Breaking Up Is Hard to Queue
Hi, Kirsten. Yeah, it’s me. How are you? I’m pretty miserable actually. Yeah, the new place is shaping up. I miss you. You still there? Oh, O.K. We have to talk. About the Netflix queue. Maybe you should delete yours and we both start over.
I set up a new account for myself like we agreed. If you want to keep our queue, fine, but we have to split it up. It’s only fair. We’ve been over this. Because if we don’t it’s going to take that much longer for both of us to get the movies we both really want. This is something I’ve learned from you. About sharing. Like how you wouldn’t share the DVD player you bought for our apartment once I moved out.
Oh, I got a new one. It’s pretty sweet. There’s an eject button. It also comes without the ring on the top where you insisted on putting your hot chai while you were loading a different disc, but I think I’ll manage.
Battlestar Galactica is mine. You were never really into it, and we were halfway through the second season before, you know. Before we broke up. Yes I know it was my idea. But I used to watch the original series and you made fun of me.
It’s important for me to finish the season. Since we broke up I’ve been looking for closure. Every night I’m up with insomnia. It’s hard to concentrate at work and I’ve been eating a lot of buttery popcorn. Battlestar might give me the closure I need. Although it’s probably another “To be continued …” Like our friendship.
Did anything come today? 24? I can swing by later and pick it up. You said you didn’t like watching it alone. You aren’t alone? Who’s Richard? Oh. Yeah, I suspected. I saw it coming when you started renting all those Godard movies. I’m glad you’ve moved on. Me too. In the movie of my life your scenes have been written out completely. You’re part of the expository voiceover.
I printed a copy of the queue after you changed your password. George Clooney backwards is so obvious. That’s not stalking! It was our queue. Not yours or mine, not Richard’s. Ours. Nobody else was meant to see that.
You shared our queue? With who? Great. Just because something has an RSS feed doesn’t mean it belongs out in public. My mom could have seen our queue. Yeah, she isn’t like your parents. It’s not like we get on the phone and chat about the Coen brothers. I mean not since The Ladykillers.
I didn’t show the queue to anyone. That is trust. I wanted to protect your. The world might not understand your Adam Sandler infatuation.
What about Steel Magnolias? Wasn’t that yours? No, you’re confusing me with that ex-boyfriend who cries. Are you deleting it? I mean, might as well release it back into the wild. But you’re deleting it, right?
I have no idea how Showgirls got on the list.
Why would you possibly want the director’s cut of Blade Runner? Richie wanna see it? Yeah, I’m sure he’s seen it a hundred times with his friends from film school. Well I’m sure he wants to see it on Blu-Ray. I’ve been waiting to see it for years. I basically have been waiting to break up with you before I see it.
You want to know why? You don’t know how to watch movies. You talk. You grade papers. You get up halfway through to make popcorn and you make fun of me for taking notes. You don’t like Raging Bull because it involves boxing. Why watch a movie if you’re going to fall asleep in the middle? And genre doesn’t rhyme with “Tanya.”
If you want to keep Blade Runner, fine. But I’ll rent Princess Bride. Then I’ll scratch it and send it back. And then when they send me a replacement I’ll say it was lost in the mail and request another copy. I will take that fucker out of Netflix’s circulation.
If it weren’t for me you wouldn’t even know about Netflix. Do you even know how to delete movies from the queue? Sorry. That was condescending. It’s simple array math. I can explain it to you. Just copy and paste a current copy of your queue and I’ll show you how it works.
Remember how you always used to order disks of TV shows out of sequence? We used to joke about how it was like magical realism. It’s not really, since magical realists don’t summarize last week’s episode at the beginning of each chapter. I guess it really wasn’t that funny.
We probably shouldn’t talk about this anymore. It’s painful for both of us. Just call me back when you’re ready to talk about our TiVo suggestions.
