3:10 to Yuma and Other Good Times

My birthday celebration just keeps happening. After the Chips'n Salsa runs, we met up with Oakley at Flannery's house. Look behind Oakley and you'll see my birthday present! Look behind Flannery and you'll see her Andy Warhol-informed tomato soup installation. And if you look still more closely, you will see that Oakley, with unflinching attention to detail, has taken care in coordinating his outfit with the prevailing banana motif in the decor.

We went out for huevos rancheros and breakfast burritos at the Gold Street Caffe. Bennie and Flan loved the huevos. Oaks and I wished we were at Flying Tortilla or The Pantry or Tia Sophia's or even the southside Shell station in Santa Fe--all of those places have Gold Street beat when it comes to breakfast burritos. The breakfast burrito was invented in Santa Fe and I believe there's something about the atmosphere here, and the altitude, and the light, maybe even the weirdness of the population, the diversity of spiritual practices, any number of mysterious, invisible factors--that infiltrate the Santa Fe-crafted breakfast burrito, making for a superior taste-bud alchemy. My opinion.

Then we went to see 3:10 to Yuma. Four enthusiastic thumbs up!!!! This movie has it all, all of the features we've come to expect and love in the classic western:
1. SHOOTOUTS GALORE
2. someone pitched over a cliff
3. torture at the hands of vigilantes
4. lots and lots of bleeding from the mouth
5. a heartless villain with an unexpected artistic side, not to mention a photographic memory of the Bible
6. greed
7. heroism
8. unexpected turns of items 6 and 7
9. big sweeping vistas of northern New Mexico (this movie, like the original 50s version, is set in Arizona, but this one was filmed near Santa Fe--part of it looked like it was outside our back door!)
10. removal of a bullet with unsanitary implements,with no anesthesia, and by a veterinarian.

I know I sound like I'm making fun. And I am. A little. But 3:10 to Yuma is a completely entertaining movie, replete with nice plot twists, and asking lots of questions of the nature of good, and evil, and motive, and courage, and personality. And the acting is just about flawless.