Summer Time woke up and stretched extra hard. She got out of bed, went to the window and pulled back the curtains with a smile.

“What the *#@%!”, she shouted in frustration. The view outside her window was of a slightly soggy Saturday morning.

“This is why I hardly ever visit Seattle! Maybe if I hang out for awhile, the fog will burn off and I can go outside and be warm.” She flopped back on the bed and  looked at the clock.

“I need something to do,” she mumbled. “I know! I’ll go get some movies from that store my friend Moon told me about. Moviecycle in Ballard! She said they have all kinds of cool flicks for real cheap.”

Summer hopped up and assessed herself in the mirror. Spiky gold hair, cupcake pajama bottoms and a Care Bear t-shirt (Sunshine Bear…of course).  She nodded to her reflection in approval and threw on her yellow Converse and Rat City Roller Girls hoodie. Keys in hand, she booked it to Ballard.

The cute little store was  nestled between a gourmet food shop and yoga studio. Darth Vader stared at her through the window as she walked in the open door (pausing for a moment to check out the bin out front…$2.99! Wow!).

The store was funky and covered in tons of movie posters while mellow tunes flowed from the speakers. The clerk smiled and greeted Summer pleasantly, asking if she had any questions.

“I am gonna browse, thanks though!” Summer shared a smile with the friendly clerk.

The new releases caught her eye, all for only $9.99. Book of Eli was supposed to be really good. And that new Michael Cera movie, Youth in Revolt was hilarious according to Moon. Kristen Bell in When In Rome. She is always a cutie. Summer was stoked to see they also had Legion and The Lovely Bones. Two movies she hadn’t caught in the theater. Cool!

Ooooh, speaking of cool. They had a whole wall devoted to cool things! The Wall O’ Cool! 4 Quentin Tarantino movies, 2 Monty Pythons, All About Eve, Fight Club, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Fargo. Summer laughed as she discovered they had The Care Bears Movie,  Labyrinth, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Classic kid flicks.

Wow! Look, there’s Death at a Funeral (the cool British version), Donnie Darko, Chasing Amy, American Splendor (didn’t Harvey Pekar just pass away? Paul Giamatti did a decent job playing him.), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Superman, E.T., Knocked Up…..the list of cool titles just kept going.

Summer felt overwhelmed.

Luckily, the clerk helpfully pointed out that she could get three cool movies for only $20! Anything $8 or less and she would be golden.

Summer grabbed The Care Bears Movie, The Darjeeling Limited and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (that one was always her favorite…the scene with the monkey brains just makes her laugh and gag all at the same time…it’s great).

Summer looked longingly at the rest of the store ( “TV shows! Foreign films and stand-up comedy? I will have to come back.”)

The clerk rang her up quickly, checking each disc to make sure they were in good shape. A smile and her change and Summer was out the door headed home to veg out and watch movies until it was time to go outside and shine.

The End

(By the way, you get that she is fictional and we still have those cool movies on the shelf. Just wanted to make sure that was clear…..)

We have gotten a lot of really awesome stuff in lately! Check out today’s haul:

Classic westerns from Sam Peckinpah: The Wild Bunch in the 2 disc special edition and The Ballad Of Cable Hogue.

Cult-comedy favorites like The Blues Brothers, Cheech and Chong’s Up In Smoke, Repo Man, The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The Eighth Dimension and Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas in the Criterion Collection edition.

Cult-horror classics, too! Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive, An American Werewolf In London and some serious madness in From Beyond. And let’s not forget the camp sci-fi classic Robot Monster, featuring a … gorilla in a space helmet! We also have The Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection Volume 2 featuring Dr. Cyclops, Cult Of The Cobra, The Land Unknown, The Deadly Mantis and The Leech Woman.

And that’s not all! Get a little mystery in your life with the amazing The Boys From Brazil or perhaps you’d prefer Fargo or maybe American Psycho?

Whatever floats your boat or blows up your skirt, we’re sure to have something for you, so come on in and see us!

That’s right, the beloved director of such films as Ran, Sanjuro, Yojimbo, Dreams, The Hidden Fortress, Rashomon and The Seven Samurai would be one hundred years old today if he were still alive. We don’t actually have any of those titles, so I will instead distract you with this dazzling display of cinematic treasures we’ve just uncovered.

Monty Python fan? We’ve got you covered with all 14 zany crazy volumes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus! Also, Monty Python And The Holy Grail, The Meaning Of Life and Terry Gilliam’s mind-bending Brazil. And speaking of mind-bending and Terry Gilliam, how’sabout the Criterion Collection version of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. Yup, we got that.

Music fans may be interested in Tenacious D: The Complete Masterworks, The Clash: West Way To The World, The Essential Clash or maybe Pink Floyd: The Dark Side Of The Moon, a 2003 release that takes an in-depth look into the creation of one of rock’s timeless recordings.

Maybe you want to get your 80s on: The Breakfast Club, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Fletch and the sequel Fletch Lives, Animal House and one of my all-time favorites: The Blues Brothers.

But wait, there’s more! Rob Zombie’s House Of 1000 Corpses, the two-disc super special edition version of Se7en, Army Of Darkness, Soylent Green, Logan’s Run, The Andromeda Strain (a movie that terrified me when I saw it as a youngster) First Spaceship On Venus/Voyage To The Prehistoric Planet (double feature) and the mother of all crappy movies: Plan 9 From Outer Space (includes The Ed Wood Story with Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, Ed Wood’s wife Dolores Fuller and even Vampira herself!).

Want more? Good! Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson and Lauren Bacall smolder in Key Largo, Charlton Heston does what he does best in Ben Hur, Jack Nicholson chews it up in Five Easy Pieces and Chinatown, Paul Newman broods in Hud and The Hustler and Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn and Omar Sharif star in the sweeping epic Lawrence Of Arabia in a two-disc super-special limited edition.

Not finished just yet, but I’m getting there: Fan-favorites Die Hard, The Road Warrior and Fight Club, plus The Last Of The Mohicans and the classics The Conversation (later remade as Enemy Of The State) and High Noon starring Gary Cooper. A couple anime’ titles: Amon Saga and Appleseed, a tongue-in-cheek look back at “educational” films of yore in Social Engineering 201 (which touches on classic 16 mm films shown to schoolchildren from the 1940s to the 1970s like It Must Be The Neighbors and What To Do On A Date), and finally, a blaxploitation triple feature: Bad Azz Muthaz featuring Black Punisher (Jim Brown), Tattoo Connection (Jim Kelly) and Kid Vengeance (Fred Williamson). Ohhh yeah.

There’s a lot more than that, but my typin’ fingers hurt, so come on in and take a look at the Wall O’ Cool and see what strikes your fancy.