Let's hear some cheers - I have a car with a/c again! Aside from about 3 months last year, I haven't had an air conditioned car since 1995. This is quite a relief. I can leave the house again before sundown (aside from to and from work). What can I say, I'm a big wuss.

I'm leaving for Galveston after work tomorrow. Gonna spend some time with the family at a house near the water. Of course there's a big tropical storm (Bill, if you need to know - what happened to naming storms after women? that seemed so apt) so it'll probably rain all week.

But I'll be back in time for a wedding on Saturday. It'll be some old school Temple folks. Speaking of which, I've been getting emails about my 10 year high school reunion which for some reason they're holding well into the next school year (let's see... graduated may 93 but reunuion will be in sept). I guess its the same year but a different school year so it throws me off. I'm just mad it doesn't have an open bar like in all the movies. I wanted to get drunk and pretend I'm a hired assassin like in Grosse Pointe Blank. Sadly, I'll have to do it on my own dime if at all.

Went to see The Hulk last night. It was both the most childish and weirdly adult comic book movie yet. I just can't decide what I think about it. I enjoyed it as I've enjoyed all of these movies. These are things coming to life on screen that I've dreamed of since I was a kid. It wasn't bad movie like, say, Daredevil was but neither did it really kick my ass as X-Men 2 did. I was never a huge Hulk fan. I read the comic but I didn't love it as I did X-Men, Spider-Man or Daredevil.

At least Ang Lee did an interesting job directing. He made what could've been a by the book film into a good movie with great casting and a cool look. But you could tell that he just didn't "get" it, though, the way that Bryan Singer and Sam Raimi did/do. Something undefinable was missing. Maybe just call it "heart" or "soul." What I'd really like to see is Buffy creator Joss Whedon take a crack at a super hero movie. Speaking interesting notes on super-hero movies - Michael Chabon (author of Wonder Boys and the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay) wrote the original story that is being shot for Spider Man 2.

Alas, I am killed. Dead.

We (s.s.) played beerland last night to an assorted smattering of random folks there for or in the other bands. Boy, I just can't do that enough in this lifetime.

Things are slow at work. I'm having trouble finding ways to goof off.

I bought two bad cd's during lunch yesterday. I can't even return 'em cause I lost the receipt. A slick one, I am.

I'm reading The Seville Communion by Arturo Perez-Reverte. This guy writes like a cut rate Umberto Eco but that's okay cause Eco can be a little much sometimes. This is only the second thing by him that I've read. The first was The Club Dumas which was made into the movie The Ninth Gate by Polanski with Johnny Depp. It was a pretty good book and an almost good movie. The movie, if it had been done right, would have done for antique book hunters what Raiders of the Lost Ark did for archeologists.

It was a busy weekend but without much of interest to report. Friday night I went to a housewarming party at Rick's. It was raining. I got drunk on the immense amount of booze set out of the table. They had dip. Someone lost a camera. We picked up the couches to look for it. It was still raining.

Saturday I don't think I left the house til close to midnight when we headed over to Ben White's b-day party which was announced from to the street by a big box spring with a pentagram painted on it that said "Ben's House." That's style. I had a good time. Saw lots of friends that I see to rarely these days. There's not much of a story here except - "I stood around drinking beer and talking to people." Hunter made light of the situation by going around randomly to people and asking if they were "punk for life?" It rained some more but this time it started about 5mins after I got home.

I got up at 1pm and read all day sunday then went to band practice.

What makes a good thursday? Having a Casino Burger for dinner on wed night! Also, meeting friends for lunch makes a dreary workday go by much faster.

I always make disparaging remarks about people with headphones on singing along in public. Well, I have discovered that I have this problem at work when listening to two albums in particular - Oddesy and Oracle by The Zombies and Different Class by Pulp. But, to be fair, it takes a lot of self-control not to sing along to the Zombies' "Care of Cell 44" or "Common People" by Pulp. Some songs are just so catchy that it can be excused.

Well, its tuesday again. Funny how they seem to come so often these days. The world is definitely in some kind of speed-up mode.

Last night we made a change to our monday evening and went to Barfly's instead of Lovejoy's. I'm not sure what I think of this. Barfly's easily wins on the jukebox but I like the beer and atmosphere of Lovejoy's much more. This will have to be taken under consideration.

I've been on a major Kinks kick lately. I got the BBC discs over the weekend and last night got Arthur but what I really want yet can't find anywhere in this damn town is Face to Face.

While picking Arthur up last night I decided to take advantage of my waterloo employee discount access and get some movies on the cheap - Audition and Road to Perdition (both used so really super cheap) and the Led Zeppelin live dvds. When we got home, we watched Joe's spanking new copy of The Animatrix. Fuck all the haters - I love getting super-geeky on all the Matrix stuff this summer.

Boy, people sure aren't doing much in the way of blogging these days. It really seems to have tapered off. For myself, I think its that the novelty of it has worn off and also that I'm a bit more picky about what I write. I mean, who really wants to read about me sitting on my ass all weekend only to go pick up a couple of used books.

Having said that, I didn't do much this weekend - mostly just sat on my ass reading a used copy of a great Robert Penn Warren biography. Loren and Liz were in town on the tail end of a road trip to (inexplicably) Nebraska and S. Dakota and we went out to some party saturday night and had a great time. They (the party throwers) had a bowl of rum-soaked cherries out for everyone. We took a bunch of what I'm sure will turn out to be truly scary pictures.

Last night, for dinner, I had a Casino Burger. MMMmmmmm.