Quick drive-bys (before a $200 backyard cab ride)

— Advice to Kathy at Relapsed Catholic (on THE SINGING DETECTIVE) … don’t mess with this sort of stuff. It just attracts attention to them.

— A fine James Lileks bleat on two film-related topics — what he sees as the spiritual emptiness, or more precisely have-it-all-ness, at the heart of the latest Matrix movies (near the end: “they want God, but they want to design him on their own screens with their own programs by their own terms for their own needs”); and a thorough fisking of Harry Knowles and the dirty, unpretty things that happen when fanboys try to talk politics and theology.

— A shakeup at the Anti-Defamation League, reportedly over THE PASSION OF CHRIST. According to the Jewish magazine Forward, some people are getting antsy over the confrontational approach the ADL has taken over Mel Gibson’s film and how it could damage inter-religious dialogue with the Catholic Church — a point made several times before by yours truly.