CSotD: I usually choose something educational
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I guess it's okay to feature Six Chix twice in the same week if you're featuring a different … um … chick. Stephanie Piro gets the "You must be looking in my windows" award for today's piece.
I have more than once decided to stream a movie and then spent so much time trying to decide on a title that I ended up glancing at the clock and realizing it was really too late to start one now. Not three hours, but that's the exaggeration needed to produce comedy.
Not quite three, certainly.
One of the down sides of having worked in both the creative area and the marketing area is that, when streaming Netflix became more popular than anyone anticipated, I missed out on most of the resulting hysteria because it seemed logical to me that the movie companies would want a larger piece of the action and that Netflix would have to increase rates to make that happen.
Being on a pretty limited budget, I simply switched from "unlimited streaming plus one disk at a time" to "unlimited streaming," so my cost didn't go up though my selection went down.
The disk always felt like homework anyway. I have 141 movies in my streaming queue and I can watch them anytime I want. I have one disk sitting on my desk that I have to watch soon so I can return it and get another one.
Now it's worse because, although I cancelled the "one disk at a time" part, that doesn't take effect until September 20, so now I really have to watch my movie soon because I've only got 17 more days to watch disks and send them back and get more disks to watch.
I get it that, if you really like contemporary movies, giving up the disk option is not practical. I'm not that concerned about current releases, however, and the streaming selection contains a good choice of classic films, though I'll admit there are some obscure titles I've had to get on disk.
For instance, the silent Ben Hur, with Ramon Navarro and Francis X. Bushman, which is a better movie than the famous one with Charlton Heston in it, mostly by virtue of being the one that doesn't have Charlton Heston in it, but also because, although it's very engrossing, you can't help occasionally stepping back and realizing what limited technology they had to work with and saying, "I can't believe they were able to shoot this!"
Also, it was pre-Code, which means one of the things you can't believe they were able to shoot is the scene where the Roman Poohbah has his triumphant entrance into Jerusalem and, just before Ben Hur's sister drops a roofing tile on his head, you have a moment of "wait a minute — were those a bunch of topless girls dancing down the street in front of his chariot?" and, by Jupiter's cock!, they were!
Which brings us to a very sad part of the Netflix streaming thingie, which is that, by Jupiter's cock!, their agreement with Starz ends in February, which will deprive me of "Spartacus: Blood, Sand And Naked People Oiling Their Bodies, Having Sex And Exclaiming 'By Jupiter's Cock! And Then Cutting Somebody's Head Off'"
It's every bit as good a guilty pleasure as Bully Beatdown, which is on MTV and not Netflix, and which doesn't really have an educational purpose unless it is to warn bullies that, if they don't change their evil ways, they might end up getting their asses kicked on television.
By the way, I would pay to watch a crossover of Bully Beatdown and the Jersey Shore, but I digress …
The best part of Spartacus is the disclaimer at the beginning where they explain that it is a depiction of ancient times and therefore they have been forced, in the name of historical accuracy, to show oiled people getting their heads cut off and having a lot of sex and exclaiming "By Jupiter's cock!" though not in that order. You see, it's not just a combination of soft-core porn and insane violence.
It's educational.
It teaches you that people in ancient times were in very good physical shape, and that, if you think overpopulation today is a problem, imagine what it would be like if they hadn't been killing each other off at the same rate as they were having sex.
We'd be up to our tightly muscled, well-oiled asses in Romans, by Jupiter's cock!
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