Brighten Your Day

A friend of mine said that when she was at Asha, a she she salon in the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago, she came across a service called "anal brightening." She couldn't resist asking someone what in the blazes that service involved, and evidently there are people who like their anuses, or is it ani?, to shimmer bright, white in the moonlight. I'll never be able to take Brighten the Corners by Pavement out of my CD rack without thinking of this operation, and think to myself, "Gosh, I wish my anus where whiter."

Why I Love The Cubs.

The title to this entry is a little misleading since I do not love the Cubs at all. I am not a Chicago Cubs fan one bit. It's the White Sox all the way for me. But I cannot turn away a baseball game no matter who is playing.

My office is four blocks away from Wrigley Field which has it's pluses and minuses. The biggest plus is that often during the baseball season someone calls me up and offers me a free ticket to a Cubs' game. How great is that? It is usually a client or vendor who offer... so my boss is usually ok with it. So this means:

1. I get to go to a baseball game.
2. I don't have to be at work for the afternoon.
3. I get to wear my White Sox hat to Wrigley and get the Cubs' fans all worked up.
4. I get to drink a tasty Old Style beer which is not allowed in our house since it has the Cubs' logo on it. I love Old Style beer.

I don't hate the Cubs... I'm not like that at all - I'm just not a fan. But working right by Wrigley has it's benefits.

I like eating especially when injury & ingesting dish towel water is imminent

In the Lincoln Square area, on the corner of Lincoln and Montrose, there used to be this shady looking Eastern European restaurant (?) with flamingos on the window and awning. There always seemed to be only two people there at a time and I was too scared to enter its doors. Well, I was over there recently, not to get some shady action, mind you, but on my way to get some pub grub with my friend, when we noticed no flamingos and a sign for $3 mojitos on the restaurant’s wall. Sign us up. Too bad, I don’t remember the name of the new place, but what I do remember is the dessert, the cookie monster. I was expecting something like this one on the left (you can sign me up for that oreo thing as a chaser while you're at it):

This is the cookie monster dessert from Chicago’s own Home Run Inn Pizza, which is one of the best pizza places in the stratosphere. Not only do Home Run Inn restaurants have a pizza buffet that includes something that looks like a deep dish pizza, but is actually a pizza whose crust is made out of Italian sausage (you heard me right), they also have the cookie monster. One time I drove 45 minutes just to have this skillet full of goodness.

At unknown Lincoln Square place the menu said, “A warm plate sized chocolate chip cookie topped with vanilla bean ice cream and whipped cream.” What we received was more like, “A burnt cookie that you can’t cut with a knife and when you do it shoots across the table, but you still eat the piece that touched the table because, well, it’s a cookie and no one in their right mind would waste a cookie, and even though it’s a struggle to eat the cookie you still try cutting it again and again until you almost break the plate.” That’s some menu description, huh? I’ll be back there soon with the hope that the culinary skills have gone up a notch and because man, their tater tots were off the chain.

Winter in April.

One of the things I've learned about Chicago is that Winter always comes back the first week of April. The past three years have seen snow flurries and cold-ass temperatures the first week of April. I have been to baseball games the past three years so bundled up that I look ready for a Bears game in January.

This would not be so bad, but every March we always have a string of nice days in the 70's... so going backwards into the 20's is the worst. I love the winter. I love the winter more than most - but by April 1st I am so over winter. These flurries on the way to work this morning just pissed me off.

Pain Killer

There is a bar in Chicago's Wrigleyville neighborhood called Trader Todd's. The bar is owned in part by none other than Donald Gibb, otherwise known as Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds. Do you think he's related to the Gibbs of Bee Gee's fame, like maybe their manic depressive, weight-lifting brother who they employed as a bodyguard, only to learn that he was prone to flying off the handle and killing people? Okay, that's certainly not true, but I did once see Ogre in the bar, someone handed him a cell phone, told him the guy's name on the phone was Bill, and Ogre's all, "What's up Bill, you big neeee-eeeeeeerd!!!" That is a true story.

Trader Todd's is known for Ogre, karaoke, and nautical themes, but I mostly know it for the painkillers, a 3 shot pina colada type drink that knocks you on your ass like a right hand from Buster Douglass before he got horribly fat. I had one of them Sunday afternoon and I felt like each coconuty sip tripled my drunkness until I was not unlike Dudley Moore in Arthur 2: On the Rocks, wait, make that like Liza Minnelli twenty years after Arthur 2: On the Rocks. Get your ass to Trader Todd's and have a painkiller. If you go after a Cub's game, your ticket stub will get you a mess of free wings, but you might want to go with mild sauce, because if you're putting out that fire with painkillers, you'll find yourself Liza Minnelli-style in no time.

Chicago Style.

When I moved to Chicago I embraced all things Chicago (except the Cubs)... I usually do that when moving to a new city. I love to feel apart of the city I live in, it makes life a little better when home feels like home. So I learned to love Chicago style pizza... something I had never tasted until I decided to moved here. Yep. I am certainly disappointed that you cannot get a good NYC style thin crust in this town - but I can always take a trip to NYC.

I have gone out for pizza at a few different places in Chicago and I quickly learned to love Gino's East downtown (Ontario & Wells)... none of the other locations are that good. Yeah, it's a tourist magnet but the pizza is top notch and since it is downtown I rarely go. Well on Monday night a few of us met up at Gino's to take Loaf for his first slice of Chicago style pizza. It was mediocre at best. I was disappointed that my Gino's East fell short the one night I needed to it shine (bubble and steam). So I am dropping Gino's down in my top places to go for pizza in Chicago.

1. The Art of Pizza
2. Gino's East (only the one on Wells)
3. Giordano's
4. Lou Malnati's
5. Chicago's

Finally.

This past Saturday (St. Patrick's Day) I finally went to the Liar's Club.
It is a bit strange being part of a group of bloggers named after a place I've never been to. Now I can say I've been there... and had a great time.

LP, Cherry and the Aussie were there. Dr. Ken showed up a little later. Classy was a flake (lame... it was my first time!). And the highlights for me were meeting two new bloggers... K.I.D. attended which was fantastic, especially since she had to be on a plane early the next morning. What a trooper. And she is a PBR drinker... always a good choice. Loaf was there... he is visiting from London. The guy drinks straight vodka... much more of a man than me.

The 80's tunes were blasting (not all 80's tunes, but heavily 80's)... so much that with my damaged ear drums from my Austin trip I caught about 70% of each conversation. K.I.D. probably thought I was slow, but she humored me with conversation. And with Loaf's accent and funky English vocab I probably only caught 40% of those conversations. He was probably asking me if I do meth every day... and I was probably agreeing. Lovely.

Everyone was dancing except for me. K.I.D. told me a story about someone throwing up on her jacket at a bar, and there were so many drunk people at the Liar's Club that I just figured it would be smart if I stayed at the table and was Coat-Protector-Guy. There were a couple close calls, but no barf ever made it on to any of the coats. I did my job well.

A great time at the Liar's Club. A good time with friends. And a good time meeting new people. My only complaint is that beer is way too expensive. Fat Tire was $5 a pint. Too much.

My vote is to add K.I.D. to the Liar's Club.