Last year was my first ever Black Friday foray. I had dreams of getting a great deal on an Ipod touch at the Apple Store and then rushing over to Best Buy for the DVD of the CW’s Supernatural tv Series. After I secured my deals I would head down to Half Price Books for a chance to be one of the first 100 people into the store and a chance to win a 100.00 shopping spree.

The Apple Store was a bust, good to know for next year, and Best Buy scared the poo out of me with all the people and armed police at the doors. I did get my DVD with no problems at all. Off to Half Price books. When I arrived at 6:00am there was a line that stretched about 50 yards from the door. I couldn’t believe it and jumped out of the car and got in line. When I finally got to the door I was number 101 and missed out.

This year was different. I would not hit the Apple Store or Best Buy until after the hoopla died. This year I was hitting Half Price Books first. When I arrived at the store the line was 1/3 as long as last year and I felt good about my chances. Upon entering the store I got my bag of swag and a 5 dollar coupon as well as a tasty Fudge strip deluxe graham cookie. I did not win the 100.00 the guy right in front of me did. Well at the very least I did have a free 5.00 and Liam and I could have a nice breakfast at Pannekoeken Haus.

This weekend, for the first time, I sat down to watch a movie about the event that happened on 9/11/01. The movie was recommended to me so I thought I would sit through it, 102 Minutes that Changed America. The movie is about normal everyday folks that picked up their cameras and shot history as it happened. From viewing it I would guess that 85% to 90% of the film was from amateurs. Siskel/Jacobs Productions, who put the film together, pieced all of this raw footage into a timeline that put the viewer as close as they could possibly get to being their as the events actually happened. I haven’t watch much footage from that day but I do recall that at the end of that work day I had to turn the tube off because the scene was so depressing and so horrorrific that I couldn’t take more. This movie brought all that back and then some. I relived the events through the eyes of these photographers and felt their panic, pain, sorrow, anger, and shock. It was put together in such a way that the roller coaster of emotions flowed right through me and I became part of 9/11. From the scenes of the fireman marching into the trade center never to be seen again to the folks that jumped and crashed into the ground dying instantly the movie brought you back to that instant and angered and troubled me all over again. That is good filmmaking. From hearing the terror in the voices of those filming to the despair you hear in the communications between rescue squads, and to the reality of what is happening, this movie becomes hard to watch because you know what happens. Yet you can’t bring yourself to tear away from the stories, from the scenes, from the human responses and I think that is good because we all should never forget this event.

Links:

http://tinyurl.com/cxvtfd

http://www.amazon.com/102-Minutes-That-Changed-America/dp/B001F5274G