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Trying to clean out the closets this weekend for the evidently imminent arrival of our second child, I spent some time in the attic. We still had lots of boxes from when we moved out of our parents houses 10 years ago. It’s amazing how much you can see the change over the last 10 years by looking at what I kept and what I tossed.

Kept – Autographs from various athletes. These will probably stay in the attic forever but maybe my kids’ kids will be able to go to college by selling the various Drew Bledsoe and Ben Coates signatures. This situation can be improved if they star in a sitcom together. It would likely be called Drew and his 87 Coates. I’m sending this off to NBC now.

Tossed – Two full boxes of laser tag paraphernalia

Kept – newspaper cutouts from my church league basketball games, 17.7 points per game my senior year good for #3 in the league

Tossed – Two large boxes of cassette tapes and CDs that included various 2pac albums, Wu-tang clan, LL Cool J.

Tossed – Every notebook I kept in my last two years of undergrad work. In what parallel universe did I think this would be valuable? Did this parallel universe have any internets?

Tossed – a 12″ stuffed Kenny doll from South Park

Having Matt Forte as a keeper and the 5th pick I was all set to take Larry Fitzgerald until the guy at #4 took Moss over Brady. I was still able to score Wayne and Colston in the WR department so it didn’t go too badly.

1. Brady, Tom
2. Wayne, Reggie
3. Colston, Marques
4. Clark, Dallas
5. Benson, Cedric
6. Lewis, Jamal
7. Hill, Shaun
8. Bears DST
9. Moore, Lance
10. Jones, Felix
11. Mendenhall, Rashard
12. Stafford, Matthew
13. Muhammed, Mushin
14. Gould, Robbie

In preparation for moving Liam to his new room with as little crying as possible we decided to set up a Thomas the Train table for him. These pictures represent roughly 4 hours of work (and I still have to glue them down). Designing this was surprisingly fun actually.

We caught Mike Birbiglia in Newport, RI over the weekend and he was awesome – decidedly not pudgy and awkward. Check out some of his stuff here:

http://www.birbigstube.com/

http://www.birbigs.com/

My Jetta has been wearing a rejection sticker since May when my check engine light came on the day before my inspection. The dealer told me I needed $1200 worth of brand new fans (I disagree, but that isn’t the point here). Today (over two months later) I’m driving to work and I notice my check engine light is off, which I quickly cash in on by driving to the garage and getting a sticker. Later on, I get a call from my wife who tells me her car needs new bearings, breaks, 4 tires and an alignment. Total cost: $1071. Driving home my check engine light comes back on. Weird.

At long last, we have a new website. I was told I would do well with the 60-105 year old woman demographic.

Bill Simmons makes a case in his most recent post for Almost Famous being the best movie of the 2000’s. First off, I’m a big fan of Almost Famous. It’s rewatchability rating is infinite. Anyway, this got me thinking about movies of the 2000’s. Pretty weak decade for movies in general. The 1990’s had Shawshank (the greatest movie ever), Pulp Fiction, Unforgiven, Goodfellas, The Usual Suspects, Forrest Gump, Saving Private Ryan, LA Confidential, Seven, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Heat, Braveheart, Goodwill Hunting and Silence of the Lambs. Here’s some links for the movies of the 2000’s:

Best Picture Nominees

imdb’s top 50 of the decade

Here’s mine (in no particular order):

Traffic
The Constant Gardner
Mystic River
Almost Famous
The Dark Knight

Honorable mentions: Sideways, Snatch, Memento, Donnie Darko

Somehow, everyone ranks Babel ahead of The Constant Gardner. If you are one of those people, go fuck yourself.