Regardless of the decade you grew up during, you probably watched too many b-movies from the previous decades. During my childhood, 60's and 70's Godzilla movies were always on TV. A local station had a weekly "Creature Double Feature," which showed the same few Godzilla movies over and over. I saw Mothra, Ebirah, and Mechagodzilla more times than I remember. I didn't know there were other Godzilla movies until I was 16-years-old and found a VHS tape of Gigan at Toys'R'Us. Being a teenager, I stole that tape and returned another day to steal a few more, thus cementing my contribution to a chain store's downfall.

It was a fitting punishment when those VHS tapes mysteriously disappeared from my possession during college. Some of my roommate's friends presumably shared my questionable ethics and movie taste. As an overworked college student, with no free time to watch movies, I didn't bother to replace the twice-stolen tapes.

To commemorate Godzilla's 50^th anniversary, Sony released some movies on DVD. By then, I had obtained expendable income, leisure time, and morals, all while still being immature enough to enjoy monster movies. I wanted the whole collection, but of the 29 movies, Sony published only a fraction on DVD. Tracking down the rest, in a high quality format, proved to be a challenge. What started with a few nostalgic purchases on Amazon, quickly turned into bootleg hunting on sketchy grey-market fan forums. I went from being excited to revisit badly dubbed monster movies from my childhood, to snubbing any film unless it was wide screen, contained the original Japanese cut, and used English subtitles instead of dubbing. I wanted to laugh at actors in rubber monster suits, in a manner as close to the director's intention as possible.

When you like something, your peers may enjoy nudging you deeper than you intend to go. What started as a prideful complete collection of rare Godzilla DVDs, quickly morphed into something embarrassing, as well-intentioned people nurtured my achievement into an lifestyle. A brother gave me a Godzilla costume for x-mas, a girlfriend offered to attend G-Fest, my students encouraged me to see the new film on opening day, and a coworker notified me that a new set of Blu-rays will soon be available at exorbitant, collectors-only prices. I'm now a "Godzilla guy," and there's no reversing course. This inescapable fact is one which I grudgingly inch closer to accepting each time I wrestle with the poorly performing pizza cutter that I never asked for but could never part with.