I went 800 miles to see a $40 movie

I went to Sundance!

Because we had to do this in the most ridiculous way possible, since that's how we roll, Walter and I went on the last weekend (when everyone had left) and drove (800 miles) and got tickets on the internet ahead of time ($6/each service fee) and chose a movie playing in Ogden (1 hour + from Park City). We r smahrt.

But the driving was pretty cool because we got to go through four states on the way (CA, AZ, NV, UT, aka caz-no-VUT) and after Las Vegas it was pretty damned beautiful for most of the way with purple mountain majesties and all that. This little lovely is from Virgin River Canyons:


We arrived at Ogden at night for our first movie and had a lot of time to kill, so we got to walk around in the pea soup fog, have dinner, and I even found a coffee in Ogden, UT! Of course, it was from inside the movie theatre, so I don't think it counts. No coffee shops in Ogden (except one place in an alley behind the theatre that promised to be open due to a whiteboard in the window promising "1/2 price lattes on Friday after 5!", but was not open at all. Maybe that's a result of the horrible economy -- rather than renege on the 1/2 price, they just closed up and ran away). I have a theory that there are mostly no-caffeine Mormons in Ogden, thus no Starbucks; could this possibly be true? Anyway, proof:


Then after coffee-hunting we still had time to kill, so we wandered down to Fat Cats and bowled:


and skee-balled:


and air hockeyed (no picture because of my shame at losing so disgracefully, including scoring ON MYSELF about six times).

We saw "500 Days of Summer" at the incredibly gorgeous Peery's Egyptian Theatre with the live organ playing ahead of time, and the movie was awesome. I have total crushes on both Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon Levitt and they both delivered, yay, movie!

Then we finally made our way to Park City and hung out with friends and saw some more movies and ate food. Thank you, Park City, for giving us a winter wonderland while we were there.

We went to see the thoughtful and charming "Arlen Faber", written and directed by my old sketch teacher John Hindman (meaning: he's not old; he taught Olde Sketch Style). We joined the crowd of post-movie-and-Q-and-A fans talking to him and shaking his hand, and I said hello and congrats, and thankfully Walter was there to capture this illustrious moment with his cell phone camera:


Boy, I'll treasure that photo!