So now I'm both old and uncool. Oh well.

So what is cool and who gets to decide? I suppose it’s a hopelessly subjective question;, cool is obviously in the eye of the beholder. I guess age also has a lot to do with it:, toddlers think mom is cool, fourth graders think snot is cool, and teenagers, depending on the day, think either nothing or everything is cool. People my age, however, seem to think it’s cool to go see It’s a Wonderful Life in a real theater with friends and family.

So that’s just what a small group of us did this last weekend at the Lafayette Theatre in Suffern, which is one of the rapidly diminishing number of original vaudeville houses that have been saved and still show first-run movies as well as “classic” films. On Saturday, though, they did a whole holiday thing, that included a Laurel and Hardy silent short accompanied by a Wurlitzer-organ-playing-guy, and a reading of A Visit From Saint Nick which was followed by, go figure, a visit from Saint Nick himself. You know, an actual fat guy in a red suit., Dopey? ,Sure, but the kids ate it up. I’d have preferred a few Rockettes myself, but that’s a different story.

Anyway, the main feature was It’s a Wonderful Life, which I, (and, as it turns out, much of the audience), had never actually seen from beginning to end. And yes, I know it’s a movie that has managed to polarize the masses like no other; ,some people love it with the same sort of blind allegiance they feel towards puppies and rainbows, and then there are those who feel waves of maudlin-induced nausea just thinking about George Bailey and Bedford Falls.

I of course fell firmly in the nausea camp, if only because I’m usually a curmudgeon and proud of it. ,(I occasionally consider myself smug bastard as well, but I usually save that for special occasions.) , Anyway, as you’ve probably already guessed, seeing It’s a Wonderful Life on a big silver screen while surrounded by cheery, unassuming folks really does make all the difference, and before I knew it the snow was falling in Bedford Falls, George was back with Mary, and I was sniffling along with everybody else.

All right, so there’s nothing cool about it, but it’s still not a bad way to spend an afternoon. ,And I got to see Santa, so there.

=