Still here

I am still here, just not watching movies.

1. I'm still fairly jet lagged, and can't stay awake after 9 o'clock.
2. We haven't gotten around to renewing our Netflix disk account or visiting the video store.

Last night, I started watching Hellgate with Sterling Hayden on streaming. Somehow I had gotten the idea it was a pirate movie. The tiny picture of the poster seemed to show a guy in a Robin Hood hat fighting in front of a ship's rigging. Well, it was a Civil War military cap, and the rigging was the wooden grating over a the entrance to a subterranean prison - the titular Hellgate.

So, basically a prison Western. It looked like a pretty good one, and you've got to love Sterling Hayden, looking stern and strong-jawed whether faced with a horse having trouble with a foal or a pest-infested military hellhole.

But, you know, it was on streaming, and for some reason I just don't commit to watching streaming the way I do to disks. So I watched about 25 minutes - just enough to ensure that he wasn't going to suddenly get on a ship and turn pirate - then gave up.

I do that a lot with Netflix streaming. Partly because the selection has a lot of bombs in it, but partly because of some psychological quirk in me. I don't like to watch part of a movie. I hate to come into a movie after it has started, or stop before it's done. I want to commit to a movie, give myself up to it. Something about streaming feels casual to me, makes it too easy to lose focus and drop out of the experience.

So, Netflix, it isn't you - it's me. I'm feel like I want more than a streaming relationship. I want the commitment that comes with a solid disk in the mail. And I don't know if I trust you to provide that.