Kate Harbour, doin’ whatever the heck she wants.
The Wonder Twins, Hayley Waterman (left) and Kate Harbour, back in the video store days.
This has nothing to do with sports, nothing.
But it’s my blog and I’ll do whatever I want.
So, on the birthday of one Kate Harbour, national treasure, I offer this excerpt from my book, “Memoirs of an Idiot” (you can order it from Amazon — there’s a link on the top right side of this page … yes, seriously).
Happy birthday, Kate, Katey, KAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTEEEEEE!
Many employees came and went during my 12+ years at Videoville, but I hold a special place in my memories for the “Wonder Twins.”
Kate and Hayley were many things — scary-smart, incredibly knowledgeable about films, sarcastic, slightly devious, hard-working, warmhearted yet capable of delivering soul-crushing verbal barbs — and they operated on the sort of secret wavelength that twins do.
They may have had different parents, but only their brains could operate on whatever fantastic frequency they were tuned into during those days.
Kate was a ninja, silent and deadly as she flashed by, yanking the DVD out of the player and replacing it with one of her own without even pausing to hit the eject button.
She detested country music, and I would try to have Waylon Jennings or Johnny Cash concerts playing when I knew she was due in for her shift.
One second, “Ring of Fire,” then the next moment “Shortbus” was scandalizing everyone in the store, and Kate had rappelled up between the storage shelves, ready to drop on the heads of unsuspecting baristas when they walked by.
As she would remind me with a long sigh, large amounts of eye-rolling and a drawn-out “Daaaaa-viiiiddd” whenever I forgot, she had been the first to be hired, but things weren’t in their proper proportion until Hayley joined her behind the counter.
The only person I’ve ever met who could do literally everything in the world at once, and do them all quite well, Hayley was the giggly one of the pair, prone to hiding in the rolling cart that went under the night drop box and grabbing people’s hands when they went to drop off a film.
She was a perfect counterpoint to Kate’s drier, precision-hit style of humor.
There are many tales to tell of the pair, only some of which involve a young boy in a Santa hat licking an ice cream cone while looking for movies, but I’ll leave you with one you can share in mixed company.
We had gotten a new film called “The Brown Bunny,” a self-indulgent piece of tripe about a man driving cross country while thinking about his lost love.
90 eyeball-glazing minutes with the camera looking out through a bug-streaked windshield, and then, out of nowhere, a fully XXX scene of Chloe Sevigny delivering some uncomfortable oral lovin’.
When the store owner discovered this, we were told not to rent the film, which then disappeared into the hands of the Wonder Twins, never to be seen again.
Until one morning when a customer walked up and asked me if this new movie “The Brown Bunny” was any good. Seeing as how we had close to 50 copies, we must of liked it, right?
Thinking the customer had lost it (which frequently happened in our store), I went around the corner of a video standee with them, my eyes coming up to see a full display of “The Brown Bunny,” row after row of boxes with the movie’s bright yellow cover looking back at me.
And, at the top, a nicely-lettered little sign saying “David’s Pick of the Week!!”
As I opened a few empty cases, which all held a photocopy of the real DVD’s artwork, I heard giggling coming from deep within the store, then the stealthy patter of feet making an escape.
Suddenly Merle Haggard’s voice vanished in mid-song, a barista on her way to get more milk screamed as something dropped on her from above, and tires squealed out of the parking lot outside.
We all worked in a video store, but we lived in the Wonder Twins’ world.
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