The $800K weekend gross and $200K per-screen average by Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel means, of course, that Anderson fans came out in strength. “What’s happening with Wes Anderson is he’s entered into Woody Allen territory,” Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino (a longtime HE pally) told TheWrap‘s Brent Lang yesterday. “He’s established a brand and…audiences show up in droves because they know it’s a good break from typical blockbusters.” But next weekend’s haul will depend, of course, on what Average Joes (i.e., viewers who like or respect but don’t necessarily worship Anderson’s signature style) are saying. I don’t mean to insult HE readers by suggesting they’re motley normals, but could I get some Budapest reactions?

For much of my life I’ve cherished the ritualized reading of the Sunday New York Times, which Tom Wolfe described in 1974 as “that great public bath, that vat, that spa, that regional physio-therapy tank, that White Sulphur Springs, that Marienbad, that Ganges, that River Jordan for a million souls.” Well, the print version of that vat, that spa, that River Jordan for a million souls has been arriving on my doormat since I signed up for Sunday morning delivery, which is the cheapest deal that allows for full digital access to the Times. And the truth is that I almost never take my Sunday edition to the cafe next door and order breakfast and, as Wolfe wrote, “slip into it like a warm bath.” I just don’t want it around for the most part. The bulk of it, the ink smudges, the folding and re-folding the paper, etc. That said, the daily issue is cool. And I still like reading newspapers in Europe. Somehow different over there.

The final episode of Cary Fukunaga and Nic Pizzolatto‘s True Detective (titled “Form and Void”) airs tonight. Yesterday’s plan to marathon through the six episodes I hadn’t seen (#2 to #7) didn’t pan out — I only watched #2 and #3. I could, of course, sit down and watch #4 through #7 today but…all right, I might do this. #4 and #5 anyway. I just bought another bike yesterday (my third — two previous bikes were stolen) and I feel like roaming around today. Eff it — I’m just going to read the synopses on the Wiki page. Update: Up on everything. Have now seen episode #6.

I slightly know a woman who paints all day long and sometimes into the night. She doesn’t recognize weekends or weekdays. She just gets up and paints like a fool. Under the usual circumstances this in itself would make her, in my eyes, a fairly serious artist, regardless of her talent. Unfortunately she’s also a devout Christian who believes that God is guiding her every brushstroke. In a sense He/She/It is doing that, but by speaking literally of God as her co-pilot, this woman somehow makes Herman Melville‘s famous theological rumination, spoken by Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, seem banal: “Is Ahab Ahab? Is it I, God, or who that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself but is an errand boy in heaven, nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power…how then can this one small heart beat, this one small brain think thoughts, unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I?”