Furiosity

I may have mentioned before in this blog that I live in a part of the San Fernando Valley that is seriously lacking in locations to purchase CDs or DVDs. I have to drive a minimum of 20 minutes in order to find a place that sells new CD's and DVD's - and I live in the second largest city in America!

There are actually 2 exceptions to this problem right now - the first being that a new Best Buy is opening next week a mere hop, skip, and a jump away. So that's exciting.

The second expception is the Target that's about two miles up the street from my house. And yes Target, I'm aiming this blog's title squarely at your little red bullseye.

The movie "Taxi Driver" was re-released on DVD for the umpteenth million time yesterday, and due to illness I couldn't really drag myself out of the house to grab it the SECOND IT WAS RELEASED. Sue me.

But today is another matter. Today, after an afternoon meeting, I decided to swing by and pick it up. Because even though it's been offered on DVD before, I've never bought it. And it really is one of my favorite movies of all time.

So I swing by today around 2 in the afternoon, and head for the DVD section at Target and what do I find? No "Taxi Driver". Sure, there's a sign saying it's on sale, but they don't actually have any copies.

Now, I contrast this with the 9,812,474,923 copies of "Muppet Show Season 2" and "Pathfinder" and "Fracture" and "Vacancy" that are literally spilling into the store aisles. So I'm forced to accept one of two options -

One being that Target didn't order very many copies of "Taxi Driver".

Two, they ordered the same number of copies as all the other movies I mentioned, yet within the first 36 hours of release, there rush of consumers to the Target near my house - one that must've rivaled the insanity of the early days of the Playstation 3 buying frenzy - all to buy a movie that's been released on DVD like 3 times already. All the other people that love this movie who haven't bought the other versions on DVD because, like me, they knew a better version was in the wings. And they also had no other recourse but to purchase it at the store near my house. Target expects me to believe all that.

I mean, was "Pathfinder" even released in theaters? Look, I never saw it and maybe it's a great film - not trying to slight "Pathfinder" here. All I'm saying is does any retail outlet in America really need ten billion copies of a DVD like that and, like, a handful of "Taxi Drivers" on the shelves? Does no one in the Target organization think to themselves - "Taxi Driver is DeNiro's finest. It's Scorcese's finest. It's a classic American movie. Pathfinder has Karl Urban. Maybe we should even out the numbers on the orders just a bit - you know, just to hedge our bets a little."

It's like Target is begging me to go shop somewhere else.