbox know that I hate Redbox (oh please, I know you're not that thick - bugs!)
3.  Redbox hired a dwarf whose sole job is to wait until I come into the store.   
4.  That dwarf is Billy Barty.
5.  Therefore, Billy Barty is still alive, and he's still active in the entertainment industry.  

My dear readers, you don't need a Venn diagram to understand all this.  To create one would be an insult to you.  You've all known the entire time:  Billy Barty is still alive and, at the age of 89, very much active in the entertainment industry.

This past evening, my wife and I decided to go shopping so that we'd have a leg up on tomorrow's dinner.  The preparations necessary for this dinner will be quite involved, so much so that it would be sage of me to start well before my wife returns from work.  Against my better judgement, I decided to check on the Gaffigan DVD.  Low and behold, I found it within two searches, and it was available!  I decided I'd play it cool.  My plan was simple:

1.  I wanted to surprise my wife, so I'd whisper the news of my discovery to her during check out.  We'd have to check out at the register farthest from the entrance, an inconvenience (all told, a minor one) that was necessary in order to maintain the facade.  
2.  I'd keep a poker face while in proximity to Redbox.  After all, Billy Barty does not take breaks, not even to sleep.  I kinda feel bad that he has to subsist on shit sandwiches, but the little creep knew the score when he took the gig, so fuck him.   

All was going according to plan after we'd paid, and I was about to pull my sneak attack.  There was another customer in front of me making his selection, so I stood behind him with my cart.  I was afraid I'd hit a snag , but I regained my wits:  I was waiting by the gumball machines next to the Redbox.  Billy Barty would think I'm buying gum.  Boy was I going to get Billy Barty.  I was going to get Billy Barty good.  

Curse that shit-eating pygmy because I got fucked out of our DVD again.  I didn't count on the customer standing at the Redbox for twenty minutes.  Billy Barty must have bribed him, that's the only explanation.  Billy Barty saw the guy and said to him, "Hey kid (everyone's "kid" to that wrinkled old prick.  It's common Hollywood lore that Billy Barty once propositioned Abe Vigoda by saying, "Look kid, me and my old lady are on the outs, and no one else wants anything to do with me, see?  Here's $100.  I'm light.  You can lift me up to your mouth.  See there, kid?  Yeah, yeah, that's it.  That's the stuff..."), you wanna make a hundred bucks?  Looks like you could use a hundred bucks."  Billy Barty flashed the goods through the slot where you collect your movie.  Billy Barty told the guy to stand there and play dumb for twenty minutes.  I figured this out after I'd filled all the available nooks and crannies of our cart with gumballs.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not only a reasonable man.  I am also a fair man.  It is in the interest of fairness that I tell you all that Billy Barty picked a real crackerjack.  The guy played dumb so well that he made Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man look like two dolphins playing chess telepathically.  

The simpleton, and the rest of the story is not a fabrication, I assure you, stood at the Redbox like he was poised to earn another Donkey Kong, watching a peep show, or taking the sort of leak he's fantasized about for years.  He can't be much older than I am, but he looked like his mom dressed him and, furthermore, he looked proud of that.  His mom, obviously a woman put upon, but with a deliciously cruel sense of humor, somehow squeezed him into a faded Coca-Cola t-shirt and matching red shorts with white stripes running down the side, the sort of stripes that ordinarily indicate participation .  Dumpy of comportment, his mouth hung agape the whole time.  By the looks of things, he saw the cover for a movie about hamburgers and thought he could eat.  My cogitations were becoming cruel and confused indeed.

Well before long, I had company in line.  After a couple of minutes, I looked at the woman behind me and shrugged my shoulders, fishing for a response.  She stared back blankly, as though she enjoyed standing in Redbox lines.  I bumped the gumball machine in hopes of getting Dumpy's attention.  It was no use.  He continued to run his hands over the screen as though it was the first time he'd set his hands on a human butt, and the woman behind me stands in lines as sport.  I figured my wife and I would be there again tomorrow anyway; besides, I was sure neither of these champions would rent the Gaffigan DVD.   

It wasn't long after I'd bowed to my fate that Dumpy finished his business at the Redbox.  He was on his way out the door when I said to my wife in what I thought was a furtive manner but hoped not, "Man, I hope that guy got a good one!"  I got what I wanted:  his face, which resembled the face of any other boob's as rendered by a funhouse mirror, betrayed meanness and ignorance.  He quickly faced forward again, presumably for fear that he might tump over and lose his grubby grip on McNugget's Murder Mystery 3:  Dipped in Shit and Left for Dead.  

My wife and I loaded up the car and started home.  Manfred Mann's "Blinded by the Light," aka the "Manned Up Like a Douche Song," started playing.  No, this affair wasn't quite over yet, and it wouldn't be for another couple of truly absurd minutes.  The moment I heard the song, I must have rolled my eyes.  Then I started laughing, just like any of you would do when it all makes sense.  Still laughing, I said to my lovely wife, "Geez, standing in line behind that guy is just like this song, except this song isn't long enough."  Oh what a wonderful world.