Author: DOuG pRATt

Netflix Discards Discs

January, 2004 I became a Netflix customer.

Three years later, Netflix gave me access to its brand-new streaming service.

Netflix Instant Watching

With streaming barely out of the starting gate, that August The Boston Globe profiled the expansive Netflix disc distribution center that serviced the area.

How Does Netflix Do It?

In February, 2009, exactly two years after having my first taste of Netflix streaming, the service had expanded enough to justify buying a first generation Roku player. Half a dozen streamers have come and gone from the house since then, with two Rokus and a Fire TV stick remaining.

Rockin’ Roku

In September, 2011 Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announced Qwikster, a premature move away from discs.

Hastings’ hasty retreat from DVD

In April, 2017, one month after retiring, I ended my Netflix disc subscription.

Notflix

The final few days of Netflix’s physical media service, ending what it began, are here. Slate has a good opinion piece about it.

https://slate.com/culture/2023/09/netflix-dvd-rental-service-ending-movies-queue.html

Life in Black and White

Warner Brothers wasn’t the only movie studio with a social conscience in the 30’s. Imitation of Life, from Universal, was one of two 1934 films with Claudette Colbert and Warren William.

Aunt Jemima pancake flour is the basis for this story about class and race, with a devastating portrayal of a black girl who passes for white. There is also a Freudian angle, with a girl falling in love with her mother’s fiancé, who represents the father she never had.

Automotive Gridlock

A key point of the striking auto workers is concern over the push to all-electric cars. GM sure looks stupid for killing, and literally destroying, the EV1.

My concern about, and hope for, electric cars is, they could end up being an interim solution, like compact fluorescent lights were on the way to LED. CF was a mistake, leaving us with a lot of mercury to worry about. It would have been better to wait for LED, the way the decision was made to wait for digital HDTV to be ready, rather than approving analog HDTV. The battery problem is far from being solved, and with no essential breakthroughs in applied physics on the horizon it probably never will be.

There is also the essential question of whether or not the electric grid(s) can meet the charging demands of all those cars. The time it takes to charge a car battery means people will be lingering for much longer at highway rest stops, leading to serious congestion problems, as well as longer travel times.

Offering rest stop swap-outs rather than charging, as I’ve seen proposed, will never work. People won’t risk losing their expensive new battery for an old, defective unit. So we’re stuck waiting for a ubiquitous network of well-maintained charging stations.

Until hydrogen or refined sea water can be used reliably as fuel, I don’t see myself going all-electric. My next and possibly last car, that I expect to buy sometime in 2027, will be a hybrid, if that’s still available as an option.

Stripped Down

Oh, the irony of Gannett/USA Today celebrating the history of comic strips, as seen in today’s editions.

https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2023/09/24/the-gannett-history-of-comic-strips/

It’s ironic because the occasion of their celebration is the gutting of their comics selection across all papers, paring it down to just 34 strips. Arlo & Janis is not one of them! Grrr…

https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2023/09/24/the-gannett-34/

The Washington Post has dropped two of the strips I enjoyed following with the WP app on my Fire tablet, Snuffy Smith and The Phantom. What all of this means is, everybody who loves “the funnies” should be a paying subscriber to Go Comics and Comics Kingdom.

https://www.gocomics.com/

https://comicskingdom.com/

Houseroy History

This is some deep “inside baseball,” except it’s about comic books. Funky Flashman is Jack Kirby’s bitter parody of Stan Lee, and Funky’s flunky is Houseroy. He’s a dig at Roy Thomas, who is depicted as being Smithers to Stan’s Mr. Burns, without the gay overtones.

Funky Flashman and Houseroy, with JACK’s characteristically idiosyncratic DIALOGUE putting the emphasis on the WRONG word.

My feeling is that Jack misrepresented Roy, who was pivotal to Marvel’s success during the second half of the 60’s, into the first half of the 70’s while Kirby was at DC. Roy talks about Funky and Houseroy, 50 minutes into this 2-hour interview.

I’m still shaking my head in disbelief from the time five years ago, when Roy and my buddy Bismo teamed up for this bit of fun craziness.