Too mellow to rant

It has been an extraordinarily good couple of weeks in popular entertainment. My favorite contemporary Christian singer-songwriter, Sara Groves, has released a beautiful new album full of insights and lovely music, "Add to the Beauty." I have been playing it constantly in my car while driving between work, home and the movie theater, where last night I took in "Serenity" for the third time. Sweetie still hasn't seen it, so I expect a fourth viewing, and perhaps a fifth or sixth while I take a break from my full-time job in the next week. A good film to me is like a roller coaster ride: "Can we go again, Ma? Please, please?"

Add to that the Brian Wilson concert I attended in August, where he performed my new favorite piece of music, "Smile," and it's been an astonishingly great couple of months. It's hard to work up a good rant against the burgeoning police state when you're distracted by so much beauty - OK, "Serenity" is a brutal, violent flick in spots, but "beauty" describes its wonderful structure, its heart, its terrific actors doing justice to a terrific story and script.

And finally, add this insidiously addictive Web site where James Leroy Wilson sent us the other day. I'm too sedated to work up a good rant over evil corporate and governmental empires and the trashing of the Constitution - you don't suppose "they" intended this?