Chicago: customers are advised to allow extra travel time

So basically what you're saying is that Sarah and I should spend the weekend catching up on Trapped in the Closet?

Oh I forgot I saw some live performance that R. Kelly did of one of the parts, probably on some MTV awards show? That was pretty binoculars.

All day
All night
All music video

you're right... i need to leave the 20th century behind. It totally sucked.

So basically what you're saying is that Sarah and I should spend the weekend catching up on Trapped in the Closet?

no no... it doesn't take long. Watch it over breakfast. Then go do other things and clear your head or the inexplicable bizarre-ness you have just witnessed.

Someone thought that they saw Will Oldham as a cop in chapter...15? 16? -- but I haven't watched it again to check.

Spend an entire weekend watching it on repeat. Then you'll see God, and you can find out what He smells like.

I feel like this is one of those Friday nights where Sarah and I spend a long time trying to figure out what to do, looking up things in the Reader and Metromix and dismissing them all, and then I get frustrated and in a bad mood and then eventually we end up checking out a movie. So really question 1 was the most important of the three questions I asked earlier.

Go to a new restaurant.

Ooh we still have that Green Zebra gift card, maybe we should do that tonight.

Go to a new restaurant.

this is truth and wisdom

via the washington post:

"[R.] Kelly says he's not sure when the series will be done, but says it will finish 'when the aliens decide to leave.'"

ahahahaha

Spend an entire weekend watching it on repeat. Then you'll see God, and you can find out what He smells like.

this is actually what all tomorrow's parties is like.

R. Kelly is an edgy motherfucker

wait... is amanda's hubby's movie tonight or next friday? I could have sworn it was tonight, but I think I'm wrong now...

Next friday.

oh ok. That's good actually, I'm so sleepy I could die.

Yeah, I'd go if it were tonight.

Yeah yeah next Friday 8/24. Also I convinced Dan that he wants to hang out at Old Timer's beforehand, so if anyone wants to meet us there please do!

ez's favorite food critic covers one of our (leaf & I) favorite local beers this week:
http://citypages.com/databank/28/1393/article15757.asp

sounds like you'll have to try it when you're up here!

the downside of people being able to see what you're listening to:

D:
are you okay?

Kenan:
?
yeah, i'm fine

D:
glad to hear it
it's just, you know, this mortal coil

Kenan:
haha
it WILL end in tears

D:
i just feel like i need to give you a pat on the back, maybe a nice cup of camomile

how do people know what you are listening to?

by the way, when did the new yorker start having weekly cartoon captioning contests?! leaf picked up a copy & as i was flipping through, it seems like the back page is now a caption contest every week. have you submitted any, john?

The contest started about two years ago, I think. I've submitted one, but there was one that I really thought I had a shot at but didn't get around to submitting in time.

seeing it made me think of you.

That Moskowitz piece is great, by the way. From what little I've read of her (that piece and the Dave and Busters one), she seems to be a great example of how criticism that's ostensibly about one thing (food, music, film, whatever) can really be about lots of things (herself, the bridge collapse, the ordinary lives of Minnesotans).

Which reminds me of this quote from Carl Wilson's blog:

I was being interviewed for a teevee show about music writing and blogging today, and among my staircase moments afterwards, I thought that my answer to the question, "If writing about music is such a non-lucrative career, why do it?" should have been that precisely because music is so abstract and inimical to verbal capture, it opens up an infinite field to write across, an unending series of creative near- or far-misses -- and because music is so insinuated in everyone's personal lives and consciousnesses, it burrows tunnels into every subject matter, making it a subject that potentially permits you to write about anything and everything in the world. But then again, I thought, that could be said of writing about food or clothing or a hundred other things.

Do you have that quote stashed in a special place so you can post it whenever you want? I swear I've seen that at least twice before and I don't even know who Carl Wilson is.

I just trawled through a year and a half of posts on my old blog to find it.

Ooh, I've never had that beer.

I just trawled through a year and a half of posts on my old blog to find it.
aw, that's a lot of effort.

Carl Wilson is the music critic for the Toronto Globe and Mail, btw. I know EZ is a fan of his.

Also, he played guitar for the Beach Boys and died in 1998.

my stomach just started a revolution & now i want to go home. blech.

http://www.virtualfools.com/filler/videogames/jimmy2521revx1.jpg

The focus of my evening is the free, well-reviewed pizza we're supposed to get at a gig in Stoughton, WI tonight.

xp that game was fucking terrible

It was no http://www.arcade-history.com/images/game/2870_1.png, that's for sure.

^actually I don't think I ever lasted more than 5 minutes on that game

\prom night

Oh yeah, that one ruled.

what wii games are supposed to be good?

mattttt to thread

My critics' hall of fame: Dara Moskowitz (food and wine), Carl Wilson (music), Jed Perl (art), Joan Acocella (dance), Robert Brustein (theater), Roger Ebert (movies), Dale Peck (novels). All of them both care and think passionately about the medium they cover, and their best essays are as important to their medium as the work they cover.

There could be a whole other roster of critic (Tim Perlich in Toronto being a big one, Monika Kendrick) who aren't writing those long essays but whose tastes are important as far as being the first ones to discover artists and entire movements rather than following them. They're equally important in a different way. Perlich told me about how Nirvana stayed at his apartment when they first played Toronto, and how he woke up the next morning to find Kurt Cobain having spent the night watching tapes of Twin Peaks for the first time.

(the point of that last sentence being that Tim P. is not well known but is a guy who has been at the crossroads of a lot of moments like that)

Like here is a typical Perlich article: writing about The Ponys in 2003 when no one knew them.

Right now, the Wii is all about the party games, which are great cause it's a fantastic way to spend a lazy evening at home drinking beer with friends. But bad because 4 controllers are expensive. For the uninitiated, party games are those that are made up of many many many smaller mini-games. Play a series of these, get points, win the game, etc. The original Wii Sports is great for this shit (ohmanohmanohman, Tennis). Mario Party 8 and Wario Ware are both a lot of fun in this setting. And I hear Mario Super fucking Strikers whatever is also supposed to be good.

If you like more traditional games, I have to recommend Super Paper Mario and the latest Zelda game -- both are absolutely wonderful for the reasons that those franchises normally are. Other upcoming games to look out for: the new Metroid and of course Guitar Hero 3 (although fucking Rock Band is going to eclipse the shit out of that one).

we play the wii sports game a lot and i think leaf wants zelda & i'm intrigued by paper mario...
are party mario & wario ware good for two people? what would you get?

How often do you see dan? I've got Wario Ware, Zelda, and Paper Mario. If you want to try them, I'll hook it up. For two people, I'd say Wario Ware is fun. If you two are the type to swap a controller back and forth whenever you die, Paper Mario could be pretty fun. I have honestly never played Mario Party 8, but Nintendo knows how to make some fun games, and in college I spent many an enjoyable night with Mario Party 2-4 and 40ozs.

I want to try Resident Evil 4 for wii, but that is not exactly a party game.

RE4 is fucking terrific also. Now if you'll excuse me, stop talking about nerdery so I can get my ass back to work.