Up and Down Weekend

"I'm in love with the ordinary
I need a simple space to rest my head
And everything gets clear"
--The World You Love, Jimmy Eat World

One of the highlights of my weekend, before I get into its up-and-down nature, was just that: a simple space to rest my head. I fell asleep upstairs at my friend Jeff's house after a nice dinner, intending merely to take a nap for an hour before heading out to another friend's party, but the sandman got me and I emerged more than three hours later with a real solid nap to my credit. Unfortunately, things didn't get clear, as Jimmy professes; instead I remained rather hazy as I braved the 110-105-405 route home.
So the weekend started with a lazy Friday evening, watching some of the bad Lakers (Kobe drives and dishes on every single offensive set, meaning that everyone else stands around, spots up, and casts threes--not a good offense, sorry Rudy T) with Michael after the initial screening of "Thanksgiving Football 2004: The Video", my half-hearted effort at re-creating the magic that was the previous weekend's football game. It's a pretty good, minute-long piece that would be better if the camera work was better (I have only myself to blame) and if any of my editors really wanted to spend more than an hour on the thing. Returned home to Philip and friends and pretty much headed straight to bed, waiting for the Lakers' conclusion and acknowledging my dramatic need for sleep (fewer than five hours of slumber in each of the previous four days).
Up fairly early on Saturday to play some NCAA football (more to come later that night) and after some grocery shopping, I headed up to Pasadena to join friends Jeff, Jenny and Jason for the UCLA-USC game. Somebody proposed the title "'Wood vs. the Hood" and I think I like it. Much better game than most thought--I knew we'd cover, but I figured it would be 13-14 instead of a five-point margin. We even had a chance to win the thing, but Drew Olson got a little too excited and fired the ball to a wide-open Jason Leach instead of one of his receivers. I'm stoked about next year, though, with Olson, Maurice Drew, Chris Markey (not to be confused with Biz Markie, though maybe they're related, I haven't done the necessary research), Marcedes Lewis (did they try to name him after the car and just miss?) and Junior Taylor all back to provide another year of experience in this West Coast offense that Tom Cable has so adeptly managed this season. The defense might suck again, but it can't help improving at least a little bit (I hope). Reggie Bush is ridiculous. He's the NCAA version of Michael Vick, so much faster than everyone he's playing that it's almost not fair. Like nine guys would have angles on Reggie, and he'd still turn the corner and go for 80. We don't have anyone like that (Maurice Drew looked like that against Washington, but, let's be fair: everyone looked like that against Washington this year). Well, nobody else in America (maybe the NFL included) has anyone like that, so I can't feel too bad. Leinart was unspectacular (we even got some pressure on him, which I didn't expect at all), but he is a tremendous manager of the game and possesses the best touch of any quarterback in the country (machine-gun Olson could stand to learn a thing or two from his counterpart: you don't need to rear back and try to throw it through the chest of a running back who's four yards in front of you--come on, man). We did have a great time at the game though--saw like four hundred people I know, which was to be expected--and not such a good time getting out of the Arroyo. We didn't arrive back at Jeff's house (in Pasadena, mind you) until after 7, and considering we departed for the game at 11:30 a.m., it was entirely too long a day. This brings us back to the nap, which took place after some Chinese food (Pei Wei, never had it before) and was intended to bridge the gap between dinner at Jeff's and a party at my buddy Jim's house on the west side. He's a hockey agent and left today for a trip all across Europe with a bunch of their players, so it would have been nice to hang out before his departure. Instead, I spent the time in dreamland, and got home around 11. Phil, Charlie and cousin Brian arrived shortly thereafter (from Union Cattle, where evidently a dozen or so of my co-workers were also partaking in the revelry--just found that out today) and we goofed around until entirely too late for my early-morning football wake-up time.
Had a good Sunday at Fox, watching some great games, most notable of which was--of course--the Chargers' survival and triumph over the visiting Broncos. We did everything we could to try and lose the game, but Jake Plummer was worse than anything we could conjure up. He threw four picks--he really, really sucks--and allowed us to hold off any late rally. Bryan Cox does a bunch of NFL picks every week on our show and I usually cut the video for that segment, so I've picked up on a few trends displayed by Mr. Cox. He always picks against the Broncos and he always uses the same humorous rationale: Jake Plummer sucks. I love it. LT, Brees and Gates weren't quite up to par either, but we got some big plays from the defense and still won, and that's all that matters.
I'm trying to think of analogies for this next little section. Like if you're a farmer (work with me here) and there hasn't been much rain in a while, you don't want a flood to come along, right? You'd rather received a steady stream of rainfall, spread out every couple weeks, because a) it won't become overwhelming and damage any crops, 2) you can prepare for it a little bit, and c) you can appreciate the days of rain that much more. In the dating life, it's nice to meet people fairly consistently, find interesting girls and go on dates on a semi-regular basis, but (due to a variety of factors, not the least of which is my standard 65-hour work week) it hasn't been as consistent as I'd like for the last several months. And now, for whatever reason, the rains have come, as it were. Multiple favorable options have presented themselves, and while I certainly can't complain, I'm just wishing I could have spread things out a little bit. An inch of rainfall a day is way better than a two-foot torrent every three weeks, that's all I'm saying. And thank goodness there are more than 65 hours in a week.