I guess I should write a full recap of my parents' visit this past weekend but, really, not that much happened. Four wonderful dinners, including a Sunday night dinner where a few friends joined, lots of time on the beach (often asleep or pretending to be asleep), several round trip apartment-to-hotel drives and vice versa, two fairly successful rounds of golf (detailed in comment form on the previous entry), an obscenely expensive but pretty freakin' good (potato skins with scrambled eggs and steak slices and cheddar cheese and sour cream and some green onions) breakfast, and and about $500 in groceries. I don't think that figure is an exaggeration.

During dinner on Saturday, we somehow got into politics. Awesomely (and uncomfortably), the solo guitarist who was playing soft acoustic music interjected with his thoughts on universal health care between songs. Like me, he was stunned by the overhead in the current health insurance system. (15 percent of costs to marketing and denying coverage, expenses that wouldn't happen in a single-payer system; we both had the number 40 percent in our heads, which is more extreme, but both figures are pretty remarkable. Again, I'm probably incorrectly quoting the made-up statistics from the current Newsweek.)

There were more awesome jokes and maybe some "life talk" thrown in there and, altogether, it was my third or fourth or fifth totally awesome weekend this summer where I did nothing of significance but hang out with people I like a lot. In this case, however, the food was better.

Also during the course of the weekend, I finished Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live and am now 70 percent through Fargo Rock City, which I picked up at the library on Sunday. It's odd, because I find myself nodding and nodding and nodding to everything he writes when, in actuality, I've got no shared history. I liked "18 and Life" by Skid Row (I saw them play it live as a 9-year-old, which is pretty awesome and which my mom feels somehow guilty about) and I loved but didn't understand all the awesome Poison songs, and I owned a Cinderella cassette and a few Living Colour cassettes and I bought Motley Crue's Dr. Feelgood but was somehow talked into giving my brother the original and keeping the dubbed copy, and I owned and definitely didn't understand Warrant's Cherry Pie. But he writes about 80's metal passionately and awesomely and breezily, which makes him fantastic.

The best part, so far, is when he recounts a supper (not dinner)-table story in which his dad criticizes another local farmer, who has several different breeds of cattle:

Predictably, my dad was disgusted. "What a motley crew that is," my father said of the cows. At that point, [siblings] Rachel and Bill began laughing like hyenas, and I just sort of stared into my stew. I can only imagine what my dad suspected everyone was howling about.

This kind of memory would bother some people. It would make them feel alienated, or detached from their paternal life force, or depressed that their male parent had absolutely no interest in something they loved. But I don't feel that way at all. When I recall this incident, I simply find it reassuring to know my father obviously never entered my bedroom the entire time I lived in his house.

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Man, I must've written an awesome thank-you note following The Engagement Party of the Millennium. How do I know? Because, Friday afternoon, I received a thank-you note for my thank-you note. I mean, that's awesome. I probably shouldn't follow with a response, right?

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When it comes right down to it, this is a pretty amazing event, considering where it's being held and all. I'm not much of a movie guy, but Raiders of the Lost Ark, outside, free, and on a big screen, is probably kind of worth it. Especially if accompanied by a flask.

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So, late Thursday night, Gurs made a particularly compelling case that I should join him and a cast of quality characters for a single day of Lollapalooza, this coming Saturday.

The upside:
The company
The music
The company

The downside:
The music's not really that good (I mean, I really like Interpol, but as a festival headliner?
The $80 ticket
The 11 hours in the car

Let's be honest, while I'd love to see Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, I'd probably spend their set thinking about how early I should leave their set to see The Hold Steady on the other side of the grounds, even though I saw The Hold Steady play the same (totally awesome) set, in longer form, 2 1/2 months ago.

While I've tried and tried and tried to talk myself into it, I just think I can't. Does that make me lame? Yup.

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The Cubs choked in their chance to get a share of first place. Or, rather, Ted Lilly left one offspeed pitch up in the zone, and Rowand hammered it. Lesson? Throw strikes. (It was a two-out homer to cap a rally started by a walk.) Lesson two? Keep it down, dammit.

But at least Pat Hughes is healthy again.