Page 6 of Doing it my way

Do you know where I live?"

     "Nope."

     "It's only about four blocks from here." Rita scribbled her address on to the pad she was doodling on, ripped off the sheet of paper and handed it to her friend. "Meet me at my house at around seven. I've got something to show you that will blow you away."

     "Can you please give me a hint?"

     "Like Trish and Betty's project, it is also entertainment related. That's all I will say." Rita started to walk towards the door, with Phoebe following.

     "Do I need to bring anything?"

     "I guess, just your brain. See you this evening."

     Rita walked out the front door and headed towards home. On the way, she thought about the fact that she had really only known Phoebe for a little over a year, and that although they were constant companions in school, today would be the first day that the two of them would visit each other's houses and only the second time they would meet each other's mothers. Thankfully, Rita's mom had ideas about male-female relationships that weren't quite as extreme as Mrs. Shan's.

  6:12 pm, Ian’s Residence

     The conversation around the dinner table was as usual. Mr. Clancy, Ian’s father was a man who wasn't shy about displaying his pride in his daughters and his disappointment in his son. Mrs. Clancy was somewhat more restrained in her acknowledgement that one of their children was clearly not excelling in school the way the other two were. On this evening, Ian decided to try an experiment.

     "Dad, I have something to ask."

     Mr. Ian looked up from his tuna salad. "Yes?"

     "Vitellius, the emperor of Rome was assassinated on in the year 69 AD. Can you tell me the name of the emperor that replaced him?"

     His father paused for a moment, not thinking about the answer, but about what on earth would prompt his son to ask such a question. "No I cannot."

     Ian turned to his mother, "Can you?" She shook her head no. He then turned to his older sister.   She rolled her eyes and sighed. "No I cannot, Ian."

     He then turned his eyes to his younger sister, Mabel. Before he could say anything, she cut him off.

     "Don't even bother."

     "I didn't think so," said Ian, with a self satisfied smirk on his face.

     This obviously was annoying his father. "Do you know who it was?" he asked.

     "Yes," responded Ian. "The man's name was Titus Flavius."

     "Well thank you for enlightening us all." Mr. Ian wiped his face with a napkin. "Now would you mind explaining to us why you felt this information was significant enough that we should all know about it?"

     "Yeah. Before this, I didn't know the answer to that either...by next week, I will have forgotten it. Just like she did." Ian nodded towards his sister. "She had the same history teacher that I now have, learned that same useless tidbit of information that I just spewed, and then promptly forgot it a week later." He then nodded towards Mabel. "In a couple of years, she'll also be in Mrs. Jaya's history class, learning useless crap like this, and then forgetting it a week later." The tone of his voice, now became even more sarcastic. "I don't know why, but it just suddenly occurred to me that while everybody in this room has probably forgotten 95% of everything they've ever learned in school, I seem to be the only person here who is aware of that fact."

     "Listen here, Ian," his father was now angry. "The difference between you and your sisters is that they are at least able to retain that knowledge long enough until the examination day."

     "I agree, but doesn't that prove that learning it in the first place is a waste of time?"

     Mr. Clancy got up from the table and pointed an accusatory finger at his son. "Your problem is, you think you're so damn special."

     "Calm down dear," Pleaded his wife, but to no avail.

     Mr. Ian continued his tirade. " What do you think you'd be doing all day if you weren't in school?"

     "Um, riding my bike, maybe learning stuff on the web..." Ian couldn't believe the surrealism of the situation. It was if he were once again getting yelled at by coach Bert.

     "What? Learning stuff on the web!?" His father was now very furious. "Every time I pass by your room, it looks to me like you're always playing video games on the web. What the..."

     Ian's mind drifted off, just like it did every day in school. If it's pointless to learn something you're just going to forget in a week, then it's even more pointless to listen to somebody screaming about what you already know.

  7:09 pm, Rita's House

     Phoebe arrived just a bit late. Rita introduced her around, and once all the formalities were out of the way, took her into a den in the back of the house, that her father liked to call his video library.

     "Feast your eyes on this" Rita declared, while pointing to all the VHSs and DVDs that were on shelves that stretched from wall to wall and ceiling to floor.

     "Whoa, this room really looks like a video rental centre."

     "My dad is a big classic film fan. Personally, I've always had a little trouble getting into them, myself. They’re too draggy…"

  Phoebe looked at her inquisitively, "Classic?"

     "Any serious film made prior to 1967." She turned to her Phoebe. "and that, my friend, is exactly what I was thinking we would do this report on."

  Phoebe was confused. "You just said you have trouble getting into this stuff. "

     Rita smiled broadly. "Just trust me."

     "Alright, so what exactly are we going to do?"

     "Debating the merits watching classical movies."

     "I’m still in the dark."

     "Don’t worry, after you've seen a few of these things, it'll become self explanatory. Grab a handful of DVDs. For some reason, my dad has them sorted by actors. You got your Hayworths over here, your Gables over here, your Cagneys over here..." Rita picked out a DVD of The Roaring 20s. "This, I’m not sure."

     Phoebe started picking DVDs randomly from various different shelves, until she had all she could carry. Rita did the same, and the two teens headed to Rita's room, to view them on her computer screen.

  9:02 pm, Trish's Bedroom

     "Alright, where do we begin?" Trish was sitting in front of her computer, fiddling with an on-line web game.

     Betty was lying idle on Trish's bed, her legs dangling over the side, staring at the ceiling, obviously not excited about the assignment. "Well, I suppose you could start by googling the words ‘Home Video’ into the search engine, and see what comes up."

     Trish did so and read aloud. "Prior to the late 1970s, most feature films were only viewable in re-releases and television broadcasts. The home video market changed all that. 20th Century Fox delved into their archives and make theatrical films available for home use...."

     Betty cut her off. "You know on that site, articles of this nature usually have a timeline you can click on that'll summarize the whole mess. Try going to that page."

  Once again, Trish complied, "Ah, here it is: 1975, Beta. 1976, VHS. 1978, Laserdisc. MCA and Warner Brothers enter the market. 1979, Paramount and Columbia enter the market. 1980, Disney..bla, bla, bla."

     "Alright, enough already." Betty sat up. "So we now know what time frame we're talking about. Around the late 70s. This is not telling us much about the industry's cultural effects on humanity. Try picking out a random search engine, type in early home video. and see what happens."

     Trish followed Betty's instructions, and much to her horror, a huge batch of pornographic pop-ups appeared simultaneously. "Eeeuuuu! Look at all this rubbish!"

     Betty was now looking over Trish's shoulders, and laughing. "Oh man, we should've seen that coming. I think you might have accidentally stumbled on to a better idea. Perhaps we should just give a presentation on the merits of adult entertainment." Betty laughed continuously as she spoke. "Would you like to take the pro or t
he con position?"    "Well, Mrs. Pinny would certainly give us an A for originality, but...." Suddenly Trish stopped what she was doing and nearly jumped out of her seat. "Oh...my...God...!" She looked in disbelief at what just appeared on the monitor.

     "What is it?"

     "Take a look at this! Tell me if you're seeing the same thing I'm seeing."

  Betty glanced at the screen, and her jaw dropped. "It can't be...that's just way too far a coincidence."

     "What should we do now?"

  The two girls just stared at the unbelievable site before them for a few moments, then Betty spoke. "We really should give Rita a call and tell her about this."

     "That, I can agree with," said Trish as Betty picked up the telephone, and dialed Rita's cell.

  9:02 PM, Rita's Bedroom

     "I’m so bored!" After a couple of hours or so of viewing samplings of the DVDs, Phoebe's eyes were beginning to glaze over. "So far, all I've learned from this stuff is that in the 30s, 40s and 50s, nobody can really act..."

     "...And that black people were only chauffeurs and maids. Racist!" Rita continued what her friend had started. "And the handicapped didn't exist at all...And neither did teenagers. You see, this is what makes this such an easy target...Easy for you anyway. I need to cook up some sort of argument defending this nonsense."

     As the movie goes on, Rita did a lot of explaining.

     "How do you know all this?" asked Phoebe.

     "I watch this stuff with my dad all the time. He did the explaining."

     Phoebe was perplexed. "Let me ask you something. If we
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