An Ode to Physical Media

**Holden McNeely** (0:00)
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That's usmint.gov slash DC.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:37)
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**Jake Young** (1:25)
Do not adjust your VCR tracking. You are watching Nerd of Mouth, and this is our physical media appreciation episode. From comic book special editions to vinyl records, face it, the streaming era has us utterly borked. We're sick. We can't choose anything anymore. We must go back. We must return. With me this week, as always, it's Holden McNeely.
And Mike Lawrence.

**Mike Lawrence** (1:50)
Man, this is gonna be a blast from the past, and I'm not just talking that underrated Brendan Fraser film.

**Holden McNeely** (1:57)
I mean, how like?

**Mike Lawrence** (1:58)
I mean, aren't they all?

**Jake Young** (2:01)
Except The Mummy Returns. That one is the only one.

**Mike Lawrence** (2:04)
And the one where he's fat, that was rated.

**Holden McNeely** (2:08)
Life-changing moments for me. Getting a TV VCR for Christmas for my bedroom. Getting eventually, a little ways after that, a couple years after that, getting a PlayStation 2 that played DVDs in my bedroom.
And I think as well, I would throw out there, modern day, I'm collecting vinyl, but getting a CD player and Nirvana Unplugged is my first CD. The beginning of my creating-

**Mike Lawrence** (2:42)
Some would say Nirvana Unplugged themselves.

**Holden McNeely** (2:45)
Getting my own identity via a CD collection that I slowly grew.
These were, these are touchstones that I still think about today. And that's not even including, you know, we talked already, check out our physical media video games episode, my Sega Genesis collection prized and beloved Game Boy collection. But these things really mattered to me. And I think, Mike, you brought it up recently. And also the sheer joy of of coming over to someone's place for the first time and they have their collection prominently displayed and finding that you can really like get an understanding of someone based on that in a way that doesn't exist when everything is all digital.

**Mike Lawrence** (3:27)
Yeah. That like if we were able to, when we met each other, see each other's collections, that we would like have that immediate bond. Like there's, there's like, you know, there were like a lot of movies that like everyone that looks like us had.

**Holden McNeely** (3:43)
Yeah.

**Mike Lawrence** (3:44)
And then there were the Outliers. And the Outliers are where a personality comes together.
And you're like, oh wow, that guy also likes this. You know, it's, it's amazing to me. My first physical media memory that I thought of when we were doing this episode was for Christmas one year, my stepdad was like, I know you like Arnold Schwarzenegger and I bought you an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. And I was like, is it Predator? Is it Terminator 2? And it was Last Action Hero.

**Jake Young** (4:11)
Okay, honestly.

**Mike Lawrence** (4:12)
And here's the thing, at the time, I was like, this sucks, in comparison to a bad ass Predator, regular horror movie that I wanted.

**Jake Young** (4:22)
I'll even take an eraser in a pinch.

**Mike Lawrence** (4:27)
Yeah, yeah. And I did a red heat, if you will.
But I got it and it was like, and it's funny because like, that's a memory of my stepdad, you know? Like, it's at first not what you want, but you learn to accept it, and you Charles dance around the issues.

**Jake Young** (4:48)
I mean, I guess, did you end up loving that movie? Because through modern eyes.

**Mike Lawrence** (4:53)
Cause I watched it a bunch.

**Jake Young** (4:54)
Yeah.

**Holden McNeely** (4:55)
Yeah, you're just, you're stuck with it. You know, Reservoir Dogs, Dazing Infused, Money Python, The Holy Grail, Mallrats. I have those movies memorized. They were my four first VHS tapes.