New Years Eve, 2011/12 Chicago

"This is how time and space work, you assholes" - Carey

I think the very point of New Years Weekend, the day before, the day of, and the day after, is sentimentality and selfishness and selfish self awareness. Everybody, every body, should be allowed to be as crazy as it chooses on those days. That means actual crazy too, not just long running jags of mixed drinks and fried food. If you need to have a public breakdown, if you need to cry for reasons known only to you, or get irrationally angry, or never leave the house, all those things are cool. Get it all out. Puncture your wounds, and let the anxieties bleed into carpet or your friend's couch. If we all give each other this freedom, then we are all forgiven too. Because the flip side of this agreement is that once you are done, you spend the rest of your time understanding and tolerating the crazies of everyone who had to deal with you too. And these things are set off like a chain reaction, one head exploding causes another causes another. So kindness, absolute generosity of spirit is required right after or right before you plummet to the depths, and that is strenuous, like a kind of exercising, a workout of your sanity. People who are like this all year round, they are the easiest to deal with on New Years, because they have been working out, they are elastic and flexible and strong. People think that having a breakdown is a sign of weakness, but in fact everyone has breakdowns, having a quick recovery time is the strength. The kind of people who keep that shit bottled up are the ones who cause the worst fires on nostalgic holidays, because asking them to look into their past is forcing them back through a nightmare land of evils they never bothered to deal with. They haven't named them and memorized their details, and said their names over and over again like a chanting old woman on the bus, an hour just tasting the consonants until you can repeat the catalog of your personal failings and regrets as well as the alphabet. That's how you accumulate power, you make spells out of your problems, you say them and make them exist, then the sunshine reduces them to drippy little rain puddles, maybe leaving a stain or watermark but certainly drying out the main infestation, the meat of the mold.

"I forgot I *liked* people." - Amanda

 Having said this, I prefer also to run away for the holiday. New Years is my 2nd most important most favorite holiday, after of course my birthday, and it's convenient that they happen half a year away from each other, it evens out nicely in terms of breaks. It's best, for me at least, to go out of town to a brand new place and hang out with people I don't know well or at all. I love my friends back home very much (no, not at all), but don't you think it just sounds lucky? To welcome a new year with new things? Someone might point out there's an inherent risk your holiday may suck, but I think experiences sucking, excepting bodily harm or crime against, is mostly up to your own frame of mind. I don't like what's happening to my skin or hair, but the very best part of getting old has certainly turned out to be a greater control of my own enjoyment. That may have just been a fancy way of saying I'm getting more delusional. But how would I know?

 If you stay home for New Years, you know what happens? There are twenty parties, 14 events, 5 personal crises, and no matter what you choose or even if you try to fit more than one appearance in, you are either driving when you shouldn't be or someone feels put out. When you go out of town, you can just be like, hey, there are no dramatic considerations here, let's do whatever you my host want to do. Even if you just stay in their living room the whole time, you still went out for New Years. Think about that.

"Chicago, where good men come to do bad things" - me

 This weekend I went to Chicago with a bunch of girls. There was some drama in the beginning, from various quarters. Everyone gets forgiven for their craziness though, remember, so people survived mostly intact and ended up where they wanted to be. The weekend blew it's crazy wad early, it was pretty and clear the rest of the time. I stayed with my sister's friend, who was as delightful as Elly had been when I met her last year, and Nellie had really nice friends (maybe I should only stay with people with similar names on NYE too? Like the next year I'll stay with someone named Adele). New Years Eve itself is a blur of costume clothing, bright pink rum punch, muppets, and an awkward dance hour. I felt at the time I was pretty sober, but later found out I had actually been so drunk, I just felt sober. I threw up at 5am in her bathroom, and worried about waking her up, but the next morning we had all vomited except Carey, which is the opposite of how it usually is. My own friends who stayed with different people, were gone for a little while and then we connected the last night and went to a good comedy show (Entertaining Julia, every Sunday, recommended), and I discovered ginger bourbon the weekend of my vowing to not drink so much anymore. Jason and Judie met me for brunch one day, since they were also visiting other people. I drove around a lot on my own and even got lost but managed to work the city grid and get home without calling anyone. Walking on the street, I fell down, but you know, the way I always fall which is on both knees like I'm being forced into prayer position by the Inquisition, and I skinned the fuck out of both my knees but luckily my leggings were black so no one could see the blood until I went to bed and peeled the scabbed fabric and skin apart. Carey and I took an unintentional day trip, first to Gary and then to find Pullman, and I accidentally got a tour of Chicago's entire South Side, which meant we had some good time to talk, if maybe a bit more than we needed. The trip home was full of blizzards, so my friends and I stress ate at every rest stop and made each other laugh, so that even though the trip took an extra two hours because of snow it was a good trip home. Then a little bit of car tire drama when we got home, but it all worked out and people got back to their respective lives.

 So right? A calm collected relaxed safe weekend where I did new things and met new people. How blessed would I be if just all of 2012 could be like that?

The Art of Manliness

There are things I do when you're not looking. There were lots of concerts, Nigerian afrobeats and hipster bands from Athens, and little coffeeshop shows and so much bourbon drinking, a 5am trip to Denny's. There were lots of snuck cigarettes, but no pack buying, and a return to the gym after finally maybe ridding my lungs of an infestation of green gooey cockroaches. A giant Buddy birthday cake with sparklers, and my sister's birthday too, and Nate's too, and taco trucks and a new favorite album. I know that last post was sort of a bummer one to leave up so long, but sometimes when serious things happen, you then need to spend the week reveling in non-serious things, and not overthinking them, or documenting them, or analyzing them. I just, well, you know. I don't want this to just become a place where you go to see what my social calendar's been looking like. Who cares? You've been doing things too. We've all been doing things. Cause it's May. Things get done in May.



One thing I did last night was go with some boys to Hot Sauce Williams for what Andrew called a "Polish Boy Standardization". We're on the hunt for the best Polish Boy in Cleveland, for the Cleveland Sandwich Board. I am going to be factual for a minute here, since so many of you are out of towners and have no idea what a Polish Boy is. Basically, you take a kielbasa, which is like the intestinal tract of Cleveland, stick it in a white bread bun (the soft underbelly), layer it with fries, pour on barbecue sauce, and crown it with coleslaw (the coleslaw representing the shiny blue eyeshadow a waitress puts on after work on the way to Happy Hour). Serve with wetnaps.

I think I've only had one before. I don't like to order messy food usually, because even unmessy food has a habit of going down my shirt. And this is the messiest.

My friend claimed to be a master of eating one in the car even, and showed me how to wrap the wax paper around it like a diaper. We started at Hot Sauce Williams cause it's the one everyone knows best, thanks to the weird Food Network, which I hold responsible for convincing Cleveland it's a foodie town. Someday they will be put on trial for that. Because now apparently we are? And it's their fault. Even as we sat down, it was made very clear to me this was not the *best* one, and thus should serve as a baseline for my homework assignment, which is Seti's.

This isn't about eating this thing though, which I *tried* to do. It ended up pretty much the way it ends up every time I try to eat a hot dog with too much stuff on it, me just eating the actual dog with a fork and halfheartedly poking at the gooey remains.

There was a discussion about a blog Andrew had seen, called the Art of Manliness. He was disgusted with it, subject matter being how to buy things and wear things and cut your hair. Kitchenware. The boys were put out, not manly! they claimed. Though I argue good kitchenware is incredibly manly. If by man we are referring to mankind. Which we should be. I think, see, that modern manliness has pretty much always been in reference to how much money you make, and what you spend it on. So a list of foppish accessories boys should buy if they feel like spending 50 bucks on hair care products seems very manly.

Anyway, here is a breakdown of the Perfect Polish Boy, in which I loosely connect the two topics.

1) Balance is Manly: I hate oversized sandwiches. I appreciate the idea that when you are broke, its awesome to get a huge roast beef monster which will provide you with at least 5 clone sandwiches, but unless you are using it as a supplement to grocery shopping, I like being able to fit the damn thing in my mouth. You should be able to get a bite with everything included in it. A little bit of outdoors, a little bit of nerd, a little bit of flirt, a little bit of serious. But I shouldn't have to deal with a whole mouthful of one ingredient at a time.

2) Good Barbecue Sauce is Manly: I mean, it's all over it. It's the public image of the sandwich. If it's too sweet or not spicy enough, you're gonna know immediately. But of course, whether or not a sauce is good is a matter of opinion. I prefer more vinegary sauces. No tomato bases.

3) Sturdy Reliable Bread is Manly: I hate when you pick up a hot dog or sausage sandwich and the bread immediately falls apart. That's basically like having the guy get drunk on the second date and start crying.

4) Good Kielbasa is Manly: If the core of the Polish Boy is lacking, then no matter how much sauce and coleslaw you put on top, it's not going to be good. How the kielbasa is cooked is extremely important. Do you want a mouthful of fatty sausage overflowing with meat juice? Or do you want it deep fried and crispy? I personally like to microwave my kielbasa until the outside starts to radioactively char. This either means I prefer men that have survived figurative fires, or that I deep down don't really like stuffed meat in casings. Maybe it means I like space robots.

5) Coleslaw Being Runny is Not Manly: it's an accessory, and not the most important part, but without that layer of crisp and cool, the Polish Boy ceases to be. If the star of your coleslaw is the dressing, then basically I'm going to get a hot dog covered in mayo. Not cool. Don't try so hard coleslaw. Just be basic and timeless, some chopped up cabbage with a little bit of flair. True story: some of us really only started eating coleslaw at all just a few years ago. The more it reminds us of the cloying mess you can get from a deli counter, the more we start to think our previous anti-coleslaw policy was warranted. In this case, deli coleslaw equals Ed Hardy shirts, and the further you are from that the better.

Just so you know, the Hot Sauce Williams Polish Boy is NOT MANLY.

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@EvenMoreSarah:

Quick, help me me fake slightly-deeper-than-superficial knowledge of Chicago.

@BridgetCallahan:

"The gentrification of Logan Square has led to several stand up comics being priced out of the neighborhood,"

"Cleveland was founded in 1796. Chicago was founded in 1797, when all the cool people left to start bars."

"In Chicago, there is currently a petition to move the lake North, to stop fucking with the out of towners."

"Did you know once there were stockyards there? TRUE STORY."

The Chicago Tour of Dinosaurs

As one starts the shopping experience at the mouth of the river, one cannot help but be impressed with the sheer selection of dinosaurs available. No where else in the Midwest can you see such a variety, from the creaky old timers to the fast, sleek, and shiny.

A popular feature looked for in dinosaurs today is an ability to mimic their environment. Gone are the days when owners wanted a monster. The Puteulanus Unda Diligo seen above blends into the water and sky, and is particularly good at catching it's own prey, making upkeep that much easier. Also, it fits easily into corners.


Speculum Liberi are quite a common site in larger metropolises, but are not as hassle free as their big brothers. They have a tendency to be egotistical and territorial, and they are not good with small children. If you are going to keep several of them, be sure there is only one male in the herd.


I tend to be old fashioned in my taste, which is why I love these Chalybs Flumen Os. They may not do much during the day, but watch them carefully towards dusk.


Chalybs Compages of Fatum, another nocturnal river frequenter, is a joy to watch, if you have the patience. Here, in a rare daytime sighting, we can see the mother on the look out for predators, while her child plays in the water. Chalybs of all sorts are very maternal.


The grand Mellis certamen of parcus Moestitia mate for life.

A group of quadratus Northmanni feed in the sunlight.



The Ebullio gum Monasteriense is certainly large and imposing, but dinosaurs this old tend to be a little crabby and not very social. They are ideal for the elderly owner, who desires companionship without the hyperness of youth.

A particularly dangerous species, the Stipes Muneris Periculosus will chew on anything it comes across. It lies in wait like a rock, letting the victims climb over it's seemingly uniform facade, until the moment is right. Then a large gaping mouth sucks the food in like a vacuum tube. We were lucky to be able to get so close without startling it.


Finally, my favorite was the Lux lucis quod Viaticus dinosaur. Look at the beauty and grace! And a healthy one like this can live for centuries, making them an excellent investment.

Of course, it's important when keeping beautiful creatures like this in captivity to try and recreate their natural environments as much as possible. The keepers of the Chicago sanctuary make sure to keep the river shores stocked with small snacks and treats, in order to stimulate the minds of their charges and give them some exercise. If you are thinking of setting up your own display, talk to your local commissioner, who will be able to tell you the freshest suppliers.

Other dinosaur pics (otherwise known as the Chicago Architectural Boat Tour, if you want to be a killjoy) can be found here.