Boy, if you had some kind of itchy need to know every single thing I did on my summer vacation last week, you could do a lot worse than listen to the latest podcast over at Happy Time. I relayed my experiences crabbing, deep sea fishing, and visiting every place you can see in the pictures down there, and it all finishes up in an interesting conversation about what would happen if a bear fought a shark (they’re natural enemies, you know).

Plus, Luke catches me up on celebrity news– apparently Eminem was right about N’Sync, and Mel Gibson said something he wasn’t supposed to. And we even put a little Shakepeare in there! Every podcast could probably use a little less Gibson and a little more Shakespeare.

I have almost no compunction in saying that I think this is probably the best podcast we’ve done yet. It’s got everything– Luke and I fighting with each other, good music, The Amazing (and, we find out, line-drive hitting) Spitzer, and some real, actual comedy. Yep, it’s a good one.

This week on Happy Time, we talk some more about the World Cup (specifically the end of it, which Luke is watching live on TV). Also, we try (somewhat unsuccessfully) to get in touch with Kyle Macdonald of oneredpaperclip.com, and we’ve got an audio clip of a horribly stupid right winger that you won’t want to miss. Seriously, you won’t. Trust us on this one.

What? We already apologized for that other thing. What do you want from us?

Baby? Where are you going?

Stop looking at this summary, and go post on the message board.  While you’re listening to this week’s show, which is very funny and has a moment in it that will freak you out for sure, post on the message board!!  P.S. Message Board.  Post on it.  Please.

A new voice on the podcast, as we start a new segment called “Sports with Spitzer.”  Also, we talk up Tool, and we introduce our new forums.

Guess I’ve been leaning back in it too much. Anyone know where I can get a good, sturdy one, preferably for under $100?

So apparently Clerks 2, which I was thinking about skipping out on (I wasn’t a big fan of any of Kevin Smith’s movies past, say, Mallrats), is amazing. And Lady in the Water, which I kind of wanted to see, is supposed to be horrible.

I saw Superman Returns and thought it was good, but it needed a real supervillian. I guess they’ll have to try that in the next one. And I saw Pirates of the Carribean, but as good as my hero Bill Nighy was, I thought it was too long, and the ending was total crap. On the DVD front, I just saw Hostel, and thought it was disgustingly fun. Tried a little too hard to be like Takahasi Miike (who even makes a cameo), but Eli Roth spilt a lot of blood and had a good time doing it.

Anyone seen any good or bad movies lately, or heard anything about Clerks 2 or Lady in the Water?

Yes, I’ve redesigned the site yet again. I’ve done it 3 (well, 3.5) times now, so I’m almost a real blogger!

To tell the truth, the last design (which I will soon have up on the “Design” page– right now that’s the only thing that’s not working yet, as far as I know) looked good and all, but it didn’t really speak to the functionality of the site, which was to put what I write in front of you as fast as possible. Sure, I had planned to start writing for other sites, and link to it with those big headlines when I got something published, but as you could probably have seen, not too much has been published lately.

And I found something else interesting about those big headlines. Because my work wasn’t immediately accessible (aka on the front page), I found that I didn’t write as much. Posting here became a much more formal process. I had to make sure a piece was completely polished before I sent it out into the world, because it required at least a click from you to be read. That’s right– hiding my pieces behind a headline actually made me more of a perfectionist. Before, when I was just posting one entry per day, I’d whip something up and send it out, knowing full well that in 24 hours it would be gone. But with those headlines, things stuck around, and the sight of the site piling up made me actually not want to write as much. Weird, I know.

So I decided to compromise. Yes, I realize it looks much more like a regular blog than anything you’ve seen here, but all the usual suspects that have always been here are still around. Miniblog entries (which I was writing longer anyway) have been upgraded to the main panel. Podcast entries are now in a seperate category, and have a neat little icon next to them, as do Discussion entries like this one. I think it’s a great way to link you to my other projects on here, because Happy Time and The Board have been picking up steam on their own.

You like those icons? I do. You can find out where I got them on the new About page, and when you’re done with that, go check the archives.

And behind the scenes, things are buttered up, too. I upgraded to Wordpress 2.0, I smoothed away some plugins with my own custom PHP, and I’m now using WP’s template system that will allow me to change the site even more. Oh, and if you care, URLs are prettier now– instead of the old “?p=xxx,” they actually give you some useful information about the posts.

And I’ve hidden some other new things around the site too.

So as long as I’ve created this discussion thing, let’s use it. After you’ve read this post, click on the link below and go discuss the new redesign over on The Board. If you haven’t made a login yet, do it, and get talking with the other cool people that frequent this crazy site o’mine. Thanks as always for reading, and now that I’ve redesigned, I promise (yet again) that new content is going to be here all the time.