My vacation began with bumpy start. On Friday, I had a sore throat. By Sunday, as the temperatures rose outside, so did my fever. By Monday, it was what we all dreaded a summer cold! It is a very cruel thing, that summer time cold. You feel bad when everything is happy, sunny, and full of life. Much like the group I took up to the mountains with me; my two dogs, and my Step Son. We were on vacation and nothing could stop us. I loaded my car, and up the mountain we went. Over packed and all, curve by curve, until we reached Cedar Mountain.  Finally, we drove into my property everyone couldn’t wait to get out of the car and go and head to the lake. Fortunately, we were able to unload the car and get into our swimsuits just before the thunder storm hit. As the days past, my cold got better and things were fine. My Grandmother said , the mountains were ”God’s Country.”   I believe that she was right.  I was blessed to be able to have summers like that.  I grew up in California, during the summer I was sent to my Grand Parents in South Carolina. With the beginning of every summer,  I would hope that everything would have stayed the same. And every year, I was excited to find Ollie was still working at his store in Cedar Mountain. He made the best milkshakes in the world.

So, I wanted to create the same sort of memories for my son. We took many trips to Brevard. Almost every day, we headed into town to the toy store.  I told Jared that we visited it so much that they erected a statue in his honor.  Overall, the week went so fast. I relaxed and had so much fun with the wonderful folks in North Carolina.

I can’t wait to go back.!

Tessa and I got away for the weekend and headed down to Atlanta which was living up to its nickname “HOTlanta”!  We initially went down so I could see CELLDWELLER led by Klayton who has had many projects I have been listening to for years starting with his original industrial metal band CIRCLE OF DUST whose debut CD I picked up back in ‘92!  Since the show was on Friday, July 1st, we decided to head down the night before and stay with my best friend Kenny and hit the town first thing on Friday.

So, we did just that and first hit the Georgia Aquarium Friday morning hoping to avoid most of the impending holiday weekend crowd.  However, it was still a mess as I’m sure many people had the same idea in mind.  But it wasn’t bad so we made the best of it and conquered the World of Coca-Cola as well since it’s right next door!

We managed to finish touring both spots by mid-afternoon so we started to make our way down to the Masquerade which was, conveniently, just a few miles away.  We paid our parking fee and made our way out into traffic when Tessa suddenly realized her cell phone was missing!  I’m not sure who freaked out worse: me or her?!

After the freak-out session was over, Tessa could only think of one place the phone could be: in the restroom of the commons area outside of the World of Coca-Cola.  She kept her phone in the back pocket of her jeans and it must have slipped out while she was relieving her bladder of all the 60+ soda flavors from around the world!  Thankfully there was an attendee in the restroom so she approached her and inquired about her phone which is a nice Samsung Droid Fascinate just like mine.  Apparently the woman was rather fond of the phone she had found because, according to Tessa, she was rather reluctant to hand it over.

After she had reacquired her electronic device, we got back out into Atlanta traffic and made our way to the Masquerade.  Once we found the venue, we went back to the Burger King we had passed on the way and grabbed a quick bite.  Quick is the key word since the Masquerade is kinda in the ghet-to!

We got to the venue shortly after five and waited outside for a couple of hours before the doors opened.  While we were out there, we meet up with some South Carolina friends who were also attending the show and even made a few new friends including Big Troy from 95 Rock in Augusta, GA.

When the doors opened, Tessa and I immediately hit the merch table and picked up a shirt each as well as some stickers (including old school CIRCLE OF DUST and BRAINCHILD) and a CD!

A couple of hours later, the opening band INVIOLATE started the show and featured a bona fide bellydancer on vocals!

After their set, it was time for me to FINALLY get to see Klayton live and in person after being thwarted from seeing CIRCLE OF DUST back in college because some jackass at a Charlotte venue had told me the show was postponed when, in reality, the venue had been changed.  No, I’m STILL not over that!

When CELLDWELLER took the stage, their sound and set-up was absolutely AMAZING!  My only complaint about the show was that the entire set was comprised of remixes and new material which I have yet to hear.  I have their only straightforward album: the 2003 self-titled debut.  They have numerous compilations of remixes and instrumentals however I am not as familiar with those.  So, on that note, I was somewhat disappointed but I did enjoy the overall experience of finally seeing Klayton perform live and in person!

After the show, Klayton and his touring partner, Blue Stahli, met with fans back at the merch table to take some pics and sign some autographs….

When we left the venue, we met up with Kenny at North River Tavern in Sandy Springs and I drove his inebriated ass home while Tessa drove my Jeep back to his house to crash for another night.

We slept in a bit the next morning and then made our way out to the Chattahoochee River and drove around parts of Alpharetta where I used to work and frequent.  We then made our way to Buford, GA to check out the Mall of Georgia and surrounding shops including the new Museum Replicas store which had some kickass geek souvenirs such as Star Wars and Harry Potter memorabilia as well as some steampunk apparel!  I picked up a Cthulhu bobble-head!

After roaming the entire mall, Tessa and I grabbed some food from Chic-Fil-A before hitting the road and heading home.  When we got back into town, we hit Yogurt Mountain and then Bi-Lo for some groceries and went home.

Sunday we relaxed and went over to my Uncle James Ray and Aunt Tina’s house for some cooking out and swimming.  Outside of that, we didn’t do much of anything else except for laundry!

Monday was more of the same as we celebrated our independence and freedom to be lazy!  We did, however, manage to make it out to meet my mom and her boyfriend Mark at Hollywood 20 to see Cars 2.  I have to admit that the sequel to the Pixar original was a bit disappointing as I was expecting since they turned it into an animated spy movie.  That’s not to say that there wasn’t any redeeming qualities to the film because there were some very funny moments and the plot was better than I had expected although it did get a little ridiculous toward the end.

Cars 2  \m/  \m/  \m/

Unfortunately, Tessa had to go to work after the movie and I had to spend a few hours in my office getting caught up from the 4-day weekend so I could hit the ground running today!

Damn, I’m glad to be back, vacation was too long. Having said that, I look forward to the next one in six weeks.

The long awaited sci fi- collaboration between Steven Spielberg and J.J. Abrams, “Super 8 is finally in the theaters. The movie was Directed by Abrams and Produced by Spielberg. The plot takes you back to 1971 with a group of Middle School kids who make a movie on Super 8 millimeter film. While shooting a scene the crew accidentally captures footage of a violent train crash. At this scene the movie is well foreshadowed for what happens in the end of the film. Shortley after the wreck, the crew found military personel surrounding the wreck and a alien escaping from the scene. It was interesting that there were no The biggest consensus among the alien theorist is that Area 51 is not only hiding captured spacecraft and aliens, but that they’re retro-engineering the technology they’ve found in there, and are probably working on biological experiments -cloning and hybridization and the like. Maybe it will you remind you of an X-Files episode almost a decade ago, so all these claims need to be taken with a grain of salt, but the really hard to stomach idea in this is that people can’t come up with technological advances on their own. Computers, stealth technology, lazers, the internet– pretty much any major advancement in the last half of the 20th century could be attributed to stuff found in a UFO, sure, and people will take it at face value because they have little understanding of how tech happens and evolves. The explanation of the opposing force, the skeptics, makes more sense: they say that Area 51 really just hides and tests the super-secret projects and experiments the government won’t admit it’s spending billions of dollars on. We know that the books get cooked all the time to hide where money is actually going. What’s another dozen or so great story, but using the story as a smoke screen is also a conspiracy– isn’t that good enough? Isn’t that enough to be concerned about? And here’s more: Because the experiments are secret, they’re exempt from environmental control issues, and they’ve been known to burn off weird chemicals with little regard or help for those who get sick because of the fumes. Why waste time on supposed aliens that may or may not exist when real humans, not far from the base, are getting real illnesses and no help for them? Why isn’t anyone but Jesse bringing up that there are actual lies that have been told to the populace for six decades?: And maybe, Spielberg knows a little bit more about life from other planets then the rest of us Earthlings.  It was strange that there weren’t any heavy hitting actors in the movie, especially since it is released during the summer time. Maybe it was intended to be more of an artistic film than a action thriller. Dakota fanning sister, Elle Fanning is one of the kids. Kyle Chandler from “Friday Night Lights” in the town sheriff and the father of the protagonist in the film. I didn’t have the heart wrenching feeling that E.T. gave me. It wasn’t a loveable alien who ate “Reece’s Pieces.” This was something violent and hard to contain. However, the message was quite clear on tolerance for people from other planets. The military turned the alien into a monster.

I then watched “ Jesse Ventura’s Conspiracy Theory.”, which I thought was quite strange considering I just watched Super 8. The movie made me think of the possibility that our government could be holding aliens captive. Jesse’s team came up with a theory on this episode that the Government secretly farms hybrid Alien/human beings. Could our military be filled with black-op ”goon” like the military men in Super 8. Frightening covert operations doing unthinkable things without our knowledge. So, once again people are migrating to Roswell to see if they could find a real alien. It is the biggest conspiracy in America. So here comes a flood of people who think that the Govornment hides aliens and downed UFO’s. Its hard to believe this conspiracy theory Meeting with the usual . Jesse and his team try to take on the biggest conspiracy in America, area 51. Where is it? It a secret airbase 90 miles north of Las Vegas. Many conspiracy theorist’s have tried to enter the compound.

If there are aliens held in area 51, all they want to do is phone home. Super 8 is astory about aliens. It is also story about forgiveness and doing what is right. I believe that the people in our Military want to serve and protect our Country. Do I believe in UFO’s? Yes………if there are other planets in the solar system, then  you bet there are some form of life living on them. Do I want to find out if there are alien bodies hiding in Area 51? I don’t know if it would terrify me, but I would like to know where they came from.