Comments

1
I know it's thirty years too late, Mindy, but I'll bet this is the interview your dad taped over:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBniLqF-…
2
I was just going to say I bet this is on youtube.
3
So much fury that she ran out of steam on page 3 and couldn't keep up writing in cursive.
4
Truly priceless.

If you lived during a time when there was no way to tape anything (not even a VCR), you feel her pain.

If you lived thru VCRs (and people taping over things), you feel her pain.

And her love for Sting? Not sure about that one.
5
I was once a teenage girl in the 80s. Good times, man. Good times.

/could have written that letter
6
Hey Mindy! Yeah you stupid!! There are these little tabs on the cassette that you can break and your dad can't record over your tape.

It's called READ THE DIRECTIONS ON THE BOX THE VHS TAPE CAME IN!!! And reading is totally radical!
7
I would retain hope for the youth of today if one in a hundred 13-year-olds were capable of, or even had the patience for, composing a missive of this length with quite good grammar and spelling, well organized thoughts, admirably restrained yet still evident sarcasm, and to top it all, evidence of conscientious proofreading. I imagine her parents treasured this.

/curmudgeonliness
8
6: Quit blaming the victim. Mindy's greatest-hits video tape was a WORK IN PROGRESS, and sure, maybe she could've popped the tab and covered it with Scotch tape when she needed to record something new but RECORDING VIDEOS WAS AN ACTIVITY FRAUGHT WITH TENSION, requiring razor-sharp reflexes and seconds were priceless, you piece of shit.
9
While I agree with both 6 and 8. I have to say keeping the tape in one's own room (or other safe place) or labeling it with hearts and such probably would have prevented the whole catastrophe.
10
9: But then we would've been denied this letter, which is cosmically unacceptable. (Fun fact: Mindy's now a partner at an LA law firm and gets to write letters like this for a living.)
11
@10:
"write letters like this for a living"
Love it.
12
This is outstanding, of course! Props to your 13-year-old self.

Anyone have a story like this, but in reverse? When I was about 10-11 I (unintentionally) taped over my mom's (unmarked) copy of Koyaaisquatsi with episodes of The Galaxy Rangers. That did not go over well.
13
My parents didn't know how to record with the VCR, so any unintentional recording-overs were entirely my fault.
14
The father (who would obviously be crushed by this letter) could console himself by noting that he had raised a lovely, thoughtful and polite child.
15
Mindy and I would have been besties in junior high! I totally understand her trauma. I had a videotape with TWO different versions of the Police Synchronicity tour (Montreal and Atlanta, FYI). It was the only thing I loved in 1984. If anything had happened to it I would have died.
17
16: She's had a giant brain since the day she was born.
18
This happened to me. The memory stings even after all these years. Though as per Fnarf's comment, it does sting less now that almost all the fleeting TV of the 80s and 90s has magically reappeared on YouTube or on DVD*.

*Though, sadly, without the original soundtracks.
19
And the negotiation skills! Did she get the $32.95 for the mail order offer? And, if so, did she reimburse dad "eventually"?
20
I had forgotten about the anti-recording plastic tab you broke off. It's been so many years! I was totally anal about my videotape collection, about forty cassettes, or whatever it was, of classic and foreign movies I taped from, usually, cable TV (because I wouldn't have to stop-start for commercials and they were unedited). I recorded three movies per cassette, or however many fit in the six- or eight-hour-long tape, and kept careful track of the counter indicating where in the tape they started. The tapes were never left in the VCR, god forbid. They were always rewound and stored standing up - not flat horizontal - with the roll of tape towards the bottom. Breaking off that plastic tab was the last act when I was satisfied that nothing else would fit and everything there was good, so it was time to have the tape immortalized. I tried to share my love of "quality" "films" with my family, but they weren't as interested. They also knew I had strict rules about my tapes and that you didn't mess around with them, or I would through a now-uncharacteristic materialist fit.

I moved away from parents across the country to Seattle at the tail end of the VCR era (LP record-sized laserdiscs were the newer thing, but they weren't taking hold), leaving my box of precious movies and my new VCR behind. It's not like I had a TV where I was going - Capitol Hill - so what was the point? My parents eventually took the VCR, with my permission, and used it to death. (I also suggested they watch my movies sometime.) The tapes, however, have probably never left the cardboard box. The two tapes of Citizen Kane and Magnificent Ambersons, with travel doc of England that my fifth grade teacher made for me as a graduation present? (He's the one who turned me on to movies.) Still there. Once Upon a Time in the West/America, Night of the Hunter, Amarcord? Still there. Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters, Bullets Over Broadway, Crimes and Misdemeanors? Also still there. Abel Gance's five-hour silent epic Napoleon, which A&E showed one Sunday morning, straight through without commercials, in an act of cultural enrichment that would send today's TV execs into apoplexy if somebody suggested it? Not only is it still there; you couldn't pay somebody to watch it. (But it's a classic!) That was probably the one and only time that was ever on TV, truly a rare, special event (or a mistake for which someone ended up getting fired), kind of like a unique Police interview (Mindy). It was a big deal. I programmed it and had it recorded while I went to church. I even had a white-washed, elegiac, heroic TV movie about Custer, Son of the Morning Star. All that stuff is sitting in a box.

The irony? Not only do I still not have a TV (or cable, obviously), I've also never had a TiVO and I don't know how to use it. When I visited my sister and tried to navigate her TV with the thousand channels, it was disorienting, like finding myself in a vast desert without knowing which direction to go. It was too much. I just gave up. And I never go to movies anymore. Titanic? The various Lords of the Ring? All the Pixar movies (Toy Story, Monsters, whatever)? Never seen them. Avatar? All the dude comedies (too many to think about), the comicbook-nerds-in-love movies, the Marvel movies? With the exception of the Joker movie, never seen them. That Joker movie was the last one that I saw, a Saturday night rerun at the Egyptian. Anna Minard's got Never Heard of 'Em? I could write Never Seen It. And the best part is? I'm not dying to. Hollywood's got me past overload; I'm like a burned out machine, a used up VCR. I've so hopelessly lost the string of popular culture, I can't even imagine trying to catch up.
21
"...worthless, ugly pseudo-humans beating each other senseless." Man, I love boxing. And Mindy and this letter. I love them both also.
22
I divorced the man who recorded goddamn football over my Harrison Ford tape. I feel at one with Mindy.
23
Can't blame a man for having higher aspirations for his daughter than groupie
24
God that letter is a work of restraint. I kind of expected her to break out in swears. Maybe I've been watching too much modern tv. I feel for Mindy. Remember when Duran Duran and the Police were hot, that HBO played only 5 movies per month and ran them continously? I must have seen the Commitments 97 times.

Frida's (from Abba) new song was actually a big hit in the US - Something's Going On. I was glued to MTV trying to get a glimpse of her video, only to NEVER SEE IT, and suffer through Money For Nothing and the Chicks for Free.

It was only in the past 10 years that I remembered I hadn't seen her video and so You Tube to the rescue.

Anyway, thanks for bringing me back. Love to Mindy.
25
Actually, this letter is amazingly well written for a 13-year-old, and fairly thoughtful too. There are a lot of 13-year-olds who can't string a coherent paragraph together to save their lives, much less a solid 4-page rant. Well done, Mindy, well done.
26
I had the same thing happen to a tape of the Papermill's Show Boat -- the household ended up with two copies of Gone With the Wind and I nearly killed youngcharles when I found out what he'd done (by inserting the tape and sitting back expecting "Cotton Blossom" to start). I wasn't anywhere near as restrained as Mindy. There was ranting. And there was raving. Since it was on a marked tape. And no, it isn't on youtube. Lost forever.
27
It's all marketing talk to get the cash advance she's after. If truth be known, she'd already grown out of Sting (who hasn't?), and deliberately set up her dad in a sophisticated sting operation.
28
This was awesome and brought back memories of all my vhs recordings! And I was a teenager in the early 90's! I would pull those tabs out all the time and then use scotch tape later. Cuz I was scared that I would accidentally record over something about Nirvana! Oh to be a teenage groupie again! Music was life back then!!!
29
@ 4, Sting was still cool in 1983.
30
@ 24, I know you won't care and are likely never going to see this since it's so late, but the lyric is "checks" for free, not chicks.
31
@12: When I was about 11 I recorded over my mom's cassette tape of Nixon giving his resignation speech. I didn't even record anything good, just me and my friend making up stories with our Barbie dolls. Mom was furious.
32
I've been thinking about it all morning, and I can now say with certainty that this is my favorite Slog post of all time.

Mr. Schmader's rebuttal at #8 is among my favorite comments, too.
33
@30 Ha! I had no idea and I must have heard that wretched song hundreds of times.

Have to admit when my bro was going through a 1960s music thing (he's younger than I am but feels he was born a decade late), I heard countless rotations of 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy. Wasn't until muuuuuch later that I learned it was Kiss the Sky.
34
#30, it's "chicks" for free, f'real

35
As the father of a teenage daughter myself, I'd be devastated to learn that when my daughter was feeling depressed, the only way to make herself feel better was to watch fifteen minutes of complete strangers talking to someone else. :^\

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