If date is greater than

[John Taylor-Johnston <jt.johnston@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have date strings in my mysql db. yyyy-mm-dd.
I want to parse to see if the date is greater than november 2011 and 
less than december 2012.

Is this the right approach? How bad is my syntax?

|function dates_range($todaynow)
{ |
|$date1=strtotime("2011-11-01");
$date2=strtotime("2012-12-31");
       if (|||($|||||todaynow |>= $date1) and |||||($|||||||todaynow| 
<= $date2)||)
||       {
||       # do something
||||       }
}
|||