Worst Buy

And it's been another busy week. No rest for the wicked for sure. To start with, speaking of wicked, the Broadway stagehands strike is still going strong, although talks are scheduled to resume this weekend. I am surprised at how obstinate the stagehands are being. They have no credibility, the issues they are stuck on do not reflect well on them or their work ethic, and they're losing money at a much faster rate than the producers. Still, at the same time, the producers do share a lot of the blame for not hiring people who will work and keeping the shows going. Now that the contracts have expired, they are under no obligation to hire only union members, they can hire whoever the hell they want that's willing to work. So come on producers, let's get it in gear and get the shows going again. All you have to do is pick up a phone and I am more than happy to do anything in any theatre (except for where Legally Blonde, the Color Purple, Jersey Boys, or Mary Poppins are playing) to help out, and I'll pay my own airfare and get my own accommodations on top of that. Ideally I wouldn't mind working at Hairspray and getting some backstage time with Lance, but I'll take anything you've got.

Now, on to more immediate topics. The third season of Melrose Place was released on DVD Tuesday. This was THE season for the show, and I'm really surprised at the lack of promotion for the DVD on Paramount's part. Granted, Season 2 was not a big seller, but this is the season everyone remembers and will be the one they want to have, but you've got to let them know it's available. However, it's not only Paramount that seems to not want viewers to get ahold of this set. When I got in to work Tuesday, I did a search on Best Buy's website, and out of the 5 stores closest to where I work, only 1 store had it in stock, and that was the Evanston store at Howard & McCormick, the one farthest away of those 5. I kept checking throughout the morning, and around 11:00, the Skokie store in the Village Crossing shopping center on Touhy finally added it to their inventory. So, around 11:30 I took an early lunch and headed to Village Crossing. I went in and went right to the movie section. It was not with the New Releases, so I went into the TV Shows section and couldn't find it. I walked around again and still had no luck. I tried to find someone to ask, but apparently everyone who works there was also on an early lunch. However, I have also found that this is the worst store in the area for trying to find someone who can help, they seem to be chronically short staffed. I walked around again, and this time I noticed a small sign on the shelf at the beginning of the M secion in the TV Shows section that said "Melrose Place Season 3." However, there were no DVD's on the shelf. They were either all sold out (in the 30 minutes since the title had appeared in their inventory) or were still sitting in the back room waiting to be shelved. Again, there was no one around to ask, so I left the store and headed to the Evanston store, which I should have just done in the first place, since stopping by the Skokie store had greatly lengthened the trip. I could have just taken Oakton out to McCormick and gone down to Howard, instead I had gone down to Touhy and then had to go to McCormick and up to Howard, which is a greater distance than Oakton to Howard. Anyways, they had it in the New Releases section, so I grabbed it, paid, and got back to work, about an hour and a half later. Fortunately, my boss doesn't ever care how long I'm gone. Still, this is just one more instance of Best Buy really declining in quality with what they stock. They may be a gay friendly company to work for, but they are not a gay friendly company to shop at. And, they're not the only ones. Borders is also continuing its long slide downhill in quality. My companion and I saw Julius Caesar at the Lyric on Sunday (overall good although in some spots it tried to be silly just for the sake of being silly, like their Magic Flute production, and that just wore on my nerves very quickly), and we went to Borders afterwards. I had just found out earlier in the week that the playbill.com columnist I really enjoy reading, Seth Rudetsky (who totally has the life I was meant for) recently published his first novel, and I had done a search of Borders' inventory, and only the State Street store had it, which fortunately is the one closest to the opera. I got into the store and went to the R section in Fiction and couldn't find it. I hopped onto their in-store computers and it said that it was in the store, in the Gay Fiction section. Now, years ago, Borders was the place to go for Gay Literature. They were the first store I ever saw with such a section, and I came across at a very critical point in my life, and I have been very loyal to them ever since. Even Barnes & Noble has a non-fiction Gay Studies section, but no Gay Lit section. However, for about the past 3 years, at all Borders, including the one in Lakeview, the Gay Lit section has been rapidly shrinking to the point where it now takes up about 2 shelves (not shelving units, two shelves total) and is comprised mostly of gay mysteries, which really don't appeal to me, and literary porn stories (you know the kind, they've got a shirtless guy on the cover and the back gives a synopsis of some impressionable lad who gets a lot of "lessons in life and love. . ."). I guess it's good that stuff like The Front Runner, The God In Flight, People Like Us (and most of Felice Picano's other books), etc. are now in the regular fiction section, but it's still kind of sad to see the section that gave such an identity to my life for so many years shrinking so quickly and appealing only to dirty old men. So, determined to support a kindred spirit in his first literary effort, I found the section, but despite the sign labeling the section stating that books were filed in alphabetical order by author, it was in complete disarray. I skimmed through it and could not find it under either R (for Rudetsky), S (for Seth) or B (for Broadway Nights, the title of the book). However, none of the books were in anything that could by any stretch of the imagination be called alphabetical order. I quickly perused the section, didn't see it, and went around the shelving unit to the Drama Section (since it is theatre-related) but couldn't find it there. I went back around to the Gay Lit section and this time went book by book, figuring that since it was all of 2 shelves, it wouldn't take long, and this time found it, between one book written by an author whose last name started with a T and another book written by an author whose last name started with M (in what sort of alphabetical order does T come before M?). I thought about saying something, but figured that no one would care, so I just bought the book and left. I'm kind of glad I didn't go up to the CD section, seeing the woefully depleted showtune section would have just made me even more depressed. It's just so sad that a store that used to so cater to my likes has completely gone the other way. I almost hate getting Borders coupons in my email anymore, they almost never have anything in the store that I can use them on. I've got all the showtune CD's they've got in stock and they don't have much of a gay lit or theatre section anymore, and the horror section seems to also be getting pared down, which is the other category I love. It may be emblematic of the dumbing down and increasing crassness of our culture, but if that was true, Barnes & Noble wouldn't be filling the void, which they're doing to at least a certain extent right now. I dread the day I go in there and find that the showtune section has shrunk from half of a wall to one row.

So, anyways, maybe it's time to start a letter writing campagin to Borders and Best Buy. For now, I'm still filling out the surveys every time I buy something and letting Best Buy know what I think of their inventory's increasing blandness. Sunday is Altar Boyz and then a well deserved break for a few weeks until Frau Ohne Schatten at Lyric just before Christmas. I'll keep you posted on the potential New York plans. Even without the strike, there's still the Met, Make Me A Song, Frankenstein both Young and original, and Mauritius. Hopefully I can catch them all.