I'm Queueless (Cigar Smoke 10-25-07)

Well, it’s nice to be back after a week off. Although I’m still trying to recover from the news that Al Gore won the Nobel Peace prize. I’ve witnessed a lot of disgusting things in my life, but that’s right up there. At least ole Al is in good company. Right there with Arafat and Carter and the United Nations. Now, there’s a trifecta of throwing up. I hear next year the Nobel is going to OJ.

OK, I’m getting off my political podium. And jumping on my mundane podium. It’s lower. Something has happened to me that I think may be the only time this has happened to anyone in the history of happenings. I do not have any movies in my Netflix queue. Yes, I am queueless.

First, a little background. Marge and I are pretty big movie fans. We see a lot of movies. Kind of like Britney Spears sees a lot of penises. We go to the show almost every Friday night. Usually, we go to the Pasadena Playhouse and see some art movie and get out and look at each other and say, “Quite meaningful and insightful and ground-breaking -- for a piece of shit movie.”

Then we go next door to Vroman’s and buy an armful of books and then go eat dinner at Coco’s and Marge says, “You know, that wasn’t very good.” And I, being a what, a great conversationalist, say, “Huh.”

Anyway, we see a lot of movies. And not only in the theater. We watch movies on TV. We TiVo movies. We watch DVDs. We even watch VHSs. We search for movies. We find good movies. We find bad movies. We watch all of them. But finally, when we couldn’t even find any acceptable bad movies, I suggested to Marge that we join Netflix. And Marge said, “What is Netflix?” And I said, “I don’t know, but it did win the Nobel Peace prize, so it must be good.”

Netflix, in case you’ve been living on Jupiter or in Barbara Boxer’s head for the past decade, is an online movie service that has, maybe, four billion movies in its database. They have movies classified by drama and comedy and romance and crime and action and sci-fi and horror and childrens (very similar to horror) and gay and lesbian and thrillers and something called blu-ray. I’m afraid to even look at what’s in the blu-ray section. Maybe it’s a movie about a guy named Ray who painted himself a color he couldn’t spell correctly. I don’t know. I don’t care.

And if that’s not enough choice, you can search in special categories like New Releases and Netflix Top 100, and Critics’ Picks and Award Winners. And believe me, I have looked. And we have found some good flicks. A lot of them. We have enjoyed our home movie experience. All in all, Netflix has been a pretty good deal. And I just love to get and send back movies in the mail. Really. Their system is slick. I love it.

You have all the movies you want in what they call an online queue. I call it a cue. Anyway, they send you two movies in two little cool envelopes and you open the envelope and take out your disk and then after your movie enjoyment is over and you’re wiping away your tears of pleasurable movie-going experience you return it in the same envelope and you don’t even have to put a stamp on it. And then they send you two more movies from your queue automatically. Wow! I think this idea will work. Send me money and we’ll start a business. Send me as much money as you can. Your kid can wait until next year for that operation. We have to act fast. I’ll be the idea man, you can take care of the details.

OK, the background is over. Now, for the nowground. (By the way, my spellchecker actually makes little beeping whimpering noises when I write a sentence like that last one. Ah, damn spellcheckers. Spyllchek this!) So I get this email message from Netflix central command headquarters the other day and it says, and I am not kidding here, “You do not have any movies in your queue!” Yes, with the exclamation point. These Netflix guys I can only assume are both incredulous and pissed. What right thinking American moviegoer would have an empty queue? What non-commie flick-appreciating person would do something like this? It is inconceivable. To them. And, I guess, to me.

I really felt kind of guilty. I was paying for something I wasn’t using. And with all their movie-choosing aids, I had failed them. I couldn’t even stoop to the lowest movie-deciding level possible and pick a documentary. Not even a fitness video. I could not find a movie to put in my queue. I was, indeed, queueless. Who knows, maybe at some point I would have had to send back fake empty envelopes, weighted with cardboard, to keep their system going.

I didn’t want it to come to that, so I asked Marge, “Say Honey Bunny Poo Poo Face, which movie would you like me to get from Netflix: Hot Fuzz, The Astronaut Farmer, or Freddie’s Dead: The Final Nightmare.” She said, “How about if you get They Shoot Husbands Don’t They?” I laughed to myself a laugh of the queueless, “Uh, don’t you mean horses?” Honey Poo Poo never answered that. She probably has a hearing problem.

Well, I don’t think I’ll always be queueless. I know there will be new movies made. And I know that I may have missed a few good movies. And I’m sure now that my queuelessness is outted, I’ll receive some good movie tips from you queued-in people, and I just remembered that I forgot to look for 300. How bad can a movie with 300 Greeks throwing scum-suckers off cliffs and sweaty stallions and wenches (sweaty or not) and a lot of screaming and swearing and quaffing of ale be?

I may be queueless but I’m not quaffless.

It's the Thought That Counts (10-18-2007)

A couple of weeks ago, I got up, I took my pills to keep the pharmaceutical industry executives high-fiving, and I sat down at the breakfast table. Marge was sitting across from me and I asked, “You come here often, baby?” She didn’t respond; she just kept reading her paper and eating her oatmeal. Hadley kind of dog-chuckled though.

Before long I took Hadley out to the Hemi for his daily walk. Because he’s older than I am (in dog years he’s 70), I have this ramp that we use to help him get into the van. So he ran up the ramp, and then, as soon as he got inside the van, he started to poop! Inside the van! I’m sorry to talk about oatmeal and poop in the same time frame, but that’s what he did. He started pooping.

So I started yelling. And I yelled and grabbed him and lifted him down to the driveway right in mid-poop. I couldn’t believe it. I know he’s getting old, but I was pretty ticked off. So I called him a bad dog, and an Airedale loser, and then to punish him, well, I had him stuffed. He really looks great. He doesn’t “come” very well, but man can he “stay.”

But I digress. By the way, what is the opposite of digress? Egress? Regress? Ungress? Gress? I just don’t know. And I don’t have time to look it up. And even if I had the time to look it up, I wouldn’t know where to go to look it up. And if you say I can just Google it, I’ll say “Google this!” I don’t know why I’m so hostile.

But to get back to the nondigression: After Hadley and I got back from our walk and before I had him stuffed, I was sitting at my computer. I went into my email account and found an email message from Barnes & Noble. They had this wonderful promo going: If I would buy $75 worth of books, I would get a free Itty Bitty Book Light — an $11 value.

How could I pass that up? It was almost Marge’s birthday and I thought she would love some books and especially love her very own Itty Bitty Book Light. Maybe I could have it monogrammed. Do any of your wives have a monogrammed Itty Bitty Book Light? No, I didn’t think so. And why don’t they? Because you guys don’t love your wives enough like some thoughtful gift-givers I know.

So I hit the button to buy the books and get the free Itty Bitty Book Light. Barnes & Noble said that the charge for the Itty Bitty Book Light would be deducted at the end of the transaction in checkout. I decided to get the $75 gift certificate and everything went fine in the checkout until I was ready to pay. And I noticed that the $11 charge for the you-know-what was still there.

I was a little concerned. But I went ahead and clicked the final purchase and I thought for sure the deduction for the free Itty Bitty Book Light would kick in. Well, like those penis enlargement ads, nothing happened. They charged my credit card for $86 plus shipping.

So I sent Barnes & Noble an email asking them why I was charged for the light. They responded that the offer wasn’t good for any gift certificate purchases. You had to actually buy books on the Internet.

Well, you know me. I’m a mild-mannered guy. I make Clark Kent look like Alec Baldwin. I know I have somewhat of a rep for getting mad, but I only get mad if I’ve been wronged, damnit. And I was wronged here. Really wronged. I was just happily sitting at my computer looking at my email and they, the Barnes & Less Than Noble people, asked me to spend $75. I didn’t go to them. I didn’t ask for a discount. They offered it. And they didn’t say anything about it only being good for online books and not for gift certificates. Nope. They bamboozled me. And I don’t like it. I can be bammed and I can be boozled, but just don’t ever bamboozle me.

Finally, I’m getting to the point of my column. On Marge’s birthday I gave her the gift certificate for the books and I gave her the Itty Bitty Book Light. She kind of liked the book gift certificate. She said it was very, uh, well, uh, personal and intimate. I felt good, even though I could hear a little retching sound in her throat.

Then I gave her the Itty Bitty Book Light and she opened it up and she looked at it and that’s about it. She just kept looking at it. She didn’t say anything; just stared at it. I said it was a light for her books. She could hook it onto the book itself and it would make light, at night, to help her read. She said, “Hmm. A book light.”

I said, “Is that all you have to say?” And she said, “I guess you couldn’t find that turquoise necklace, huh? “

And then I said the stupidest thing I have ever said in my life, and believe me, that is saying something. I said, “I thought you’d like the Itty Bitty Book Light more than the turquoise necklace.”

She just stared at me — kind of like that old mythical chick who turned some dude into stone. That kind of a look.

I said stonily, “You know, it’s the thought that counts.”

And I think she said, although it is hard to hear with stone ears, “Where does your thought come from? Your Itty Bitty Brain.”