Yep I agree. When ODP was a PR10 my site moved to PR6, might be coincedence. ODP went to PR9, my site went back to PR5.. again might be coincedence. So I'm hoping ODP goes to a PR10
It really is the same thing. It's backlinks that generate PR. Google see the backlinks and even modifies their SERPs for them as soon as they crawl the pages. But they only update the records every three or four weeks. About the only value of a PR/BL update is to let you know what Google really is seeing. Significant changes in the SERPs rarely happen at the same time as the PR/BL update.