Last week was ESPYs week, which meant I blinked and the week was gone. And I realized this morning that I haven’t checked in with the AR.com blog in more than a week. In other words, I was busy. I spent Monday night at the Playboy Mansion (obviously) surrounded by athletes, agents and naked women. (And I wonder why all my guy friends think I have the dream job.) Tuesday was spent at The Standard downtown hooking up tickets and party passes. And Wednesday night was the actual awards show, which was way better in person than on television. Although I’d take JT over Sam Jackson as host any day of the week. Let’s make that happen next year, home office! The rest of the week was spent doing actual work. (Can’t wait for you to check out the Colt McCoy piece for our college football preview issue, or the Clay Marzo piece, which is finally running next month.)

This week, the U.S. Open of surfing is taking place at Huntington Beach. I’ll check in from there this weekend.

And next week is X Games week, which I am pretty sure will make ESPYs week seem like a cake walk. Monday, I’m playing in Ryan Sheckler’s celebrity golf tournament. I haven’t swung a golf club in five years, so that should go swimmingly. Hopefully I’ll land Kelly Slater as a teammate. Tuesday, Red Bull is roasting Travis Pastrana at the Avalon downtown. (Maybe they’ll give away a few books, too.) The rest of the week/weekend is packed with movie premieres, parties and competition.

The X Games starts Thursday, so check out our preview, which is on newsstands now (or here, online) to prime yourself for four days of skate, BMX, moto and rally racing. For the preview, I hooked up legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk with Alex Perelson, the future of vert skating. I talked with Travis Pastrana about his 10 years competing at the X Games and asked Shaun White and Ken Block to share their favorite X memories. It’s all fun stuff.