It’s been a while since I broke out the pee test, my movie rating system that basically ascribes a movie’s quality to the length of time needed at the urinal after exiting the theater. The longer the duration, the better the flick. Suffice it to say that, while watching “Snakes on a Plane” on Saturday night, my bladder was rarin’ from the moment that first snake struck that first woman’s boob during the mile-high-club scene. By the time of the second bathroom snake attack, it was positively throbbing.

I know, I know, too much info. Like the brilliant conceit of the movie, as executed in a full-length feature film, it sounds like a little too much of a good thing. But I’m here to tell you that — despite what naysayers Ana and Katie will claim — “Snakes on a Plane” is wonderfully, stomach-spasmingly, 5:20-pee-minutes-long good. Not all that funny, I admit (though the guys in back of us were enormous Keenan Thompson fans, and cheered for the last ten minutes straight as he landed the plane), and not enough to get my fellow moviegoers to throw gummie worms at the screen (a la Rocky Horror Picture Show), but still worthy of all the praise the Joel Siegel, the New York Times, and Entertainment Weekly have been heaping upon it.

Incidentally, if you don’t see me writing any movie comments for a while, there’s a reason: Seeing “SoaP” unwittingly put me five movies in the hole with Ana. It’s an accounting I don’t fully agree with, but I’m not appealing until something else hits the theaters worth seeing. Until then, I’ll suck it up and watch my five “Trust the Man”s. My bladder could use the rest.

When Ana and I moved from West Philadelphia to Westchester, NY, we took for granted that there were certain set, understood, inailiable lifestyle changes involved. The cost of living would go up, but so would our square-footage and yard acreage. The cultural amenities would be few and far between, but the parking spaces would be plentiful. And perhaps most obvious and certain of all, we would be more insulated and would only see minorities once every other week, but we would be much, much safer.

Where in the hell did we get those crazy ideas?

Now, a year and a half into living here, I can confirm that not a single one of those assumptions about life in the suburbs (or at least, the second parts of the equations) are true. Yes, the cost of living went up, but our we have no yard to speak of and a slightly smaller apartment that costs twice as much as our Philly one did. Parking is nonexistant — so much so that we sometimes walk for an eternity to our cars. And worst of all, the crime here would make even the most hardened Christopher Miller car thiefs nervous.

In our building we recently got a letter that there have been break-ins. I regularly read about violent stabbings and other crimes at nearby malls. And most alarming of all, one of my colleagues at work in White Plains has had his car tires (all four) slashed on repeated occassions. In my entire time here, I’ve only seen a handful of police, and the only times I’ve ever laid eyes on them is when their staking out a speed trap, sobriety checkpoint, or pulling over someone for making an illegal left-hand turn. In other words, crime may be out of control, but all we’ve got here is a bunch of traffic cops.

On the eve of a visit from our West Philly friends, Andy and Katie, it’s got me wondering why the suburbs have such a utopian rep, and why the inner city get’s such a bad rap.

Update: OK, turns out I posted literally a few hours too soon. Our West Philly friends Andy and Katie visited us on Saturday, and when they woke up to drive to Westchester, suprise!, their Jeep was missing. The car and the GPS navigation system inside it were stolen. So, for all my griping and comparing the crime here to the crime there, it appears that the only real, concrete conclusion is that there’s crime just about everywhere. And LoJack is looking like a smarter and smarter investment every day.

Like many, after the recently foiled Gatorade-and-disposable-camera plot, I’ve been waiting all week for the other shoe to drop in the war on terror. Say, for example, no more flights to Lisbon in September. Or no more monkey torture jokes in the terminal. Or, shudder to think, no more snakes on the planes.

As it turns out, the real aftershock is far worse: No more mentos and diet coke. Not just on planes, either. No more mentos and diet coke, period. The Homeland Security dept, Michael Chertoff, and Alberto Gonzalez have spoken:

“The war on terror is an ongoing thing,” added Attorney General Gonzalez, “we adapt and we improvise and we adjust our tactics. Americans have always been willing to make sacrifices during times of war. Reluctantly, we will institute tomorrow a ban on all carbonated beverages in America as well as suspect over-the-counter breath freshener preparations. Bad breath is a small sacrifice we can all pay in support of our troops overseas.”

Many thanks to brother-in-law Dan R. (as opposed to Dan Q. and Dan S.) for pointing me to this story.

Even since seeing Little Miss Sunshine a week ago, I’ve been trying to figure out why I liked it so damn much — why a movie that didn’t really have any jokes, and even at times felt like a James L. Brooks movie, could feel so fresh and moving and funny. And the thing is, it was so much better than Spanglish or As Good As It Gets. But it wasn’t the pitch-perfect dysfunctional characters that made it truly memorable. Nor was it the the broken-down yellow VW bus that carried them on their cross-country journey. No, after much pondering, I’m quite sure that it was the one character who I’d never heard of before, the pudgy little girl who’s determined to win the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pagent. Steve Carell, Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, and Alan Arkin are all great, but it’s Abigail Breslin who helps the film transcend the category of heartfelt ensemble comedy.

Not since I watched a little kid named Spencer Breslin carry a Bruce Willis movie called The Kid has a child actor seemed so brilliantly, unimpeachably innocent. And wouldn’t you know it! — Spencer’s little sister is none other than Abigail. To add to my affection for the Breslin family, it turns out that they have a connection to my hometown, Summit, NJ. In this month’s Rachael Ray mag, Spence recounts a day in his eating habits while visiting his uncle in NJ and stopping in Summit:

We always bring my uncle fresh mozzarella and roasted peppers from Russo Mozzarella and Pasta (212-254-7452), an Italian market near our apartment in Manhattan. Then we make two important stops in Summit, New Jersey, where my mom grew up, first at Natale’s Summit Bakery for the best cake and Italian bread. (I had my 14th birthday cake made there with the Grateful dead logo in the center.) Then we get sandwiches at the Towne Deli. My mom and I love their special Sloppy Joe sandwiches: deli meat, coleslaw and Russian dressing on three pieces of rye bread. These are the best sandwiches I’ve ever had. My dad likes a roast beef sub and my sister, Abigail, always gets a plain turkey sandwich on plain white bread.

I’ve long suspected that Towne Deli Sloppy Joes, which I too subsisted on for much of my childhood, gave me an almost supernatural cuteness. Of course, I never capitalized on the cuteness at the time, but current child actors of New Jersey, I hope you’re taking notes.

When I heard that Mel Gibson’s anti-semitic Malibu rant — or at least, an impersonation of it based on the arrest report — has been turned into a ringtown, I felt inspired. Not so much by the words uttered by Mr. “Sugar Tits,” but by the speed with which our buddies on the Net manage to turn celebrity scandal into a downloadable piece of pure brilliance. And then it hit me: If we can have our Motorola’s tricked out with the rantings of California’s most notorious religious yahoo, surely we can do the same thing for New York’s most evangelical pentecostal.

And speaking of Stephen Baldwin, wouldn’t you know it, but I still have recording of him giving his testimony at the New City Gospel Fellowship. I quoted some of the kookier parts in my profile of Brother Stephen in my article in last month’s Rockland Magazine, but now, in honor of his soon-to-be-released memoir, The Unusual Suspect, which — get this! — is going to be excerpted in Esquire. Anyway, I’ve posted three of your very own downloadable ringtones from Baldwin’s Pentecostal sermon, here:

1. “Die for Jesus”
2. “I can do everything”
3. “A complete and total stranger came into my house”. Enjoy!

And for those interested in Steve-O’s born-again coming-of-age story, here’s a piece from the NY Daily News with some choice excerpts from the book:

He’s perhaps a smite too zealous

Actor Stephen Baldwin is the born-again, George Bush-loving Baldwin brother, but who knew he’s also a fan of threesomes in the bedroom?

“I like to ask friends of mine, happy couples who seem to have a pretty good marriage, I will ask them, ‘How’s your sex life?’” Alec Baldwin’s little brother writes in a new book excerpted in the upcoming Esquire mag. “They will say something like pretty good or okay or no complaints here. Here’s what I tell them: Imagine taking a healthy sex life and inviting the power of God into that exchange.”

Baldwin also seems to prefer a muscular — make that violent and aggressive — form of religion.

“I’d always imagined Jesus was the sweet, cuddly, loving dude, and suddenly I find out he makes Conan the Barbarian look like Conan the wimp,” he says. “He didn’t come with a guitar singing Kum Ba Yah. Jesus brought a sword to the earth, and he is still swinging it.”

As for Baldwin himself, “God has called me to go and make disciples of the youth of America. That is what I am going to do. And if you try to stop me, I am going to break your face.”