something that no one reading this will give two shits about

Today I went into Borders with a gift certificate my mother sent me for my birthday. In case you are curious, I bought two DVD's. One was the Free Tibet concert which was a little disappointing and I also purchased Rust Never Sleeps by Neil Young which is a classic and I'm pretty sure that means it's good. This is not the part you will not care about, this is just small talk so I can get myself riled up enough to address my concern.

We all have guilty pleasures. My biggest guilty pleasure is the rock band KISS. I was a KISS fan in my childhood and I make no apologies for being a fan (though I like them less currently because their desire for money, which has always been voracious, is getting bad even for them) because in your childhood certain things get hardwired into your brain that you can't shake no matter how hard you try. For example, my stepfather yelled a lot. He yelled so much that even now when someone raises their voice I get jittery.

Each time I go into a store that sells videos I always to the knowingly fruitless search for a KISS concert video. I know they have footage in their vaults. I have seen bootleg videos of their glory days and some of them have been professionally shot. Why, oh why, do they not release this stuff? Instead of releasing these videos which I would unashamedly purchase and watch with glee they market those stupid KISS Koffins and plastic dolls.

For a while I just couldn't understand why this stuff was not released. There can only be two reasons that I can concieve. I may be wrong, probably am, but here is what I think. I think that 1) they are waiting for the perfect time to release this stuff. Somewhere there is a chart marking the time the marketing scum think these videos will be a strong sell or 2) I tend to think they are not thrilled by the quality of their performances. I'm not saying that the performances are bad but there is such a mystique that surrounds those KISS shows from the seventies that they likely believe the marketing of the nostalgia of this time through collectibles is more profitable than releasing the actual performances. You see this same strategy played out with the Star Wars franchise. Rather than being sold the actual motion pictures or the music they sell us our memories through toys.