I have become one of those people whom Hollywood hates. I am one of those people who don't see as many movies as I used to because I have too many other ways of entertaining myself.

I used to try and see a movie at least once a week, usually by myself because I've found it easier to see movies when you're the only one going to see a movie. Or at least a movie you want to go see (think about it, how many movies over the years have you not seen because you waited to go see it with friends and your friends could never get organized enough to all see it together). But lately, I haven't been seeing as many movies as before, mainly because now that I have TiVo and a souped up DVD hookup, I'm seeing other things.

I would like to say it's because I can't take the previews and the commercials and the cell phone chattering, but I don't mind that stuff that much. In fact, I would have to say it mainly comes down to general laziness-- it's so much easier to flip on TiVO than hop on pub trans to go to either the Metreon or the AMC 1000.

Well, that's not entirely true exactly. What it is is that while there's a bunch of movies I want to see-- like Munich and Syriana and the Edward Murrow movie-- I'm not dying to see them. Yeah, I'd like to see them, but why see them when I could see something I'm dying to see.

Take this weekend. I was planning on seeing a whole bunch of movies as it was the perfect weekend for it-- rainy, lazy and hungover, but I didn't want to see them nearly as much as I wanted to watch season 1 of "Battlestar Gallactica" on DVD. So I watched Battlestar Gallactica, my new fave show, instead.

None of this, however is the point of all this blathering. What is,however, is the perception that comes with staying home and watching DVDs as opposed to going to see movies. See, going to the movies gets you out of the house, it's active, it's considered social even though it's basically leaving home to do something you can do at home, stare at a screen. Yet seeing a movie is considered social while watching DVDs are considered a sign of anti-social loser-dom.

Which brings us to my new baby, the laptop. I got the laptop partly because I could take it to coffee shops and do my computing stuff there. Because staying in the apartment to write and surf the Web while listening to music is considered a sign of anti-social loserdom while walking to a coffee shop to surf the Web while listening to music is considered being social and active. Think about it, if I said- I just hung out and played on the computer all day, that sounds like a lame time. If I said I hung out at Muddy Waters and played on the computer all day, that comes off as sounding, "wow, that Jon is always so social and never at home." All this despite the fact I'm not actually doing anything that I couldn't do at home.

When I brought the baby out to the coffee shop for it's first time on Friday, I walked into the coffee shop and saw the entire coffee shop jammed pack with people, all hunched over their glowing PowerBooks, with their headphones on, typing away. Everyone was "out" and "being social" yet nobody was actually being social. Unless, of course, they were using their time to go online and do some sort of internet networking thing which means they were being anti-social around people they were in close proximity to while being social with people who aren't in close proximity to them. I even saw a couple in there, both staring not at each other, but at their respective laptops.

In other words, I stayed in the apartment for most of the weekend watching DVDs and playing on the computer. What of it?

Side note- what about all those people who still look down on TV and say that they only do NetFlix. Then when everyone talks about some great TV show, they always just sniff and say something like "oh, I'll just get it on NetFlix and watch it that way." As if by watching a TV show when it's on DVD somehow makes it infinitely more intellectual than watching a TV show when it's actually aired on TV. Like if I watch "Arrested Development" (RIP) when it's on, I'm one of those lazy, unintellectual TV watching clods who represent the worst of America. Yet if I were only to watch Arrested Development when I order it on NetFlix, that would make me a soulful artiste making a stand against BushCo America.