my blogmate is in france, mb is stuck in cleveland, my family is all out of state, ck is writing a paper... i'm actually not bored (right now) or jealous (especially of cleveland). i have a fridge full of homemade salsa, the dixie chicks and alison krauss are on austin city limits, and i'm making a ridiculous mess in the kitchen, only stopping to write this on my BRAND NEW LAPTOP.
such deliciousness is happening -- too bad nobody's here to eat it with me! chipotle orange barbecue chicken, baked green rice (made with the last of nb's famous green salsa and a little cheddar cheese), mango salsa, lemon cupcakes frosted with cream cheese frosting and topped with strawberries. i'd call nb to join me, especially seeing as it's his salsa (and i've already stretched his pico de gallo into tilapia with salsa-flavored black beans and rice, and gemelli pasta with the salsa, artichokes, chicken and parmesan -- the pico de gallo is nice and garlicky so i can pretend it's a base for an italian sauce)... but nb is visiting his dad in hawaii.
so hello, world travellers, from here in cold-but-cozy chicago. the salsas miss you. so there.
Friday, March 07, 2008
Saturday, March 01, 2008
groupies
there are plenty of benefits to going to see live music in bars. for one thing it buys you a little street cred, or at least gives you something to talk about. plus it's fun and tends to enhance any drinking experience, and since chicago now has its very own smoking ban you don't even have to smell bad at the end (that's not to say that you can't smell bad, but i'm getting ahead of myself).
and then there's the people-watching.
it all started last weekend when nb and i went off to ballydoyle in downer's grove to see american english, the local beatles tribute band. i am way more beatles-neutral than nb is, but a night of watching a bunch of grown men in silly outfits singing songs that i actually know seemed like a totally reasonable way to spend an evening, and that was before i knew about the groupies. as it turns out, beatles geeks are a few rungs below salsa geeks on on the early-twenties social ladder - such bad fashion choices, such earnest dedication. it's really not clear to me if these girls dream of the actual john lennon or of young hines, who i must say does a pretty good impression (as an aside, who names their son young?) - but boy do they swoon.
it turns out that nb is much more motivated than i am when it comes to live music, so a few days later i again found myself in a bar past my bedtime, this time at martyr's to see cornmeal. it turns out that quietly mocking dreadlocked microbrew drinking hippies, while fun, isn't quite as novel or entertaining, mostly because even at their most ridiculous they tend to be a bit more bar-savvy... although it's hard to be less bar-savvy than a beatles fanatic who honestly thinks they she can leave for the set break and then come back to angrily reclaim the exact place that she was standing before.
as though what i really needed was more blog material and less sleep, i went for round three this week, this time at sonotheque for bonobo. nb and i were a little surprised to discover that bonobo really was the "kid with the mac" that jk, the evening's orchestrator had described, and my good blogmate and i were even more surprised to discover that what really separated us from the crowd at the uber-hipster west town lounge wasn't our lack of appropriately hip accoutrements but was, in fact, about ten years and, well, good sense. for a club that was pretty dark there sure were alot of sunglasses, and for a scene that should have been pretty aloof there sure was alot drunken groping tongue kissing. on the plus side, i decided that mobs of people in a bar with monochromatic grey decor all gathered around a dork with headphones and laptop enables non-ironic, appropriate use of the term "post-modern." on the down side, crowded rooms full of frenetic, dancing college kids smell alot like dorm rooms.
as a side note, full credit to jk for telling my good blogmate and mb who in turn told me and nb that we should all be listening to bonobo, and who was able to pull off "NWA's 'straight outta compton' is like our abbey road," seemingly without ever having thought about that before, and clearly not knowing about my recent discovery that lots of people still care about the beatles.
i draw from these experiences a few conclusions:
- though i uniformly start turning into a pumpkin at exactly 12:15, i really should get out to live shows more often.
- it's easier to make fun of people dancing in bars when they bring props like glow sticks or glass orbs.
- people should spend more time in frat parties during their formative years, so that they learn the apparently lost art of gracefully moving people out of the way when navigating across crowded rooms. it seems no one does the discreet hand on the back or the arm sort of thing anymore - now we just shove each other out of the way.
- i've noted this before - it's really nice to have friends... especially friends who rally you to go out on frigid february nights, know what's musically good for you (even if you don't), and feed you homemade guacamole and salsa before you hit the town.
and then there's the people-watching.
it all started last weekend when nb and i went off to ballydoyle in downer's grove to see american english, the local beatles tribute band. i am way more beatles-neutral than nb is, but a night of watching a bunch of grown men in silly outfits singing songs that i actually know seemed like a totally reasonable way to spend an evening, and that was before i knew about the groupies. as it turns out, beatles geeks are a few rungs below salsa geeks on on the early-twenties social ladder - such bad fashion choices, such earnest dedication. it's really not clear to me if these girls dream of the actual john lennon or of young hines, who i must say does a pretty good impression (as an aside, who names their son young?) - but boy do they swoon.
it turns out that nb is much more motivated than i am when it comes to live music, so a few days later i again found myself in a bar past my bedtime, this time at martyr's to see cornmeal. it turns out that quietly mocking dreadlocked microbrew drinking hippies, while fun, isn't quite as novel or entertaining, mostly because even at their most ridiculous they tend to be a bit more bar-savvy... although it's hard to be less bar-savvy than a beatles fanatic who honestly thinks they she can leave for the set break and then come back to angrily reclaim the exact place that she was standing before.
as though what i really needed was more blog material and less sleep, i went for round three this week, this time at sonotheque for bonobo. nb and i were a little surprised to discover that bonobo really was the "kid with the mac" that jk, the evening's orchestrator had described, and my good blogmate and i were even more surprised to discover that what really separated us from the crowd at the uber-hipster west town lounge wasn't our lack of appropriately hip accoutrements but was, in fact, about ten years and, well, good sense. for a club that was pretty dark there sure were alot of sunglasses, and for a scene that should have been pretty aloof there sure was alot drunken groping tongue kissing. on the plus side, i decided that mobs of people in a bar with monochromatic grey decor all gathered around a dork with headphones and laptop enables non-ironic, appropriate use of the term "post-modern." on the down side, crowded rooms full of frenetic, dancing college kids smell alot like dorm rooms.
as a side note, full credit to jk for telling my good blogmate and mb who in turn told me and nb that we should all be listening to bonobo, and who was able to pull off "NWA's 'straight outta compton' is like our abbey road," seemingly without ever having thought about that before, and clearly not knowing about my recent discovery that lots of people still care about the beatles.
i draw from these experiences a few conclusions:
- though i uniformly start turning into a pumpkin at exactly 12:15, i really should get out to live shows more often.
- it's easier to make fun of people dancing in bars when they bring props like glow sticks or glass orbs.
- people should spend more time in frat parties during their formative years, so that they learn the apparently lost art of gracefully moving people out of the way when navigating across crowded rooms. it seems no one does the discreet hand on the back or the arm sort of thing anymore - now we just shove each other out of the way.
- i've noted this before - it's really nice to have friends... especially friends who rally you to go out on frigid february nights, know what's musically good for you (even if you don't), and feed you homemade guacamole and salsa before you hit the town.
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