Let Me 'Splain....No, wait. Let Me Sum Up.

Let me just start out by saying this weekend went better than planned considering how BUSY with a capital "BUH" I was. Instead of killing myself with the muthah of all blog entries, I'll sum up each day with the events that unfolded.

Friday: After finishing a rather slowish day at work (I dont think anybody was doing super intensive work at the office considering the week was only three days long due to the holiday), Mike and I raced home only to find within minutes our apartment complex on fire. It turns out a lady in our building set the patio BBQ too close to a palm tree nestled against the front wall of our place. That palm tree turned into an instant tiki torch and the flames were higher than our roof in the blink of an eye. Mike ran in to call 911, but apparently someone had already notified the fire dept. because we could hear the sirens before he hung up the phone. Can I just say how much I love living five blocks from a fire dept.? It's a comforting thought. Anyways, the guys put it out pretty fast and then checked the rest of the building. We couldn 't stay around much longer since we had a birthday party to get to, and everything seemed well taken care of, so we took off for parts unknown (well, Los Feliz anyway). The birthday party was for "one-n" Jen, an girl that used to sit by Mike at his office until recently when she changed jobs. It was mainly his office group of friends there, and I really enjoy their goofy sensibility. Very sweet, intelligent people who aren't afraid of making complete asses of themselves with silly voices and whatnot. My kind of people. :) After an extremely long wait for food and drinks at the restaurant, we bid adieu to Jen and drove speedily to the El Capitan for the long-awaited premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. The line was filled with pirates and their wenches, giant plumed hats and plastic parrots on shoulders-- quite the ren faire experience. El Capitan had props and scenery bits all over the theater to enhance the experience of paying a rather exorbitant price for a movie you could see for 10 bucks anywhere else. The movie was fun but definitely set up as a "bridge" to the third movie. I wish it could stand on its own better. Outside of the lack of storyline, it was fun and witty and slapsticky and scary-- just what we were hoping for.

Saturday: Getting to bed after three a.m., I woke up at the ungodly hour of 9:30 to go have breakfast. There's few people that I'd get out of bed that early for, one of them being Kate, a good friend of mine via animation biz shtuff. We had breakfast over at Mudka's Meat Hut (Bob's Big Boy of Burbank) along with Amanda and Danielle. It was nice to have breakfast with the ladies again-- we all laughed riotously until we annoyed the people in the next booth-- our topics ranging from movies to boys to tea, and finally, to taxidermy (still not quite sure how that happened). I came back home for a few hours respite only to get ready for another birthday party that was in the Pacific Palisades. The drive was far, but thankfully, the party was relaxing and mellow. I wasn't sure I could handle a drop down crazy night of dancing and drinking or something after such little sleep. Instead, Mark (the birthday boy) and Joy (his girlfriend) had about ten people over for BBQ and drinks, all of which were super yummy. We reclined on her balcony which overlooked the Santa Monica hills and a partial ocean view. The sunset was stunning and the conversation worldly- most of the people there were architects who had travelled the world experiencing different cultures and visiting beautiful buildings. I think Mike and I felt a little uncivilized in the group having not seen such things. But we're young! Plenty of time...

Sunday: Sunday- two words: Pearl Jam. Oh yea. We got up on the later side of things and had a few hours to hang around the house before heading off to pick up our comrades for the evening, Mike's friends Nels and Bill. Mike was a driving champ- trekking everybody from north hollywood to westwood to pick up nels, venice to get bill, then on to redondo beach for a bbq and world cup finals party at another friends house. We ate quickly and then made our way to The Forum Theatre where the band I've always wanted to see since middle school was playing. And they didn't let any of us down. Only Nels had seen them before, and Mike and I were in full scream mode when they got on stage. They started with a powerful version of "Release Me" and then went on to do a full 2 and a half hour set of AMAZING renditions of their music-- all the greats from "Ten" "Vs." and "Vitalogy" to their most recent album with "World Wide Suicide". Apparently Eddie Vedder is buds with Tim Robbins and he even came out to sing acoustic style with Eddie on one anti-Bush song they co-wrote together. Only in L.A., man... what an awesome night- one for the books.

Happy Explosive Day!

In honor of this festively red, white, and blue holiday, two of my friends and I put together a little Flash short. Enjoy and have a clucking good holiday!


See it here at my other blog "Sketches in the Sand."Cluck of July.


Credits:
Amanda Ricketts and Jessica Kreig (animators)
David Fuller (chickens, sheep, duck, pigs)