Like many others, I can no longer bear to gaze upon the retarded monkey face of George W. Bush. Of course this means I skipped last night’s State of the Union address, a necessary bit of self-protection that still made me feel kinda crappy. (Considering all the havoc Dubya’s wreaked around the world, a part of me feels it’s my duty as an American to suffer through his speeches, no matter how torturous or infuriating.)

Instead, I did something legitimately patriotic: My taxes. This task was every bit as boring as watching Dubya make words, but 10 zillion times less insulting to my intelligence. Plus, ruffling through all those papers and receipts, I learned something: I saw only six and a half movies in the cinema last year. (Two of them were Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know, which I loved, while the half-movie was the first hour of Sin City, which bored the shit out of me.)

Tales of plummeting movie attendance have been common for a couple years now, but still, I was surprised. But there’s no denying that between pre-movie commercials and the existence of Netflix (God’s gift to lazy movie lovers), the reasons for staying the hell out of the multiplex are substantial, and I can only imagine 2006 will bring many, many more.

As for Bush’s speech (and the second half of Sin City): Did I miss anything?