Happy New Year, folks. Gotta stop writing 4703 on my checks.

I was in Neiman Marcus in SF yesterday when this mother and daughter duo started racking up the clothes. The saleswoman who accompanied them asked them to tell their story again within earshot of me. Apparently, they had come straight from the airport because the airline had lost the daughter's luggage. If you had lost your luggage, would you be buying emergency clothes for hundreds if not thousands of dollars when they'll probably find your luggage within a day or so? Here's the kicker: they're from Orange County. Come on...the O.C? I guess that explains it.

When I was in that Iron Chef phase in college (still now, but not so much), one of the challengers was a Japanese cook who specialized in quick and easy meals and you know what? She whooped the Iron Chef. At the time, I thought, man, Rachael Ray, with her 30-minute meals, could also thrive in the one-hour pressure packed format. Ok, so it's in the less-entertaining Iron Chef America, but a wish has been granted. She'll be part of the premiere of the 3rd season next month.

Amazon.com thinks I'd be interested in saving 40% off bathroom furniture. Why???

I was eating at Carrows (Carrows? Yeah, umm, there was a discount.) the other day with my sister when our drinks were about a quarter full. One waitress brought us new glasses. I finished mine before starting on the new glass while my sister immediately went for the new glass. A second waiter came up a few minutes later to take the old ones away and I looked in a little bit of disbelief when he started pouring the contents of my sister's old glass into the new one. Can you really do that? The people I've talked to said it's been done before. I don't believe it. It kinda soured an experience that was better than I expected. After all, I was coming to a place whose competitors were Denny's and your typical diner.

The Four Brothers soundtrack featured a bold action theme, tense action theme, and a strong bold theme during the course of the movie. Now if we had a bold and tense story, then we'd have something.

You would think that with a cinephile like me armed with a Netflix subscription, the number of movies I'd watch would go up. But in 2005, it went down by a third. I've watched 41 movies so far (Oscar will increase this number). Why? The same reason the box office in general is down: quality is down the tubes and it costs an insane $10 to watch a flick in the first place in a market where DVDs will come out in three months or less. And those free tickets I'm used to getting have been coming in few and far between. There's also that new job thing that's been eating up my time and the big crackdown on illegal movie downloads (uhh, it wasn't illegal when I was downloading!!!)

With that being said, here's the recap, about a month late and in ABC order.

4 stars
Crash
Match Point
Munich

3.5 stars
Cinderella Man
King Kong
March of the Penguins
Sin City
Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
The Interpreter

3 stars
Batman Begins
Coach Carter
Guess Who
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Madagascar
Melinda and Melinda
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
The Skeleton Key

2.5 stars
Hostage
The Island
War of the Worlds
Wedding Crashers

2 stars
Assault on Precinct 13
Bad News Bears
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Constantine
Sahara
The Longest Yard
The Upside of Anger

1.5 stars
Be Cool
Four Brothers
Kingdom of Heaven
Monster-in-Law
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Red Eye
The Ring Two

1 star
Bewitched
Elektra
Fantastic Four
Hide and Seek
Kicking and Screaming
Mindhunters

"My own experience has been that the anointing of dukes rarely improves the quotidian prospects of the serfs who toil outside the castle walls."

Yep, this is but one employee at my company.

Excuse me while I repeat what I've asked for the past four years regarding 24...what the hell is happening???

Are you coming down with something? Flu? Cold? Please stay away. There are enough people around me that are sick...don't wanna face you too.

And just like that, Christmas break is over. It seems like I didn't get anything done. Woke up, stared blankly at something and soon it was nighttime and off to bed. And it was like that for 10 days straight, save for New Year's. Don't remember much from that night anyway, so it actually might be the same.

Work welcomed me back with open arms and a stack of papers. Maybe that first day back was good since I managed to whip through it with ease, leaving me with little to do except occasionally break bad news to my manager. Suffice it to say, he wasn't too happy about it since most of this stuff was thought to be fixed weeks ago. It's easy to place the blame on accounting simply because it is their fault. Don't know how it will be tomorrow, with him being the big SC fan that he is (not an alum, but he knew some ppl from their past glory days). Great game by the way with things going back and forth until finally Texas came back from 12 down to beat the fighting condoms. Unless Vince Young comes back, don't expect these two teams to be back in the championship game next year. With Young, Texas might since he's the entire team. SC loses pretty much everybody. Being the homer I am, Cal will definitely contend next year.