Chicago City Redux.

Another weekend & another wedding in Chicago City. This time it was the wedding of long-time blog reader Sam Spratlin to the lovely bride, Bethie Polark.

Due to time constraints, I can't give a full play-by-play of this weekend, but I can say that this wedding was a real hoot and went off without a hitch thanks in large part to my oversight as a groomsperson. After the ceremony I received a lot of compliments and some people even inquired as to whether they could hire me to be a part of their weddings. Some of my favorite things from the weekend include: surf & turf, tiny cheeseburgers, the chocolate cake, party bus, TOTAL, Matt Cassity, Junior Bridesmaids, people from Kansas, parade of babies, pork sliders, wedding reception, and dancing.

This wedding just about does it for the stage of my life where my friends get married all the time and it looks like Leslie and I's marriage in May will be the grand finale.

Also, I really do like Chicao City.

The Top Five Foods fo All Time.

#1. Fried Chicken: I can eat fifteen fried chicken legs without any problem at all. I could eat twenty easy, but then I would start feeling a little self conscious. I will not stop eating the fried chicken when the meat is gone, instead I will gnaw the marrow from the the bones and chew the cartilage from the ends.

#2. Barbecue Ribs: I prefer the baby back and I prefer them hickory smoked with a spicy dry rub and a light, yet sticky, & slightly sweet sauce. One slab for me and whatever's left over from yours will suffice. Maybe I like ribs better than fried chicken, but I'd never want to have to choose. I think, coming off the barbecue season, my appetite for ribs is somewhat diminished, but ribs & fried chicken are certainly numbers one and two.

#3. Giant Burrito: I'm not talking about a Chipotle burrito or anything like that. I'm talking about a giant (2.5lbs), straightforward, beef burrito smothered in green & red chile sauce. Not some burrito you get in New York City or Los Angeles, I'm referring to a New Mexican burrito served right up next to four or five margaritas and endless baskets of homemade tortillas and guacamole topped off at the end with some warm sopapillas.

#4. Chicken Fried Steak w/Country Gravy: I will eat a serving of chicken fried steak in less than five minutes and I will not breathe while I eat it. I will eat it until I sweat gravy. I have been to brunch meals where I down one of these things before the other people have even started on their toast and I will consider ordering another one, but I refrain out of fear of becoming a pariah.

#5. Pizza: a good slice of pizza with chunks of italian sausage as topping is as good as anything else on the list, but it can be irksome at times to find a good slice. A bad slice is always regrettable. So simple and cliche, but so undeniably delicious.

Honorable Mentions: buckets of boiled shrimp with cocktail sauce; biscuits & sausage gravy; chicken tikka masala; cheeseburgers; sushi.

A Complete and Thorough Summation of My Recent Trip to Chicago.

Went to Chicago City this past weekend for the wedding of Mark & Adele Hansen. I booked myself a very reasonable flight time on Friday and left Philadelphia right on time at 10:20EST and arrived in Chicago City around 11:30CST. From there I hopped onto a train which took me to the area where Sam works near the Chicago City River. I haven’t been to this part of the city for a long time and was pleased by the number of bridges and the crisp autumn breeze. I walked over one of the bridges and into Sam’s workspace. His workspace reminded me of a Kindergarten for adults and I don’t know how they get any work done there. It’s my guess that they don’t get as much work done as they could get done if they took out all the fun stuff and put in some more disciplined chairs and some content filters on the internets.

From Sam’s work we went to a cheeseburger store that was located just up past this chocolate factory. We had a beer and prepared to order a cheeseburger when Matt Cassity called us on the phone. Matt Cassity was back at Sam’s house and he wanted us to meet him. We called off the burgers and delayed our gratification so that we could eat pizza with Matt Cassity. When we got to Sam’s house Matt was there waiting and we had some Old Style beers and stood in the kitchen to do some catching up. Soon thereafter Sam’s fiancé, Bethie, arrived home with one of her friends whose name escapes me. We all conversed briefly until Bethie’s friend left to meet up with her husband of one year. We sat around for a while longer eating various chips and dips and watching the Phillies and drinking cans of Old Style before eventually leaving for pizza.

Pizza was really great as we had both thin and thicker styles of sausage/tomato pizza of which I liked the thinner better, but only by a slim margin. Mark Hansen’s dad just happened to be there at the same time and this was the first time I got to meet this character. This guy is pretty indescribable and hilarious and he bought us a round of beers with our pizzas. Eventually Matt Blume showed up and we all left the pizza place to meet up with the wedding party at some loft-style bar place. We all drank more beer, I drank some gin and tonics, and then Darren arrived and spoke fondly of his newly born son. From there we went to several more bars. For some reason I thought all the bars were gay bars, but in reality there were just a lot of dudes out at these bars and only one of the bars was (maybe) a gay bay. Eventually I got myself drunk enough to go to bed on Sam’s couch and I slept the night away beneath a surprisingly warm quilt. Mike Klodginski slept beside me atop an air mattress on the floor.

Saturday was the day of the wedding. I woke up on the couch still tired from the night before. We laid around in our respective lying places, watched some college football, and waited for Matt Cassity to arrive back from his prior evening’s erotic sexploits. Eventually Matt returned and we went out for biscuits and gravy. The biscuits and gravy were ok, but there was some taste in there that I didn’t fully dig and it may have been that the cast-iron skillet in which they were cooked was not property seasoned. Whatever the case, I ate the whole thing without much problem and we returned to Sam’s place to lounge around watching television, playing video games, and drinking Bloody Mary’s with jalapenos in them. At some point Bethie became a bit perturbed by our consistent binge drinking and thought we would be too intoxicated for the wedding, but this turned out not to be a problem. Soon thereafter I ate a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and when I was done with my bowl we had a hell of a time getting some of that mush down into the garbage disposal.

Soon enough it was time to go to the wedding. We all got dressed in our fancy clothes and went to the place of the wedding. The wedding and reception were in this giant warehouse full of old architectural antiques. It was a pretty amazing place that reminded me of my Grandpa’s old garage, only much huger and with many more and fancier things to rummage about. The ceremony was short and sweet and then it was on to the reception where we all danced and drank the night away. I drank a rotation of Beefeater & Tonics along with Stella Artois and I pretty much danced the whole time and it was pretty clear that I was the best dancer. Eventually they stopped playing music and dancing and we had to go to another place where there was an even bigger dance party.

This other place was called “The Hideout” and it was this sort of sheddy/barn type thing packed full of Chicago hipsters. I was a bit overdressed for the scene and people took my appearance for being a square and kept asking me how I found out about such a cool place. I just told them that I was a high powered hedge fund manager and all I was looking for was some blow and some mouth sex and I heard this was the place to go. At another point I ran into some young lawyer types. We talked law for a while and then I attempted to put on a mock court session with them out on the patio. We managed a bit of shouting and some cross-examination, but in the end it was clear that nobody had a winning case. All in all it turned out to be quite the dance party. There were all types of music but my favorite was an old throwback dance to the song “Shout!” I went so low during this particular dance that I practically went all the way to China. Sometime around 4am the dancing ended and I was pissed because I wasn’t done drinking, but there was nothing I could do but go back to Sam’s house for bed. Unfortunately this proved more difficult than it should have been.

But that’s another story.

Bruce.

Bruce Springsteen is probably the greatest American musician ever created. I am listening to Bruce Springsteen right now and I am glad that I'm doing it. He sings about factories and jeans and memories and dreams and power automobiles and railroads and necking and youth and love and all these other big theme type things. He makes me want to be a better American when he says something like "strap your hands across my engines" or "he could throw that speed ball by you, make you look like a fool boy." I cannot imagine that countries like Pakistan have Bruce Springsteen equivalents and I think this is ultimately what makes America better than most countries in the world and if you don't think that America is better than most countries in the world then you are crazy. The thing is, if you were talking to Bruce Springsteen, and you told him that you didn't think that American is the best country in the world, he wouldn't punch you or anything like that. He would probably just talk to you about America and why he thinks its the best country in the world. Sure he would admit that America has some problems, but so does everywhere else. For example, at some grocery stores in American they've implemented these things so that if you take the shopping cart beyond the parking lot then the wheels will lock up and you can't move them anymore. Well, compare that to a place like Brazil where they have roving gangs of gasoline-huffing youths and our problems don't seem so bad. After discussing this Bruce would probably say something like, what are you doing to make America a better place and you probably wouldn't have much to say about this and that would be where he gets you really thinking.

Cereal Killer.

When I was a kid I would eat cereal three times a day. I would eat cereal like it was going out of style. I'd even eat that cereal that comes in a bag. I'd eat cereal dry or I'd eat it with milk, it wouldn't even matter. At some point I stopped eating so much cereal and moved on to things like bagel bites and microwavable cakes. I hardly ever eat cereal these days, mostly because the majority of cereals are terrible for you and will give you diabetes, but on the rare occasion that I do buy some cereal at the store I eat the shit out of it. If fact, you might well be justified in supposing that I bought cereal at the store the other day and I'm eating cereal right this minute.

Here are the top five cereals of all time.

#1. Frosted Flakes: Frosted flakes is a classic cereal with not too many bells and whistles. It's basically just a corn flake covered with some sugar, but that sugar adds a delicious and impenetrably crispy coating that stays delicious and firm throughout the entire eating process. I imagine this cereal came into being sometime after the War when they shut down the factories and started making cereal like crazy. I bet once those soldiers got a taste of Frosted Flakes their weary minds drifted away from the horrors of Europe and back to the wonders of America. "This was worth fighting for" they would say.

#2. Grape Nuts Most kids don't like Grapenuts, but when I was a kid I loved them and I still love them. When I was a kid I sort of had this fixation with impoverished African people and I imagined that grapenuts was all they ever had to eat over there on that god-forsaken continent. I imagined that Grapenuts were harvested by slender African bushmen who would carry around long, bamboo rods and would whack some sort of largish pine nut hanging from a tall tree. Grapenuts is what would fall off the pinenuts and the bushmen would harvest these by the sack full. To this day, whenever I eat Grapenuts, I'm transported back to the African bush. Plus you can eat them warm in the winter time.

#3. Cap'n Crunch: I suppose Cap'n Crunch is supposed to be a peanut butter flavored cereal, but I never got that from Cap'n Crunch. I'm not sure what the flavor profile is, but the sugar content is unreal and it's absolutely delicious. The only downside with Cap'n Crunch is that the texture can be harsh on the roof of your mouth at times, so it's best to let it sit in milk for a bit before you dig in. A funny thing about Cap'n Crunch is that some woman a few weeks back tried to sue the makers because she had eaten Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries for years before she realized that "crunchberries" weren't actually a real fruit berry. Apparently these same lawyers tried to sue Fruitloops for not being actual fruit a few years prior. That's why people hate lawyers.

#4. Raisin Bran Crunch: the same basic setup as regular Raisin Bran, except they add something to those flakes to make them super fucking crunchy. I'm not sure what it is they add (honey, butterscotch, peanut brittle???) but they do not get soggy and they taste like sweet gold. Not only is it crunchy, but you still get your full two scoops of raisins in every box.

#5. Crispix: probably my favorite cereal as a kid, it's basically Rice Chex and a Corn Chex fused together into a prismatic cage-type shape. I think Crispix came out about the same time as the movie The Deer Hunter and I loved watching the Deer Hunter as a little kid. In that movie the Vietcong kept a bunch of P.O.W.s in these bamboo cage things that floated in the river and Robert DeNiro had to rescue them from the cages right after playing Russian Roulette with Christopher Walken. Well, whenever I ate this cereal I couldn't help but think of those cages and how awesome it would have been to be in Vietnam with all those machine guns and grenades. The name Crispix is a bit deceiving because they do not stay crispy for longer than a few seconds, but the cereal is still great when it turns to mush. I think if those lawyers want to sue anybody they could sue Crispix because the name is blantantly false advertising as the cereal is not at all crisp.

Honorable Mentions: Honey Nut Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Corn Flakes.

H-O-L-Y F-U-C-K-I-N-G S-H-I-T ! ! !

This thing is mutating faster than our human science can handle.

Illness (Day 4)

As my illness progresses into day four I have begun phase 2 of my treatment. Treatment includes three Advils and a healthy dose of Tussin Cough & Cold at regular intervals throughout the day. The Advil helps the aches and fever while the cough syrup tastes terrible and supposedly suppresses my cough and helps me expunge additional phlegm through my bronchial tubes. I question the Tussin's effectiveness.

Regardless of my condition, I have refused to abide by any public health recommendations put forth by the Centers for Disease Control. If anything I'm using public transportation more than ever because I don't feel like biking and nothing is going to keep me from my regular routine of visiting various places of business.

Today I unhatched a particularly fiendish plan as I likely infected the entire Philadelphia District Attorney's office with the deadly swine flu. In a matter of days the office will be brought to its knees and there will be no person left to prosecute the hordes of criminals that overcrowd the Philadelphia prison system. With nobody to prosecute, the courts will have no choice but to recognize the criminal's due process rights and release them back onto the streets. Once back on the streets they will no doubt take to murdering and raping their way across the city in an orgy of bloodthirsty revenge. These deviant hordes will likely recognize me as their despotic savior and, under my tutelage, this army of rogue savages will plunder their way through the Eastern Seaboard. Once satisfied with our bloodlust we will meet with Kim Jong Il and he will provide us with nuclear arms in exchange for some of our enslaved women-folk. With arms in hand we shall raise Civil War amongst the Americas and we shall not rest from this war until I am feeling a bit better.