May I be struck down by the ghost of Sid Caesar if I'm lying, but I swear I'm the only person who's paying attention any more in this crazy world. The latest example of thistruism happens to be the VCR repair business. Seems harmless enough of a topic, right? Wrong again, my friend! I may never loose those CIA dogs of my trail after this one.

I've become convinced that the VCR repair business is nothing but a front for criminal activity in all of it's grisly manifestations. A few years ago I was living down the street from this guy who claimed to be a VCR repair man. I even had him tinker with my betamax machine on several occaisions. Now I'm not saying he didn't fix the thing, but I knew something was up. Then one pleasant afternoon I was sitting on my porch when not unlike all the monkeys of hell descending from the sky at least a dozen police vehicles of every make and description, vans, trucks, cars and battering devices squealed onto my street, producing scores of heavily armed SWAT officers brandishing shotguns, gas masks and ferocious-looking dogs. Equipment and vehicles were scattered helter-skelter across the street, and all of these Virgina farmboys had but one intention in mind: Well, there's an outside chance that they wanted to have an old hi-fi deck looked at or something, and that it was all a coincidence, but deep down inside I think that they came there that day with the intention of kicking down my neighbor's door, dragging him out into the street in his underwear, and then removing large amounts of illegal drugs from his home before loading him into the back of one of their cars and driving away. Call it a hunch.

Naturally, anybody would be a little curious about "VCR Repair Men" after an episode like that. But it doesn't stop there. Just today on the way home I passed the friendly neighborhood porno theater and what did I see on the marquee (I mean, under "A Fistfull of Tits" and "Jug-Jambouree") but the simple words "VCR REPAIR UPSTAIRS". I should have suspected as much.

There are several schools of thought on the subject. Some have suggested to me that those living on the fringes of our society's culture, the unwashed and rarely shaven, those apt to deal in drugs or products of the flesh, may themselves be frequent users of porno videocassettes. And that the frequent playing of these tapes, in cahoots with frequent high-speed rewinding and heavy use of the slow-motion feature, may be apt to damage the average video cassette recorder. And that these individuals, rather than pay the high price of electronics repair or replacement, might take up with screwdriver in hand (and some kind of tool with which to open the VCR in the non-drinking hand) and learn the fine art of VCR repair themselves through trial and error. And that such experience might give them a way to supplement the income received from their illegal and barely-legal activities.

A sound enough theory to most ears. But I think it's bullshit. I think VCR repair people are all inherently evil, and most likely they are from Milwaukee. I know, sometimes the truth hurts. I'll be in touch.

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