VLC media player fails to start

When I run the command "vlc" in a terminal window I get the following error:
VLC media player 0.8.6c Janus
The program '.' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)'.
  (Details: serial 477 error_code 11 request_code 146 minor_code 5)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

Prior to this morning I had no trouble with VLC. The error message makes sense with the fact that this morning I installed (as the update mechanism recommended) an update to xorg. Here is the line from my apt log:
Preparing to replace xserver-xorg-core 2:1.3.0.0.dfsg-12ubuntu8 (using .../xserver-xorg-core_2%3a1.3.0.0.dfsg-12ubuntu8.1_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement xserver-xorg-core ...

It is probably also worth pointing out that gxine and gmplayer both work with no problem and I have not seen any other applications (so far) having problems aside from VLC.

Here is some information about my system and versions:
System: Dell Latitude D620

OS: Ubuntu 7.10 Desktop with all recommended updates installed (compiz installed, but off)

Version info: Linux version 2.6.22-14-generic (buildd@terranova) (gcc version 4.1.3 20070929 (prerelease) (Ubuntu 4.1.2-16ubuntu2)) #1 SMP Tue Dec 18 08:02:57 UTC 2007

VLC: version 0.8.6c with wx python GUI (wxvlc)

Video card: Intel 945 GMA

xorg info (taken from log file:
 X Window System Version 1.3.0
 Release Date: 19 April 2007
 X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0, Release 1.3
 Build Operating System: Linux Ubuntu (xorg-server 2:1.3.0.0.dfsg-12ubuntu8.1)