the awesome/terrifying freedom

last weekend the roommates and i embarked on an amazing trip into the past.

first we watched the film 'space camp,' which definitively nails the 'kate capshaw is a terrible terrible actress' coffin shut. it's obvious that the only thing spielberg saw in her was.. himself. the film is fascinating to watch for several reasons: 1) it had such a profound impact on me as a boy. 2) lea thompson, kelly preston, joaquin phoenix, and tate donovan all got their start on it, and 3) terry o'quinn (locke on 'lost') has three lines, and hair.

the plot is so amazingly stupid, the acting is atrocious, and yet it taps into a childhood fascination with outer space in a way that still makes it (just barely) watchable.

take a trip back to 1986, with this amazing set of trailers, including one for 'space camp.'



the second wave of 'return to boyhood 2007' consisted of a jaunt to california's 'legoland,' yes, a theme park based entirely on plastic bricks.



last year i got david a ticket for his birthday because our early friendship (we were 6 years old), like the park, was based entirely on plastic bricks.

the target demographic for legoland is kids aged 5-12. i don't recommend it unless you possess the capability to truly regress yourself down to that age. fortunately, for the three of us, this was no problem at all. we spent a good portion of the day programming lego robots to pick up lego asteroids and lego astronauts.



the highlight though, was the scale reconstructions of entire cities in lego - including new orleans' bourbon street, which faithfully depicts the first gay bar i ever went to. how cool is that?



also in legos: the bethesda fountain!



i bought myself a lego artoo-detoo keychain, and a set from the new, totally awesome, anime inspired exo-force collection.





on the way home we had dinner in laguna beach. the people were disturbingly pulled from jcrew catalogs and reality shows, but the sunset on the beach was so beautiful.