It’s Oscar night, and I’m sitting in a former funeral parlor in the middle of nowhere Texas. The bar looks unwelcoming from the outside, but surrounded by dust, tumbleweeds and the promise of alien lights flickering on the horizon, there isn’t much else to do in Marfa once the sun sets.
Dimly-lit chandeliers hang from the lofty ceiling at Padre’s, as weathered farmers saddle up for cold cans of Lone Star and a surly bartender croaks confirmations back at patrons as they order.
Billy Crystal takes the screen and I crack open the local porter; a can of Big Bend Brewing No. 22. Malty and crisp. It’s the end of February, and I forgot how temperatures drop in the desert, so I bristle a little bit as I take a sip. I wonder how the dead take their beer, and if the parlor director would appreciate Octavia Spencer’s award-winning performance in The Help.
