Sam's Backup Page

It is Second Saturday Silent Cinema day! The best Saturday!

The Music Box, the little indy cinema near my place, does silent films every second Saturday of the month, with live organ accompaniment. I'm not well-versed in early cinema, particularly, but of course the best way to learn is to do, and so I go. It's a good time, everyone there is a dork like me, and I get popcorn with fake butter, which I love.

Someone the other day, when I wrote about Going On Adventurs, suggested I should make a book out of Adventuring, sort of an Introvert's Guide To Getting Out More, and I think it's kind of a good idea. But there's no reason I can't be instructional on the blog, as well.

Most independent cinemas survive through grants and special events, because attendance at independent films is not really always all that great. Music Box does a lot of events; Second Saturday Silent Cinema is just one of them. One very easy way to Get Out More, if such is your desire (there's nothing wrong with Mostly Staying In) is to go to movies at independent cinemas, because there's a much higher ratio of people-going-alone to people-going-with-family/friends/partners, and it doesn't feel as weird to be buying a single ticket. And because most events cater to specific interests, like National Theatre Live or Silent Cinema, you're more likely to be with people who dork out over this stuff like you do. Seriously, when I went to the summer sunday Disney matinee, there were way more grownup Disney dorks than there were parents with children. When I went to the National Theatre Live, which was showing Frankenstein with Benedict Cumberbatch, I believe I may have sat directly behind the entire LJ Sherlock fandom in Chicago.

Plus you're supporting independent small business, and independent filmmaking, which is sometimes pretentious but often less strangled by convention than studio films. So check your local independent movie house, and see what's playing!

And with that, I'm off to the picture show. Be good while I'm gone. No throwing Milk Duds.

It occurred to me just now that I have spent the entire day nursing a hangover from an actual real live New Year's Eve party I went to last night. I feel like such a grownup.

Yesterday, someone asked me about my Adventur Programme and how I pulled it off, and it occurred to me that this would be fun info to share -- what I do to find my Adventurs and how I schedule and arrange them. So you can find that ( behind the cut! )

This training is making me feel like I'm back in high school geometry class for the second year I failed it. I am so angry not just at my own inability to grasp this bullshit but the bullshit way in which it's being taught. And I can't even explain to you guys why it's being taught badly because a) it's highly technical and b) it's HOMICIDALLY BORING.

So I decided to treat myself to a pizza lunch, especially since today is payday, and when we were given our break I veritably ran down the street to the pizza place I'd noticed and ordered a personal pizza. I normally think Chicago pizza of any kind is mostly shit, but it turns out there is a point at which Chicago thin crust pizza is edible.

For the first five minutes after it comes out of the oven, thin crust pizza in this town is delicious. But of course you can't eat it straight out of the oven. You have to wait about a minute, until you won't get third degree burns on your tongue.

This leaves you four minutes in which to eat your entire pizza serving before it turns disgusting, soggy, and rubbery.

I am back from the Sound Of Music sing along!

I was a bit apprehensive because audience participation can go far wrong, but it was a matinee so it was mostly parents and kids, which was pretty high energy. We got to boo the Nazis and the kids were very, very into hissing whenever the Baroness showed up. Plenty of fake nuns in the audience, and I ended up sitting behind a pair of grandparents who had brought a handful of kids all dressed up like the von Trapp children. Very enjoyable time had by all.

The minor tragedy of the afternoon is that I appear to have lost my Dalek hat. I know I had it going into the building, and I suspect I dropped it in the lobby and someone made off with it. I can't say I blame them; it's a fantastic hat. I checked with the concessions stand and nobody had turned it in, but they might yet. It's a shame; aunty_marion knitted it for me without a pattern, so it was quite singular (and remarkably durable) but it could have been worse. I have other hats and I'd rather lose a hat than my keys or wallet or phone.

And now, off to prep Radio Free Monday, for my sins.

Sam: OMG the ukeleles and the trained hoop-jumping dog and the four people juggling at once and the bolo juggler and the cellphone gag and and and!
R: That woman who did the rope dance was hot.

People take different things from the circus.

I might have photo spammed you guys a little earlier, sorry about that. I'm never keyed up about the circus until I get there and then all of a sudden it's OMG TENT POPCORN CLOWNS ACROBATS MUSIC.

A kind Cafe member read my remarks about the Midnight Circus earlier in the month, and subsidized tickets for R and me to attend. This is the last day they're performing in the park, but they'll be doing short acts at Daley Plaza next weekend, and even if you don't like Chicagoween it's worth a trip downtown just to see them. There were a lot of really unique acts, some I'd honestly never encountered before (BLOCK JUGGLING) and some really great variations on old standards. This one guy did a strap act with an umbrella, it was fantastic. You can kind of tell that some of the performances came from people just dicking around with standard acts until they found something really unique.

And pretty much every act had some clowning in even though nobody was just a straight-up nothing-but-clowning clown, which was my favourite part.

Anyway, thoroughly enjoyable. And it got me into a neighborhood I've never seen before, which was cool.

So the story of the woman who thought I was going to Rhode Island isn't all that complex.

...he says, and then wonders how he reached this point in his life.

I had bought a breakfast pastry in the airport this morning because I had three hours to kill before my flight, and I was sitting at, let's call it Gate B10. This wasn't my gate, because I had THREE HOURS to kill, but it was near my gate and it had empty seats at the long bar-tables Midway Airport boasts.

So I'm sitting there at this bar-table, eating my pastry, and a woman walks up to me and says, "Rhode Island?"

"Beg pardon?" I ask.

"Is this the gate for the flight to Rhode Island?"

"Oh, I don't know, it's not my gate," I say, and here is where the crucial misunderstanding, I think, took place. I think she made an assumption that I was going to Rhode Island but wasn't at my gate. "What gate did the ticket agent tell you?"

"Gate B10."

"Well, you're at B10," I tell her, and assume that's the end of it. But no, because I have an invisible talk to me aura, she says "It's not listed yet, maybe we're too early" and goes into this detailed description of how she was going to take a shuttle to the airport, but her husband insisted on driving her -- there was some kind of husband logic involved, but I was busy boggling at the level of information this woman was pouring out to me, a complete stranger, someone not even traveling to Rhode Island. A description of her breakfast was involved.

But I've developed some new dealing-with-strangers social skills in the past few months of Adventuring to supplant my usual "break eye contact, mutter, and run away". One of them is the "actually listen and respond like a human being when someone overshares with me" technique, which works well on elderly museum docents and hamburger cooks. The other is the "remind yourself you don't care what this person thinks of you, and do what makes you happy" technique, which works on -- well, technically everyone, but I only use it on people who approach me when I'm on public transit, usually. That level of disrespect must be earned.

If I had been less startled or significantly less "in an airport", I would probably have asked her about Rhode Island and learned something fun about a state I've never visited. Did you know they had a vampire? Google "Mercy Brown" and hit me back.

But I wasn't, so I decided to just stare at this woman in patient, visible surprise, like I couldn't believe what she was doing. When she just kept going, I finished my pastry, got up, and walked away while she was still talking. I assumed that would be a subtle hint that she was WAY OVERSHARING WITH SOMEONE WHOSE NAME SHE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW.

But apparently she thought we were going to our gate. To go to Rhode Island!

So she followed me to the water fountain, then into a shop where I bought a Snickers bar, and then to my gate. Where she sat down next to me and kept talking until finally she sort of petered out and I put in my headphones.

I think possibly she left when I got up to get in line for my flight to Austin, but by then to be honest I wasn't going to dare eye contact.

I genuinely hope she made her flight to Rhode Island. I mean I don't feel good about leading her on a merry chase round an annex of Midway Airport. On the other hand, she brought it upon herself. Even if I were to be trusted, which I clearly am not, she had no way of knowing that. Plus her manners were atrocious. You're getting on an airplane, come prepared or go home. Don't depend on the kindness of strangers, fuckwit, it's the twenty-first century! You have Google, look it up! Take control of your life. I already have more life than I can handle, I don't need yours too.

I should visit Rhode Island sometime, though. Apparently they have lovely beaches.

I'M BACK.

The Lapidary Museum was way more awesome than I expected, not that my expectations were very high. There were also other people there, which I didn't expect given it's a museum of lapidary, but I guess it's a big draw in Elmhurst. While I was paying admission I mentioned to the octogenarian behind the counter that I'd come up from Chicago to see the museum, and she got all smiley and took me under her wing and gave me an informal tour. I tried my patented new "Actually listen to strangers when they want to tell you something" technique and learned quite a lot about German figurine carving.

After she left me to explore the rest of the museum on my own, I wandered around staring at a shit-ton of carved rock and taking pictures and generally enjoying myself and only very occasionally pretending to case the place for a heist.

One of the things I took a photo of was the Ivory Puzzle Ball, an intricate carving of 24 spheres, each inside the next, carved from a single piece of ivory (you can see some examples here). About twenty minutes later I was looking at some other shiny rocks when a woman came up to me and said, "I noticed you taking a picture of the puzzle ball."

Which, I'm not really sure how to respond to that, but she continued, "Going to try carving that at home?"

And I LOLed and shook my head, thinking she must have some reason to be talking to me about puzzle balls, and also unwilling to explain to her that I was taking a picture to share with The Internet. She said something about visiting as a kid and always being fascinated by it, and I mumbled something about yes, it's very interesting, and then she went off to look at something else.

I'm pretty sure she wasn't trying to make a pass because A) I think she was there with her husband and B) who picks up dates at a Lapidary Museum? Though I suppose it's not a bad idea, really, because at least you know the person is interested in esoteric things (and/or shiny rocks). I think I fell victim once more to "People inexplicably talk to me" syndrome, inherited from my mother.

I was going to go to the art museum, but I wouldn't have had enough time to really dig into it before the train came, and the next train after that was two hours later, so I ended up exploring a little bit of downtown -- they have a shop called It's Good To Be King which proclaims itself a store for those interested in "Chess, History, And Toy Soldiers" -- and then I caught the train back to Chicago. After which I found the Chicago French Market, which I knew in theory existed but had never seen, and will revisit because it's like a teeny tiny version of Reading Terminal Market in Philly and St. Lawrence Market in Toronto, both of which I love.

And then I got on a train with approximately two million hipsters and at least three million Cubs fans and came home.

I have returned home from the Pedway! No dragons. I was almost disappointed.

It's really not as cavernous and subterranean as I was led to believe. If I hadn't known I was underground I'd think I was walking through a mall. They did have a Subway sandwich shop, which appealed to my sense of somethingorother, the Subway in the Pedway, but most everything was closed. At one point I found myself unwittingly in the basement food court in Macy's; I also found an amusing tiny pharmacy, two gyms, and the Banner Institute, which is not for Hulk Studies, sadly.

On the other hand, I came up from the Pedway on Washington between State and Wabash, and according to the map I just checked, there is no exit from the Pedway on Washington between State and Wabash. So I may have been rearranging the Pedway to suit my will, which is kind of impressive. Or it's possible this map is very old, since the actual text guide I found for the Pedway tells you to enter through the Corner Bakery in the Cultural Centre (there is no Corner Bakery in the Cultural Centre) and says you can get to the Pedway from the Washington red line El stop (the Washington red line El stop has been closed for two years).

Next time I'm going to try going east from the Cultural Center instead of west and see if I can make it back to the Top Secret Food Court that way.

Also, have some origami! It's White Collar Tuesday, so I thought I'd bust out a lily. My props to whoever folds them for the show, they're not exactly the simplest of folds. To display it properly, I also fell back on my old friend, the Stem.



Now I want to write a caper-theft-chase-scene through the Pedway.

Well, that was a thwarted afternoon.

I did not get a book or trousers or barbecue. I did get rubber cement and headphones. Blick sells both things, though the headphones are somewhat novelty. Still, for ten bucks, I now have earbuds that look like tiny salmon maki, which is pretty cool.

The Harold Washington Library never has the books I want, even though it always says it does. It's like a goblin went through the library and removed all the books it knew I would want, without telling anyone. And I didn't get trousers because I have NO TIME for someone who wants to sell me skinny jeans. Also I have either uncovered fashion's ultimate insanity OR the salesman has the worst patter ever, but I decided it was time to leave the store when he tried to sell me "wide leg skinny jeans".

Actually my afternoon was filled with skinny jeans, because after that fiasco I went to Wicker Park, one of the neighborhoods of Chicago, which I am not cool enough to walk around in. I saw more sockless boat shoes and skinny jeans and tattoos in one block of Wicker Park than I've seen in the rest of Chicago all year.

I didn't go to Lillie's Q. I walked past it and decided I didn't want barbecue, and I especially didn't want barbecue from somewhere I'd have to sit in a high cafe chair in a window to eat it.

By the way, as long as we're talking about how I got back on the train to go home, fuck the Blue Line, it's full of assholes. If you ride the Blue Line, I apologise, but surely you're aware you're surrounded by assholes, right? My god, I will never take the Red Line for granted again. Or live on the Blue Line.

So now I'm home, and I'm feeling thwarted, and I'm not going out again and you can't make me.

THIS WAS NOT AN ADVENTUR. IT WAS A TRAGEDIE.

Tonight I went to the Meatloaf Bakery.

Oh yes, you read that right: Meatloaf. Bakery.

I've been meaning to try it for a while but always assumed it was a bit difficult to get to. Turns out it's right on a bus route, just about central between work and home. Door to door service, almost. Anyway, I wanted to get a gift certificate for R for his birthday; he loves Meatloaf Bakery, and he's a big fan of "meat" as a gift. So for him, I braved the 151 bus, which I normally hate and fear. Apparently the trick to not ending up in backstreet hell on the 151 is to get off before it leaves the park.

Anyway, I picked up his gift and got a "meatloaf cupcake" for myself -- "bunless burger" meatloaf, topped with cheesy mashed potatoes. It is 100% delicious, really rich and flavourful, not too heavy. I thought it would be greasy, because when I heated it (they package them chilled) some grease bled out the bottom. It's not, though -- I mean, it is a little, but just enough to make it moist. For nine bucks, it's a pretty full meal, and way better than the nine dollar mac and cheese from the food truck. NOVELTY DINING: I'M ABOUT IT.

It's in a neat little area of Clark Street, lots of hipster cafes and shops, and best of all about a block south there is, drumroll please, a Five Guys Burgers.

I love Five Guys. They're not everyone's taste but they make exactly the kind of burger I like and their fries are awesome. And I've never lived within easy reach of one before, so they've always been a special treat. Now, I can get on a bus a block from work, and twenty minutes later be in a booth eating Five Guys fries.

I declare this more than an ADVENTUR. Tonight was, quite simply, A TRIUMPH.