11 June, 2009

"Ashley, it's just that I love you so much, it scares me!"

So here's the thing.

I love Amazon. I generally try not to think how many thousands of dollars I have spent there over the past decade because the thought of all that money actually makes me somewhat uncomfortable. Why, just this week, I've received a package from them containing season 2, season 3, and season 4 of Saturday Night Live, as well as a non-fiction book, The Corner, by David Simon and Ed Burns (who created the "I didn't realise television could be this good" TV series The Wire), as well as the HBO miniseries adaptation of that book. Meanwhile, from Amazon UK, a seperate package arrived containing a Marx Brothers DVD box set and the Blu-Ray of Persepolis.

And to me, that's the type of shop Amazon is. I remember first shopping at Amazon back when it just sold books, CDs, and VHS tapes. And other than the fact that we're now two generations later for prerecorded movies (purchasing DVDs and Blu-Ray discs these days instead of VHS tapes) there's no change in my purchasing patterns. Amazon is a place to buy books, music, and movies, and in my mind that's all.

But the interesting thing about Amazon is that that's not all there is. In fact, it seems they're not content until you can buy everything from there. Mattresses, groceries, lingerie, televisions, drum kits, refrigerators, whatever you want, apparently Amazon will sell it.

So the other day, out of curiosity I found myself exploring the site, trying to find out exactly how wide the site's range is. And best as I can work out, they don't sell houses or cars, and I think that's all. Pretty much anything else I could think of was available. And then I stumbled across one product that truly surprised me, a product that I had never really even thought about even needing to be purchased, and certainly not from Amazon. But there it was, listed almost for the sole purpose of stating "Yes, you really can buy anything from Amazon".

I'm just disappointed they won't ship it to New Zealand.

2 comments:

Slightly Intrepid said...

At the risk of seeming like a serial commenter / stalker, can I say that I was chuffed to see the post title, and the final link sealed the deal for me. That particular boxset is here in Auckland and I'm sorely tempted to rewatch it all over again... And I still wonder about the deluxe version that had the table read sessions with the cast reading different roles to those they ended up with.

Matthew said...

Very happy to have a serial-commenter.

I had to go back to rewatch the opening scene just to check I had the exact quote, and damn that is a great scene. I love the way they manage to state that this is not like every other teen drama, establish all the core characters and which group they belong to, demonstrate the point of connection, while managing to be genuinely funny ("So? This is church, forgive me", or "I believe in God, man. I’ve seen him. I’ve felt his power! He plays drums for Led Zeppelin and his name is John Bonham baby!"), all in a very natural manner so that it feels a lot easier than it really is. Brilliantly executed.

I don't know if you've caught up on the fact that they've since made the yearbook edition generally available. Look it up on Amazon - it's expensive ($125 US) but very tempting.