entertainment

A gracious friend has gifted me a 6-month trial of Netflix. I'm one week into the trial, and I think I'm liking it.

The first movie sent to my door was Quadrophenia. Why? The Who, that's why. For some reason I had The Who on my brain, and I thought I would check if Netflix had Quadrophenia. I'd never seen the whole movie. Of course they had it, so I decided to add it to my "queue." What I didn't realize was that, having no movies in my queue, it would be shipped to me immediately. So that was my first Netflix rental. And now I hate scooters and England.

Last night, we watched Metallica: Some Kind of Monster--a documentary film commissioned by the band. Unreal. Awesome. The film takes you fairly deep into some intimate shit with the band--bitter arguments in the recording studio, group therapy sessions with their quasi-therapist "performance enhanment coach", and much more. [I can only imagine the great stuff that got cut by Metallica.] It's so crazy to see how rich and arrogant these guys have become. They don't even bat an eye at the $40,000 per month that they pay their performance enhancement coach [who they employ for the better part of two years!]. Lars has a collection of million-dollar paintings and wears Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses. James has a different, custom hot-rod vehicle to match his every mood swing. Kirk owns a ranch with horses [WTF?]. But beyond that, it's fun to witness the group dynamic and watch egos clash as they struggle to put together some really awful material for their album, St. Anger. I'll stop there. If you haven't seen it, then go rent it now--even if you don't like Metallica.

We've also Netflixed The Matador [not too bad] and Brick [haven't watched yet].

Like I said--I like Netflix so far, but I don't think I've taken full advantage of the concept. I still feel like I should "ration" my movie picks. But the movies are essentially paid-for. So I need to get busy loading up my queue.

I wonder how much I'll like it when the free subscription ends, and they start billing me $18/month. That's approximately what it costs to rent 4 new-release DVD's at my local video place. Well . . . we've 'flixed four movies in seven days. And I like the idea of never having to go to the video store ever again. It's much cheaper than getting cable TV. I'd say there's a pretty good chance we'll continue after our 6 months is up.