George Clooney and community

I know that "Avatar'' is a wildly popular movie, but we thought going to the theater last night before dinner and three hours before the show was pretty slick and would assure us of getting tix.

Think again. The box-office lady told us it had been sold out since the day before.

Backup movie was "Up in the Air,'' which was terrific and actually had some relevance to the sermon in church today.

The movie is about a guy whose job takes him around the country firing people for execs who don't have the guts to do it themselves. He spends most of his time in hotels and airports and in the air.

More importantly (I'm putting on my critic's hat here) it's about the futility of much of life without loved ones to share it with.

In church today, our minister talked up joining various committees and other church groups as a way for people to increase their feeling of connectedness to the other members of the congregation. (I know this doesn't sound particularly religious on the surface, but this is, after all, a Unitarian-Universalist church.)

Sitting in the pew today, I got to thinking about a friend who almost can't utter a complete sentence without airing his disgust for New York State government and the taxes, fees, bureaucracy and other irritants we've all become familiar with.

Yet although he is now retired, he has no immediate plans to move out of state. He likes it here and wants to stay because he likes the people, he said.

And that, in the end, counts for more than anything.