Sam Goody Closes, And I Make Out Like A Bandit

As is, I suspect, the case in the rest of the country, the Sam Goody and Suncoast stores in town here are shutting down. Suncoast closed a week or so ago, and now looks to have a jewelry store going in. Sam Goody will be gone in another week, with a last-ditch money grab going on as we speak. Being bored, and making a round of the mall, The Girl and I stopped by Goody's to see if there were any bargains to be had.

I knew, going in, that I wasn't going to find any music I wanted. (They had about a thousand copies of Madonna's Confessions on a Dance Floor at a price that still didn't merit buying it. Not that I would, as that record blows.) I went in looking for movies. And, as I suspected, it was some pretty picked-over shit. Oh sure, if I wanted Superman 4 or War of the Worlds, this was the place to go. A lot of shit, but what did I expect from a store going through a liquidation sale?

But then The Girl stumbled upon the Mother Lode: the Used Movies section, something I didn't even know existed. While all the dumb mallrats were picking through the scattered remains of the "new" movies, all of the hidden treasures were in the "used" section. Look at the stuff I found tucked away:

Spartan: the great Mamet flick from two years ago;
Adaptation: the Spike Jonze/Charlie Kaufman co-op that should have won more Oscars than it did;
About Schmidt: The Girl likes this one;
Exorcist 3: better than the first one, and a lot scarier;
Phantom of the Paradise: Brian DePalma's cult-classic Phantom of the Opera/Faust/Dorian Gray retelling, with Paul Williams (!!) as The Devil;
and, the Find of the Century,
The Changeling: one of the best horror movies of the past 25 years, and one of The Girl's favorites.

And the cost of this monster haul? Six movies = sixteen bucks. A veritable score, and a historic one, as well: In my near 32 years of movie buying, I have never once bought a George C. Scott movie; today, I bought two. (I'm contacting the Guinness people, as I think this may be a record.)

All things considered, I don't think I could have made out any better. If every trip out of the house was this fulfilling, maybe I'd go "outside" more often. But I doubt it.