Ken's Visit Part III: Revenge of the Sith Lords Who Are Cloned and Really Pissed at The Jedi's Return
One thing I forgot to mention from my Improv class last week: we played ass tag. Ass tag is just like normal tag, except you have to use your ass to tag someone. This is very interesting with a class of a dozen in a very small space. But, the coolest part of ass tag was that Tim O'Malley said of me, after I 'fought off' three guys who were trying to team up to tag me, "This guy. This guy's crazy." And I thought to myself "Sweet! I'm crazy, even here!" I just thought that was awesome.
Saturday: Apparently the Saint Patrick's Day Parade is the Saturday before March 17, making it this past Saturday. Neither Ken nor I knew about it until we reached Michigan Avenue and were bombarded by people wearing ugly green hats, people wearing items with the Irish flag on it, and a general wave of green. Don't ask me how one can be bombarded by a wave... perhaps it only occurs on the very rare occasion that your narrator completely f--ks up his metaphor. What an idiot. Anyway, we were kind of upset (we = I)("I were"?)(Shut up) that we didn't know about the Parade going on. It would have been cool to just go down there and hang out at the parade. Maybe find me a nice Irish lass. That's not a typo... I was not trying to write "ass". I actually meant lass.
Right, so, when we realized that there was something very Irish going on, I wondered out loud if they had colored the river green yet. As we got closer, Ken responded in the affirmative and I looked up. I was astonished. Never before have I seen such a large area so GREEN... it was a brilliant green. I want to say I was blinded by it... but it was almost the opposite. I felt like I had finally seen something that I should have seen a long time ago. I made a couple calls to try to share it... but no luck. So Ken and I stood and shared it... and told ourselves that we'd bring cameras Sunday and take some pictures of it; and I silently cursed myself for not having the foresight to just bring my camera anyway.
After crossing the river, I spotted a Chipotle. Ken had never been... and I LOVE that place, so we went. When we got there, it was so packed that there were only two seats available, and they were the window seats. Ken and I quickly got over the fact that everyone walking from the parade was watching us eat... and we started playing around with it. We tried to become the unofficial spokesmen for Chipotle... and we made faces while eating to try to show everyone passing by that it was the greatest place ever. We even had one guy who specifically responded to us from outside, as if to say "Hey, are those good?" and we made the "Yeppers" face. We're clever. While we were sitting in the window, I spotted two ALBION people: Kat and Josh James. Kat had tried to get a hold of me on MySpace and I was kind of like "um... who?" But I was so surprised to see them walking around Chicago's downtown that I did the totally shocked "OMG!" face, and they came in to say hello. The conversation was brief and pleasant. Josh was in town to play at a bar up North and Kat was there for support. I remember Josh as being a little anal retentive about his music, but in the conversation, he was relaxed and groovy... which made me really happy to be able to see him and change my POV. And he seemed very supportive of me being in Chicago trying to do my acting thing here; so that's awesome. It was great to see them. And it was a great burrito. And it's time to move on.
After Chipotle, we moved to the real reason he dragged me into the downtown: The Art Institute Museum. We were trying to get as cultured as bacteria (stay with me, the jokes get worse). Ken and I started with a photography exhibit. It was incredible: beautiful, innovative, and interesting. It was by a Japanese photographer who uses hour-long exposures and flashlights/mirrors to create white spots on the film. So what you end up seeing is a beautiful landscape with white spots on it... but no photographer. He's moving fast enough to not be picked up by the camera. Fascinating. Then we moved to the impressionist paintings... enjoying them but feeling something not quite right. We were less in awe than we were supposed to be, I think. It's like, we were cultured, but not like yogurt. Heehee. Anyway, when we were looking at a Monet fruit painting I turned to Ken and spoke pretty loudly saying "This was from Monet's senior art class. His teacher gave him a still-life fruit assignment and this is what he painted. He received an A minus for this one." Turning back to the painting, contemplative; "A minus." And that seemed to open the flood gates. We got comfortable and tried making each other laugh while looking at some pretty famous paintings. There's something horrifically inappropriate about what we were doing... but it was so much fun! One of my favorites was the Van Gogh (?) haystacks. There are four paintings of basically the same haystack but in different times of the day and two of them have two haystacks. So I said that he was just trying to paint one haystack and, by the time he finished, it was night and the lighting had changed... so he had to paint it again (and so on). That made me laugh and laugh... and you had to be there. OH YEAH! Even though we were being inappropriate, there were people taking pictures of the paintings with their fucking picture phones. I had to stop myself from punching them in the head! That's just disrespectful! Ugh! It makes me sick to see technology used to bastardize great works of art. Yeah, Ken and I were mocking them... but only the content, not the artistry. You're now going to say there's no difference between what we were doing and what they were doing... and I'm going to let you know how wrong you continue to be. It must get tiring to be so wrong so often.
After being cultured like... (I'm stopping, I swear!) we went to the Virgin Megastore. Nothing juxtaposes fine art quite like the disgusting stench of capitalist commerce. We spent a very long time looking around at stuff and I finally settled on buying myself the Starsky and Hutch DVD, The Hudsucker Proxy (two DVDs for $25! It was a sale!!!) and Dane Cook's Harmful if Swallowed. A Traum got me into Dane Cook... Dane's young and he's pretty good: Raised Catholic, he's got a couple funny bits about going church when he was younger. He's good... and young enough to get better (which I think he has in the past few years).
After spending way too much money, we went back to my place and ordered some food from Garlic and Chili Healthy Thai cuisine. That's the thai place a block away from me... that doesn't look like it would be good from the outside, but it is really awesome food. Ken and I both got some chicken curry... and we ate it while watching old plays that we were in. Ken kept saying "I had hair! Look at my hair!" I commented that I was the only one in a suit in The Last Fisherman... I'm such a tight-ass.
And, the last thing we did Saturday night was play Brute Force. For those of you who have lives and don't know everything about video games like this dork *points to self*, Brute Force was supposed to help Microsoft build off the success of Halo. Brute Force is a squad-based, third-person shooter that was basically developed with the Halo fan in mind (and it even uses the exact same controls). Unfortunately, there are problems with BF... first of which being the atrocious writing and voice acting. Ken and I actually had a pretty good time making fun of it... but the acting is terrible which doesn't matter because the writing is so bad that even a good actor would have a tough time making it sound anything but ridiculous. Additionally, the rest of your team is useless. Ken and I seemed to figure the best strategy is to tell your teammates to stay put and then go ahead and kill some stuff. Regardless of the shortcomings of this game, we started playing through it two years ago, and finally sat down to finish it Saturday night. Ken seemed pretty pissed when we realized that we were only two levels from the end of the game. Not that I blame him... to have this unfinished game when you're so close to being done is irritating. *sigh* Our long journey finally came to a bloody and frustrating end Saturday night. Good for us.
Sunday: The first thing we did was head over to the Cheesecake Factory on Michigan Avenue. When we got there, we had to wait about half an hour for a table... telling each other that we think there's nothing immoral or unethical about stealing a table from someone... so long as you make sure to beat the crap out of that person first. That's a fair trade, I feel. But we did, eventually, get a table. Right up front by a window! Again! Two meals in two days. It wasn't as awesome as the last time, because there aren't a lot of people who walk past the Cheesecake Factory. You have to walk down some stairs to get there from the street. Regardless, our waiter sucked and our food was great.
After lunch, we headed to the Apple store on Michigan Avenue. Ken wanted to get an ipod to be even more trendy than he already is (I love ya, Kenny!). And, while we were there, I kept thinking about how awesome it would be to have an ipod for my trip to England. As such, while he was buying his ipod mini, I was coveting my own... thinking about how little I'd actually have to talk to people if I got an ipod. Although I just heard that I'm going to be with Bohne and Sadler for most of the trip... so I probably won't need to avoid talking to people. Although, have to really talked to Bohne? I mean REALLY? Heehee... I'm fun.
Then, as always happens, it was time to say good-bye. Ken and I are the masters of the anti-climatic good-bye, and this time was no different. I went with him to check in his bags... then we headed to the part of the airport where you have to have a ticket to get passed, and we were both like "Well. It was fun. See you again. Bye." And that's pretty much it. This good-bye was a lot easier for me to swallow than the last time he was here because I actually have friends and a life this time.
When taking the Orange-line back, I got a call from Miss Karen Green. We talked for a while until the voices were too much for her and she had to go. I refer to the voice of the dude who tells you which stop you're at... and not the voices in my head. If MY voices were what made her have to leave, that'd be really weird. I thought only I could hear those. All the time.