A Day In The Life of An Obsessive / Compulsive… October 26, 2006
Posted by John Hodson in : General, DVD News & Info , 5 commentsThis is madness.
Work is piled high on my desk, I have a million and one tasks facing me, each one a challenge for any highly skilled individual (y’know; breathe in - breathe out - breathe in - breathe…), places to go, people to see. And what’s been preoccupying my day?
My Humphrey Bogart Signature Collection 2 arrived this morning. And there is no slipcase wrapped around The Maltese Falcon three-disc SE. That’s it. Nothing earth shaking, nothing exciting, nothing to get het up about. Nothing.
Not even anything that affects the content of this fantastic box set. Except there is no slipcase wrapped around The Maltese Falcon.
Now look, I’m a fairly rational guy (well, fairly), I know what matters in this crazy world and what doesn’t amount to a hill o’beans. But - God help me - there is no slipcase.
I stare at the box, hoping that one will materialise out of the ether. I slap myself around the chops (I do, I actually slap myself. I’ll take it and like it…), telling the inner me to pull himself together. But look - I just want this to be perfect. This most entertaining, thrilling, brilliant of film classics has been reborn as an all new Special Edition, digitally spruced up, beautiful - I mean goddamned gorgeous - with a host of extras. But it’s emerged into my world blemished. There. Is. No. Slipcase.
The box sits there and drools at me. The slimcases inside beg for an extra couple of millimetres so that they can stand proud and erect. But (have I mentioned this before?) there is no slipcase around The Maltese Falcon, so they slump, sadly, together, like lifers in the Big House. Especially the two slimcases that form the ‘Falcon’ set, as if they’re both frightened of bending for the soap. With no slipcase to protect them. The box itself resembles an inverse Kasper Gutman, the sides sucking themselves in to take up the slack of the space within. It wilts. It won’t stand upright.
There is no slipcase, y’see?
The box lies. It does you know. Pictures on the box show the artwork from the slipcase (the one that has apparently joined the choir eternal), just to show me exactly what I’m missing. ‘This is what you could have had’ it yells‘ if only either (a) you’d have bought the The Maltese Falcon individually or (b) Warners had got their FUCKING ACT TOGETHER!’
Calm down now. It’s only a slipcase. The slipcase that is not there. Missing. Not included. Not actually in my possession. Omitted. Not present (or correct). Unaccounted for. Stood on a shelf in Burbank next to the big sign that reads ‘For the Humphrey Bogart box sets - Do Not Forget!’ I’m not the only one. Do I take comfort in that? Not for one second. I want my slipcase. My slipcase.
I email my etailer - Movietyme - and they basically tell me that, okay, but-this-is-how-they-came-to-us-and-it’s-not-our-fault-and-please-don’t-bother-us-again. So there. I wince, but I know who to blame. How could you Jack Warner (or is it Ted Turner. I forget)? But then I remember Jack Warner. A total penny-pinching bastard. And dead. I’m screwed (slipcase wise). I feel like such a sucker. Like Miles, I too would have followed that dame down the alley. Gat in pocket. Overcoat buttoned. Without a slipcase.
So I sit here. Not working, not going places or seeing anyone, my brain beginning to itch. Not watching the damned films in the damned Humphrey Bogart Signature Collection 2. Thinking about something that isn’t here and how to get it. No, not the black bird.
The slipcase.
Madness…