Say what you will about former New Yorker staff writer Garrison Keillor—I find that my fellow displaced Midwesterners often turn against him with particular vehemence—but his Saturday sermon (there's no other word for it) on the spiritual thrill of lawnmowing was an ecstatic and impish pitch worthy of Professor Harold Hill or Tom Sawyer. Poetry, and nothing less. But NPR's sooooo bourgeooooooois, you whine. Fine, when Air America's arts and culture coverage catches up to its political commentary, we'll talk again.

Speaking of religious quests, go see The Holy Girl, a film about a pair of lips stung by a whole hive of honeybees, a theremin, ghost stories, a really great-looking heated pool, ear problems, and girls with long hair. In Argentina. Someone from the showing before me complained fruitlessly to the manager that it was "slow-moving." If the days you remember lounging around with your high school squeeze seem slow-moving to you, don't see this movie. If they seem hot and sweet in retrospect, then see it pronto before it leaves the theater. You want these lips to be larger than life. (Not yet reviewed by The New Yorker, but when it is, I hope it's by David Denby—I can't bear for teenage star María Alché to get the Kirsten Dunst treatment by Anthony Lane. "If I were Mr. or Mrs. Alché, I would be slightly worried that my radiant daughter is able to feign the effects of reciting religious texts and embracing her best friend with quite such convincing ease...")

Parodies of "Ya Got Trouble" [Forbidden Broadway 2001; The Simpsons, etc.; via Endresnet]

Categories: Keillor, Movies, Lane