For a guy who got laid off earlier in the day, Jeff Vice was a pretty happy fellow Tuesday night.

The Cricket ran into Vice, now the former movie critic for the Deseret News, where he usually does — at a movie screening (in this case, for the exploitation flick "Machete"). He was smiling, beaming even.

Vice couldn't talk about what happened Tuesday at the Deseret News, where 85 full- and part-time staffers were laid off in a major reorganization (which is management-speak for "bloodbath") that included most of the paper's Features staff — including TV critic Scott Pierce, music writer Scott Iwasaki, theater writer Erica Hansen and food editor Valerie Phillips. Non-disclosure agreements were part of the deal for the laid-off employees' generous severance packages.

But Vice assured his colleagues that he was fine, and happy to be doing what he wants to do.

He's still reviewing movies for a variety of outlets: He still has his Thursday morning gig on X96's "Radio From Hell," his perch on the "Geek Show Podcast" with X96's Kerry Jackson, and is a contributor to "The Mediocre Show," a podcast out of Philadelphia.

Also, Vice and Jimmy Martin, the movie critic for SLUG magazine, are launching "The Big Movie Mouth-Off," a movie-review show available on Comcast on Demand. And Vice says he will be a contributor to the movie blog Big Shiny Robot.

And that's all before he has to go out and find a real job.

Good luck, Jeff. Enjoy the journey.