I just saw "The Secret of the Grain", which reminds me of "No Man's Land", a movie that makes you wait the entire time for a bomb to go off--only to roll the credits without it happening. But it's couscous that's the source of the tension in "The Secret of the Grain". Time seemed strange to me in the movie--it skips ahead without warning in some places, then seems impossibly slow in others.
I feel bad for thinking "La Vie, Mode d'Emploi" is just a list of lists. It's growing on me. I'm taking a break to read a couple other things ("The Ballade of Beta-2", and "Count Zero"), but I'll put Perec in my luggage for thanksgiving.
We had some people from my French conversation group over Saturday. It went OK. Some people take their potluck contributions very seriously, and not only did we end up with much more food than necessary, but several people insisted on leaving the leftovers; we'll be eating them for a few more days.