12.31.04 - 3:16 p.m.

Does it seem strange to anyone else that I identified more with the life crisis/journey in Sideways more than the one in Garden State? Never mind the fact that these are male-dominated plots; sorry if I can't find myself in the latest Meg Ryan film, or even Maggie Gyllenhaal.

There's so much disaffection in my generation, but I feel like I've already had my quarter-life crisis, and I'm on my way to some semblance of adulthood (although that may not fully come until after the wedding, when I see my name and Dan's together on his car insurance). So I don't particularly feel like seeing another simplistic story about it - no offense, Zach, because I really love you and your work in so many ways, but Douglas Coupland did it better about 10 years ago with Shampoo Planet and the entire Generation X oeuvre. Although when I was reading those, I hadn't yet experienced my own little twenty-something ennui, so I was reading aspirationally as we all do. Maybe now I'm waiting to aspire to my midlife wine-snob boredom and failure issues. Yip.

Or maybe I'm just a grouchy, balding, bearded man inside. I don't know what I'm saying.

Douglas Coupland does have a new book coming out in ELEVEN DAYS, though. How did I almost miss this?