Happy birthday wishes go out to my two cousins who turn 21; Christy's is today while Trang's was last week.

I went to the dentist recently and lo and behold, the worst happened. They found a cavity. Oh my. I haven't had one of those since my age was still in single digits. It was tricky to find too. Those spiffy computerized x-rays couldn't find it. It took a nice dental instrument to poke everywhere just to find it. Man, it's been so long, I don't even know how they fill it anymore. From my last cavity, this metal colored thing remains, but nowadays, they use white fillings and such to hide it as best they can. So they filled it on Monday, but I think they used too much of that numbing agent. It lasted a good 3 hours before the effects went away.

There was this Simpsons episode once when Mr. Burns was worried he didn't have an heir to pass along his fortunes so he held tryouts for every young boy in Springfield in order to find the perfect heir. Eventually, he settled on the energetic Bart smashing up the windows of his estate. Why did I think of that when I was watching The Benefactor? I don't even understand the show. It seems Mark Cuban will find just about anything to out the contestants. Well, you know what, he might say, I don't like that your left-handed, so you don't get my million bucks. Or something like that. Just a ridiculous excuse for a show.

I finally watched the updated version of The Manchurian Candidate, bringing the summer's movie total to 23. 23? That's it? What happened to the times when you could watch 23 in a month? Well, times have changed and, let's face it, August pretty much sucked in terms of movies. And September doesn't look any better. Probably the next true must-see is in October when Shark Tale comes out. Though I might catch Sky Captain, I'm not waiting in any line to see it.