My wife and I hardly ever get to the

movies anymore, between my work schedule and the difficulty of

coordinating babysitting with her mom’s work schedule. Typical parent

stuff. We finally had a movie date for the first time in months last night, as was my wife’s birthday. Went to see Casanova. Cost of

tickets: $17. Cost of wife’s chicken salad sandwich and small bottle of

water: $12. Cost of my medium soda and a medium popcorn: $8. Cost of

never getting back those two hours of my life: priceless.

As we left the crappy movie, Julie said, “And that’s why we love

Netflix.” Hear, hear. You can’t replace the experience of seeing a film

on the big screen by watching it at home, but you can get close enough

for me. For people like us, it costs too much to take a chance on

seeing a mediocre movie. You risk that with Netflix, you’re out little

more than the cost of your time, and certainly less than a latte at

Starbucks. Mind you, we wouldn’t have felt the sting of the cost of

this evening nearly so much if we’d actually enjoyed the movie, but how

many movies these days are actually all that enjoyable?