Baseball, Rain & A New House

Three things.

Baseball
1. I just finished the Ken Burns documentary Baseball and, honestly, I think it may be the best thing I've ever watched. And I say that as someone who has seen 99 of AFI's 100 greatest movies and does not follow baseball. However, from beginning to end, it's perfect. The original nine-part documentary is 18.5 hours long and I just watched the four-hour follow-up, The Tenth Inning. The story of baseball is told as the great American opera, with its heroes and villains, its triumphs and tragedies, its action and adventure. It's beautiful, glorious and unrelentingly interesting. It shows how baseball has endured wars and epidemics. It's the unstoppable history of Americans. I've always loved old baseball movies and haven't followed the sport since the 1990s, but, hot damn, this documentary was spectacular.

Rain
2. I went to Big Bear this weekend. On Saturday morning, we drove deep into the woods, parked and made it over boulders and fallen trees. Once we made it to the rock-climbing spot, the sky rumbled and movie set rain came flooding from the sky. The seven of us ducked into a small shelter of rocks. We were going to wait it out, but then we wondered if the roads would flood. So, we ran through the woods shirtless in the pouring rain with thunder rolling and lighting screaming. Finally, we made it to the cars. The lightning cracked louder than I've ever heard it, like it was a monster coming for us. We yelled for each other to get in the car and we sped the hell out of there. It started to hail on our way back down a different road, so we listened to old punk songs. The parking lots and streets were devoured by water, so we ate grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. Then I took a nap. Then I drank all night.

A New House
3. I'm moving out this week with Grant, Rich and Jason. It's a huge house with a gardener and a big backyard. It also comes with a basement that seems straight out of the '60s, complete with a legit bar and a pool table. I imagine that we'll end up spending an alarming percentage of our time down there, growing delusional as we pose ourselves as "swingin' cats." Stoked.