Dean and I saw "Little Miss Sunshine" last night. What a cute little movie, definitely fun. A dysfunctional family is on a road trip with their little girl Olive, played by Abigail Breslin, who is going to compete in a beauty pageant (shades of Jon Benet, but in a low-budget middle-America sort of way). Said family includes an onery coke-snorting grandfather, played by Alan Arkin. A suicidal Proust-scholar gay uncle played by Steve Carrel. A failed motivational-speaker/author father played by Greg Kinnear. A vow-of-silence Nietzche-reading goth teen whose dream is to join the Air Force, played by Paul Dano. A chain-smoking super-mom who tries to hold them all together, played by Toni Collette. And Olive: the precious/precocious nine-year old beauty pageant wanna-be, whose song-and-dance routine is being coached by the hippie grandfather. The road trip gets started on the wrong foot when their VW van breaks down, leading to the hilarious ritual of them all having to push to get it started, and then run along side it and jump in one-by one. The beauty pageant scene at the end is a total hoot. Go ahead and see it, you know you want to.