forum post widget that needs an evaluation

[steven s]

Could someone please evaluate the coding.
I don't know what I am doing, other than I got it to work.
I'd like to learn where I can improve it.

What it does.
This is used for a calendar of events widget on my CMS homepage.
http://www.nccbmwcca.org
Each event is a forum post that uses a thread prefix 'chapter event' and the title begins with MM/DD/YYYY -.

The script uses today() to find any post starting with today().
It also adds a <br /> between each month.
It's pretty convoluted, in my opinion.

PHP Code:

ob_start();

    $output_bits = '';
    $today_m = date("m");
    $today_d = date("d");
    $today_y = date("Y");
    $spacer = $today_m; //used to separate months
  
    $get_calendarofevents = vB::$db->query_read("
        SELECT *
        FROM ".TABLE_PREFIX."thread
        WHERE prefixid='Chapter_Event' AND LEFT(title, 2) >= $today_m AND MID(title, 4, 2) >= $today_d AND MID(title, 7, 4) >= $today_y
        ORDER BY title ASC");


      while($calendarofevents = vB::$db->fetch_array($get_calendarofevents))
{
     $str = substr($calendarofevents[title], 0, 2); //get month of event
 if ( $str == $spacer )
{
    $output_bits .='<a target="_blank" href="showthread.php?t='.$calendarofevent[threadid].'">'.$calendarofevents[title].'</a><br />';
}
    else
{
    $output_bits .='<br /><a target="_blank" href="showthread.php?t='.$calendarofevents[threadid].'">'.$calendarofevents[title].'</a><br />';
}
    $spacer = $str;
}
      $output = $output_bits;
      ob_end_clean(); 


Thanks!