Monday, June 29, 2009

Lazy Summer Evening Mind Wanderings.

Crunchy peanut butter will forever and always reign supreme over smooth peanut butter. I cannot fathom why someone would ever choose the latter. Skippy now has an "extra crunchy" choice, which is both genius and fantastic. I don't know about you, but I prefer dynamic over stasis any day of the week. It's like pussing out and going to the second-rate after-prom party. Sure, you know everyone and it's an okay time. Maybe a couple of people even get a little drunk. But you're missing the Can't Hardly Wait party where Jennifer Love Hewitt's strutting around looking for you and people are vomiting in the swimming pool and fucking in the bathroom.

What was I thinking buying a bunch of size small t-shirts and other random forms of cotton from American Apparel when I worked there? It seemed like a good idea at the time because I was a slim lad, but now I prefer the comfort of a medium. So I have all this discarded cotton in my closet that I can't imagine wearing again. Time for another trip to Buffalo Exchange. Also, I may slightly regret my past fixation with v-necks. Not yet, but maybe soon.

There are those that say they'd work even if they had money coming out of their assholes. I'm sorry, but if I were rich I wouldn't be working. If there's one thing I learned from my recent two week vacation it's this: Sure, you can get bored from time to time without a job or profession, but it's still a lot better than working.

In essence, there's really nothing on TV but sports, re-runs of Seinfeld, and solid Eddie Murphy flicks, such as Trading Places and Coming to America. What else is there to watch? Please don't recommend any HBO programs, rich shitbags.

Brett Favre will return to football because he is the Antichrist, and he wants to steal the public's collective attention so that he can piss all over it and hand it back to them. I used to just think he was the Devil, but I feel like the Antichrist would be a little bit more cunning and sneaky in the process of making you miserable. He makes you feel like he's your friend and pal until he pulls down your bathing suit trunks in the middle of the after-prom Can't Hardly Wait party with Jennifer Love Hewitt looking on. What a bastard.

I'll be in Cincinnati for the 4th of July. This is a recent development but is making me more and more excited as the time nears. My weekend will consist of the Northside Festival and watching Billy's brother and family shoot off $3,000 worth of fireworks. I did both of these activities last year, and I have to say that I would try again and again. For the next blog post, I'm actually hoping to photo document my 4th of July journey to Cincinnati. We'll see if that happens. Stay tuned.

I didn't ride my bike for four days straight. It was totally pissed at me. I played tourist for the weekend to my mom and stepdad (a fun yet exhausting and draining endeavor), and therefore spent way too much time on the train. My bike missed me, and I missed it. We made up.

Who the fuck is this Jon and Kate, and why is everyone all of the sudden so interested in their well-being or lack thereof? I'm sorry, but if you have eight kids, you deserve to be a little miserable. Are they getting divorced? What do you think put a strain on the marriage? Give me two boys, born two years apart. I can teach them how to play sports, give them pointers on the opposite sex (or not at all), and watch movies with explosions and decapitations.

I recently moved from a rather large office to a cubicle. My job is reorganizing its floor plan, so I really had no choice in the matter. Aside from missing my window that looked out onto a parking garage, the move isn't really bothering me because I generally prefer feeling cozy and secure in my immediate environment.

I hate the word "cozy" but it often seems like the most appropriate choice.

Working for an alt-weekly is peppered with perks, and the best one is the holy, blessed press pass. I just went to a $20 beer tasting for free and was able to sample new beers from Great Lakes, Flying Dog, Breckenridge (damn, I love you vanilla stout), and several others. Plus, you feel important and shit.

What's up with the wonky weather this "summer?" I'm wearing a flannel and jeans on July 1st. Listen here, Weather, I suffered through your winter and dealt with another year without a spring. Now, give me the fucking summer or I'm going to be forced to slaughter a goat as a sacrifice to the almighty weather deities.

Speaking of slaughtering goats (which I often do), Drag Me to Hell was a fantastically campy and wildly entertaining movie. I saw it by myself at Logan Square Theater ($4 movies) on a Tuesday afternoon during my recent vacation. I used to be a puss about going to shit by myself, but thankfully I'm getting over it. That's right, I'm 28.

That's good enough . . .

And here's my patented semi-sporadic, semi-regular list of shit I'm currently listening to:

Future of the Left - Travels With Myself and Another
Tortoise - Beacons of Ancestorship
Deer Tick - Born on Flag Day
Chain & the Gang - Down With Liberty . . . Up With Chains!
Japandroids - Post-Nothing

Monday, June 15, 2009

Trips.

It's been far too long since my last post, but I have a good excuse. I was in cars and planes for what seemed to be an eternity. Let's map this shit out. On Saturday morning (6/6), I found out my grandfather had passed away on my mom's side. He had extremely advanced Alzheimer's, and we were expecting this, but it still blows balls. Anyway, I had scheduled a vacation to visit Russell the Love Muscle in D.C. on Thursday (6/11). So, I went into work on Sunday for like nine hours (I don't know if there's a more helpless feeling then getting to work on a Sunday at 9:30 AM, sitting down in your office, and realizing you have to work) because my work deadlines changed due to the funeral.

After working for nine hours Sunday and then seeing my lover St. Vincent play at the Metro, I went into work at 9 AM Monday and worked until 8 PM. I then drove home, shoved food into my mouth, packed, and headed to Cincinnati. I got in at about 3 AM and promptly went to bed. The next morning, I hopped in the car with my stepdad at 8 AM and began the trek to Harlan, KY, which is about four and a half hours away. After the funeral, which ended around 8 PM, I ate Pizza Hut and basically went to bed (I'm obviously avoiding any sort of funeral details. Simply put - it fucking sucked). The next morning, I woke up at 9 AM for the burial, ate more Pizza Hut (Harlan doesn't have a heavily diverse food selection), and headed back to Cincinnati. I got in at 4:30 PM or so, fed my mom's dog, and drove back to Chicago, arriving around 9:30 PM on Wednesday night. On Thursday at 10:30 AM, I flew my tight ass out to DC.

So, that was the wildness of last week before I made my trip to visit Russ. It felt like a week crammed into two and a half days, and it wore me the fuck down. Luckily, I remained spry and virile enough to vacation in the nation's capital. When I arrived at the National airport in D.C., I became afraid that the plane had accidentally landed in Cincinnati. See, Chicago's weather has been a heaping pile of diarrhea lately, chocked full of rain, wind, crappy temperatures, and other bullshit that made it feel like the beginning of fall, as opposed to the beginning of summer. When I walked out of the airport, the stifling humidity of D.C. kicked me in the assdick. Not as bad as Cincinnati, but still tough shit. I was actually wearing a flannel at the time and had packed a jacket, amongst other sweatshirt-type materials. Needless to say, I'm an awful packer, and I suspect I always will be because I tend to overcompensate for everything all the time.

The trip was a damn solid time. I've driven through the capital on tour but never actually visited. Here are my lasting impressions and other highlights:

-D.C. traffic is just fucking terrible. Magda put it best when she said that the city never really decided whether it wanted to be considered a public transit city or a car city. It's caught in some sort of transportation identity limbo, and everyone is suffering because of it.

-The city as a whole is much more racially integrated than any Midwest city I've been to or lived in. This is a good thing, and I enjoyed the characteristic.

-The Nationals ballpark is less than exciting and really just not too fucking impressive. It was about as impressive as the Reds deciding to lose to the Nationals on my first day in town. Good job, shitbags.

-Russ should get a job as a professional smoker. He's fucking good at it and has taken it up a couple of notches in his quest for perfection. That boy knows how to smoke, and he does it a whole fucking lot. More than I've ever seen before.

-The Capitol Building and the White House are imposing buildings where important people do important work.

-There's a strange sense of southern hospitality about D.C. (I know, I know. The city's not in the "South," but that's my way of describing people who aren't rude shitbags, so suck it). Everyone I met was super fucking nice and hospitable beyond belief. I don't think I really saw too much of the scenester scene of the city, and maybe that's a good thing. I commiserated with late 20/early 30-something groups, and I appreciated them greatly. Being judgmental is for the birds.

-Shit's expensive.

-This may seem obvious to others, but I was way in to the multiple dialects being spoken on random street corners throughout the city. Must be all those damn embassies.

-Russ and I succeeded this weekend in stringing together as many obscenities and objectionable words as we could to make new exciting amalgamations. Examples include assdick (see above), slitcunt, fuckbitch, pussytwat, and so on.

-The Mexican restaurant we went to didn't have black beans. I question their authenticity, or just their intelligence in general. The weekend's food in general was pretty okay, and the city has a lack of brunch options. This is no good.

-I'm a big fan of hearing drug dealing stories and other crackhead themed tales.

-Dance parties that break out at 1 AM with twelve people on a tiny-ass patio will always rule.

-I didn't see Ian MacKaye or any other iconic D.C. musicians. Bummed.

-It felt poignant to be leaving the nation's capitol on the country's most heralded day. You guessed it, Flag Day.

All in all, I would try again. Recommended.