Thursday, November 20, 2008

On Behalf Of All Mothers Everywhere

I have a multitude of pet peeves. For example, it bothers me when the microwave door is left ajar, or when I go to a friend's house and they leave the TV on for my entire visit. Or when I call some company and they have no available option to talk to an actual person (which once caused me to yell at the voice recognition software, "I just want to talk to a human!" which actually worked, by the way).

But I decided that those pet peeves are rather ridiculous and petty (except for the TV one - I really hate that). So let's get down to one that is truly important. In the interest of making the world a better place, I thought I would resolve this most irritating pet peeve by writing a letter:

Dear DVD Producers Everywhere,

I have kept silent in the past, but as the mother of a soon-to-be two-year old who is just starting to take an interest in television and movies, I'm begging you, please, please do not program your DVDs to make the previews required viewing. You don't know the frustration I feel when I see that annoying red no-no symbol dash my hopes of skipping the preview of a movie I never plan to see.

I'm certain your intentions were good. You wanted to make sure people would actually watch the previews for upcoming movies or videos, which makes some sense if they are merely being rented for a one-time viewing. But obviously you have some sort of sadistic grudge against mothers whose children fixate on a particular DVD and want to watch it over and over and over again until their brain matter oozes out their ears. By not allowing mothers to skip the previews, you are contributing to nervous breakdowns all over the country.

And while we're at it, must there be any pre-movie things at all? For the love of Disney, please just put up the menu screen immediately upon DVD insertion. Watching the same movie 87 times (in one day) can be rather wearing. Please don't make it worse.

Sincerely,

Frazzled I-Just-Want-To-Get-To-The-Menu-Screen Mom

4 comments:

fiona said...

Oooh, I'm with you on that one! luckily, N&B are obsessed with Finding Nemo right now (OBSESSED), and there's NOTHING before the menu screen! Bliss. Pure bliss.

Now if only I didn't hear, "watch..Nemo!" 8 million times a day. Of course, they don't get to watch it all that often, though it would be soooo easy. At least it's a movie I love, too!

Anonymous said...

If the skip button won't work, usually the fast forward will. Still painful but not as long.

foculbrown said...

I feel the same way. Some of the anime films we watch are really bad. We have "Menu" and "Top Menu" button on our DVD player. Usually one of those buttons work. Sometime they don't, and we try the Fast Forward button. I think there was one series of DVDs that none of those three worked.

But...we have improved from when we grew up. DVDs don't wear out like VHS tapes did. We don't have to rewind after every viewing. And...we can skip (once we are past the menus) to part of the movie we like the best.

Megan B ♥ said...

AMEN. AND AMEN.

As far as pet peeves, I actually had a supposedly really good friend who every time we went out to lunch together, she talked on her cell phone THE ENTIRE TIME (including carpooling time to the restaurant) while I sat and picked at my food. She'd say things like "oh, good, you are both 'here' so I will tell you both this story." I'm still not over it. And we don't do lunch anymore.