Fall of a Sudden

The first day of Fall wasn't fooling around in Santa Fe. It's cold here now!

Snow tonight means time to break out a nice warm wolf sweatshirt.

Western Movie Night

It was a beautiful day in Santa Fe... FOR A WESTERN MOVIE NIGHT WHERE WE SERVED BARBECUE!!!

We had run into royalty troubles with one of the movies we were going to show so I had to make a last minute stop for something different at the best video rental in town.

Casablanca has a huge selection and is itself huge. Its massive floor space is its biggest advantage compared to the overrated Video Library. Video library has a pretty good selection too, but it's so tiny that if any other person is in there you have to spoon them and breathe on their neck to look at the shelves. Also, there is so little shelf space that only the spines of videos and (worse) DVDs face out. This is exhausting to browse compared to the more common (and better) practice of displaying the front of the boxes as Casablanca does. Additionally, Casablanca's layout is much more sane and has sections like comedy, classics, westerns, etc. instead of obnoxious and unhelpful sections like "British Cult". I often wonder if the ideal video store wouldn't just be alphabetized from one end to other with no divisions besides the new releases. Literature sections of bookstores do this. It prevents bookstores from having to decide what genre Pale Fire belongs to and would prevent video store managers from telling me that all black and white movies are classic and that any slightly clever movie is a comedy.

The better and smarter genre divisions reminds me that Casablanca is also unpretentious. Although their catalogue is deep they also have the room and inclination to stock more major titles and new releases. This means you can go to one place to rent those movies and to get artier stuff - instead of having to make a decision from the start about whether you'll be going to Video Library or Hollywood. Also, since you aren't competing as intensely against other "serious" movie fans you're less likely to discover that Out of the Past has already been rented.

Add to this longer rental times and the option of renting 7 videos for 7 days for 7 dollars (or 4 DVDS), and Casablanca becomes an obvious winner. It has lousy hours, but they mirror the lousy hours of Video Library so no demerit.


Back in the Great Hall, Oliver, Joe, and Emily help set up the table of food in the back. Scott and Levi helped as well and Daphne was typically expert at producing a snowdrift's worth of popcorn. We had brownies, rolls, tortilla chips and salsa, potato salad, popcorn, sarsaparilla, and five different kinds of sauce to accompany many pounds of barbecued chicken, pork, and beef brought in from the new Whole Hog Cafe here in Santa Fe. It was delicious.

Because of the newly arisen and ambiguous legal issues I won't say what movies we showed, but they were excellent. Two classic westerns, one from the forties one from the fifties, both featuring Mr. Marion Morrison. Hooray for watching good movies on a big screen, surrounded by other people also enjoying themselves, and eating as much really good food as you can. And all for free.