Truth in Blogging

About a year ago, I posted something false on my blog. I just found out about it now, and have posted the correction as a comment. I found out by browsing through Snopes.com, which bills itself as the Urban Legend Reference Pages. Often when I get an email or hear a rumor, I'll look it up on Snopes to get the real deal. Here is what I have learned over the past few years:

Companies are not going to give you free things for forwarding emails.

The day after Thanksgiving is not the busiest shopping day of the year.

Ligers and Tigons really do exist. Also real are a wholphin (whale-dolphin), cama (camel-llama), and Dzo (cow-yak), as well as many zebra-donkey-horse combinations which include mule, hinny, zorse and zeedonk.

The racist remarks attributed to Elvis, Tommy Hilfiger and Lauryn Hill are all false.

Top 11 Movies of 2005

Surprise, I had to go with eleven again this year. In alphabetical order:

The 40 Year Old Virgin 9/10 - Hilarious but still realistic. Judd Apatow and Steve Carrell deserve the nomination from the Writer's Guild.

Batman Begins 8/10 - Bale is great as Bruce Wayne, but I felt he was missing something as Batman. I still prefer Michael Keaton. Michael Caine and Liam Neeson were wonderful. It has been announced that there will be a sequel in 2008.

Brokeback Mountain 10/10 - Amazingly sweet story and beautiful landscapes. The acting, setting and script are all good as seperate pieces, so they integrate well. Even the sad, bleak parts of the movie are captivating. I nearly didn't see this one in the theater, but I'm very glad I did.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 10/10 - Others felt this was too long, but it was worth it for me. Its box-office success has assured there will be more Narnia movies.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 10/10 - Faithful enough to the original story, the movie kept the frenetic pace and sense of mystery that made the book impossible to put down. Order of the Phoenix starts filming in February for a June 2007 release, and Rowling is writing the seventh book this year.

The Interpreter 9/10 - An international thriller that could have easily been a snoozefest, but Sydney Pollack kept the suspense going.

Memoirs of a Geisha 9/10 - An adaptation I have been waiting years to see. While Ziyi Zhang did Sayuri justice, I think Ken Watanabe's Chairman was the most accurate portrayal.

Serenity 10/10 - The finale that the TV series deserved. Too bad Firefly wasn't made as a movie from the beginning, it would have made a great space trilogy.

Sin City 9/10 - Gritty, violent and even gruesome at times, I still enjoyed this one. The casting was dead on. The sequel is due out next summer.

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith 8/10 - An appropriate ending to the saga, I think I expected too much from this movie.

Zathura 9/10 - Funny, with a sense of adventure. There are only five human characters in the movie, yet it never gets tedious.

Spring Quarter

School starts today, and I am taking two classes, Environmental History and Modernism. Modernism is the period of change and rebellion that took place in art, music and literature that started around the end of the 19th century and continued well into the 20th. The class fulfills two different generals and also takes care of one major requirement if I decide to be an English major (who would have ever thought?).

TV

24 starts next Sunday, January 15th and Monday, January 16th from 7-9pm Central time.

Since I got my DVR, I've been watching more of the following shows:
Daria
Grounded for Life
Home Movies
Futurama
MadTV/SNL
Grey's Anatomy
Arrested Development
How I Met your Mother
Entourage
Blow Out
Queer Eye

And AOL provides a midseason schedule for new and returning shows.

Happy New Year - Now You're Old

So, while looking in the mirror on New Year's Eve, I discovered my first grey hairs, and I'm only 28! Many people subscribe to the superstition that what you're doing on New Year's is what you'll be doing all year, but luckily I am not one of them.