Chicago——-Saturday…greatest night ever!
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*
