Thursday, July 29, 2004

Lame motherfucker

I met up with a few people at Club Foot last night to have a few drinks, hours after promising myself not to spend any more money.  But I only ended up buying one beer for myself since others were willing to buy me and everyone else drinks.

While we were sitting there enjoying our drinks, this guy who looks like Luke from the Dukes of Hazzard came up to us and handed us flyers of his band.

He said, "We're playing this weekend, and you should check us out.  Do you like the Clash?  If you do, you'll probably like us.  Do you like Joy Division?  We're strongly influenced by them.  Do you like Franz Ferdinand?  If you do, you'll probably like us.  Come check us out."  Then he proceeded to namecheck other bands from the punk/post-punk era that stupid hipsters are into and also bands of today that stupid hipsters dig, like the Rapture, Radio 4, and Franz Ferdinand.  Yes, he was the lamest motherfucker ever.  I thought to myself, "There can't be a level of lameness more lame than what I just witnessed."

But he outdid himself fifteen minutes later when he came back and said, "Go check out our website and take a listen for yourself.  If you're into cool music, I think you'll like it.  If not, that's cool, too.  Oh, I forgot to mention, Sire Records is going to be at our show to check us out.  You guys heard of Sire, right?  You know, the Talking Heads, Blondie, and others.  Yeah, they're going to be there to check us out."

I wish I had a video of all that.  I also wish I could remember the name of his band.

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

I have seen the future

Wow.  Tonight I saw the future in Barack Obama. In case you haven't heard, he's being called the Tiger Woods, the new golden boy, and the future of the Democratic party...and a possible future presidential nominee, even though, for the time being, he's only an Illinois state senator.  I hadn't even heard of him until fairly recently when Tim mentioned him to me a couple of weeks before I moved to Chicago. And once I moved up here, there's been so much hype around him in the news, especially in the wake of Jack Ryan's troubles.  Still, like most people, I didn't really understand the hype because I didn't really know him and had never seen him speak.  Until tonight.

I caught Hilary and Bill Clinton's speeches last night and Al Gore's today on the DNC website.  I really liked Bill Clinton's speech while Hilary's and Gore's were alright but kind of underwhelming, I thought...although I especially liked Gore's part in addressing voters for Nader in 2000...asking them, "Do you still believe that there was no difference between the candidates?"

Tonight I was excited to hear Howard Dean speak, but he was also a bit underwhelming.  So was Teresa Heinz Kerry.  Although I agreed with Ron Reagan and supporting stem cell research, I thought he might have oversold it a little, maybe putting a bit too much optimism into it being the miracle he envisions it becoming.  But the Democrats hit a home run tonight by having Barack Obama as the keynote speaker.  He started off well, but you could literally see him picking up confidence and momentum as the speech went on, and it was perhaps the best speech I've ever seen.  I wish I was at the Fleet Center to witness it in person and give a well-deserved standing ovation.  One of the PBS analysts said that Obama's introduction to the national public via his speech tonight was transcendent across Republicans and Democrats, blacks and whites, men and women, and others.  I agree wholeheartedly.

It's quite a shame that the major networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS) didn't air tonight's convention, although I'm assuming that the cable networks did.  (The Chicago ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliates only broadcasted Obama's speech.)  If you missed Obama's speech and you have high speed internet, go to the DNC website and watch it.  I doubt that any other speaker during the convention in the next two days will even come close to matching his speech.

Monday, July 26, 2004

No sand in vaginas

Yesterday a bunch of us headed to the beach...in Indiana.  Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore to be more specific. Because of traffic and highway construction outside of Chicago, we got there later than planned, and by the time we got there, there was literally no place to park. At 2:30, we actually did find a place to park...however, it would've been a 30-minute walk to the beach from where we were, and Jeff had to be back in Chicago for work starting at 6:00, which meant that we wouldn't be at the beach very long since it would take us almost two hours to get back to Chi-town because of said highway construction and traffic.  So the other car stayed while we headed back.  So I didn't get to catch the surf at the famed beaches of Indiana.  Everybody has told me, however, including someone from North Carolina, that the Indiana Dunes are really nice.

I met up with my friend, Kat, and got a few drinks and went to a party on Saturday.  We talked about many things, including today's emo kids and Eddie Murphy's hit song from the 80s, which she played on the jukebox (was it "Party All the Time"?...I can't remember).  But the best thing we talked about was in regard to many of the great restaurants of Chicago, most of which I've never been to.  Sean, Kat, and I got excited, and soon (maybe this week?) I hope to be going to Soul Vegetarian in the South Side, this very Afro-centric soul-food vegan and vegetarian place that everybody says is the best place ever.

Shit, I hear Toby Keith singing on the TV in the living room, which means I need to head out there and mosh.

Friday, July 23, 2004

Random notes

The past several days have been some of the laziest days I've had in quite a while. Chicago's been unbearably hot and humid (and thunderstormy) this week, just about reaching Missouri and North Carolina levels of temperature and humidity...and I realized that I don't have central air conditioning in my apartment after all. But today and for at least the next four to five days the weather should be awesome. It's sunny and beautiful and the temperature is in the mid-to-upper seventies. Everybody's at work right now, but shit, maybe I should get out this afternoon, maybe walk over to Dusty Groove. I kind of wanted to hit the new Millennium Park, but parts of it is closed this weekend because of some fundraiser. Maybe I'll go next week.

In between the hot, humid, and rainy days this week and me being so lazy and refusing to bathe since I'd just start sweating badly anyway, I sat and watched a lot of TV. I don't have cable, but there are a surprising number of free channels here. One of them is an all-Korean channel. I've been watching a bit of that trying to understand what they're saying. It's been another reminder of how much my Korean sucks. I've also been watching some Cubs baseball since you can't get away from it here in Chicago. I used to be a baseball fanatic when I was in elementary school, but I've lost a lot of interest since then. However, I took great satisfaction in watching the St. Louis Cardinals bitchslap the Cubs for their two-game sweep at Wrigley.

Friday, July 16, 2004

Pizza! Pizza!

A couple of days ago a friend and I took a 90-minute roadtrip to Columbia, Missouri, the college town where the University of Missouri resides and where my friends and I lost a third of our brain cells due to the amount of alcohol consumed.  (I remember buying 24-packs of Milwaukee's Best long neck bottles for $5 and 40's of Pabst and Mickey's for $1.29 each.  Sigh.) 

Although I've spent some of the best times of my life there, I can't picture myself ever living in Columbia again, even though Money Magazine consistenly ranks the small city as one of the best places in the country to live.  Interestingly, I can easily see myself moving back to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, if I ever get sick of living in a large city...because I ain't ever going to live in the suburbs.
 
Just walking around Columbia was kind of weird...the city has changed in many ways but is still the same.  The Heidelberg, my favorite place to drink alcohol and home to the great late night happy hours (10:30 PM to 12:30 AM), cheap, strong, and large Long Island Ice Teas, and hot waitresses, is being rebuilt into this massive more modern-looking building after being burned to the ground in a fire a year or so ago.  And Osama's, this Turkish-owned coffee joint next the the 'Berg, is now a Lion's Choice, a fast food joint specializing in roast beef sandwiches.
 
The highlight of the day trip was going to Shakespeare's Pizza, Columbia's finest pizza joint.  Lots of people swear by Shakespeare's, saying it's the best pizza anywhere.  (You can actually mailorder a frozen Shakespeare's pizza wherever you live, although you can no longer have meat toppings if you do this because of the USDA regulations.)  I remember having Shakespeare's for the first time the day I moved into the dorms my freshman year.  I've always thought it was quite good, although I never thought it was the best.  I personally think the pizzas at Pepper's in Chapel Hill taste better, although this chick I dated disagreed after visiting me in Chapel Hill in 2000.  (But if you get pizza at Pepper's, you have to get the pie, not just individual slices since the pies are freshly made.)  But Shakespeare's wins hands down for its atmosphere...you can actually hang out and drink there and not just have pizza.
 
In other news, I've taken four large shits in the past couple of hours.  I feel like I've given birth, and I feel so light I think can dunk a basketball.

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

I guess this blog is really gay after all

I used to check sitemeter every other day to see how many hits this blog gets a day and how they get to it...like if it's a direct hit or a referral from another site or whatever. Since moving, however, I rarely ever check it.

But I decided to log in and check sitemeter today, and apparently someone found this blog doing a web search using these key words: "hot gay latin boys fucking."

Maybe it's time to either retire this blog, or maybe I should stop using the word "gay" so often when describing things, like this blog. I'm thinking the latter.

Friday, July 09, 2004

Missouri, humidity, politics, bitches, and more!

I'm at my parents' house in Missouri right now, and they still use dial-up for their internet, which is making surfing for porn very, very frustrating. I'm not even sure if this entry will make my gay-ass blog.

I guess I'd forgotten exactly how hot and humid this state is until I arrived last night. This is even worse than North Carolina. Chicago's weather is weird...one day it'll be 90 degrees, and the next day it'll be 70. Personally, I prefer the 70 degree weather even though it's weird wearing a jacket in June and July.

Of course, the trip from Chicago to St. Louis via I-55 was fucking boring as hell. Two things that helped were the hip hop/R&B CDs my good friend, Tim, made for a bunch of people last winter. There's nothing like Beyonce, Jay-Z, R. Kelly, and more to help tolerate shitty Illinois. Thanks, Tim.

I'm glad Kerry has chosen John Edwards to be his running mate. I like Edwards, although I prefer that "crazy radical" Dennis Kucinich and the "ultra-leftist"Howard Dean over all others. Oh yeah, I also like Al Sharpton. I also would prefer Edwards as the presidential candidate and Kerry as the vice-presidential nominee, but this will have to do. I think Edwards was a much better choice than Gephardt, and this will only help Kerry. I'm not a huge fan of Kerry, but anything's better than Bush. I'd rather have someone with mental retardation as our president than Bush...but then again, Bush may very well be mentally retarded.

I've never blamed Nader for Bush winning in 2000 but rather the incompetence of the Democrats coupled with the Republicans cheating. I sort of wish Nader wouldn't run this time, but I personally am not mad at him for running nor will I blame him for Bush winning again should that happen. I do understand, however, the anger some feel about Nader running. But I think if Kerry, Edwards, and the Democrats do what they're supposed to do, they should win regardless of the 5% Nader holds in recent polls.

Despite Kerry not even being close to my ideal candidate, I'm voting for him for sure. I've been telling people that having Kerry as president is like being kicked in the balls, but Bush again in office is like having testicular cancer. I'd rather be kicked in the nuts than have testicular cancer.

When I started this stupid weblog, I was going to write whatever was on my mind, including politics. But expressing most of my political views is like preaching to the choir, at least to my loyal fanbase. Besides, I'm not a very good writer, and two of my friends, Tim and Fred, each do excellent jobs writing about things political. So this was a rare occasion. I promise I'll get back to writing about bitches and hoes in the near future. Good day.

Sunday, July 04, 2004

Happy Fireworks Day

The rooftop at my friends' apartment should be crazy, from what everybody tells me. BBQ, alcohol, lots of people, and fireworks from 360 degress around us with the skyline as the backdrop sound awesome.

Wolf Eyes were great last night. So were Sunn O))), who were fucking creepy as well, with their smoke machine and all. I think much of the crowd just came for Wolf Eyes and may not have been into the sludgy metal Earth tribute band. I thought they were great.

Okay, it's now time to start the grill.