I was recently gifted several issues (Volume CXLV, Numbers 3-6) of The Saguache Crescent, the newspaper of record for Saguache, Colorado, for 145 years and counting. (Still just 35¢! Cheap!) It has a delightful engraved, four-column masthead of the sort they just don't make anymore.

I've been told that natives (by which I mean the descendants of white settlers who now populate the region) pronounce "Saguache" much the same as I pronounced the name of the ubiquitous Swiss wristwatch of my 1980s childhood: Sa-watch. Wikipedia says there's a bit of confusion about what exactly the word means in the original Ute language. It's either "sand dune," "green place," "blue earth," or "blue water." Maybe all of the above? In any event, it sounds like a nice place. No wonder people have been writing and reading about it for so long.

Wikipedia also alerted me to the fact that The Saguache Crescent is the only known newspaper in the world still printed on a 19th-century Linotype machine, something that's pretty obvious when you have one in your hand. Back before you watched the news on your phones, kids, they used a keyboard to assemble physical letter molds into lines that became the printing slugs that were inked and applied to paper. Because the final slugs were a single block of lead, typos—which might have been your fault but just as easily could have been the fault of a finicky machine, something no computer will ever admit to—were forever. It's charming in hindsight.

Once you go looking, you'll find plenty of web articles explaining that The Saguache Crescent is run by one man, "DEAN I. COOMBS, Publisher," as a labor of love. He prints one paper a week for his modern community of about 500 people, obviously reusing slugs as often as possible. All of which explains why all four editions of the paper in front of me contain the same misspelled headline:

"VD Love Lettesrs at the saguache public library."

And I know I'm old-fashioned, but I'm going to blame the lingering nostalgia inspired by this Old West newspaper for causing me to wonder why in the world the Saguache, Colorado, public library is getting love letters from Venereal Disease.

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Let's go ahead and put these three together:

6/2576. Francis (1950)
11/2581. Francis Goes to the Races (1951)
18/2588. Francis Goes to West Point (1952)

Once upon a time, one of my grandmothers expressed surprise that I'd never seen the Francis the Talking Mule movies. (Honestly, I don't remember which grandmother, and they're both long gone now so I can't ask. If I had to guess, it was probably Granny; she was a lifelong devoted fan of the "picture shows," even if she thought they got too coarse from the 1970s onward. In hindsight, I think she had a point.)

Thanks to TCM, I finally made the effort to watch the first three. (There are seven in all, but Donald O'Connor and Chill Wills are only in the first six.) I'm happy to report that these three are indeed quite enjoyable. I particularly enjoyed the talking mule providing secret assistance to the West Point football coach. The highest complement I can pay is that they make me want to read the book that inspired them.

More to come.

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"Bother!" said Rabbit. "He's gone out."

He went back to the red front door, just to make sure, and he was turning away, feeling that his morning had got all spoilt, when he saw a piece of paper on the ground. And there was a pin in it, as if it had fallen off the door.

"Ha!" said Rabbit, feeling quite happy again. "Another notice!"

This is what it said:

WATCHING OLYMPICS
BACKSON
BISY
BACKSON.
           W.S.

"Ha!" said Rabbit again. "I must tell the others." And he hurried off importantly.

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My favorite barbeque joint is celebrating 100 years in business, so I painted them a birthday card:

That logo was designed by David Boyd and has been part of their street sign since at least 1992 when I worked my first ever summer job there as a curb hop, a position they have since eliminated, maybe because they had a hard time finding qualified curb hops. In my case, I just wrote whatever the customer said on my pad and handed it to the employee behind the register who re-wrote the order for the kitchen. Not that I didn't try; I think they just didn't trust me to take the orders correctly, and in all honesty, they were probably right. In addition to being my first job, it was the first job I was fired from.

(Don't feel bad for me. As lowest man on the totem pole, it was also my job to clean the barbeque pit every night. Being fired from shoveling grease out of an oven was an undisguised blessing. And I've since been fired from many jobs, so it would prove to be good training.)

Here's to one hundred more!

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Reset the numbers! Grab a Coke! Here are quick reviews of the movies watched by me for the first time in 2026, part one of many:

1/2571. The Pirate (1948)
You just know from the moment that Gene Kelly's arrogant actor is introduced that this film is going to struggle landing its complicated love triangle, but it does all right for itself, specifically because the Nicholas Brothers show up at the climax to do a great dance routine and make you forget about the silly melodrama. Those guys could dance.

2/2572. Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (2025)
Inferior in most ways to the original, but everyone involved seems to know it'd be foolish to try to top a classic and instead trusts the audience to be satisfied enough with hanging out once again with old friends. I was. (Bonus points for surprise performance by a Beatle!) Thanks for all the laughs, Rob Reiner.

3/2573. The Bad Guys (2022)
Perhaps I've played too many role-playing games and watched too many heist movies, but I don't think a movie could be any more predictable in structure. To its credit, the target audience is children, and invention isn't really the point here so much as fun visual style and the chummy camaraderie of the voice actors.

4/2574. Too Many Husbands (1940)
What a mess! This farce was later remade as My Favorite Wife which handles the material somewhat better by swapping the genders, prolonging the secret, and adding children. In fact, go watch that one. It's just better all around.

5/2575. The In-Laws (1979)
Generally speaking, I do not find Alan Arkin's trademark "comedically" exasperated film persona funny, and that held true for most of this movie as well. But the scenes in the diner and on the airfield really landed with me.

Parallel to the road? Hmm. What an odd place for a billboard.

More to come.

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