You know what? I’m about ready for this month to end. It’s true. August and September are the worst. They both go by slower than any other month. Regardless of my hostility towards this time of year, I’ve compiled this list of things that are awesome.

1. I love ABC’s new half-hour comedy Modern Family. It follows three exceedingly abnormal families trying to live, as the title implies, modern lives. The pilot episode aired on Wednesday, and has got to be one of the funniest pilots I’ve seen. I look forward to seeing where they take the show with such sharp, intelligent writing.

2. One of ABC’s other new fall shows is FlashForward. If you’ve been watching the network at all in the last two months, you know that ABC is putting all their eggs in this strange, sci-fi basket. I had huge expectations going in, and the first episode really delivered. The direction and writing, courtesy of Dark Knight co-writer David Goyer, are both on a cinematic scale that rarely sees the light of primetime. It’s more than enough to hold me over until Lost returns in January.

3. Go buy an I am Birmingham shirt HERE. Seriously, just go get one.

4. In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of French Elle magazine, had a stroke which resulted in locked-in syndrome, a condition in which a person is fully functional mentally, but physically paralyzed. Bauby was totally paralyzed save for his left eyelid. Using a painstaking system with an assisstant, Bauby blinked out a 139-page memoir of his inner thoughts called The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. The book was adapted into a film by Julian Schnabel in 2007. The movie is a unique portrait of a man whose true feelings aren’t expressed until a near-death experience jolts them out of him. It’s inspiring, funny, devastating, and hypnotic. Netflix it.

5. Greg Holden, the English musician who opened for Ingrid Michaelson the other night at Workplay, has been on rotation on my iPod since. Check out Thinking of You and The Chase.