Ahhh, time flies

Can you believe I've been on this blogger thing for more than a year? Sure, just like a guy, I went and forgot my anniversary, but it was back at the end of July 2005 that I started on this site.

Last year on this exact date, I was illuminating you all with my thoughts on the laundromat. And telling you about Yelling Guy. (Update: Although I still see him around, Yelling Guy no longer really yells at me. Now he's more like Head Nod Guy.)

Last year around this date, the price of gas was $3.29 a gallon for the cheap stuff. Which is what I get. My car can drink the Naragansett of gas so that I can afford to drink the Bass Ale of beer.

Last year on this date, my rent was $50 cheaper a month.

Last year on this date I was excited about my new project to rewrite our job description to hopefully get us paid more money. This year on this date I'm aggravated by it.

Last year on this date, T.O. was still a (relatively) model citizen for the Philadelphia Eagles.

Last year at this time I was not in any sort of structured musical situation. This year I sort of am. If you can call playing with one other person "structured" or a "musical situation".

Other than that, not much has changed. There's something to be said for consistency. There's also something to be said for growth. Ideally, you'd like a good balance of the two. Unfortunately I lean too far in one direction. Well, unless you want to count the pimple on my neck that's the size of a baby's head. I guess you could consider that a "growth."
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On to quickie movie reviews.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Really funny. Not Anchorman funny, but really funny. It pissed excellence.

Little Miss Sunshine. Overall a little dull, with a few funny scenes, (including one hilarous scene at the end, that if you're paying attention you should see coming.) Overrated indie crap. Let me tell you why I knew I wasn't going to like this movie. I read the description and it reeked of "trying to hard" indie-ism. You know what I mean? Where they filmmakers seems to be thinking way too much about how to make their movie indie and interesting. It's obnoxious and pretentious when people do this. There a phenomenom that I think of as the "indie stock character". By which I mean characters that are so skewed in some weird way as so not to be stock, that they become cliche in their own way. This movie had a bunch of them, and merely by reading the blurb I could tell they were Trying Too Hard. The father who is an inspirational speaker with his own 9 step plan he's trying to sell as a book (taken from Magnolia perhaps? Wasn't Tom Cruise an inspirational speaker in that?) The mother who plays the "straight" character, the anchor for the narrative. Her brother, a gay Proust scholar that had tried to commit suicide. The son reads Nietzsche and has taken a vow of silence until he can get into the Air Force academy. The grandfather, vulgar and a heroin addict. And the daughter, around whom the action revolves, as a precocious contestant for a beauty pageant (for all that she looks like the bee girl from the No Rain video.) I can understand the desire to make your characters interesting and unique, but do you know any families like that? Name one. I sure can't.