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Sutter Health. From doctors who

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Californians. sutterhealth.org. Now

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that streaming services bring so much to the comfort

0:26

of the couch and the phone, it might not

0:28

seem as critical as it once was to own

0:30

a movie or an album in the sense that

0:32

you could actually hold it in your hand. The

0:35

comic book, the DVD, the old video

0:37

game, we all have physical media we

0:39

treasure. I'm Stephen Thompson. And I'm

0:41

Linda Holmes. And in this encore episode of

0:44

NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're talking about

0:46

some of our most prized possessions. Also

0:52

with us is our co-host, Glenn Weldon. Hey, Glenn.

0:54

Hey, Linda. And also with

0:56

us is our co-host, Aisha Harris. Hello, Aisha.

0:58

Reporting for duty in the flesh in my

1:00

physical form. It's

1:03

always fun when we're all together. We live

1:05

in a time where we see more things

1:07

disappearing from streaming services. And I do think

1:09

that it has caused people to think a

1:11

little bit about what they stream and what

1:13

they keep. We're just going to go around

1:16

and we are each going to talk about

1:18

something that we treasure that we have on

1:20

physical media. Now, we have not shared these

1:22

picks, so you will be seeing perhaps

1:24

our true shock and surprise at

1:26

each other's choices. Aisha, I'm going to start

1:28

with you. Tell me something that you own

1:30

on physical media and you treasure. Well,

1:33

I actually have to say that you all have

1:35

actually heard about this before, but it was a

1:37

long time ago. And it

1:39

is the thing I most treasure. So it

1:41

wouldn't feel true if I pick something else.

1:43

I've gone through a phase of growing up.

1:45

You had the CDs, you had the DVDs,

1:47

VHS, all those things. And then once I

1:49

hit college, you have to downsize with your

1:51

dorm room, dorm living. And I

1:53

got rid of a lot of stuff. And then

1:56

I started collecting things again. Then I went back

1:58

to downsizing again because I was moving into small

2:00

New York apartments. Lately, I've decided

2:02

I've gone back to physical media and I think I

2:04

will be back to physical media from now on, especially

2:06

in light of all of this news. And

2:09

so the thing that I most treasure,

2:11

I've actually had for, I'd say, close

2:13

to 20 years now at this point.

2:15

And it is my two dicks DVD.

2:17

I actually have it here, I'm singing

2:19

in the rain. Nice. It came out

2:21

for the 50th anniversary. So this would

2:24

have been 2002, yes. One

2:27

of the reasons I love it is because,

2:30

first of all, it has so much extra

2:32

material. There's two discs, it claims the movie,

2:34

of course, but also some documentaries. Some of

2:36

the music comes from different musicals that came

2:39

before it in shows. They have actual performances

2:41

of that in other movies. You've got Judy

2:43

Garland and Mickey Rooney singing Good Morning in

2:45

an earlier movie. So I love it because

2:48

you can find all of these things on

2:50

YouTube piecemeal, but to have it all in

2:52

one place is ideal. But the

2:54

other reason I have not let go of it

2:56

yet is because it is signed

2:59

by none other than Debbie Reynolds herself.

3:01

Oh. Yes. All

3:04

right. Sure. When you have a

3:06

favorite movie or a favorite comic book or TV show,

3:08

whatever, your favorite person from that

3:10

work of art cannot sign a digital copy.

3:12

It's not possible. Like, it's not the same.

3:14

I know there are NFTs. I don't believe

3:17

in those things. I met

3:19

Debbie Reynolds. I knew I was

3:21

going to hopefully meet her when I went to

3:23

see her perform like a one-woman show. My

3:26

cousin, his friend, her father, there's

3:29

some degrees of separation, her father worked at

3:31

a symphony locally. And so she invited us.

3:34

I got to see the show. She was

3:36

wonderful, fabulous. She did some jokes about Eddie

3:38

Fisher, her ex-husband who left her for Elizabeth

3:40

Taylor. It was great. And then I met

3:43

her afterwards and I brought my copy of

3:45

Singing in the Rain. Excellent. Because what else

3:47

are you going to do? I admire that.

3:49

It is my most prized possession. I

3:52

will love it until the day that I die

3:55

and it is never leaving my side.

3:57

That is awesome. I am cowed by

3:59

the greatness. of that opening pic. So

4:01

Aisha owns her copy. I had that

4:03

set too, but mine is not signed.

4:05

And I am not sure if I

4:07

still have it anywhere. Glenn, we

4:09

are gonna go to you. Give me your pic. I

4:12

mean, this was tough for me because I am not now

4:14

and have never been a sensualist, a

4:16

contained shock. I mean, these people who

4:18

go on and on about the smell

4:20

and the feel of a book and

4:22

a comic and the roundedness

4:24

of tone from a vinyl record.

4:27

We love you, all of you. We love you who

4:29

feel this way. The rebuttal is coming, don't

4:31

worry. What I am instead, and there's not

4:33

a word for it yet, so I'm gonna

4:35

try to coin one right now, is a

4:38

convenience-a-list. Sure. I am a creature who

4:40

was made for these times. Boy, give it to

4:42

me at the click of a button and I'm

4:44

happy. What do you need? My social security number?

4:46

A cheek scraping? Sure. I don't care. Give

4:48

it to me. Compress those files. I can't hear

4:50

the difference. It doesn't matter. The notion of ordering something

4:53

and waiting to get it in a few

4:55

weeks. What is this, little house

4:57

in the big woods? What am I, ordering a

5:00

packet of seeds to plant in the spring? No,

5:02

it's 2022. We don't have to wait for

5:04

the Wells Fargo wagon anymore. But

5:06

here's my thing. I spent my early teens

5:08

and 20s accumulating comics. I say accumulating because

5:11

I never considered myself a collector, I still

5:13

don't, because I was reading them for

5:15

the stories and for the art and for the characters,

5:18

right? I was living in the moment.

5:20

I didn't bag and board anything. I didn't organize them.

5:22

I didn't fret over their physical condition because I always

5:24

thought of that as a completely separate pursuit. That

5:27

story becomes an object. I'd never

5:29

have gotten that, but there is one exception. One

5:32

time, I have bagged and boarded a comic. And that

5:34

was a comic I bought when I was 14 years

5:37

old. It

5:39

was New Teen Titans number one. This

5:41

was in 1982, but it had debuted

5:43

two years earlier in 1980 with

5:46

New Teen Titans number one. This was before

5:48

there was any way to research something as

5:51

stupid and ephemeral as how a

5:53

specific team of superheroes came together

5:56

for the first time. Nowadays,

5:58

all that stuff. Even the stupidest stuff, even the

6:01

most ridiculous stuff, is

6:03

Wikid. This was pre-Wiki, so

6:05

the only way for me to know how Robin

6:07

Wonder Girl Kid Flash Star Fire Raven, Cyborg, and

6:10

Beast Boy came together for the first time was

6:12

for me to read New Teen

6:14

Titans No. 1. It was a very

6:16

successful series, so successful that I never

6:19

found any of it in back issue bins and

6:21

I tried, but every time I walked into Fat

6:23

Jack's comic crypt on Sansom Street in Philadelphia, there

6:25

it was, hanging on the wall for

6:28

$25. That

6:31

was ridiculous. That was insulting. That comic was

6:33

less than two years old. It

6:35

originally sold for 50 cents. How

6:39

dare they? Capitalism will

6:41

get you, right? Because here was this meager supply

6:43

and I was just one

6:45

big ball of demand, so I, a 14-year-old

6:48

boy who got a buck and a half a week for

6:51

weeding the garden and mowing the lawn, I

6:53

spent $25 on

6:56

a comic book. If you're doing the

6:58

math, that's 50 times its cover value.

7:00

It's like a half a year of your

7:03

income. I know. Totally.

7:05

And when I finally read it, it was like, fine. That

7:08

was fine, I guess, but I still

7:10

have it. And it's not because I care about what it's

7:12

worth today, because it's not worth anything today, because that story

7:14

has been reprinted dozens of times. You can download it with

7:16

the click of a button, but

7:18

I'm holding on to that thing for the rest of my

7:20

damn life, because, to be honest, I do like knowing I

7:23

have it, because I do like knowing when I pull it

7:25

out and read it. I am reading it in

7:27

exactly the same way I read it back then.

7:30

There is a certain frisson to

7:32

seeing things like the ads, right?

7:35

Because you don't get those in reprints. But

7:37

mainly I'm holding on to it as a cautionary tale, because it

7:39

was 50 times the cover price

7:41

and I'm an idiot. Aw. I

7:45

remember spending $25 on a Beanie Baby once. Okay,

7:48

and did you still have it? I'm sure it's

7:50

somewhere in my mom's basement. And

7:52

that has only skyrocketed in value. Yep,

7:58

yep, yep. All right. Well, thank you very

8:00

much, Glenn Weldon. Next time I see you, I

8:03

will have you show me your Teen Titans number

8:05

one. I didn't know Robin was in Teen Titans.

8:07

I don't know anything about Teen Titans. Yeah,

8:09

bring gloves. That

8:12

is slabbed in loose sight to within an inch of

8:14

its life. I will bring gloves and I

8:16

will read it in a climate-controlled environment. There

8:18

we go. All right, Steven C. Thompson,

8:21

what is your pick? Well,

8:23

I feel vaguely persecuted by

8:25

Glenn Weldon's diatribe against collectors.

8:28

I'm a collector because I

8:30

come by it honestly. I

8:33

was raised by two of the world's foremost

8:35

comic book collectors. Damn right. I have been

8:37

around bagged and boarded comic books since I

8:39

was an infant. I was not allowed to

8:42

touch them. I'm probably still not allowed to

8:44

touch them. Acquiring a collection

8:46

comes really naturally to me. And

8:48

I have to say, if you

8:50

were to parse the why beyond

8:52

simple biology, it's to have it. I

8:55

want to have it. I don't want

8:57

gatekeepers to decide to take it away

8:59

from me because I thought of my

9:01

mother who had—I mean, she's gotten rid

9:03

of most of them by now, but

9:05

she had thousands and thousands and thousands

9:08

of videotapes going back to the 1970s

9:10

of shows she had taped off of

9:12

the air, not because they were collectible,

9:14

but because she wanted to have them.

9:16

I want everything in circulation. And

9:19

so having collections, I have a large collection

9:21

of CDs. I have a large collection of

9:23

vinyl records and DVDs. So

9:26

what I selected as my most

9:28

treasured piece of physical media is

9:31

the several Rubbermaid containers that I

9:33

own containing my collection of Atari

9:36

2600 cartridges. Now

9:39

you can get reproductions of

9:41

these things. You can get emulators.

9:43

They don't compare. Glenn is shaking

9:46

his head over the Zoom right

9:48

now. But he's not tisking. I

9:50

can feel you tisking, Glenn. Part

9:53

of the reason that I've assembled

9:55

this collection is because I have

9:57

a childhood association with

9:59

love. loving those games and loving the

10:01

experience of having a big pile of

10:03

cartridges and chunking them into the Atari

10:05

2600 and plucking them out of the

10:07

Atari 2600. I

10:10

like that experience of gameplay.

10:13

And if you put that in an emulator, it

10:15

isn't the same. They're never going to

10:17

be reproduced. But like when I was a kid,

10:19

I was like, oh my God, there are these

10:21

forbidden games. There's a Texas Chainsaw Massacre game for

10:23

the Atari 2600. Parents

10:26

were legitimately upset. That

10:28

is what people were upset about. And I love that. So

10:31

to me, of all the physical

10:33

media I own, the only one I

10:35

still to this day have recurring dreams

10:37

about is Atari 2600 cartridges. I

10:40

have a dream as a recurring dream where I go

10:43

to some thrift store and I find a box of

10:45

old Atari 2600 cartridges. And

10:47

how I know it's a dream is because I've had

10:49

that dream so many times and I'm like, I'm too

10:51

happy. It's that dream again. Wow.

10:55

I hear you. Well, the thing that's amazing about the

10:57

stuff that I own is that it is such a

10:59

mix of things I have

11:01

very intentionally kept and

11:03

things that I have sort of accidentally kept

11:05

where I'll be like, all of a sudden

11:07

I'll find the ABC pilots from 2006, 2007,

11:09

because I just never

11:14

got rid of it. For a

11:16

long time, I still had my sci-fi

11:18

screener of Piranha Kanda, which

11:21

I treasured because it came with

11:23

the special effects not finished. The

11:26

thing that's amazing is, you know, I used to

11:28

do these trips to the mall where I would just

11:30

sort of look for things that I was interested

11:32

in. And I realized that

11:34

I still have like the CD soundtracks

11:36

of a bunch of like, I have

11:39

the soundtrack of my best friend's wedding.

11:41

I have the soundtrack of It Could

11:43

Happen to You with Bridget Fonda and

11:45

Nicholas Cage, a movie that I don't

11:47

remember liking that much, although

11:49

I know I owned it on VHS because

11:51

that's the other thing I did around the

11:53

same time. I

11:56

would go to the mall and I

11:58

would pick up VHS copies. of

12:00

movies that I liked, even if I didn't

12:02

like them that much. And it would kind

12:04

of be like, well, of all the things

12:06

they have, this is the thing I like

12:08

the most. So I would wind up with,

12:10

like, IQ with Meg Ryan and Walter Mathau

12:12

as Albert Einstein. I

12:15

owned the VHS of Bounce

12:18

with Ben Affleck and Gwyneth

12:21

Paltrow. A movie about

12:23

which I remember nothing, and a movie that,

12:25

as far as I can tell, no one

12:27

likes. That's the movie that it was just

12:29

always, if you went to Circuit City or

12:31

any of those stores, like, and were just

12:33

perusing, it'd always be there. That's probably why.

12:36

All of which is to say, my

12:38

most treasured thing that is

12:40

very foundational to my being,

12:43

and it is my DVD collection of moonlighting,

12:46

which aired in the 1980s when I was a teenager

12:48

and absolutely made me a romantic

12:51

comedy person, a snappy dialogue person,

12:53

a detective show person. And

12:56

I bought it at some point on DVD. But

12:58

do you actually pull it down and watch them

13:01

often? You know where it is right now? It's

13:03

at the office. Where

13:06

I haven't gone to go through the DVDs

13:08

in, like, a couple years. So

13:10

I'm going to be reunited with it

13:12

at some point. It is more a

13:14

matter of having it than it is

13:16

a matter of actually watching it.

13:19

Because the fact that something is your favorite

13:21

thing might actually mean you don't want to

13:23

watch it too much. Because

13:25

not everything holds up,

13:27

especially to repeat viewings. Yeah, you know?

13:30

Yeah, that's absolutely true. The only DVDs

13:32

that I watch with regularity are my

13:34

I Love Lucy DVDs. And I'm actually

13:36

making my way through the whole

13:39

series again for the hundredth millionth

13:41

time right now. Yeah. In terms

13:43

of, like, collector versus aesthete versus

13:45

whatever, one thing I definitely am,

13:47

for damn sure, is a completist.

13:50

If I like something, I want all of it, even

13:52

if I don't watch it all. There is one

13:55

thing that has really been lost as we have

13:57

moved from so much

13:59

DVD watching. to more streaming

14:01

watching for home viewing. And

14:03

that is, if you turned on a

14:06

show, a DVD to watch the

14:08

episodes on that DVD, and

14:10

you fell asleep, you would wake

14:12

up and it would be going, dun, dun, dun,

14:14

da da da dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, da

14:17

da da... -...da

14:19

da, da da, da da, da da, da da... -...da da, da, da, da, da...

14:21

Those DVD menus are a terrible scarring

14:23

loss. Oh, yeah. Really,

14:25

like 30 Rock, where it was like a

14:28

ten-second loop. And you'd

14:30

wake up and be like, oh, it's still on, and

14:32

then you got to turn it off. Because those DVD

14:34

menus, man. Da da da da da da da, bow!

14:36

-...ha ha ha ha ha... -...ha ha

14:39

ha ha ha... All

14:41

right, well, we want to know what you've

14:43

collected and you don't want to give up.

14:45

Find us at facebook.com/pchh. That brings

14:47

us to the end of our show. Ayesha Harris, Stephen

14:49

Thompson, Glenn Weldon, thank you so much for being here.

14:51

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This

14:54

episode was produced by Candice Lim and Ramel

14:56

Wood and edited by Mike Kassif and Jessica

14:58

Reidy. And Hello, Come In provides

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our theme music. Thank you for

15:02

listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm

15:04

Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all tomorrow. This

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