My Billings Gazette

The San Antonio Spurs and the Sacramento Kings squared off in an NBA game on Saturday night at the AT&T Center in San Antonio. No big deal, except thought it would be amusing to release a live bat in the arena.

The bat swooped down around the court, delaying the game as it was diving around the players. Enter Manu Ginobili.

With one fell swat, the bat was dead, and was removed from the court by the tall Argentinian. Much more efficient than the Joker.

The last Blockbuster video store in Billings has closed its doors.  If you are looking to stock up on your VHS collection, the store opens at noon on Sept. 15th to sell of the remaining stock.  Just a sign of how times have changed and those that dismiss technology are almost certain to fail.
Video rental barely had a 20 year run, however I do remember the days when you would rent both the VHS movies AND the VCR for a weekend, and invite over every one of your friends to watch.  It was that special.  Now I can sit at our computer in our office at home and watch movies from my DVR in the other room, or simply download them directly.  I remember when our family got a VCR, and how exciting it was to watch 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' whenever I wanted.
We stopped renting videos and went to pay per view about three years ago.  The reason was we could never find the movie we wanted to rent; the new releases went fast.  We would walk around the video store for about 30 minutes then go home empty handed.  We might watch a pay per view movie once every six months, so any kind of membership seems useless.
So farewell video rental.  You died an early death, but the memories live on.