I've had a lot of free time over the past week and a half, so it's probably time to combine two major recurring themes, review and dots:

• I saw Bruce Almighty while I was in Jersey. I have often been told that I over-analyze movies, which in my experience is what many people tell you if you think about them at all. While I was in California, thanks to Tim, Kristan, and Dana I saw a lot of big-budget Hollywood fare, a lot of lower-budget Hollywood fare, and just a lot of Hollywood fare in general. I'd like to think that I got better at just sitting back and enjoying relatively dumb films for what they are, especially big summer action movies and comedies. But I couldn't do that here for one simple reason: what's an agnostic supposed to do with a movie that is all about prayer and Godstuff? Touched by an Angel spent less time talking about God than this movie does. Of course, it's a watered-down Hollywood version of religion that's all about self-actualization, "helping others", and making people feel good in the most generic sense--this is not the nasty Old Testament, smiting type of Bruce/God by any stretch. But if you can shut your brain off better than I can and enjoy Jim Carrey's antics even if you've seen them 20 times in the commercials, then by all means go see this movie. At least Stephen Carrell was kind of funny in very limited screen time, most of which you've also seen in the commercials.
  
• I also finally got around to seeing Chicago last Thursday. This was a lot of fun for a couple of reasons. One is that as much as I usually fight watching them, I almost inevitably really enjoy movie musicals. (This, by the way, is just one more piece of evidence that--barring the part about sleeping with men instead of women--I'm basically gay.) Secondly, this was the first time I'd ever been the only patron for a movie in the theater. I'd always wonder how that worked; it turns out that, since I was late, I found out--as soon as I bought my ticket, the person at the front counter radioed the people in back to tell them to start the program, since someone had in fact shown up.
  
• Right before I left for Jersey I cleaned up the last of my "run through The List by picking out the really short ones" books, John Fante's Ask The Dust. Fante is the stylistic forefather of Charles Bukowski, who ended up championing Fante's writings later in his life. This is a slim but vivid story about Arturo Bandini, a poor young writer whose modest successes and larger failures, both as a writer and as a lover, send him back and forth from excruciating agony to dizzying heights. Fante seems to be making fun of his own emotional excesses, and the effect makes for a sympathetic and memorable character once you are sure that he is truly over the top. Mostly, though, this is just a story of bumming around cheap Los Angeles hotels, streets, and dives in the 1930s. The book is accessible and easily readable and is a lesson in writing with a highly emotional style, even if the story doesn't amount to much.
  
• Ride With Me, Mariah Montana is the final book in Ivan Doig's Montana trilogy, including the previously reviewed English Creek. Doig brings protagonist forward from the 14-year-old on the verge of adulthood and World War II, to a 64-year-old on the verge of old age and Montana's Centennial, an occasion for both celebration and consternation about the future of rural America. Doig is a new favorite of mine, and this book did little to change that. Jick, daughter Mariah, and her ex-husband Riley travel around 1989 Montana covering the Centennial for a Missoula newspaper--Riley as the columnist and Mariah as the photographer. Jick provides and drives the Winnebago. Family and state history interweave as we learn the dynamics of each, and as layer after layer falls into place the tale becomes richer and richer as a story and as a history lesson. One gripe is that much of the information from English Creek needs to be re-presented, but that's unavoidable in a book such as this one, because not everyone will have read the original. I highly recommend both.
  
• James Hunter's Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America was a disappointment to me. I do believe in the concept of a quasi-war between rural and cosmopolitan, conservative and (for lack of a better term) "progressive" America, but certainly not in the simplistic and basically religious terms presented by Hunter. Hunter focuses on religion--not that different religions are on different sides, but the orthodox and progressive factions in a variety of churches (Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish). He also denies class any important role in this struggle. I have been thinking a lot about the concept of culture wars as I try to position myself intellectually, as a lefty, urban-oriented po-mo type who often feels like no one out there is really speaking for me. This book, sadly, wasn't much help.
  
• I also just read Garry Wills' John Wayne's America, but the workday is pretty much over, so more on that later.