Today’s Rant Is Brought To You By The Letter N

N as in Netflix.

There’s nothing I like better than sitting in the dark, watching some awesome, absorbing movie.

Back in my hearing days, I’d, on occasion, take a day off from work just to do this exact thing. I recall a loverly afternoon spent in the Nickelodeon (gone now) down off Kenmore Square, eating hot real butter popcorn, watching Repo Man.

There was another afternoon spent at the Orson Welles (also gone. sigh) on Massachusetts Ave between Central and Harvard Squares, watching Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. That was the movie which turned me on to Robert Altman. It was like a flood lamp was switched on in my brain. It was also the flick that made me keen to see any movie Cher was in. Shocked me to no end -- she had serious acting chops.

These are just two of so many days of sitting happily in the dark. Harold and Maude, Eating Raul, Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise and Down By Law,  the absolutely brill concert film Stop Making Sense (which I saw no fewer than ten times in the theaters!) and Spalding Gray's monologue performance, Swimming to Cambodia -- both directed by Jonathan Demme. John Sayles’ Return of the Secaucus 7, (The Big Chill was the big, slick Hollywood remake) and Brother From Another Planet. Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It.

I know I’ve mentioned my movie and movie experience love before and the fact that now I have to find either foreign (subtitled) or closed captioned flicks or I have to wait and rent the discs. I’m fine with the rental deal and was signed up with Netflix. Jen and Oni have a big screen (everything’s relative -- it’s bigger than a postage stamp. To me that’s big) and Netflix has a pretty vast collection so I should've been golden. Right?

Ah, nope.

Imagine this -- Jen, Oni and I have done all the prep for our traditional late Saturday afternoon of snacks and movies in their darkened living room. There’s crab rangoons, guacamole, roasted seaweed squares and wasabi peas for me, black bean chips for them. Jen and I have our wine, Oni his cocktail and we are ready to sink into the cinematic reality.

Oni pops the platter into the player and begins all the set up crap -- finding the language/captioning selection and all that -- only to find NADA. No captioning at all.

Mega disappointment!

Now, I know the special features stuff is never captioned (and, boy-howdy, that’s annoying as all hell. I love all that Making Of stuff). I'm not expecting it.

BUT!!!

We’ve rented no fewer than six flicks in the last six months that did NOT have any closed captioning. Not only that but Netflix doesn’t give ANY indication no warning, nothing, that the picture show doesn’t have ‘em.

Bad enough that the movie/documentary/whatever isn’t captioned but Netflix can’t even note this in the DVD's description? ‘The fuck? This is a pretty basic thing, doncha think? I mean c’mon, not ALL customers have beautiful, ‘luxe hearing. There's a fair amount of us who need the damned captions!

Netflix has a handy dandy ‘what up? was falsch ist?’ section. I’ve gone to it. There’s nowhere to tap in that I don’t want to be charged for the rental since there was NO captioning AND no indication, anywhere on the site, of this most sad lack. No warning. You get, like, four options of things that could possibly be amiss. That’s it.

What am I -- invisible now that I’m deaf? Are my needs irrelevant and extraneous?

There’s a customer service ('service'...snort) phone number. Jen called twice. Both times she was told that it’d be over an hour wait to speak with a live human. Yeah, like ANYone has the time to sit on hold for an hour plus.

Christ almighty!

So I quit Netflix. Yeah sure, they’re not gonna go broke without my four rentals per month but at least I won’t have the astronomic aggro anymore.