Tuggin' my sleeve, Chicago is.......

Chicago did not let me down. And yes, it did have all that jazz. I left on the plane with major apprehensions. I wasn't sure who would show or who I'd hang with or what exactly the panels at AWP are even like. I was scared, a bit. Ask my mom.

But that is the beauty of Friday the 13ths and holidays, especially when so many of them are packed into the same three-day weekend. It's like standing in the center of a ring of toadstools--something wicked or supernatural must happen, it's a general rule of the universe. Chicago now ranks as one of my top five cities in the nation, and last weekend ranks as one of the new best nostalgic string of moments that I'll be talking about until I finally quit this earth and move ahead. I'm pretty sure I'll still be talking about it after then, too.

So, some pictures. It was truly a Ferris Bueller Chicago experience. I went to three panels and that was it. I ditched out on everything and painted the town red with trusty old chums and brand new interests. Joe and I searched all the crannies of the Art Institute and saw mummies and Sue the T-Rex and other natural history paraphenalia (you ought to check out the room about "Our Moving Earth." There's no way you can be disappointed. At all. Really. Not disappointing. Anti-disappoint.) at the Field Museum and pressed our foreheads against the windows at the top of the Sears Tower. Sharon joined us for a Valentines' Day Massacre reenactment on Friday the 13th, and I even had a Charlie-Sheen/Jennifer-Grey moment with a charming new prospect and that's all the details you're going to get here. Except I wasn't wearing a lot of eye make-up and he didn't compare me to a whore.

Chicago from the Sears Tower:

Blade Runner as seen from the Sears Tower:

A large trough of appetizers (mushrooms, zucchini, mozzarella) that Joe and I ate about half of, triumphantly, disgustedly.

The deep dish stuffed Chicago-style pizza that did us in after the appetizers. We murdered about half of it, too. It was a superhuman effort, I don't care how little we had eaten that day up to that point.

On Friday the 13th, Joe, Sharon, and I caught a cab to Chicago's Oven Grinder, across the street from the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929, when "Bugs" Moran and Al Capone's men had it out in a bloody Chicago bite of history. We saluted the ghosts that haunt that thar side street and enjoyed the best salad and pizza pot pies I think I'll ever eat. It was truly wicked and pagan.



Sharon under the Antiques sign *snicker*

This is the part where we expressed how much fun we were having in Chicago.

Later that night I was invited to a rollicking Friday the 13th game night at Grover's hotel room. I held my own. I would have won had we played cards or Mouse Trap.

This is David Grover. Sometimes he comments here. Everyone be nice to him. You can tell he is quality from the kickass Cosby sweater he is sporting.

This pic is courtesy of Joe. It's the large metallic awesome lima bean next to the ice skating rink. I believe it has magical properties and I visited it more than once during my time in Chicago.

Here it is up close.

The inside is a great concave tunnel of reflection and shimmering acid trip. It makes you walk around looking as idiotic as I do here.


On Valentines Day we walked through the many leg statues on the way to the Field Museum. The legs reminded me oddly of Pink Floyd's goosestepping hammers.....maybe?

Here's me in front of the stained glass Chagall at the Chicago Art Institute.

Oh right, that's Sloane and Bueller. Yeah, not me. The Chagalls, the Magrittes, Wood's "American Gothic"--none were on display at this time. Foiled again. Nothing has peeved me more since Jeff Koons' ceramic statue of Michael Jackson and his monkey, Bubbles, was in storage when I went to the SFMOMA. Fortunately I saw my fair share of Van Goghs, Toulouse-Latrecs, Monets, Manets, Winslow Homers, Hopper's "Nighthawks," Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon," lots of Frank Lloyd Wright chairs, and a truly inspiring shot of Peter Lorre that Joe pointed out for me.

I can't complain. I had a truly transcendent and surreal twenty minutes when I thought my calves were going to burst, I'd pumped them up with so much blood from walking around not going to any AWP panels, and I lay down on the floor of the old Chicago stock exchange room at the Art Institute, listening to one of my greatest old friends play the piano in a room of great acoustics, staring up at this:

I can't recreate it for you. Not here. There isn't the time or the space. It was a fantastic weekend. Dream Academy's "Please Let Me Get What I Want" didn't stop running through my head and neither did Frankie Sinatra. Life altering, literally. Cathartic. Irresponsible. Nostalgic. New.

Later on Valentine's Day I got to watch many Oscar-nominated animated shorts in a truly fabulous old-timey theater with some really swell kids. I ate even more pizza, laughed at even more jokes, and then I was escorted back to my hotel by a charming man with plenty of charming conversation and charming charms. Well done, Chicago. Well done.

Bonus ghost pictures:
"Sharon As Sloth Fratelli"

"Amy Sucked into a Brothers Quay Twitchy Short"

"Presidents Day Flashy Ghost avec Gilliland Chillun"