VCR

“This is the nerdiest part: I’ve figured out a way to connect the VCR to a modern projector so I can screen movies from the VCR,” he says, laughing at himself.

Dug sits upright on the limo’s black Corinthian leather seat, flanked by crystal liquor decanters on one side and a TV and VCR on the other.

Of course, we consume these things differently since streaming took over the world, and arguably since man first learned to program a VCR, with network shows subsumed into the ocean of time-shifted picking and choosing.

A beard trimmer leaps into jugulars, a VCR shoots tapes like a cannon, and the carnage of consumer goods is nasty, gory and cruel, with a darkly comic mean streak that recalls Joe Dante’s “Gremlins.”

One of my favorite childhood pastimes was watching my parents’ wedding video, which I played on our family VCR in the days before DVDs and online streaming.