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Peas Go Home!
Hollywood Video Clerk Uses VeggieTales® To Clear Store
Eastlake(JM) - It's the same scene every night at Hollywood Video on Oporto Madrid Boulevard South and pretty much any other video rental store in town: four or five browsers meander back and forth through the aisles, occasionally picking up a DVD, only to set it back down out of place halfway across the store. "Usually they don't even end up renting anything," complains Evening Shift Manager Troy Bosphorus, "they just give up and grunt at me on the way out." Recently, though, one of Bosphorus' employees has found a way to make sure he can finish his closing routine and still get home before midnight. "VeggieTales," says Malik Wood. [referring to the 2002 feature release 'Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie'] "Pop in that VeggieTales DVD, crank it up a couple of notches, and watch the zombies turn and run."

"I tried some other stuff," Wood relates, "I tried the violent stuff but it had no impact. I even tried the Chinese language tracks on the martial arts movies, but I just got complaints. With this Christian cartoon crap nobody has the balls to complain, but they sure can't stand to stay in the same room with it. Fortunately," he added, "I've got my iPod."

Some late-night customers we interviewed outside the store were non-committal about their reasons for leaving without rentals. Marc Dunlop, an auto technician, said that earlier in the evening he felt like seeing a movie, but after browsing the available titles he could never find the right mix of atmospheric scenery, nailbiting action and full frontal nudity. "I was looking at 'Dark City' pretty hard, but I couldn't remember if Jennifer Connelly gets naked in it or not. At some point I just started to get a headache." Asked if the VeggieTales on the in-store televisions was a factor in his decision to leave, Dunlop thought for a second and then agreed: "Oh yeah. Man, there WAS some really annoying singing in there. What was that?"

"THAT", according to Big Idea Productions spokesman Forrest Carter, "was 'The Hairbrush,' a classic song in which Larry the Cucumber can't find his hairbrush. He is joined by Pa Grape and Junior Asparagus who, although embarrassed to see a male cucumber dressed only in a towel, try to help him find his missing hairbrush. Bob the Tomato comes in and reminds Larry that he has no hair and divulges that he gave the hairbrush to the Peach, who does have hair. This awkward moment in which four male vegetables gather in a bathroom to compare body hair and grooming is one of our zanier 'silly songs'. Kids absolutely love it!" Fortunately for Mr. Wood's evening plans, video store customers decidedly don't.