I hate the past. To me, the past is something we should learn from but never return to. I have no desire to return to the days where gay and the r-slur were every day jokes and and “Tits or gtfo” was a common reply to women on the internet.
But I love old machines and gizmos. I love gears and levers and buttons. I love things that clunk and whir. Vinage music boxes, Clockwork toys and VHS machines that sound like they’re trying to go into orbit when you rewind a cassette. I’ve always liked old stuff for as long as I can remember.
Is it nostalgia or just autism? Is it something I should be ashamed of?
Pan and scan is such an interesting artifact of the standard def era. Most of the movies I watched in the 90s were VHS recordings from when they played on TV, and so I ended up becoming very familiar with the 4:3 version of movies like Jurassic Park and Empire Srikes Back. When I saw Empire Strikes Back in theaters during the re-release in 97, it was a revelation - as a kid, I hadn’t even internalized that I was missing a big chunk of the picture.