Ah yeah, the weekend shows up again, seemingly out of nowhere to rescue me from jobdum. For only a brief weekend in July I wish I still lived in Ohio because on July 19 there is the 2nd annual Lebowski Fest in Louisville. Here is the website: http://www.lebowskifest.com. The real “Dude”, the guy the Coen brothers based the Dude on will be attending the fest and speaking. Man that would be sweet to go to. I need someone I know to go to this thing and get me a t-shirt. When we went to see Nemo this guy outside the theatre gave us some free passes to see an advanced screening of American Pie 3, but we passed. Work is slow today, well, I’m slow. I played basketball for over 3 hours last night and I’m pretty sore today. This one place I play at in La Jolla just got new glass backboards and break away rims, which was cool. It was one of those nights I got on a great team and we just ran everyone off the court and won a ton of games in a row. Tomorrow we’re hitting that Padres game. We’re going to a cook out before the game, which should be fun. I plan to get back out and surf again this weekend, maybe up north, we’ll see. Ok, I’m being summoned to play some foos ball, so I’m out.

I’m glad you thought Boiler Room was interesting Dad. I know it’s not the greatest movie ever, but the characters are funny, and have always contended that they could do a whole movie on Ben Afflect’s character. We watched the movie EdTV last night. It was just ok but fun to remember Maconahae (sp?) from Reign of Fire and his low growling voice. Tracey and I make fun of that all the time. We went and saw Finding Nemo last night. Funny for a kids movie, not much else to say, Tracey really liked it. We have our Bible study tonight, which means a late night, but worth it. Saturday we’re going to the Padres game with some friends from work, I feel like I already mentioned that, sorry if I have. We’ve had about 5 straight days of overcast days and it sucks. People out here call it June Gloom, I guess for like three weeks out of June the sun don’t shine much. They don’t tell you that in the vacation guides do they? Hope it clears up for Ryan and Michele. And Michele, just so you are prepared, unfortunately my work is really picking up again and will be in full swing when you guys are here so it will be virtually impossible for me to go to Price is Right, sorry in advance, it’s not looking good. Ryan, I hope to take you up to La Jolla to play ball this time, maybe on the Sunday after you get here, and maybe we can squeeze in the OB court as well during the week. Oh, message to Dad and Justin from Ryan’s blog: “I'm hoping to get to a Lexington legends game sometime this week. They are a minor league baseball team for the Houston Astros. Tickets are $4 and there is not a bad seat in the place. Matt you should tell your dad and Justin they are welcome to come down and hit up a game with us some weekend.” Missed your call this weekend Justin. And isn’t it time to start the Diligent Trio back up? I’m looking forward to Lucky tonight and how bout those Indians? Trying not get too excited about a 5 game winning streak, but everyone sucks in the Central, so you never know? As long as they keep distancing themselves from the horrible Tigers, who are in competition now with the Padres for worst record. And Jim Rome announced today that he’s doing his next tour stop in Detroit. That’s two tour stops I’ve missed near BG since moving. I won’t even begin to talk about the Cleveland one I had to miss cause of a stupid dinner thing for some people I won’t name. Don’t worry, if you’re reading this, it’s not you. Well, back to rockin out to some Travoltas (Mary, you into them at all?) and pretending to work hard.

Friday night’s Flaming Lips concert was in my top 3 of best concerts ever (If you don’t know who the Flaming Lips are or don’t care, skip to the next paragraph for normal updates). I don’t even know where to begin, but it was epic. Lets start with the 25 people on stage with the band dressed up like various stuffed animals. They had frogs, bears, cookie monster, a gold fish, tigers, penguins, rabbits and many others I can’t remember. They just danced around the whole time with giant flash lights. The band also, at various times, threw out giant balloons for the crowd to play with. Wayne, the lead singer, had some type of spike taped to the end of his guitar that he would pop the balloons with when they flew back on stage. Speaking of Wayne’s guitar, it was acoustic, had only like 2 or three strings, had no back to it and wasn’t even plugged in in the first place, so not sure what that was about, another dude played electric guitar, and a lot of their stuff was on tape, mostly their electronic stuff, although they had two keyboards on stage that the guitar and bass player would randomly play. Lets move on. They opened the show up playing Flight Test, the first song on their newest CD. They also had a huge projection screen behind them that played various weird videos, too much to even go into. I’ll just give you a few examples, they showed clips from a Jane Fonda work out, clips of Time Bandits, clips of Krull, a movie of an asian girl beating up a bunch of other asian girls during Yoshimi, old footage from the John Stewart show (which was on MTV) introducing the Flaming Lips playing She Don’t Use Jelly, then they kicked in and actually played it themselves, scenes of volcanoes exploding, all kinds of things like that, it was perfect. They also had some footage from their new movie they made about Mars. Wayne also let everyone in singing happy birthday to a few people, but not before he poured fake blood all over his head and face. Wayne was very charismatic and pastor like during the show, talking about good will towards each other and how much he loved us and thanking us for coming, it was a very surreal experience that I loved, I can’t believe BG people blew it on seeing this show. I would do everything in my power to see this show again and again. There is so much more that I cannot even remember, it was just a great time, only sad that I had to experience it by myself.

On to other news. The end of an era and a staple in BG. Jay is no longer an employee at Cosmos. I won’t discuss the details here, but I wish Jay good luck with whatever he ends up doing. Related to that is Jay can no longer come out to visit me while Tracey is in Ohio for two weeks in July (although there is an outside chance he still might be able to make it, but doubtful). I am disappointed by this but I’m sure I will fill my time anyway. There are a ton of movies I need to catch up on anyway. Saturday Tracey and I went up to Encinitas and did some shopping, got some food and ate it on the cliffs overlooking the ocean while we watched surfers. While we were still there, I was talking to Harr on our cell phone and Tracey went to throw our food away and ran into a homeless guy digging in the trash, next thing I know Tracey is walking over to our car and giving the guy my blue jacket, which was cool, but just a funny seen to me as I was talking on the phone. Tracey said, “I didn’t think you would mind (which I didn’t), but I didn’t care if you did or not, I would have given it to him anyway”. Tracey is awesome. We then headed home to watch some movies we had rented earlier. We got Equilibrium and 25th Hour. I really liked Equilibrium, not the best ever made, but it had some very cool fighting stuff in it. I tried to burn it with my DVD burner but I couldn’t figure out how to do it, I don’t know if my computer can, I think maybe it can only burn data DVD’s or original projects, does anybody know if my Superdrive can burn a regular DVD? 25th Hour was slow and kinda boring, but had some good moments, I just don’t ever really like Spike Lee movies.

Yesterday Tracey kidnapped me took me to a winery up north for some wine tasting and it was really fun. I got a call from Donkey Boy to play some bball so I did, then came home and was able to get to OB for a quick surf session, finally. The waves were 6 foot so I stayed in mostly and rode white water, it was just good to get back out in the water and get the stoke back on. Two weeks till Ryan and Michele get here. I’m glad to hear that you’re finally bringing my Christmas present, although I think you’re going to try to find some way to forget it! As for cigars Ryan, I can’t think off the top of my head, but that one I had with you when you were out here and my friend Sean from work was with us was good, I think it was La Unica or something like it, but I trust your judgment, so whatever you bring will be good. I think Saturday we’re going to a Padres game cause it’s free retro hat day. Justin I enjoyed your photo montage or England, very funny. And I am also annoyed with blog page loading time, most times I have to push refresh like 3 times to get pages to load. Hope everyone has a good week.