I'd like to write a few things, but, let's be honest, there's not much time. My parents are in town, and that's totally awesome. We just had a really nice dinner, and my mom tried to set me up with the waitress. Turns out, the waitress was about 20. (Which is, for the record, younger than my sister.) Sadly, for my mom, I think the waitress was turned off by my giggling and my mom's slurring. Just a little slurring, a teensy bit of slurring, but slurring nonetheless.

Ah, well.

The other highlight of dinner came, oddly enough, during our wait for a table. (There were plenty of tables available, but we, wisely, asked to wait for one by the window and, therefore, the water.) It was an interesting bar, with normal-sized chairs (which is to say, regular dinner chairs instead of bar stools) and a sunken behind-the-bar area.

Unique, and, for the time we were there, far more comfortable than a normal bar stool, I thought.

So, my dad was going to check on how long the wait would be for a window table, and my mom and I headed to the bar.

As we were about to sit down, my mom said to the bartender...
"Oh, you look so tiny down there!"

The bartender responded, "Well, I am only five-two."

Though nobody laughed at the moment - it was uncomfortable, though in a friendly way - it was hilarious. When we were seated for dinner, my parents and I enjoyed a good belly-laugh over the moment.

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I'd've liked to get something down here earlier this week but, sadly, a late night talk Sunday, a night out Monday and back-to-back asleep-on-the-couch nights have precluded such an endeavor. (Also, my apartment's filthy, even though it had gotten clean on Sunday. We're talking three-day old chicken bones on the stove filthy. Seriously. Eww.)

Thankfully, there was nothing really that notable about this past weekend to report. I golfed - terribly - Saturday morning. I think I got a 135 on a par-72. I swung and missed as much as I connected solidly. I cheated my way to a 135.

I took a few tips to the range with me on Monday. I adjusted my grip. I started with my short clubs, then worked towards the longer ones as I hit the short ones straight and easy. I focused on a straight swing path. I used loose change to aid this cause. I tightened the grip with my top two fingers. I became a dork who talks about my golf game.

Tuesday, post-work, I played a relatively short nine hole course. Par 32. I pulled out a 48, terribly mishitting only three balls, and holing out, down a ridge, from the fringe, about 80 feet from the cup, on the final hole.

I'm playing with my dad tomorrow morning, a grown-up course. I won't write about it, though I probably will.

Otherwise, over last weekend, I cleaned, watched Endless Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and watched VH-1's World Series of Pop Culture. The World Series is a fantastic format, and hugely entertaining. I missed it last year. I'll watch in marathon-form next year, as well. Endless Sunshine is better than I remembered, and I really liked it the first time I saw it.

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Movies. Let me tell you, friends, I don't see a lot of them. And this summer's biggest one has me so unmistakably torn.

The Simpsons Movie. (That's the title, right? That's it, right?)

As is the case with anybody my age, at least part of my adolescence was strongly influenced by the show. I remember the debut of the Christmas special. I remember some Tracey Ullman short where Bart's visage was frozen in the shape of a funny face he was making at Lisa. I didn't have any t-shirts, but I was quite jealous of those with the Underachiever: "And Proud Of It, Man" ("Dude?") variety. (I even yearned for the skateboarding "Ay Caramba!" shirt. Seriously.)

I learned quite a bit, mostly about what was funny, from the show. ("I know. This lesbian bar has no fire exits!") I also learned, over time, how wildly funny the references and set pieces were, even though I'm far from a movie buff. The A Streetcar Named Desire episode. The "Miss Krabapple, you're trying to seduce me!" scene, perfectly emulating The Graduate. (Did the same episode somehow end with an awkward back-of-the-bus glance, also from The Graduate?)

There was the Last Exit To Brooklyn episode ("Dental plan. Lisa needs braces.")

Really, it was genius.

However, the last eight years have happened. Gosh, it stopped being funny in 1997 or so, it seems to me. Sadly, I haven't really watched it since 1998 or so, catching just a spare episode here or there.

So, on the one hand, I'm hopeful that they'll live up to their history. (But Conan didn't work on it at all, so they might not be able to...) Clearly, Matt Groening appreciates the legacy, and they say that his other work is still good (I don't know what is, but that's what I've heard), and he can understand that the moving being awful will certainly reduce the characters' cultural importance, somehow. It's gotta be good, for his own pride, right?

On the other hand, I'm fearful that it'll just out and out suck.

Still, I think I'll actually see it and, again, I don't see movies. In the theater, and everything. I think.

And, for the record, reviews are very strong, which is reassuring.

But I'm still afraid it'll suck, and hard.

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I'm reading Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live right now. About him visiting rock star death sites. He's really a fun-to-read writer, though I'm not sure how good of a writer he is.

But he's got this way of mixing the personal and the highly-personal and the pure pulp. It's really breezy and, at this point (sixty or so pages in), comes highly recommended.

But, then again, I'm about two years late on this, so anybody who cares has already read it.

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Everybody hates Barry Bonds. Why? Read this interview with Jeff Pearlman, who wrote Love Me, Hate Me, the Bonds biography which was promoted in March or so of last year. (It was promoted for its factual reporting of his steroids usage and was, therefore, tagged as "the other steroids book." From what I hear, it's far more than that. After this interview, it's also on my to-read list.)

The choicest bits:

And the truth of the matter is, Bonds is completely, undeniably 100 percent full of shit. He truly is. I no longer buy his love of baseball history any more than I buy the sanctity of his marriages or the purity of his blood stream.

Bonds is as un-Hank Aaron as anyone this side of Ty Cobb.

I've maintained some contacts [ed: that is, sources], and I know of no one who's actually happy that he's breaking the record.

Now that I'm well beyond the researching and writing; now that I'm beyond the promotional, 20-second soundbite push, I feel liberated to express my conclusion of the whole experience.

It is this: Barry Bonds is evil.

More on Bonds, from a fairly funny Slate piece making light, a bit, of all the awfulness in sports recently. The Vick dogfighting thing. The Tour de France leader getting kicked out. The crooked NBA ref. The minor league baseball death on the field. All pretty awful things.

So, it goes on to 'predict' some news stories, including details of Roger Federer's dalliances with the Wimbledon ballboys, Jeremy Shockey's intentional pass-dropping for his fantasy football cause, and the fact that the autistic three-point shooting kid, Jason McElwain, was actually just former NBA'er Tim Legler in disguise. And not autistic.

The highlight, of course, is the Bonds joke:
"Barry Bonds broke baseball's all-time home run record last night with a towering, eighth-inning long ball against the Washington Nationals. After smashing his 756th career home run, the seven-time National League MVP pumped his fists in the air repeatedly. Bonds then reached into his back pocket and pulled out a large syringe labeled "DRUGS FOR CHEATING AT BASEBALL." The San Francisco Giants slugger lowered his pants, injected himself in the buttocks, and extended both middle fingers before setting off on his record-setting jaunt around the bases."

Mostly, I'm indifferent to Bonds. I've paid little attention to "The Chase" for the record. But, as we get closer, I'm just angry about it. Really, really angry. I get fired up. It's too bad, really. But there's no way we can, you know, retroactively take the record away. Sigh.