No Country for Old Men, Narrow-Minded Moviegoers, and Shaggy-Haired Emo Movie Store Employees

So we finally watched "No Country for Old Men."

Yeah, I know it's been out for a while.

You know the last movies Rob and I saw in the theater?

"Be Kind, Rewind" and "I Am Legend."

So not only has it been an eternity since we went to the movie theater, but it has also been an eternity since we rented movies.

Typically we visit our local Hollywood Video for our fix as we are poor and don't want yet another monthly bill to have the luxury that is Netflix (but I assure you, we will get it back someday).

Most times we rent movies on a Friday because we're pathetic and don't have the energy to go out drinking on a Friday night (this reserves the drunken debauchery for Saturday night- then you can spend Sunday hungover and be fine on Monday instead of ruining your weekend).

This time we went on a Saturday night.

BIG mistake.

Not only was it packed to the gills with screaming children and their parents attempting to shut them up with a substitute babysitter called "The Water Horse," there were some of Gresham's trashiest.

Lovely.

We fight through the masses and realize it's been a long time since we have seen any new movies- before we reached the "M" section of the New Release wall, I already had four movies in hand.

Anyway, we go to check out, and the shaggy-haired emo kid rings us up and had the most ridiculous sales pitch ever.

He looks at the movies, then looks at us and says, "Okay, what you need to do right now is go get two sodas, two popcorns, and a candy, and you will actually save money and get free disc protection."

That was my shortened version of his sales schpeil. It went on for a few minutes, and as he was blabbering, I realized why we waited so long in line, and why the poor sods behind us were also subject to a long wait:

This guy was a moron.

His sales pitch would have failed miserably in the first place because:

a) I'm trying my damndest not to drink any soda (although I am still horribly addicted to caffeine),

b) I'm trying my damndest not to eat any crap (I normally grab a bag of those oh-so delicious Sour Patch Kids- Fruits, and I had refrained during this trip),

c) and we weren't looking to buy any more shit. We just wanted to rent our movies, including running the "risk" that one of the discs is scratched. That makes me wonder, what if Hollywood Video employees intentionally scratch their DVDs in an attempt to sell more of the disc protection?

Another reason to go back to Netflix.

I just wanted to smack the shaggy-haired emo kid after his pitch, which made me feel totally old.

We get home and choose "No Country for Old Men" first.

By the way, our dog (a black pomeranian puppy named Marley) hates horses...on TV. There was a scene with Tommy Lee Jones on a horse, and Marley just went apeshit- we had to eventually put him in his crate with a blanket over it so that we could make a two-hour movie actually under three hours.

Once the movie was over, I had to watch a few episodes of "Futurama" before going to bed because I would have had the most fucked-up dreams regarding pressurized air and pageboy haircuts.

Seriously- Javier Bardem would NOT have been as creepy (okay, he would have still scared the fuck outta me) without that weird pageboy haircut.

Before I had seen the movie, I noticed a lot of blogs and bulletin posts on MySpace and heard a lot of bitching at work about the ending. I'll post my take.

****WARNING: SPOILER ALERT. Haven't seen the movie? End here*******

I think people were so pissed off is because generally we like closure. And many people hate things that have no "endings."

I'm sure people wondered:

-What Carla Jean called what side on the coin toss
- If Anton (Javier Bardem) killed Carla Jean at her house or not
-What happened to Anton after the car accident
-If Ed (Tommy Lee Jones) was a target for Anton

I didn't wonder.

But there were questions raised during the movie, too, like did Anton come back and kill the gas station attendant, or was that scene in the movie just to reveal the odd conversational nature of Anton (and other factors)?

That's probably why people also got pissed off at the series finale of "The Sopranos."

That's also why so many fucking sequels make more and more money each year.

Yuck.

Sometimes (and as a writer, I can relate to this) you simply don't know how to end a piece. Endings are funny- sometimes they leave more of an impression than the majority of the piece.

So sometimes you just end it. Monty Python was famous for this- they thought punchlines would cheapen some of their sketches. And punchlines would have.

If any of the other movies we rented are good or interesting, I just may be compelled to post about them here.

Or not.