A couple things:

1) Watched Big Fish the other night and for all the hype that it got, I don't think that it really lived up to it. Ewan McGregor was good (as always) but a little too Forrest Gumpy and it's always a plus when he keeps his pants on in a movie. It was very much a Tim Burton movie in lots of ways with touches of Sleepy Hollow and even Danny DeVito practically reprising his role as Penguin from Batman Returns. Worth a watch but I'm just not sure I ever need to see it again, which was kind of depressing because I was hoping for so much more.

2) I'm reading this book called Nickel & Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. It was mentioned on a listserv that I'm on, but Heidi picked it up at Borders independent of that and it just makes you want to be mad at somebody somewhere because I can't believe people have to live like this. Basically, the author (who is a Ph.D.) goes undercover to see what it's like to work in what would typically be termed "low-end jobs" that pay a "living wage." She quickly finds out how much living can actually occur on a living wage--and it ain't much. Heidi finished it a few days ago and she just couldn't put it down. She compared it to a train wreck--something that you don't really want to see but can't help but keep watching. It's really sad and it's really not a piece of leftist propaganda because she is very disappointed with Democrats for not doing anything about this when it's supposed to be "their" issue. (She did all her research in the late 90s during the waning days of the Clinton administration.) An interesting read.