Renewal, Issue 5
Because HPLD items can be renewed 3 times in most cases, the format of this newsletter is one story, The Checkout, followed by three smaller news items, the Renewals.
Pretty clever, eh? You should probably read on and discover all the other awesome ideas we’ve had.
RFP? Me?
Over $800,000 if we can brag for a moment!
One staff member, who shall remain nameless but does write a lot of newsletter stuff did suggest we use the money for books. Specifically, copies of One Piece, which just seems to keep chugging along and is now up to volume 108, so we could lay this $800,000 aside to offset the costs of new copies until the series is done, maybe at volume 40,000? Who knows!?
But cooler, more rational, sane-er, financially responsible heads have prevailed, and we’re building a mobile workforce unit.
And we need your proposals for that unit!
Take a look at the Request for Proposal, and if you’re in the game, get us your best pitches!
Renewal 1: A Deep Dive
Yes, we’ve gotten into the video essay game, mere years after we all enjoyed the 4-hour documentary about the failed Star Wars hotel and the mind-bending trip through myhouse.wad.
Our foray into this mostly-tamed west is a look at Choose Your Own Adventure books, especially volume 1: The Cave of Time!
Renewal 2: Why Is There So Much Stuff "On Order" In The Catalog?
Fair question, fair question.
We’re in the thick of renovating our admin building, including a nice little surprise that you’re going to love, so we had to press PAUSE on item orders a bit back because, well, we didn’t know if the address we normally use would, um, exist in the summer. Like, the PLACE still exists, but we didn’t know if any structures would be there (they are) or if there would be power (there’s not) or if anyone would be there to receive shipments (there isn’t).
Fortunately, we’ve got some temporary digs, and we’ve restarted all the paused orders, so things are rolling in fast!
I can say this with authority because FINALLY my Uketsu books are in!
Renewal 3: A Kanopy Gem
There’s a lot of great stuff on Kanopy, and it’s hard to pick things to highlight because there’s SO MUCH…
Okay, this is getting into the territory where you hear podcast ads that are like, “This supplement is one of my favorite things on the planet, I use it 7 times a day, I would probably be dead without this stuff!”
I don’t need to sell Kanopy that hard, it’s a streaming service that’s FREE with your library card, what more do you need?
You know, I will say that when the Kanopy screen pops up, and it has the little slogan “Thoughtful entertainment,” and then I watch Tammy and the T-Rex, it does give me a good deal of joy. There is NOTHING thoughtful about that movie, Kanopy. If you all were keeping track of what I watch, you would’ve deleted that slogan from my version of the app years ago.
Anyway, I did watch a great movie, dare I say a THOUGHTFUL movie, that I’d like to recommend to you, especially if you’re a fan of the sort of 90s indie movies made by people like Kevin Smith.
I Like Movies follows a young guy named Lawrence, a teenage Ignatius J. Reilly fumbling his way through the last months of high school and trying to find his way to New York City to make his filmmaker dreams come true.
But this isn’t a romantic, “Isn’t coming of age in New York the pinnacle of experience?” kind of movie that I think we’ve all tired of, it’s about a teenager who doesn’t have it easy, who can be a bit of an obnoxious jerk at times (as many of us were as teens. No? Just me?), and there are lots of great character moments and little scenes that really make for something special.
No explosions, no hospital bedside sequences, no superheroes, but it’s a movie where you can feel that the people behind the camera believed in it as a story, not just as Product.
It’s probably hard for movies like this to make as big a splash these days, there’s so much competition online, and theaters don’t really seem to screen stuff like this as much as they should, so do yourself a favor, get on Kanopy, giggle at “thoughtful entertainment,” and give I Like Movies 2 tickets and 99 minutes of your time. Well worth it.