the fours of july

July has come and gone and I haven't done a good job of chronicling this pretty decent summer. We all know that July holds a crucial spot as the middle summer month as well as the source of the holy triumvirate of holidays: the 4th of July, the 14th of July and the 24th of July.

Before I get into the fours of July, now may be a good time to post some old nightswimming pics from the June full moon. Apparently nightswimming on the first official full moon of summer is a holiday now. Well, now you know. Spread it!


I don't have any pictures of the 4th of July. They wouldn't let me take my camera into the theater. Maria and I saw Live Free or Die Hard, Transformers and Ratatouille.

Die Hard was adequate. Seems like most people I've talked to have loved it, but I didn't get quite the same thrill out of it I think. The problem may have been that the 21st century villain they got was way too bland. What would it take to bring Alan Rickman back, huh? I mean besides actually resurrecting his character.
I quite liked Transformers in the moment, but the more I think about it, the more I'm annoyed with it. It spent tons of precious time introducing ultra-lame unnecessary characters like the hot hacker chick and the dorks in the secret government agency. Even the main love interest wasn't worth much. My biggest complaint, though, is the lameness of the robots themselves. Yeah, I know they looked cool (they really did), but these things are supposed to be far superior to us. Why did they talk and act like animal actors? They were just robots. They weren't characters in the least bit. For my money, go rent the 1986 Transformers: The Movie (and listen to my commentary of it found right here and here).

Of course my favorite part of both movies was when one of the characters was like, "There's only one hacker on Earth who can save us now..."and then it cuts to some super nerd who lives with his mom. This same scene happened in BOTH movies. The joke may have been funny like 15 years ago, but it was embarrassing to see it within a 24-hour period.

Ratatouille was yawningly brilliant. It was really really good, but I already knew it would be. I'll only say that the alien abduction short at the beginning had both me and Maria crying because we were laughing so hard. We actually had to stifle our laugher, though, because the theater was filled with tired mothers and strollers. Funniest thing I've seen this year and we were the only ones in the sold-out theater laughing.

The 14th was a real groovy time. I feel the 14th is rapidly gaining acceptance. We listened to a lot of Spanish brass band and told a lot of Chuck Norris lore. Still my favorite Chuck Norris story is that he was born in a log cabin he built with his own hands. As promised, here are some photos:

Most of the action was spent on our hardly-seen heli-pad

Here's the view of the slip 'n slide from the heli-pad. Also, Jonny and Ashlie came by! Notice they brought Cafe Rio. Cafe Rio was extremely popular this 14th of JulyIf you can read that warning sign, it's incredibly funny.I got this welt from my bout of fun.

Here's a vid of Dre mastering the plastic with a cartwheel:



I didn't have my camera on the 24th, but as from what I remember Maria and I went to a parade and then ate ourselves silly.