Steve Lopez: I’m going back to the video store

I remain three birthdays shy of the big 6-0, but recent developments in the world of modern technology have made it impossible for me to deny the obvious.

I have officially hit old age.

Part of me is still fighting it. For instance, I check Facebook now and then because I don’t want to be crushed by the stampede, like some slow-footed lug at the running of the bulls. But when I’m honest with myself, I can’t figure out why I should spend a minute looking at photos of family pets posted by people I haven’t seen in 25 years. Or why I should buy an iPhone 4, which would only guarantee that the vastly superior iPhone 5 would be on store shelves the following week.

The thing that’s really done it, though — the thing that makes me want to stop tearing up the AARP solicitations and look for a pay-in-advance discount on cremation — has to do with Netflix.

First, the movie rental company jumped its rates. Excuse me? I have finished entire bottles of wine in less time than it takes to move from one movie to another while browsing on their irritatingly slow website. And does Netflix have any idea how many times one of their discs has stalled in my DVD player because another customer drooled Junior Mints onto it or had Edward Scissorhands place the disc into the machine?

Then Netflix announced that it was splitting the company in two. To squeeze more money out of us, naturally, but also to quadruple the chance of my having an aneurysm.

They’re going to divide their customers by how they prefer to get their movies, requiring them to register on separate websites. One is for customers who still want to receive scratched movies in the mail, and the other is for those who prefer streaming. If you want both, you have to register at both places.

I’d say there’s a 50-50 chance that if I’m forced to squeeze two more passwords into the memory banks, as well as figure out how to stream a movie, an eyeball will pop out of my head. I’m capable, you see. It’s just that I’ve lost the will.

Look, I got lucky many years ago and guessed right between Beta and VHS, but I don’t like my chances this time. If you go with movies by mail, the selection may soon shrink because some movie companies will no longer make their flicks available to Netflix for reasons I don’t care to know about. If you go with streaming, you’ll also have a limited inventory to choose from.

Let me tell you something, Netflix. I would sooner blow up my house than have to locate a router, figure out what the router is or understand what it does. And as for Hollywood, I’d rather make my own movies than go through this kind of torture, and believe me, I couldn’t do much worse.

Frankly, I see only one solution.

Dump Netflix and go back to the Stone Ages.

That’s right, video stores.

Yes, I know they’re nearly extinct. But so am I.

Unfortunately, I don’t love the few holdouts in my neighborhood. At one video store, the lady at the counter is nice, but the selection is slim. At another, the professionally aloof clerks have always struck me as only slightly more accommodating than the staff at the DMV.

Recently, I wanted to rent one of the great achievements in American cinema, “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” and didn’t care to wait for Netflix to deliver damaged goods. But the store with the nice lady didn’t carry the 1966 masterpiece, which was an Oscar nominee for best picture. And at the other store, an indifferent clerk told me “Russians” probably doesn’t exist on DVD.

So I checked around, and a place called Videotheque in South Pasadena had it on DVD. They said they’d hold it for me, even though I wasn’t a member.

Can I tell you something?

Videotheque is the answer. The store, on Mission Street near the Gold Line train station, is a celebration of film, with classic movie posters lining the walls as if the store itself were a museum. And they’ve got everything at Videotheque, where owner Mark Wright and his staff seem to love both movies and customers.

On Monday, Wright told me the store has had its challenges with the rise of the mail-order and downloading rental business. But he’s betting that service and selection count for something, and Wright said business has picked up since Netflix raised its rates and dropped the streaming plan on customers.

“Maybe we’ll have a rebirth” of stores like Videotheque, said customer Ann-Marie Rounkle, a nurse who used to have a mail-order service but prefers the more personal experience of hands-on browsing.

“First of all, you have so many things here that you’d never find anywhere else,” said Didi Hollingsworth, a psychology teacher who likes British comedies and dramas, among other things.

A longtime customer, cinephile Alan Lawrence, was helping owner Wright point out movies that Netflix doesn’t carry. Louis Malle’s “Black Moon,” for instance, and Orson Welles’ “The Magnificent Ambersons.”

And writer/commentator Sandra Tsing Loh was in Videotheque, singing the praises of a good, old-school video store over the alternatives.

Loh said she is “tired of wriggling on my belly under the couch to plug and unplug” blinking cable-control boxes in her bundled package of TV and Internet services.

“Perhaps I overreact, but I almost killed my boyfriend with an ax last night over an iPhone charger,” she said. “That’s how bad it is! That’s how bad!!!”

I’m with you, sister, except that I never got an iPhone.

steve.lopez@latimes.com