A multiple point of view of the events leading up to the crash of Oceanic 815.

HT: Andrew Sullivan

There’s a cool video on CNN.com showing footage of the missile which blew up that errant satellite, “explodes like Death Star”, the ticker says. And, y’know, it’s true: it does blow up similar to how the Death Star blew up. Well. I mean … without completely ruining our atmosphere like that fucker did to Endor.

David’s Right: Indy toys are cool! What’s not so cool is the almost total lack of support for The Temple of Doom. No Short Round? No Chinese gunman with flaming kabob through his heart? No Temple playset? Heck, I bet we don’t even get a Sacrifice Victim With Removable Heart Action.

Here’s a cute story. When Kevin Smith was recording the commentary track for the Clerks laserdisc release, he and his friends began dissing DVD. They were all very much movie afficianados, and big fans of their own laserdisc collections, and that format. At one point, Kevin Smith says “Fuck DVD!” A couple of years later, when Clerks was to be released on DVD, the commentary track from the laserdisc was used, without any editing. “Fuck DVD!” he proclaims, on the commentary track on the DVD.

I was a late convert to laserdisc, this was back in ’97, when a friend of a friend went out and bought himself a combination laserdisc/DVD player. I was able to buy his old laserdisc player off him fairly cheap, and as that crowd was spending the big bucks on expensive DVD players and the movies to go with them, I was able to collect a virtual library of film titles on the cheap, either from them, or the mall movie stores that were discounting their selection, knowing that the format was all but dead. I eventually got my first DVD player as a Christmas gift in 2000: a nice Panasonic which croaked this past summer.

Lasersdisc took a while to die, though: if memory serves, laserdiscs were still being produced until 2002 (I think Lucasfilm’s announcement that “Attack of the Clones” wouldn’t be released on LD was eventually what put the nail in the coffin). I think the last laserdisc I bought was the release of “Saving Private Ryan”, shortly after I’d moved to Towson (summer of ’99). I still have most of them: they might bring in a few bucks from collectors on eBay, at the moment, they don’t do me much good: my player has a slight malfunction and won’t open, so I can’t remove the laser-rotting disc that’s been stuck in there for six years: Disc 2, Side 1 of “Terminator 2.”

Right now, in the wake of the official killing of Toshiba’s HD-DVD format, I’d imagine there are a lot of people out there taking advantage of this dead format. Movies and players will be sharply discounted to get them off retailers’ shelves. Those who bought will be in one of two camps: selling their HD players and movies, or picking up a lot of cheap HD-format movies while hoping that a Blu-Ray/HD cross-compatible player is released somewhere in the future.

Meanwhile, I am quite some ways away from buying either a Blu-Ray player or a high definition television. But I am glad that the format war is over.

One last note, since we’re talking eBay here: I hate eBay sellers who post feedback after you, the customer, posts yours. It’s effin’ B.S.