Luckily, I'm having lower back trouble.  It's what saved me from an afternoon of Fathers Day fence-building -- well, that and the Fathers Day barbecue at Dave's.  The grills are firing up thick and fast these days.  June, you know.

The back trouble started a couple of weeks ago when I whacked the weeds on the west hill of the backyard.  The incline is steep, so keeping one's balance while wielding a manly power tool requires cat-like reflexes, well-toned warmed-up muscles, and an efficient plan of attack.  Since I performed the task without any of these attributes, my back is killin' me.  What really wrecked it though was getting jumped on in the pool.  About a week back, I was lying on my stomach, floating on my inflatable Mat of Perfect Bliss, when Amy decided it would fun to leap into the air and land unannounced on the small of my back in perfect perpendicularity.  Oocheewango.

Loading and unloading the 16 cement piers for the new fence didn't help either.

So I'm hurtin'.  

*****

I'm counting on the Endorphins of Victory to numb the pain when the Lakers take the championship tonight.  Adam is throwing the party for the game, which is only right since he has the TV with the biggest screen.  Yesterday he passed out flyers with the promise of pizza and other comestibles, and my only hope is that he does not celebrate a Laker victory in the same way he celebrated the New Year: crashing through a banner while dressed in a diaper.  I love pizza, but the figure on the left has some powerful appetite-curbing properties.  For me, anyway.  Iris, his girlfriend, may be driven to other intents by the cut of his jib, but if that jib ever got close to me I'd ask to be driven somewhere else fast.

Most Southern Californians are pleased that the Lakers lost last Friday night.  Yes, it's nice when the team wins at home, but more importantly, even though the game was in Indiana, had the Lakers won, the riot here would've been on a Friday night, and we like our riots to start on a weeknight.  Not only does it offer the possibility of getting a day or two off work due to looting and fires, history has proven that National Guard troops are much more efficient when they don't have to be mustered on a Saturday.  Besides, news coverage is more entertaining during a weekday riot when you have the first-string Action News Team doing the reporting instead of the weekend bumped-up-from-sports anchorman with the just-out-of-USC j-school minicam crew.  And with viewership higher on weeknights, it's just so much better for ratings.  I wouldn't be surprised if right now there are several graphic artists around town putting together video bumpers for "Championship Riot 2000" where in slo-mo, with urgent music under, we see an orange basketball being licked by oranger flames, and as it reaches the plexiglas backboard it dissolves to a trash can flying through plate glass at the Staples Center.  Tympani, strings, crescendo, and we go out on one lone sustained minor key cello chord signifying the tragedy of our times... "Good evening, everybody..."

*****

FLASH: DATELINE - VIV'S OFFICE...

I just received an e-mail from Viv on the subject of my last entry, the one about the shower curtain.  She's digging in.  Her latest message includes a long list of her efforts to whip that room into shape.  Too bad the sympathy/guilt ploy doesn't work with me.  She is offering compromises, but they are extreme.  She wants the right of first refusal on photo selection.  Unfortunately, that may be a deal-breaker.  Time to get tough.

Looks like I'm going to the bath mat on this one.

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