Weekend High and Lowlights

Lady Friend and I took Thursday off and started the long weekend by borrowing a small powerboat and getting our Crockett and Tubbs on. We hit the Magothy River and tooled around the different creeks checking out all the waterfront houses and passing judgment on people’s bad taste. We live in Pigtown, so we consider ourselves authorities in bad taste. Before we went on our three-hour tour, we had to gas up the boat. I guess the cost of gas is really c-blocking people from blasting up and down the river in powerboats and on jet-skis because the Magothy was so empty that I lost my bearings and I almost missed the marina. We pulled right up to the gas pumps at the end of the pier and there were no other boats gassing up or waiting to gas up. It was like a ghost town on the dock. We filled up the boat  and took off for Dobbins Island, leaving $20 bills in our wake when I hit the throttle.

We didn’t make any plans for the 4th of July since we didn’t have any money left after cashing out our savings and our 401(k)s to fill up the boat. One of my hungover cousins called and she didn’t have any plans for the 4th either, so we decided to hole up in the Pigtown Palace and do the most patriotic thing any true American can do in honor of Independence Day - watch a Steven Seagal movie. Saturday, LF and I continued the patriotic theme by packing up some lawn chairs and some ice cold beers and then heading over to Fort McHenry N.P. We picked a tree on a hill and sat in the shade nursing our low-grade Seagal hangovers while watching the ships move in and out of the harbor.

Yesterday we took a day trip to Sharpsburg, MD to bike around Antietam National Battlefield. It took us about three hours to bike the whole thing because it’s pretty hilly in spots. The scenery is beautiful and it’s so quiet around the battlefield that it’s hard to believe there were 23,000 casualties in one day in that location. When I worked for the state park service back in the day, I occasionally used to have to camp at Antietam Creek. I could never fall asleep when I stayed there because my imagination always ran wild thinking of all of the ghost stories I’d heard about Civil War soldiers wandering through the woods.

I feel like I should fess up to my weekend lowlights though. When I’m left unsupervised in front of the TV it’s not uncommon for me to make really bad decisions in my viewing choices. LF came home from unSafeway and caught me fully engrossed in the atrocity that is Georgia Rule. To quote LF upon opening the front door and seeing what was on the screen: “I was only gone for ten minutes!!!” There’s only one thing worse than a Lindsay Lohan movie and that’s a Lindsay Lohan movie co-starring a pinko communist traitor and hater of American troops Jane Fonda. I need to call DOUCHE DISH Network and give them an Anger Hangover Rule - No Jane Fonda Movies on the 4th of July (or ever, for that matter).

As if losing precious minutes of my soulless existence to Georgia Rule wasn’t bad enough, I debased myself even further by getting caught up in Freedom Writers (aka Million Dollar Dangerous Minds). Wow. This movie was so heavy-handed and overly wrought that I was praying Clint Eastwood would show up and put this Mo Chuisle out of her misery. He never showed up though, which meant I was left lingering on life support for the duration. Fortunately, LF found the strength to pry the remote control from my cold hands and pull the plug on HBO-E.

Some may debate whether or not this his a highlight or lowlight, but LF and I got sucked into El Cantante starring Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony. I feel no shame in admitting this - the movie was really good. It was basically a Puerto Rican version of What’s Love Got to Do With It, minus the chronic wife-beating and Buddhist chanting. Good stuff.