Three thumbs up for Netflix

Thank goodness for Netflix. If you don't know what Netflix is, you probably (a) don't watch movies much or (b) are not married. Netflix has been one of those small but important things, like dual-control electric blankets, that has saved our weekend nights. We used to spend a good portion of those nights at Blockbuster, trying to agree on a movie. Knowing we were in for a long night (even before watching the movie), I'd bring along hot chocolate, make popcorn, set up the Foreman grill, etc. (inadvertently attracting other customers: "Oooh, free samples?"). And then we would begin The Hunt for the Perfect Movie. By the end of the night, I would be ready to settle for The Movie That Does Not Make Me Throw Up.

He'd see a movie called "A Very Long Engagement" and remark, "Oh, look, someone made a movie about us." Whereupon we would start a lively discussion of why it had taken him so long to ask me to marry him, with him countering that once he had, I had dragged out the process so long that coworkers started taking bets on whether he would indeed get married. At which time I would promptly leave the romantic comedy section and head for the drama section, particularly the movies where wives plot to inflict severe injury on their husbands' person.

Meanwhile, in the new release section, he would say, "Hey, this sounds good" and hand something to me to read, but before I had gotten through the first sentence of the synopsis he'd find another one. "Or this one -- yeah, this one definitely looks better." I never had time to read a synopsis in its entirety, the result being that the snippets I read all merged into one movie: "Chaos reigns at the natural history museum, where the swashbuckling Captain Jack Sparrow, a struggling single parent determined to make life better for brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, battles dinosaurs and with the help of a beautiful penguin, is evicted from his apartment amid fears of a disastrous tidal wave that could wipe out an undefeated high school basketball team..."

After the first few times of this I took to following him around, looking only at the movies he expressed an interest in and giving my hearty approval to such gems as "Grave of the Fireflies" and "Cowboy Bebop." At this point I did not care what we watched; I wanted only to escape before the next hit came out and was on the shelves and he had yet another decision to make.

And so when he told me about Netflix and how they send movies right to your door, without your having to set foot in an actual rental place, I knelt down and kissed the ground. Now our movie disagreements are restricted to battling for better placement in the online queue of our respective movie choices. And fighting over who gets the electric blanket while we watch the movie.