ADVENTURES IN THE BUDGET BIN: Bye-Bye, Big Lots

A REPORT BY MR. BISCUITS🐈

Today marked a sad moment in my life, and not just as a bargain-hunting movie lover. 

True to our age and the fact we’ve been married for roughly a thousand years, Mama Kitty and I have a Sunday morning routine - basically our “date night” - which consists of grabbing coffee from Starbucks before hitting the usual local stores. Sometimes we actually need something, but just as often, it’s simply fun to hang out together, just the two of us.

The store we always visit first is Big Lots. Upon arriving, we immediately split up, Mama Kitty making a bee line toward housewares, while I grab a shopping cart to pick up kitty litter & toilet paper, which are cheaper here than anywhere else. But before hittin' the shittin’ supplies, checking out the movie section is always priority one. 

On this particular day, however, our collective jaws dropped as we climbed from the catmobile and spotted this banner under the familiar orange logo: 

CLOSING. THIS STORE ONLY.

“Nooooooo!” We collectively wailed. It can’t be! They can’t do this to us! Where the hell am I gonna get my tobacco-scented candles? 

What really stuck in my claws was the “This store only” part. That was bullshit. A couple other Big Lots stores closed their doors in recent years, and now they’re all gonna be gone from this area. Was “This store only” supposed to reassure us that we could still enjoy shopping at Big Lots by flying to another town? And why should I give a fuck if some asshole in Yakima, Washington gets to continue saving money on kitty litter & toilet paper?

The banner might as well have said, STORE CLOSING. FUCK YOUR DATE NIGHT.

So it was with heavy hearts that Mama Kitty and I ventured inside. Perhaps as compensation for fucking up future date nights, the store had some pretty great Blu-ray deals this time around…

Though it was nominated for some Oscars, Steven Spielberg’s War Horse (Blu-ray/$6.99) seems like one of his ‘forgotten’ films. I enjoyed it in theaters back in the day, though apparently not enough to add it to my collection, simply because I never gave the movie another thought. But a four-disc edition for only seven bucks is tough to pass up. Granted, one of those discs is an archaic digital copy once used for uploading to a computer, and another is a DVD that I’ll probably never use. But hey…a bargain’s a bargain and, truth be told, I enjoyed the film a lot more the second time.

I know it got a lot of critical flak for being sensationally gory, but I really enjoyed 2001’s Hannibal (Bly-ray/$4.99), the maligned sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. It doesn’t hold an artistic candle to Silence, nor did I ever expect it to, not with Ridley Scott directing. I certainly love many of Scott’s films, but he’s always been wildly inconsistent and this one damn-near borders on exploitation. Still, it could have been worse. Having read Thomas Harris’ book first, I can safely say that if you thought the movie went too far, it’s nothing compared to what Harris wrote.

This visit afforded me the opportunity to finally catch Pig (Blu-ray/$4.99), a charming drama featuring an uncharacteristically low-key performance by Nicholas Cage as a recluse on a quest to find his kidnapped truffle pig. This one was of special interest to me because it was shot in and around my hometown of Portland, Oregon. But there’s much more to the film than a missing pig. It’s just as much about the past trials and tragedies of its main characters. As such, Pig ain’t the most uplifting movie on Earth, but it’s emotionally affecting, with an especially poignant denouement.

Finally, I snagged Dances with Wolves (Blu-ray/$6.99) and Forrest Gump (Blu-ray/$6.99), two Best Picture Oscar winners that have since become hip to hate among self-congratulatory snobs. While I agree that neither film should have taken home the top prize those years (not with Goodfellas and Pulp Fiction as competition), both remain epic, emotionally-charged films intended as entertainment, not history lessons. Those who spend appreciable amounts of time poking holes in either of them need to lighten the fuck up. Kevin Costner and Robert Zemeckis aren’t the reasons you struggle to find joy in your lives.

Finally leaving the store with our treasures, it was a bittersweet moment, with Mama Kitty and I forced to come to the realization that Big Lots would soon be absent from our date night routine. Yeah, there’s always Walmart or Target, though both have always been a little too peopley for our liking. But I guess if Big Lots was a little more peopley, we wouldn’t be mourning its inevitable demise.