This Guillermo del Toro snap was taken in the hallowed aisles of Laser Blazer — the Pico Blvd. location, I mean — sometime in ’00, possibly in ’01. Guillermo had either just finished shooting The Devil’s Backbone or was preparing to do that or…oh, hell, I can’t specifically recall. I could be off by a couple of years. It could have been ’04 or ’05.

Laser Blazer was where my heart was…it was my home, my soul haven. It began in ’88 just as laser discs were starting to happen; it finally died in ’11.