Last time I checked there was a thing called “illegal immigrants” and our state/country’s duty was to basically send them back to where they immigrated from. Now Arizona has implemented a new policy that sort of allows “racial profiling” of possible illegal immigrants. This should really just be called “the Mexican rule.” That is really all that it is targeting. So now there is a whole bunch of hullabaloo over this possible profiling, but why? If you are legally in America you will simply have to show your I.D. to the officer. Done. If you are illegally in America, you go to jail and then are sent home. Two weeks elapse and you’re back in Arizona working for 5 bucks an hour washing dishes.
So why is everyone freaking out? Seth McFarlane, who I consider wildly intelligent, made statements about this resembling Nazi Germany. Really? Let’s look at the worst case scenario for an illegal alien in Arizona. Unlicensed truck is pulled over, ask for your I.D….you don’t have your I.D. because you’re an illegal alien…you are in jail for a few days (receiving food and shelter and entertainment!)….you board an air conditioned truck that takes you across the border and releases you at a designated point. This sucks. Might be without your family, without work, without money. BUT (this is a BIG BUT)….the difference between this and Nazi Germany is that you weren’t forced into a giant fucking oven! You were not murdered along with another 4 million Mexicans!
PETA also likes to compare the slaughter of animals for food to Nazi Germany. PETA is a whole gaggle full of retards!
I understand the whole “profiling” thing is frowned upon, but I can imagine that it works! Our country is such a huge whiney bag of pussies that any legislation will ALWAYS have someone huffing and puffing about whatever gains it is aimed at attaining (how about that alliteration! booyah!). Simply based on the political parties alone, people will come out of the woodwork to scream “unconstitutional,” “unchristian,” and “unacceptable.” When was the last time ANY law, decree, or solution made its public appearance and the country sat back and said “you know what, it’s not perfect, but let’s give this a chance.” NEVER.
I have a battle that is lamenting inside of my brain. When i am first dosing off, i will begin to dream. Not as most people do though. Most people don’t dream until their REM cycle…My dreams begin pretty quickly, while i’m still awake. I can actually alter my dreams to some account, and other times i am just along for the ride. I was trying to meditate (thanks doc) and during my quiet time of “breath in, breath out” i was joined by a conversation of 4 people speaking austrian or perhaps german. I was unable to simply shoo them away. And within a few seconds my attention was completely absorbed into their conversation, that i did not understand.
I have recently been chased by aliens, i was a leader of a pack of wolves and we used strategy to take down the animal we were chasing. i never saw the creature, i was on a ridge watching the others do the work. I have a pen and paper near my bed that i write on. I’ve been searching online to find out about what my doctor called “drop in” syndrom. Basically the wrong chemicals are being released in the wrong order so i’m not goin to sleep in the right course of action.
Between my new diet, lack of booze, i’m getting a set regiment of shower, prep time, ambien, lights out, watch Good Eats, into bed, read till go sleepy.
It’s officially the week that i begin to start losing this weight that i’ve gained while NOT being gainfully employed. When you become broke you need to save money, by saving money you buy cheap shit, cheap shit is horrible for you, welcome to America! When i was 21 years old and making 35K a year, i would call home and ask what was for dinner; my mom, not the most sterling of cooks would say “spaghetti”” this is where i would twich and then hit up my closest high-end deli and buy a 28 dollar bottle of vodka and some shark steaks. i felt sorry for my family who browsed through the bottled marinara and over-done pasta while i basked in my yellow rice and fish. It was a wonderful time. Soon i built up an impressive amount of vodka in my “bar” down in my basement room. Shortly after that was when i realized that someone was sneaking some of my lovely liquid out of their bottles and enjoying them as much as i did. This was when i gave my bro an allowance to curr his desire to snog my booze!
What was really great was New Years Night…2000…………1999/2000…you know, when the world was gonna end. During the day my Mom was telling us…….”say your prayers, beg/wish for forgiveness”….she went to bed at like 9pm.!!!!
Now if you truely believe that the world is going to end, wouldn’t you stay up the extra 3 hours? Both Jamey and I were kinda curious about this. We DID stay up together, we were taking shots of vodka and playing video games while watching Dick Clark (pre-stroke) slather through his bullshit.
Tuesday.
…we hit up the Science and Industry Museum…which was more about kids making a shit-ton of noise and sucking. Didn’t we learn that you stay to the right, not RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE GROWN UP WALKING DOWN THE STAIRS? Katie giggled because I sounded like an old man bitching about kids not knowing the right-of-way! It’s not the left-of-way! Morons!
Not that Tuesday wasn’t a blast…We did the Science/Industry Museum, the Adler Planetarium, and the Chicago Aquarium, all before 5pm! There was just not as much bat-shit craziness that Saturday provided. Although, I did see a chick jogging with a stroller that made me stare at her. She had to be the nanny because that booty, in those skin tight…..uhhh, exercise pants-thingies….never mind it’s not important.
Tuesday night I did have a conversation with a cool homeless dude on the inability of people to make eye-contact with him. He mentioned that a smile and a nod would be a good thing, but he gets frowns and head shakes. Chicago-ans are assholes in his mind. I can’t blame him, I kept change/a dollar in my pocket at all times just in case we came across someone less fortunate. Now I’m going to heaven! Yay! I also handed out cigarettes! I’m the worst-best person ever.
Wednesday
Woke up, train at 7:30am…..Car at 11:00am….Home at 2:45pm….Much napping.
Monday.
Went to bed too late, so when the alarm went off at 9am I grunted “shut it off”…we then slept till like 1pm!!!! We hit the Field Museum today, which was fun and comfortable (since I’ve been there 3 times now) and irritating! We bought “city passes” which let you in most museums and Hancock Building and Sears Tower…but it doesn’t let you into any special events at the museum. It would have been an additional 14 bucks to see them. Annoying. But we had an enjoyable time there before catching the train up to the Magnificent Mile for booze and Spinach Artichoke Waffle Fries. Our waitress was from Flint, Michigan! Small world. Much goodness for 7 bucks! I got MLW buzzed up pretty good for our time at the Hancock Building. 40 seconds to go 94 stories, ears popped a plenty. Took 3 photos and batteries ran out on the camera. Damn. We got some good “setting sun” pictures along with a few more shots with MLW’s camera/phone.
Cheesecake Factory is crazy over-rated. And it’s HUGE! Holy shit that was the biggest menu, full of ads, which would make it bigger, of course. It was like 12 pages! We just got cheesecake, Key Lime cheesecake was awesome, and I still have half of it to eat for breakfast! I earlier made fun of Asian tourists. Well, we’re at the Cheesecake Factory and two nice Asian ladies sit down. They brought their own Pellegrino sparkling water and a fucking pizza box. They then proceeded to ask for a couple of glasses and poured their own water into the glass and ate the pizza out of the box. Horrible.
We walked to the “L” station and headed back, and then I finally embarrassed myself by losing my sense of direction. We got onto one train heading back towards our hotel, had to make an exchange, but had to walk 2 blocks to the next station. I thought we were going North/South….nope East/West. So we ended up on the wrong platform and I was trying to convince a couple of drunken morons that they were headed the wrong direction to get to Wrigleyville. Drunken morons knew more than me at that point. I realized that we were going away from the hotel (though still in the loop) so we just took a cap. MLW called it when she said “we’re probably only 2 blocks away”…nope, we were 5 blocks away. Kevin=fail.
Sunday.
Katie is recovering from Saturday night. I was bored. I did nap. 2-3….strolled around lower Loop (we’re 2 blocks from The Art Institute of Chicago) and found our favorite corner deli from our honeymoon…it’s called….The Corner Bakery Deli…..Delicious. Then I went out and bought snacks and we hung out to heal up (too much walking!) We have TONS of shit planned the next few days…meaning I’ll be the only one getting drunk! BOOYAH! Hotel is pretty sweet but there is a problem… we have to share a bed (the prior hotel had 2 beds, we LOVED being in separate beds!)…We are both sprawlers!
Saturday—- St. Patty’s Celebration in Chicago
Our friends wanted to see the river turn green, and have alcohol pre-noon, not that I’ve never done that, I would just prefer not having 300,000 people around me (it might have been 30,000) I wouldn’t want to be there, nonetheless (how is that one word!). My lovely wife and I hit up (what seems like) the world’s largest museum, The Art Institute. We were there for 2 hours, at least; and didn’t cover the last 40% of it! We did witness some women who thought that the fact they couldn’t speak English is a solid reason to just RUN past the ticket agent. They were stopped and said something like “hommina hommina” then walked out.
SIDE NOTE….I was appalled at the irish-retards (I will no longer capitalize Irish) who were flocking the museum district! They were flooding Bennigans…I mean really, FUCKING BENNIGANS? We had a more irish pub in Greek Town!!!!! What sucks is that my red beard makes me look entirely too irish, failure on my part. More on my beard later.
So My Lovely Wife and I spent a solid 2-2.5 hours in the horrible maze that is the Art Institute of Chicago…good times, but holy hell if you don’t know where you are at any given point! If someone would have bet me 40 bucks to point North….I might not take that bet. It’s a ton of side channels and stairs and shit….It’s like 11:30 now.
Apparently both My Lovely Wife and I have picked the wrong shoes. My new shoes seemed to have pooped the bed; we loved any room with a bench in it. Always nice to be the fat guy fanning himself on a bench! And I will stick by my guns (somewhat racist belief) that Asians are the worst tourists ever! (I will elaborate more on this in about 2 days time….you’ll see) Nobody has given me a solid rebuttal! They are rude; they will hip-check you like Chris Pronger and they don’t seem to give a shit! I love you Brena (my beautiful Korean sister). I almost DON’T want to go to the Noodle Shop just to spite the whole Asian world.
My Lovely Wife and I took a cab away from the green retards that were choking up traffic in the Museum District; to a Greek restaurant. Delicious. Braised lamb, with roasted artichokes. Our food was numm-tastic. Then we got to take a nap…
I tried sleeping but ended up just reading, then waking up, then wanting beer. Typical Saturday.
So there is a marketplace across from the Hotel….I went in and walked around for 15 minutes searching for booze. I found a “mixers/juice” aisle, and there were random small stashes of beer (6 packs) but I was looking for a 12 pack and some real booze. The layout was weird as hell, it was the bottom level of an 18 story building, but it was ridiculous! Aisles ended short, and then picked up after a small frozen section. Finally, when I walked to the farthest spot from my hotel I found an electric sliding door with a sign “chilled beer and wine” there I also found liquor. This was BEHIND the produce!!! In Chicago, during the weekend of St. Patty’s day, why wouldn’t you have a green arrow pointing out the booze! I wandered around for 15 minutes trying to GIVE THEM MONEY! What was worse is that I forgot my belt so I had to keep hiking up my pants while wandering the place. And then it started raining on the way back to the hotel…Once your pants begin to get wet, they get heavier. So the bottoms of my pants are getting wet and I’m trying to pick up my pants, hold a bag full of booze and a 12-pack of beer. *Side note, Katie just went “HMMMMM” super fucking loud, I almost punched her ankles, she scared me so bad!* Got back to the hotel and watched some 30 Rock while everyone else was sleeping, or sleeping the morning off. Drunkards!
Finally everyone was up, Joe and Myself needed a total of 5 minutes to put on pants and a shirt…the girls had to fuck with hair, makeup, leg warmers (fire-starters), layers of clothing, and whatever else they need to prepare to drink booze and watch drag queens and improve actors entertain (or not entertain) us.
Yeah, perhaps the craziest night in my life hasn’t even started yet!
I believe we left at about 5:30…Joe and Myself have decided that we’re going to head up the night by researching and planning out where we’re going to eat dinner, before the debauchery begins. We figured The Weber Grill was a good place for some steaks and cocktails. Yeah, we took the wrong train. We both thought we knew the “L” pretty well, shit, he had an App on his “smart phone” (I also like to call his Blackberry, the “party killer” because we go to his house and he’s playing with his phone the whole fucking time)…So we were on the wrong line for The Weber Grill, but we were on the right train to get to Boys Town/Belmont…where we already had some gay fun… We ended up in a wonderful Old School Italian restaurant. Red/white checkered table cloth, candles….but somehow the menu was not very Italian. Pizza, chick parm, lasagna…I wanted Veal Parm….horrible. And what was funny is that our waitress looked like Dexter! Yup, the female version of Michael C. Hall was our waitress. The kitchen fucked up so much we all got our bills cut in half…which would be on the border of 100 bucks off the group. Kickass. And we had Mac-n-cheese Lasagna. Sweet lord it was good. I’m getting hungry (perhaps even horngry) thinking about it now.
We left with what we thought was a 15 minutes lead before the show started. The show being a tribute to “Glee” with mainly gay men/women, not sure if they were lesbians; singing. Joe’s friend Keith, in drag; was the MC of the whole event. Awesome! Oh yeah…Joe was an hour off! Opening act of “Single Ladies” with full choreography; led by a dude in a full body uni-tard was both inspiring, hilarious and goddamn frightening! The singers were going at it full bore! Great singing, nice song selection; we had a blast. At one point Susan looks at me and asks…”are you okay”…Gay dudes don’t scare me! Anyone who knows me, knows that I am un-offend able. A few dudes dressed in drag and dancing to catchy music….no problem! The blay dude (blay = black/gay) KILLED! Joe and I actually walked through the dance floor to tell him how well he did. *Side note…I had to pass a dude near the stage…he turned towards the stage and bent over at the waist!…Leaving his hind parts pointing at me! Oy-vey!* Needless to say, I accepted the compliment!
Before, I mentioned having a beard. I knew we were going to a gay bar, and at this point I hate all irish people so I wear a collared black/white shirt and a white Red Sox cap(yes, I realize the whole Red Sox/irish conglomerate!). Figured that would put me out of the whole “gay league”….I was wrong. I forgot the whole “Bear” aspect of gay life. I know “bear” and “power-bottom”…I’m depressed that I forgot how easily I would pigeon-hole myself with a beard(that makes me a bear)! Not that anyone hit on me (kind of a bummer). What was enjoyable was smoking outside with Joe’s friend/drag queen… fun! Seeing Joe and Keith interacting and talking about old times had me instantly pegging Joe as a gay-bo and Susan as his beard….Sorry guys! J He had 10 pairs of panty-hose on to hide the wiener! And the neighborhood was SO GAY that instead of K-mart, there was Gay-Mart…I’m not lying.
Here is my little tangent on being in Boys Town…it was the cleanest, nicest, friendliest place that any of us were in all weekend long. The Gays are the nicest, most tolerant people in the world. If you grew up being persecuted for who you are, you would be a very tolerant person.
Then we went to one of my favorite places, Wrigleyville. Party central. Normally, this is pretty mellow, but because it’s St. Patty’s weekend, the retards have attacked. Going from clean and tolerant to rude, obtuse and ugly. I’m seeing the bruises on my beloved Wrigleyville. We hit up the Improv Olympics.
Soooo, we’re standing around waiting for the IO to fire up….Sarah is attacking anyone with a penis (which was very awkward for the pre-op trans-gender dude!)….a.k.a. “making friends”…and we’re just standing there when I hear Katie say “ohhh” and a couple of dude walk away. Katie’s buttocks have been accosted! She was a victim of a bum-grab-by! She got her booty grabbed! I being the attentive husband was busy trying to light my cigarette in the wind. So a random dude, on a phone kind of walks up and says “did that dude grab your ass?” To which Katie enjoyably answers “Mommy likey”…okay, she didn’t really say that, but she did agree. Then this random fellow looks at me and says “some dude grabbed your girlfriend’s ass!” This confused me because my girlfriend lives in Oxford and said she’d be home all weekend, and then I realized he was talking about my WIFE. I feigned surprise, and then re-lit my smoke. This chap ended up being an actor from the Improv Olympics; Joe and I had an extensive conversation with him. The best part was when a dude on crutches came by with a “Kiss Me I’m Color Blind” t-shirt, which was red (I was told), and the New Guy pointed at him and laughed. He was laughing at the t-shirt but everyone; including the BIG DUDE walking with “crutches” thought he was laughing at…well, the crutches. It turned funny and we all had a good laugh. Then we made handicap and racial jokes. It was sooooo funny because we’re not handicapped, and best of all, we’re all WHITE! HA HAHAHAHAH.
Every time that we have gone to IO (okay, twice) we seem to encounter one great Improv group and one group that blows, and not in the good way. First group was very solid but the 2nd group was just not funny, which is a bummer, and I was even drinking a lot! Not funny is just not funny, alcohol cannot remedy that matter.
This takes us into the “Sarah making friends” stage of the night. Apparently, dry humping (sort of) and grinding on (same thing?) strangers makes them friends. Nobody disagreed with her of course; they were making friends as well. Initially the drunken group, (what I call a group of people who look at you like you’re Admiral Akbar when you give then directions, even though you’re the sober person) just wanted to stand around and look at the aftermath of a fight. This was riveting, a dude standing there in hand-cuffs and another dude getting put in an ambulance. Yeah, it’s like NCIS only MORE boring. We stood there for a solid 10 minutes. This was the point where I was asking “are we going anywhere?” Being the sober person isn’t as fun as it sounds, of course it doesn’t sound fun at all.
We walked to a bar and had a shot, and then they were closing down for the night. Thank the good lord! I had a dude bust me on my Boston Red Sox hat…he actually said “you know what team we like around here?”……….I was 2 blocks from Wrigley Field…yeah, they are the Cubs. We talked a little baseball, which was enjoyable since I don’t have really nerdy sports fan friends like myself. But he kept up on my hat! I wanted to yell….”It’s the fucking Red Sox, we’re in the OTHER league, and we don’t play each other!” But he was a black man, which means I was clearly intimidated by him, so I did my best to pussy out and make the situation bearable.
(By the way, the term “bearable”…what can’t bears do? Climb a tree? Bust up a honeycomb? Kill a person? I think the term “bearable” needs to be reconfigured! I want to be “as able as a bear”…. I could mess some people up. Bad food at a restaurant…Bear attack! Rooooooaaaarrr!…..I’m just saying!)
After that we began our trek to the train station. Except, my short-cut was cut short when Sarah announced…“I need to make more friends!” Again, my soberness held no esteem with these people! They all followed Sarah instead. So instead of walking down a nice quiet couple of blocks to get to the train station, we waded through the horrible chunks of society that were known as “drunks in Wrigleyville!” Dumb. We made it through to the train station before we all went “I need to pee”…Susan said “I’m hungry and need to pee”…clearly she has her priorities straight. So while we’re deciding where to go…..aka….I’m deciding where to take these people to go potty, the weird/funny guy from the IO pops up and says “hi.” We talk and jabber and it ends up his place is but a few stops away, so we all hit up the “L” and head to Joe Russell’s place. Soon the talk of a serial killer begins. Which I think is funny because a real serial killer doesn’t invite 5 people to his house…maybe one at a time. We get off the train to find a McDonalds…urination is divine. Joe Russell goes on his way and our favorite friend “Drunk Friendly Joe” comes out to mediate a confrontation between McDonald’s Management and a Homeless man (yes, I capitalized homeless). Everyone says “fuck Joe, leave ‘em”…and I really wanted to, but he’s just sooo cute! We didn’t end up at Joe Russell’s place, we didn’t get killed, and we made it safely to our hotel.
The story must be done now? Right?
Wrong.
Joseph and I, having penises, are designated to go get food. We walk half a block to Walgreens and the security guard tells us that there is a burger/gyro joint a block away. This sounds much better than cheesy puffs and beef jerky! We walk down the block, being stalked by cabs the whole way! (If you haven’t been to chi-town, the cabbies will follow you gently tapping their horn asking “want a ride”….when you want a cab its cool; except the fact when you need a cab you aren’t talking to the person you’re walking with, you’re LOOKING FOR A CAB!….otherwise its annoying). Oh yeah, it’s also 4:45am….we picked the weekend of Daylight Savings time. And at this point we’ve been “out” for nearly 8 hours. What a night! Once Joe and I reach the 24 hour diner, we notice that there are roughly 73,000 people there for food, we head back to the Walgreens where we get cheesy puffs and beef jerky. Go back to the hotel where we head up the 9th floor. Upon leaving the elevator and turning into our hall we notice two dudes talking into a room on the right-hand side.
Joe- “that’s our room”
Me- “huh” (I was busy imagining the joys of cheesy puffs and beef jerky)
Joe- “stop imagining the joys of cheesy puffs and beef jerky, those dudes are trying to get into our room!”
Me- “technically it your room, my room is closer…………..wait, what the fuck!”
SOOOOOOOOOOOOoo…..the dudes next to Joe/Susan/Sarah’s room heard giggling and decided to come over, to the point where they were pushing into the room! Susan being the strong woman was holding them at bay! Sarah was showering and Katie was giggling. Oh, yeah, the dudes were in their underwear! Once Joe and I showed up they went away, being that we’re married to 2/3s of the women there! But they did call and ask Sarah out to the balcony. Morons!
It was now past 5am, we had checkout in about 7 hours. And we all needed sleepy time and plenty of water.
*It’s now 2:27 on Thursday. I have been writing this since Sunday, and I’m pretty sure I’ve left stuff out. Joe/Susan/Sarah/Katie/Joe Russell……..if you have anything to add, or remember something I left out, let me know. This was an epic vacation night*
Friday
The ethereal sound of “city” is calling to me. I’ve never lived in a big city…Edmund, Oklahoma…..Pocatello, Idaho….Martinez, Georgia…..Flint, Michigan………But I’ve always have enjoyed the forced socialization that a big city brings. I’ve heard gangsta-ass gay dude talk crazy gay-gangsta stuff on the phone while riding a cramped “El” train to Wrigelyville. Just today my lovely wife and I decided to check out the “lounge” where we would imbibe in a cocktail and perhaps play some pool…7 steps was all it took. Seven steps into a gay-strip club. No warning, just big bald naked dude!
Later we learned that Belmont= Boys town. Wow. But still in a way awesome because that means in a somewhat normal neighborhood, where there is a little rinky-dink “grill” that serves breakfast all day; next-door is entirely too many wieners! Two dudes were walking across the street, they stopped and one dude licked the other’s face! Sweet Chicago, how can you be so cruel. I could live here, and just walk around the random shops and find that “Fuck me, I’m Irish” t-shirt I’ve always needed!
I am enjoying the sound of the I-90 expressway, the chattering of the taxi’s honking and the resounding blare of a fire engine. From someone who never has lived in a big city, this clearly has something to do with alcohol intake or perhaps too much smog. Or the creepy redhead in a kilt on the “El.”
Visually it’s very soft right now. Lots of fog that squanders away the buildings. Seeing lights on above the 9th floor I’m inhabiting makes me wonder “what do these people do?” Not just for a living but with all the other potpourris of life.
Joe pointed out that having kids would be incredulous. And how couldn’t it? The closest daycare to the train would charge a fortune and have thousands of parents wanting their brats to be part of said daycare! Grocery shopping, lugging that shit up 3 flights of stairs, AFTER walking the load of goodies to the train station, through the turn stiles, and waiting on the deck. Then taking the groceries onto the train, through the station, and walking to your house. Imagine that with a 4 year old you picked up from daycare!
Words cannot suffice.
I wish we could stay another 2 days! A solid 8 hours of walking/standing today, hell for someone with flat feet. Bummer that tomorrow is the last full day we have hear. Wednesday means we’re hitting the Amtrak outta here at 7:10. Yuck!
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