Napoleon Dynamite is, well, dynamite

Modest, yes. Extremely funny, too. If you're not sick of cinematic depictions of high school yet, you really ought to go see the new movie, Napoleon Dynamite. My wife Kate, ever the connoisseur of geekdom, insisted. Briefly: Napoleon is an incredibly gangly, nerdy kid going to high school in Idaho. The movie follows him through about a year's worth of his life. I laughed VERY hard. One movie I'm not going to see: Open Water. Didn't see Blair Witch, and I've been afraid of sharks since I was five. No thanks. And since we're on the topic of fear, I just finished a draft of this comic novel; it's getting read by the braintrust (Kate, Jon, and a selected few others) even I type. Or maybe they're just going to *say* they read it. "Oh, yeah, Mike. It was...really good." Oh well, even it they hate it I have a whole bunch of new (used) books to comfort me: last night Jon, Kate and I went to the annual Oak Park Library Book Fair, which is a booklover's paradise: 50,000 books at low, low, low prices. Fifty cents per paperback, hardcovers for a buck. Truly awesome--Oak Park is my adopted hometown, and things like this are exactly why...And yes, I saw a copy of Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody nestled in among the humor!