WENT TO THE MALL with the Insta-Daughter and one of her friends. Build-a-Bear was absolutely jammed, providing still more evidence (if any were needed) of my inability to tell when a business is going to make it.

We saw the SpongeBob Squarepants movie, and while it didn’t suck — it was lightyears better than the last cartoon movie I saw, which I thought was pretty bad — it doesn’t say anything good about Oliver Stone’s Alexander that SpongeBob beat him out at the box office last week.

I actually like SpongeBob, though I wouldn’t have gone to see the movie on my own. But if you’re not being dragged by a kid, I’d recommend one of the tv episode collections on DVD over the movie. SpongeBob is funnier in shorter doses.

UPDATE: Hey, here are some SpongeBob movie customer reviews from other people. Some liked it more than I did, some less. Best line: “If I were Sandy Cheeks’ agent, I would be on the line for my client wanting to know what happened to my character’s part.”