Back to Yahoo! after 7 years

The House of Cards!

Netflix has been playing well-timed cards to stay in the game, it seems … the content cards ...

I’ve been trying to cancel Netflix for a while now...

Why cancel, you ask?

Nothing good to watch, or no easy way to find it without spending a chunk of time, at  which point I’m tired, ready to give up and go to sleep!

Ok - so ready to pull the plug last year, … and along came Lilyhammer - I watched the first season, and … kinda enjoyed it. What happened to it?

Ok - so started watching Breaking Bad - fantastic AMC show - on Netflix. We’d missed the boat on AMC. Being late to the party, my wife and I spent a crazy period of time catching up. We did that in record time and arrived very quickly at ...Season 5. Not on Netflix! OUCH!  Not even available for $$. I’ve never before gotten to the point where I’m desperate enough to pay for a TV show  - right then and there!

No go on Netflix :-(

Switch to Amazon - it wasn’t on Amazon Prime, but it was available for-pay; I coughed up promptly. We’re now ready for the rest of the final season to air - we’ll probably catch it on AMC on Comcast (I pay Comcast more than for food and clothing per month!)

Ready to cut cord with Netflix again …  we watch House of Cards - pretty darn good show. And Sherlock. We’re caught up on the first season of both shows.

Do I stay or do I go? Ask me after the summer!

Amazon, I think has/had an amazing opportunity to upend Netflix, and it hasn’t happened yet. They’re trading content deals - PBS, Dreamworks, ... - and something’s got to give. Amazon has also gone the path of original content - we’ll see what they come up with. YouTube's playing on the sidelines with its own content strategy.

I think Amazon can leverage it’s Prime position,  but again, content is king.

What’s the next card to be played in this house?

The Reunion

Rarely  does a person feel old and young in the same moment! The reunion had exactly that effect. A bunch of middle-aged folks feeling and acting exactly like they'd scratched 25 years off their lives. More juvenile, in fact! The jokes came quickly and everyone laughed, independent of how terrible they were.

Walking around campus alone at 4.30 a.m. with the orange traffic lights on the trees and the deer slowly sauntering, unperturbed, the crickets making a gentle racket in the gul-mohars ... a strong sense of nostalgia hit! The memories were blurred, but the one of the black buck and chital deer herd bounding across from left to right in the moonlight while I was returning from the computer center on my moped "Julie" - an indelible scene carved into my young mind.

Walked to OAT all alone to see that there were renovations ongoing; I could see the spot where I had first spoken to my wife; we have two young boys because of that meeting 25 years earlier. A few words exchanged ... and the world changes!

Met my 3 Idiot friends; 4, 5, 110 of them for that matter. Singing along "All izz well" with the rolling credits at the screening of the 3 Idiots movie the next day at OAT, walking right into the ambush of the warm Madras torrential rain as it soaked us to the skin as we walked back to the Taramani guest house.

Better than it was 25 years ago? It was! 

The only thing in favor of our student days? 

We were younger, our hair was black! We felt like our sons do today?