This in my Journal, ten years ago:

Yesterday, while walking downtown, bored and lonely (before calling J, meeting her in Kensington Market, having a falafel and going with her to see The Ladykillers -an entertaining and forgettable film – ) I had an idea for a story: a man decides to give up the desire for love, and is immediately confronted with friends and doctors who tell him he’s insane. […] Just now, thinking of how rotten that movie was last night, how entirely forgettable despite being charming and entertaining and at times funny – makes me aware of living in 2004 – the same sick ennui of a decade still figuring itself out, as in 1994, when Forrest Gump came out, and that stupid movie Speed which inspired men’s haircuts. (And the real influence on hair styles for the past ten years, Friends began). It is an utterly miserable time to be alive and intelligent, just as it was then.

That movie was so entirely forgettable that I had to Google it, and I was surprised to see it’s a Cohen brothers movie staring Tom Hanks. The Ladykillers (2004).

Anyway, a decade later I’ve thought the same; the 4th year of a decade is awful, and I see the parallels again in 2014, the decade figuring itself out, not having yet achieved that which it will be most remembered by.