California Dreamin'

In a mere 72 hours from now, I'll be picking up my rental car out in LA, headed for the LBC. I think that the official music sponsor of my trip will be Suge Knight and Death Row records. Of course, they're also the producers of the official soundtrack of my life, I think. Of course, you already knew that.

Contrary to popular belief, Suge Knight actually wasn't Phillip Banks from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. However, he is still my hero. After all, who hasn't wanted to dangle Vanilla Ice off of the edge of a balcony?

Of course, I'm there, ostensibly, for a conference. I've got two presentations on Saturday morning. That should take approximately 36 minutes. And I'm going to a dinner out on some Queen Mary cruise ship on Saturday night. So, at some point, I may actually have to put on a shirt that has sleeves. And pants. Maybe. After that? I think that a visit to Pink's is in order. And I'll also figure out where to hit up some taco stands. I think that some beach time will have to happen. But aside from that? Who knows. To steal from Tony Bourdain, my body isn't a temple - it's an amusement park, and it's pay as you go, but I'm going to enjoy this ride. We'll see what sort of adventures I can immerse myself in.

Work is pretty standard issue right now. I'm not very inspired, but I'm chugging along. Barely. Let's just say that I've been working on this summer paper for about 3 weeks, and right now I'm already about 2 weeks behind. Just need to get things moving. Right now, the task at hand is to finish up my literature review. This has to be the most boring part of research for me. I don't really like reading about what other people think. I'm not big on hearing people's opinions. And I've always liked starting things from the ground up. I don't find much art in the process of building off of other's work. But unfortunately, we have to be "grounded in the literature." Which means that we have to have citations where we say what's been done, just before where we decide that it's inadequate. Which isn't nearly as fun as I just made it sound. Many of the people who end up reviewing your work are the ones who wrote the work that you just claimed to be inadequate. Sometimes, they'll actually agree with you. But most of the time, they like to tell you how what you're doing really isn't all that novel, interesting, or correct. All in all, I'd prefer to pull a Kobe and settle things in the Octagon with these guys. But I don't think that's what professors do.

Over the last few days, the most interesting things that I've done in the last week are: complete a trade in fantasy baseball for another closer, buy a chimney starter for my grill, do a little grilling over the weekend, and buy a used laptop in eBay. Probably in that order. And as sad as that sounds, I've loved every minute of it. The mundane life is what I'm wanting right now. Bed by 1. Wake up around 9-ish, if possible. Get to gym by 10. Work out until 11:30. Clean up, and get lunch. Work for a few hours in the afternoon. Naptime. Dinner. Maybe a little more work after dinner. Either meet up with some friends at night, or veg out for a little while. On some days, I'll replace naptime with some ultimate frisbee. The beauty of it is that if I can actually manage to put in 3 hours of work a day, I can get this done pretty quick. Of course, I get easily distracted with other important tasks, like looking for photos of Suge Knight on Google.

And we can't really have a posting w/out some sports thoughts:

Heat in 6. Diop/Dampier are not going to deny Shaq. No one on the Mavs roster can check D-Wade. Dirk will get his, but he doesn't do it in a way that cripples the other team (i.e. create foul trouble, force doubles in spots that make teammates better shooters).

After sweeping the 'Stros, the Reds are still in 2nd place, only 3 games back of the Cards, and half a game up on the Dodgers for the wild card. With Pujols out for a little while, the Reds just may keep things interesting for a while.

Marvin Lewis will have to start chopping some heads to keep order in Cincy. Chris Henry comes to mind. A 2nd year, 3rd receiver coming off of a felony charge and a DUI may just find out that his position on the roster isn't all that set in stone. I'm all about keeping street cred. But DUI is just dumb. For as much money as you make, require a member of your posse to drink Coke (and not snort coke) for the night, and drive everyone home. They can take turns. Otherwise, they're fired from their cush job as "posse member." It's not difficult. Meanwhile, I'm sure that Kelly Washington will be more than happy to hire some posse members that are actually not worthless.

All I know is that if I have an entourage, I will never have a DUI.

-Chairman