The Jerrys are a beautiful thing.

December 15, 2016 8:18 AM

This is the stupidest incarnation of the American dream and it must be realized.
posted by amnesia and magnets (19 comments total)

I hear there's a hole somewhere you could bury them all in afterwards.
posted by zamboni at 8:22 AM on December 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

If you haven't witnessed a couple hundred Jerry Maguire videotapes being brought up to the front of a theater by audience members after an altar call from lunatics in monster costumes and cast down before them in handfuls massing into a cascading heap of capitalist overproduction, you haven't lived.
posted by likethemagician at 8:22 AM on December 15, 2016 [5 favorites]

You had me at Everything is terrible.
posted by zamboni at 8:26 AM on December 15, 2016 [6 favorites]

In 2007 or so, a fellow volunteer at a small film production company in Chicago tried to interest me in making videos for this site he and his friends had founded, which took old VHS tapes and re-edited them for comedic effect. I turned him down. I regret that decision.
posted by goatdog at 8:27 AM on December 15, 2016 [8 favorites]

Oh look, someone defined "twee" in a one-minute video
posted by clockzero at 8:46 AM on December 15, 2016

This makes me inordinately happy.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 8:49 AM on December 15, 2016

This is the stupidest incarnation of the American dream and it must be realized.

In this age, optimism like that is a revolutionary act.
posted by Kabanos at 8:57 AM on December 15, 2016 [4 favorites]

Now they need your help to make this stupid dream a reality.
posted by books for weapons at 9:15 AM on December 15, 2016

This completes me.
posted by rouftop at 9:21 AM on December 15, 2016 [3 favorites]

I am impressed that the website could restrain itself to asking people to merely "Donate Now" rather than shouting "SHOW ME THE MONEY!"
posted by chavenet at 9:29 AM on December 15, 2016 [3 favorites]

Well that was weird, Jerry.
posted by maryr at 9:34 AM on December 15, 2016

Show me the exit.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:38 AM on December 15, 2016

This makes TWO projects that I'm aware of where someone is proposing to build an odd structure in the desert for artistic and/or didactic purposes. Which one, I wonder, will speak more clearly to future generations: this or a pyramid filled with VHS copies of a Tom Cruise movie?
posted by Ipsifendus at 9:56 AM on December 15, 2016

I spent the better part of the 1990s on LSD, completely tuned out of popular culture. As a result, I completely missed out on a number of "important" cultural touchstones. One of these was inevitably Jerry Maguire.

I finally saw it a few months back. Pretty sure I was on an airplane.

Can anybody please explain to me WHY this movie was such a big deal? I remember it being hugely popular. I'm not saying it was a bad movie or anything; just kinda blah. Minimally funny, minimally entertaining. Essentially, the kind of movie you'd wind up watching on an airplane.

Why did people go so crazy for it? Was there something going on in the culture at the time? Some facet of Clinton-era America that made this movie so compelling? Because honestly, it just sort of seems like a generic romantic comedy to me. Nothing real special about it.
posted by panama joe at 9:59 AM on December 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

panama joe, as far as I can tell, it's because people liked saying "Show me the money!"
posted by thelonius at 10:03 AM on December 15, 2016 [5 favorites]

They only had 2,700 tapes in 2013 (previously on MeFi), so this is pretty good progress.
posted by Kabanos at 10:16 AM on December 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Jerry Maguire Video Store at iam8bit Gallery will be a perfect re-creation of a video rental store circa 1996, but instead of carrying thousands of porn quadrilogies and action movie knockoffs, this store will carry only Jerry Maguire on VHS.

What joy there will be to pull back the curtain of the small back room, and discover yet more Jerry Maguires.
posted by Kabanos at 10:19 AM on December 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

They need to collab with the CAH Holiday Hole folks for an epic moment of existential zeitgeist-palooza for our times.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 10:20 AM on December 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

I am exceedingly delighted by the cheerful uselessness of this project even though my only exposure to Jerrys has been seeing them on the shelf at Goodwill. Bonus content: Jerry Donation Leader Board, 2014 Throne of Jerrys, JERRY DRIVE 2015.
posted by amnesia and magnets at 10:30 AM on December 15, 2016 [1 favorite]