Best Buy?.. more like WORST BUY!!

I'm starting to realize each new time I go to Best Buy to pick up discounted CDs just how much Best Buy sucks.



Maybe it's just the one I go to (St. Charles Rock Rd.), but the selection just isn't great. I guess they're aiming to please a different audience than I, but walking around seeing this audience makes me cringe. I walked by some dude in a skull cap as "Redneck Woman" blared through the speakers. In a desperate attempt to sound badass, he proudly told his girlfriend "I hate this country shit. Don't you?" I guess he was right, but his credibility quickly dropped as he searched for the newest Hatebreed.

What I laughed at/pitied the most, though, was while looking through the "W's." Apparently, some crack Best Buy stock boy actually thought there was a singer/songwriter named "Dandy Warhols" and filed it as such. Welcome to the monkey house, huh?!?!?!?!?! BUT I DIGRESS.



Ahem, anyways, one saving grace of it all is that I know I can always play all the newest video game technology I'm being deprived of thanks to being stuck in the N64 era. I got busy as Anakin Skywalker, spankin' droids left and right in the new Star Wars game, and I have to say I felt pretty good about myself.

As I watched a giant battleship crash into my planet, I looked into the TV reflection to see this maybe 5 year old kid watching in awe of my Jedi mastery. Wow--I'm a hero, I thought. I better show this kid just how kickass I am. 5 minutes pass, and this kid is still there. 10 minutes. 20. Okay, this is weird. Maybe he wants to play? God, I'm an ass. Where are this kid's parents? I put down the controller, and the kid walked away. Really, really off-putting.

So yeah, unless a gift card beckons me, I can't say Best Buy has the same mystique as it used to. I think you can agree with me. (Editor's note: this is quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever written.)

Why don't they just merge?

A while back a friend saw an issue of Blender on my desk and proceeded to mock me. "What?" I asked. "It's entertaining." For some reason, he believed the nearby issue of Spin was more credible.

I got the newest issues of Spin and Blender on the same day, yesterday. Great, I thought. They'll keep me occupied as long as I'm still sitting in bed for ridiculous intervals of time. I read through the good parts in Blender and, as expected, I was entertained. Pop culture is silly and entertaining, dammit, and good photo captions can redeem entire articles.

Spin, which is often given more credibility based on the music it talks about, had My Chemical Romance featured on the front. Since I never judge a magazine by its cover, I read on anyway. What I began to notice is that Spin and Blender must either have the exact same writers or they're in some symbiotic relationship where they just assume there's a different, much more hip audience for their respective magazines and reap each other's benefits.

South by Southwest coverage? Fine. It's news. Breakdown of the Bravery/Killers feud? Hmm, yeah, it's news, but each breakdown had the same topic - deciding whether the ska roots of each band were legit. The kicker, though, was the exact same stupid unmistakable pun: "Ska-letons in the closet." Now THAT'S interesting.


Annie is hot and Scandinavian.

There were "New Artist Spotlights" in both mags of Annie, even though her buzz definitely started last year. They both decided that the comeback of the Backstreet Boys was newsworthy enough to write over two pages about them. And, in the most bizarrely obscure similarity, both write a fair amount about the bloody past of Norwegian death metal.

What can I conclude from this? Well, what I was originally getting at was that no one should diss Blender, but what I've really decided is that I'm subscribing to one magazine too many. In the end, though, the fact that Spin features Dave Eggers and Chuck Klosterman will sway me their way.