Recently I trekked north to Salem, MA to visit the Peabody-Essex Museum and see the Joseph Cornell exhibit. Pretty much everybody knows about Cornell’s boxes, but his experimental films were new to me, and a friend and myself sat in the screening room and watched, entranced, a selection of his shorts.

Not that he needs any more publicity for his upcoming film "Sicko," but here's a rough transcript of an interview I had with Michael Moore when he made an appearance in Manchester, New Hampshire to promote the movie

Q: You used to be print journalist. Want to go back to that? A little easier?

MM: I often think about how much I like to write and how writing is more peaceful and sometimes a more personally enjoyable way to spend my time.

Twenty-five years ago Ridley Scott made “Blade Runner,” initiating the trend in adapting the works of sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick that continues to this day. Soon, it is rumored, he’ll be working on an adaptation of a different kind, starting what might be another trend in moviemaking and one that would seem right out of one of Dick’s bleakest, satiric dystopian visions: he’s making a movie out of “Monopoly.

I first started noticing this trend with the commercials. Here’s just one of the more obnoxious ones, for Coors beer:

Wife in bathroom checking to see if the strip for her pregnancy test has turned blue: “Honey, I think this is what we’ve been waiting for…”

Oafish husband checking to see if label of his beer has turned blue, indicating it has reached the perfect temperature for consumption: “Yes, I think it is!”