Saturday, 9 August 2003: I am so ticked off right now. I was scheduled for a closing shift at the gym and, being a weekend with beautiful weather, I knew there would hardly be anyone there for the entirety of my five-hour shift. Oh, was I ever right. No more than a dozen people came in the whole night. So I planned in advance to work on one of my freelance projects by bringing in my laptop (I'm working on a website for a girl named Maria McNeil who is a jazz vocalist trying to make it in the music industry). I placed all the files on a ZIP disk and packed up my PowerBook and took it in to work.

What's the snag? I forgot all the fonts that I need to get the pages done. My coworker Eric was responsible for designing the layout on her CD and he did a really nice job and got me all the stuff I needed for the site. Fonts included. And I forgot them. There sitting on my Mac at my other job because, and don't ask me how, I forgot to copy them to the ZIP.

This would have been the perfect opportunity to get some real work done on this site, and what do I, the ultimate bonehead, do? I forget one of the most essential pieces for the site. This sucks. What a waste of good freelance opportunity. This just means that I'm gonna have to drive into the office tomorrow and nab the fonts so I don't waste all of tomorrow as well sitting idly by.

Thursday, 7 August 2003: In the "Duh" political announcement of the week, Arnold Schwarzenegger has officially announced that he is running for governor of California against Gray Davis in the recall vote to take place, I believe, next month. Not that this wasn't expected. Schwarzy has been harboring political ambitions for years and it was just a matter of time and convincing considering his wife is a Kennedy relation and, therefore, staunchly democratic while he's a republican.

C'mon folks, did you really think he wasn't going to run? He's been talking about it for months. If he didn't run now, it would've been like Ross Perot a couple of Presidential elections ago when he was running, then he wan't, then he was again. If Ahnuld didn't run for governor after all this hype, he would have lost all credibility in any future elections he decided to run in. It was now or never.

The one thing I'm kinda looking forward to is the campaign process. Not that I'll see all of it being as I live in Illinois and not California, but I'm sure there will be plenty of coverage in the news. The reason I'm curious as to how it's going to be run is because Gray Davis is known for his smear campaigns and The Terminator acknowledged this last night on The Tonight Show while announcing his candidacy. But, seriously, what don't we already know about him that Davis could possibly dig up? He's been in the spotlight for over two decades and has been the focal point of much scrutiny already especially after marrying into the Kennedy clan. What don't we know? I would think nothing.

Well, it should be interesting all the same.

Let's see... we've got Jesse Ventura as governor of Minnesota. Schwarzenegger is running for the governor's seat in California. Now we just need Bill Duke or Carl Weathers to run for some government position and we'll have The Predator Trifecta.

Wednesday, 6 August 2003: I'm finding it so hard to believe that the new T.V. season is nearly upon us. I was really starting to enjoy not having any shows to watch on a weekly basis. It truly makes for a much more enjoyable week. But now they have started. Well, in very small scale I suppose.

Last night, for example, FOX debuted their new drama The O.C. (which refers to Orange County -- the L.A./Beverly Hills area of southern California) starring Peter Gallagher as a public defender named Sandy Cohen who takes in one of his clients, Ryan Atwood (Benjamin McKenzie), who is thrown out of his mother's house after he is busted with his brother for grand theft auto. Of course, it's your typical fish-out-of-water story... the poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks trying to figure out how he fits into this new life in the glam and glitter world of Orange County. However, this kid McKenzie is pretty good so far. Katie and I taped the first episode and watched it later on in the evening and enjoyed it thoroughly. We especially enjoyed the interplay between the street smart Ryan and Sandy's geeky and highly unpopular son Seth (Adam Brody). The premiere episode is being rebroadcast on FOX tomorrow night at around 8 p.m. CDT so tune in. I hope it stays as good as the first episode.

In other news, yesterday a package arrived in the mail for me from a local radio station with a free copy of the DVD for Shanghai Knights starring Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson. It would seem that I've won another contest through their website. I think that makes three, if not more, that I've won by being a member of their site. The first prize was a copy of Jackie Brown on DVD and the second one was about 10 tickets to a one-year anniversary celebration of the opening of a bar in Chicago called Hogs & Honeys. Wasn't able to attend the party and I couldn't give away the tickets (I had to be there to claim them) unfortunately. But I have been enjoying my copy of Jackie Brown. Much better the second time around than it was the first time I saw it.

Does anyone else out there own Shanghai Knights yet? I'm curious because mine seems to be a normal copy save for the fact that there is no insert card inside the case showing chapter titles or anything else. Only thing in the case was the DVD. Are all of them like this or is mine an unmarked promotional copy that just doesn't have all the bells and whistles? It looks like I've got all the same special features contained on the disc itself. Somebody let me knwo.

And you may have noticed that I've added some pictures to the Photo Album section. Yes, I have finally added the digital prints, but hey, it's a start, right? More will be coming as soon as I get off my lazy butt and scan some of the 35mm prints. So keep checking back. Also included in this batch of photo album updates are shot from this past weekend's trip to the Tall Ships 2003 exhibition near Navy Pier in Chicago. Check them out as well. This is all that I'm posting for this gallery since that's pretty much all I took.

Tuesday, 5 August 2003: I hope this isn't just a ploy to boost her popularity and really is just a means of raising what I would expect to be some major funds for charity.

You may or may not have heard of the song "You're So Vain" by Carly Simon. Well, for decades, there has been speculation about who the song is referring to. Some of the guesswork has been directed towards actor Warren Beatty as well as Rolling Stones vocalist Mick Jagger and Simon's ex-husband James Taylor. Well, Simon has never publicly stated who it's about which has only added fuel to the speculative fire.

Now she's spilling the beans. But only to one lucky person who wins a bidding war. Of course, that person will be sworn to secrecy by signing away their life on what's bound to be a stack of legal documents that could choke a horse.

Well, the winner, with a bid of $50,000 is NBC Sports President Dick Ebersol.

I don't know that I'd want to win this or know the identity of the subject of the song. First, it would be hell to keep it a secret. Second, it would be hell to be hounded by the press who will likely stop at nothing to get you to spill the beans. Lastly, I just wouldn't want to know because I'm of the opinion that the answer to the riddle is not nearly as much fun as the speculation as to the secret Narcissus' identity.

Oh well, just my two Lincolns.

Monday, 4 August 2003: Ah, football season is almost upon us. No, for you non-U.S.ians, I am not referring to your idea of football -- I am not talking about soccer. I mean good old fashioned, hard hitting, NFL style FOOTBALL. Tonight, ABC will be showing the Hall of Fame preseason game between the Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs. Oh, I am so looking forward to this game. Tune me in, baby!

Okay, so the game was called in the third quarter due to storms in Canton, Ohio. The Chiefs wound up being declared the winner in what was definitely a kicker's game since the only scoring game from Chiefs kickers, 9-0. Wasn't all that exciting as both of the teams really didn't run their starters for all that long. But when do they ever run starters for an entire game in the preseason?