The 4th and Beyond

Hope everyone had a good 4th weekend.

Friday I actually didn't do anything (well, I was lucky enough to work all day!). But my allergies were bothering me and I'm not so excited about fireworks, so I just spent some quality time on the couch and watched the Mets blow a 2-0 9th inning lead and lost to the Philthies.

Saturday I finished up Season 2 of Weeds. Holy crap what an AWESOME season finale!!! Then headed over to Courtney & Mike's place for a BBQ and festivities. It was fun. They're big into the game cornhole. Which, I thought they made up, but apparently its popular enough to have its own wikipedia page! They make their own boards and equipment, involving the college team colors of choice. For Mike and his friend Adam, they've got Auburn colors, Courtney gets one LSU board. I may need to get me an FSU set...I think my patio is big enough to handle it! So anyways, we setup a Cornhole tournament (complete with dry-eraser-board brackets!). I teamed up with Will, but we lost in round two to Mike and Adam. We definitely got a raw deal in that setup! Courtney and Mike are also the proud new owners of a Wii. And more importantly, the game Rock Band. Which, I'd never experienced before. I've played Guitar Hero before, but Rock Band includes a drum set and a microphone! If I was ever gonna play any instrument, I'd always wanted to be a drummer. Back to the days when I was a kid, going into a music store and grabbing some drum sticks in a side room only to have some a-hole working there yell at me that I was holding the sticks wrong. I ran off crying and it crushed my hopes and dreams forever. I'm pretty sure my parents told him to do that so that they wouldn't have to deal with me playing the drums in their house :) Anyways, we went through a couple of songs, turns out I'm a good singer???? well, it helps when the "singing" is actually a Beastie Boys song! I spent most of the night trying out the drums. And it was A LOT tougher that you'd think. Especially because they incorporate a foot pedal. That makes it tough, and eventually by about 2:30am, after Courtney was long asleep and Mike was passed out on the couch, it was just me and Nooga, we decided we were ready to call it a night.

On Sunday, without really anything to do, I talked Lauren into a double-feature, which we'd been talking about doing for a while now. We both wanted to see The Love Guru, but we couldn't fit it in. We wound up seeing Get Smart (with Steve Carell) first. It was pretty good...but you've really gotta appreciate Steve Carell to really like it. I think he'd be perfect to play a real life Inspector Gadget movie. Next up was Hancock (with Will Smith). I hadn't really heard a whole lot about it, but I definitely wanted to give it a shot. We originally got seats pretty close to the screen, but after staring at the Rock Band screen all night the night before and with it being the 2nd half of a double feature, I asked Lauren if she would be cool with moving towards the back of the theatre. WORST. DECISION. EVER. Turns out we sat right in front of a family with a 2yr old wondering and chatting with himself throughout the aisle behind us. It's bad enough that I already generally don't have a lot of patience for annoying kids, but this was a movie theatre. You just don't let that happen. It's not like this was a kids movie. Without giving much away, Will Smith plays the role of a guy with super powers, but, well, he's kind of an asshole. There's a lot of cursing and drinking in the movie. Not that I claim to know anything about parenting, but this is not something I'd think a 2yr old should be subject to. This kid was sooooooooooooooo annoying, eventually, about halfway through the movie, we moved back down to the bottom closer to the screen again. I was sure to make sure they heard me use the word "obnoxious" as we left our seats, I also made sure to say "fucking" first but not TOO loud. Once we got to our new seats they did take the kid outside, so I feel like I made a positive difference in the lives of everyone in that theatre :) Unfortunately, it was temporary, the kid was back, and even way down at the bottom of the theatre, everyone can still hear this kid. With all that said, Hancock was an AWESOME movie. I absolutely loved it, and whenever it comes on DVD, Mitsa will be providing a movie night viewing party.

Last night was the return of Sports Trivia to a new bar since Frankies is no more. It was at a little hole in the wall kind of place called Charlie Mopps. It's hard to find, I will admit to one U-Turn. I met up with a coworker, Cintron and he needed at least 3 U-Turns I believe. The place was pretty cool, it had tons of beers to choose from. Anyways, for trivia, where half the fun is coming up with funny team names, we went with the recently demoted Braves outfielder, Jeff Francoeur as our target. "Jeff Francoeur, AA [minor league] All Star Game MVP". At first when I got there, our waitress, who was wearing a Sweetwater T-Shirt (a good sign, I was actually wearing mine too) took my order and I ordered a sweetwater and asked if they could turn the Mets game on one of the TV's. Well, they turned it on about 6 TV's! wow!!!! what service :) and the Mets were winning 5-0 before they even got it on! For my 2nd beer I asked the waitress to recommend something to me. She did one better. Actually three better. She brought me 3 samples of beers to try. Hell, after the samples I was kind of thinking I didn't need anymore beer, but since she went through all that I wasn't about to say no thanks, I'm good! So I got a 2nd beer and that was gonna be it. Well, as luck would have it, throughout trivia, they randomly pick team names and award a free pitcher of beer to two teams. Yep, we "won". Cintron isn't really a big drinker and I had to drive, so as sad and tragic as it was, the pitcher pretty much went to waste. I was tempted to offer it to the table next to us, but I'm not so sure they were even 21. There were too many straws in their drinks anyways. Well, me and Cintron wound up finishing in 2nd place and went off with $30 of gift certificates to spend there next time we go back. Which we most definitely will. Hopefully we get the same waitress too!

And in typical Mets fashion, after being ahead 8-0 and 10-1...they had to make things interesting, and wound up winning 10-9. Ughhhhh.