It started with Lyla's surprise birthday party a week ago Saturday. Lyla was surprisingly totally surprised. Some of her friends traveled from the northeast and midwest to be there which was great. I caught up with her friends, many of whom I had not seen in 5-10 years.

Wednesday Ben and Dennis came down from Secaucus, NJ to attend the reception of their artist friend Chakaia Booker. She is a very interesting person to look at and she does very interesting work with rubber tires. Her pieces are huge and amazingly graceful. Lyla, Tracy, Austin, William and I attended the reception and then went to dinner with Ben and Dennis at Tabaq in the U Street neighborhood.

This past Saturday Marcia, Brooke and I drove up to Baltimore for a cookout with friends I met through Brooke. The cookout was at the house of Jill and David who live in a beautiful 1950s house. It was a nice night. There were stories of celebrity encounters. Tanya met Paul McCartney and his now estranged wife Heather at an animal rights event in Canada. But even more intriguing to me was Jill and David's story of being at Hunter S. Thompson's memorial party and meeting Johnny Depp. He offered them cigarettes. Someone also knew someone who dated James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano) in school. Apparently he was very nice.

Family News (where it's not all about me):

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• Lenore who was diagnosed with and treated for breast cancer this past month will be starting chemotherapy soon. She'll be sporting that Melissa Ethridge look for a time. Maybe she'll take up the guitar.
  
• Lynda finished her chemotherapy and is back at work. During her time off she learned Dreamweaver and became a web mistress. I think there's even an outfit that she wears.
  
• Lyla and Tracy are getting married, sometime in the fall, somewhere in the US.
  
• My parents have started their Spoleto marathon where they try to cram in as much culture as possible in a two week period. It's like a city-wide smorgasbord.
  
• Tommy and Sandy will receive a grant to renovate their house with equipment that will help Little T get around
  
• Austin made fajitas last weekend.
  

Here are three slide shows of pictures from my week. I experimented with some new formats. If you have an opinion on them let me know.

Some more movie/DVD reviews

Curse of the Were Rabbit Wallace and Gromit are now inventing for their new pest control business and making some money. There is a monster out there eating all the vegetables that may or may not win the Giant Vegetable Competition and they intend to find it and stop it. Very clever and funny.

Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself

This movie is a little funny, a little sweet, a little sad. The look and feel is mostly bleak (it is filmed in rainy, cold Scotland) but there are wonderful moments in the film when color is used to highlight an event. And there's this German doctor that has a great face. Another good movie.

Tags: dvd reviews, family, art