No, it’s not going to win awards, barring Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice and possibly MTV’s movie awards. The fact is, I enjoyed it. The lead was appealingly real in her prickly dialogue, the music was fantastic, and there were lots of scenes that I enjoyed with the guilty pleasure that I usually derive from watching re-runs of McGyver – You don’t want to look like you’re enjoying it as much as you are, but what the hell, the lights are off.

Yes, it gets a lil sappy. It also presents this grand vision of sports utopia that I believe, one day, can come true if we are all truly faithful and make monthly offerings to the Gods of Impossible Optimism.

I have to note the one creepy-crawly element – too many teenaged girls vying for the sweet caresses of Mr. Bridges. It’s not meant to be disturbing, but there’s a twinge…

Ahh, the seedy underbelly of fairytales… I LOVE it. I was confused about the double authorship, however. It felt like Napoli the whole way through.

If you secretly (or not so secretly) loved Sister Act 2, Save the Last Dance, Finding Forrester, Fame, or ANY movie in which an unlikely teacher directs a wayward teen towards self-expression and self-esteem while the teacher learns something about him/herself in the process, this movie is for you.

Yes, it gets corny. Yes, there are vast dance numbers. Yes, oh yes, Antonio Banderas learns how to groove with inner city teens… How could it get better?

Meow, this is just my opnion, but I had this feeling of overwhelming sadness to think of meow I only saw this movie for the first time yesterday. So much of meow life wasted!

I love that Ashbery gently pulls you through the idea of a landscape to get to emotions. You don’t know what he’s doing until suddenly, something resonates in your mind. Very wily, that Ashbery…

I was a wee bit sad about this book by the end, mostly because the beginning was so rich and tightly woven. All of the details were consistent, all of the characters changed and grew believably, and the setting became safe and homey for me, the reader, as much as it was for Dinah and her mothers.

Then, it seemed, Diamant faltered a bit. She took me all the way through to Dinah’s near-wedding, and I was there with her, soaking in the story and the drama and the detail. After that, I was understandably confused by the vagueries – Dinah struggles beneath a deep depression, trauma nightmares, etc. It made sense that the narrative was less descriptive, disjointed, dischordant.

But after that, it was difficult for me to commit to Dinah’s story. The details remained vague, the characters seemed thrown in for the sake of having characters, and the book walked along to its conclusion without me. I felt like I was given plot points in a sort of outline that hadn’t been filled in completely. It made me wonder if Diamant’s true inspiration for the book was driven by the meticulous parallel with the biblical text, and once she departed from that text she was a little frightened by the pure freedom of borderless fiction.

To conclude, I’m glad I read this book, I DO think it’s worth consuming, but I drew the most intense enjoyment from the richness of the biblical text woven with a previously unvoiced experience.

My approval of MySpace is NOT emphatic, despite the exclamation point. I’m getting annoyed with the many, many, many social networking blahdeeblah things out there, and my friends pressure me into signing up for all of them. Friendster, myspace, msn spaces, livejournal, blogger… good god in heaven, make it stop. (Okay, I do swear fealty to Blogger, don’t mean to lump it with the other things.)

I’m mostly excited about MySpace because other people are getting excited enough to emerge from their hidey holes and rejoin the living and get back in touch with their favorite JoBiv. I’m down wid dat, yo.

This woman’s voice is angry, mellow, sexy, evocative… The album has about eighteen tracks on it, genres ranging from hip hop to delta blues. The production – immaculate. The lyrics – intelligent and listenable. My favorite track… honestly can’t pick one.

The text; perfect. The art; perfect. The emotions it drew from me… astounding.

I guess I didn’t count on the fact that this album would make me wanna GO! I put this on while I was sorting laundry and couldn’t help dancing like a happy idiot. (Those are the best kind of idiot anyway.)