It's My List Dude.....Let me worry about it.

So here I am ladies and gentlemen, making my first, and hopefully not last, contribution to my good friend The Doctor's little slice of cyberspace. We've know each other for awhile now, and though our tastes are often quite different, we both enjoy the hell out of a good movie. So after a much appreciated invitation, here I am, and here goes.

I don't like crowds. Let's just get that out of the way right off the bat. I'm not even talking about a football stadium full of 66,000 people, although if truth be told, they drive me nuts too, but even 30 or 40 people waiting in line to buy movie tickets drives me crazy. It wasn't always like this. In my younger days, I would bust my tail to get to the theater on opening day to see the a new release. I mean, this is a guy who saw Star Wars Episode IV when it was released the first time in the theater 12 times. So I've had my day. However, those days of opening weekend box office are few and far between these days. Instead, with the DVD explosion of the last decade, my own in house home theater complete with 92" front projection, and my own popcorn machine, I find myself venturing out less and less and opting for a home viewing.

The perfect companion for my growing anti-social tendencies came into my life in 2000. When Netflix came along, I was ripe for the picking. I've always been the worst possible video store rental customer. I take 30 minutes to an hour sizing up my options, I can never remember when a movie is due back, and I tend to be more on the Art House/Independent Film side of the aisle. So when I saw Netflix advertised in the now "online" only Premiere magazine, I signed up immediately. We were a marriage made in heaven. In those early days, they were still a little sparse on titles. They boasted 1 million DVD's, but I still found myself coming up empty on some searches. But as time passed, and they got bigger and more popular, those days quickly disappeared. So now they are my go to place for movies. I still get out to the theater from time to time, but less than 10 times a year for sure. I did see Alice in Wonderland on opening weekend in IMAX-3D, but we can just chalk that up to a perfect storm of Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Tim Burton, and a rare free Friday.

So after much back story and a little more than a bit of beating around the bush, we finally come to the subject of this post. What's the best way to use Netflix. This question came up as The Doctor recommended a movie to me over the weekend. He recommended "Let the Right One In" and insisted that I should move it to the top of my queue. I checked, and "Let the Right One In" is way down the list in #203 on my Netflix queue. So should I move it up? What about all those other movies in between? For me the queue is the best part about Netflix. I don't have to go to the video store and make value judgements about which movie is more worthy of my attention or which movie I might like better. When I read about a movie in Entertainment Weekly, or see A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips discussing it on "At the Movies", I'll head to my computer and add it to my queue. This is almost always months before the movie even has a release date on DVD, but Netflix has it listed and "Saves" it for me. This little bit of magic is what keeps me sending them my monthly payments.

I'm a sporadic movie watcher. I'll watch 12 movies one month and then go the next two without even watching one. But Netflix keeps them all neatly organized and waiting for me. So I tend to keep my list in the order of their addition, and not in order of how interested I am in seeing the film. If it's on the list I want to see it, so does it make sense for me to keep moving stuff around. My thought has always been, "I'll get to it". Sure I miss out on a conversation here and there because I'm usually a year or more behind in seeing a movie. Is that truly so bad? Without those conversations, I'm usually able to form my own opinion of a movie without a great deal of input. Even if a movie is all over the internet and television, and takes front and center in office conversations, by the time I get around to seeing it, most of that stuff has subsided and I'm left on my own with the film. I get to decide what I think. But the biggest thing is that I can just forget about it. I watch a movie, I send it back, I get another movie. I don't have to decide. I don't have to value one over another. I don't have to do anything. For me that's perfect.

So to the Doctor, I humbly say, "It's on my list, I'll get to it eventually". And to the rest of you I look for input. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you think my argument to be flimsy and trite. Well let me hear your alternative. How do you manage your list? How do I decide? What criteria do I use to order this list? But most importantly, "When it comes to stewed prunes, is three enough, or is four too many?"