June 27th, 2002 08:10 hours CST currently listening to: "Sueisfine" by My Bloody Valentine

I had such a fantastic night last night. Hope picked me up and we went to the Beat Kitchen to see Whimsical. I've met everyone but the drummer, and they're all the nicest god damned bunch of people you'll ever meet. Their live set was really good. Really nice turnout too. Before the show, Hope and I grabbed a booth and talked it up over our drinky's. Christian showed up which made me really happy. He usually doesn't go to bars because his girlfriend, Linsey, is only 19 still. I was so glad he came out. We all hammed it up and got buzzed and then watched a terrific show. Amanda, Chris, Susan and Tam showed up, but I didn't get a chance to talk to any of them. As soon as Whimsical finished their set, they went into the other room.

I got home and talked to Rachel on the phone for quite a bit. I finally got the low-down on all the crazy shit that's happened to her in the last few days. Good grief. Zach, you're a fucking asshole. There, I said it. I've got tons of fun stuff planned for this weekend. It's all going to rock. Speaking of cool shit... I got this off of Mimi's blog site. It's the cutest fucking thing I have ever seen!!!! Oh, and speaking of cute, last night they were playing Cibo Matto's album "Viva! La Woman" over the PA before the show. I forgot how much that album rocks. Hope and I sang along. It was wonderful and oh so silly.

June 26th, 2002 08:45 hours CST currently listening to: "Aruca" by Medicine

Saw Minority Report last night. While I definitely recommend you go see it, I'm still undecided about whether or not I really liked the movie. I haven't seen a few of Steven Spielberg's later works (A.I. for example) and I was trying to equate this to some of his early movies because of the in-depth discussion I got into with Harry and DJ last night, who went with me. There were several moments in the movie where, mostly during action scenes, they threw in a comic relief moment, and it really killed the suspense. Well, I'm not sure. I like to think that I'm not fascists enough to let the audience reaction sway my opinion or make me think "you guys are so stupid. why are you laughing at that?", but in this movies case, I wonder if it would have felt different if I had viewed it alone on a DVD or something. I was trying to think of earlier movies to compare this to and I thought of JAWS. The scene where Brody panics and calls the coast guard on the radio in the Orca and Quint comes in and bashes the radio to pieces with a bat. Now, nobody laughs when they watch that scene, but if they saw it now, in a theater, would they? Especially with Brody flipping out the way he does afterwards. It's kind of weird. I think I'm developing a snobbish sense when it comes to movie audiences. I don't know. I think for the most part, I liked the movie. It's definitely a dark picture. There are some really odd scenes and a few gross ones as well. Whether they're for comedic or dramatic purposes will be left up to the viewer. I was just really surprised that DJ's initial reaction when the lights came back on was to make a gun out of his hand and pretend to fire at the screen. His thoughts were once the first comic relief segment came in, he was so put off that he couldn't help but become detached from the movie and wait in annoyance for the next comic scene. It's like saying to someone "don't think about a pink elephant," and then of course you try, but you still manage to thank about a pink elephant. It wasn't that bad for me though. DJ and I had gotten into a discussion in the cab on the way to the theater about Star Wars. He told me a story of a guy in a bar who was bitching up a storm about how much he hated Episode I and how it was so unbelievable and whatnot. DJ interjected and said "well, I guess it's nice that you're so smart and educated that you can't just sit back and watch all the cool ships and lightsabers." I used this exact same line on DJ when we left, and it made him stop and think about his arguments. I suppose that's a good attitude to have when you see this movie. Just sit back and have fun with it. I think I want to see it again really soon.

June 25th, 2002 08:40 hours CST currently listening to: "Waterfall" by The Stone Roses

Gah. Horrible dreams last night. Subjects included Tom Waits, repeated vomiting, seeing my friends Brian Petersen and Jeremy Sprague, more vomiting, a bar run by some freaky guy that could have been Tom Waits in what appeared to be Wicker Park, some really odd plot involving food poisoning from the the freaky bar and wondering if I got and then seeing Brian and Jeremy suffering from it, searching a bad neighborhood for my old friend Deedee, and awkward personal moment with my friend Linsey, and a car wreck. Rachel, this is what happens to me when you call me up all upset and then don't call me back when you say you will, god damnit. I woke up really fucking late and managed to get to work on time. I even had a few minutes to kill since I skipped breakfast (thereby showing you how late I was) and I discovered that the Palmer House does indeed sell Krispie Kremes. So, now I feel like shit still. One, because I'm tired. And two, because I just gorged myself on fried sugar. Not that I usually have a problem with the latter. Now I'm sitting at my desk like a complete zombie. Is this Tuesday?

On a lighter note, I got to chat with Ri for quite a while. It felt like old times. Except in the fact that now I know she doesn't read my journal any more and she used to read it all the time. Oh well. What are you gonna do? I did what seemed like endless loads of laundry last night and in between those, I took some pictures of my toys. pic #1, pic #2, pic #3. I also got a picture of Rachel's new tattoos last week when we all went to go see Ameliee. I need a nap in the worst way.

June 24th, 2002 08:40 hours CST currently listening to: "Vapor Trail" by Ride

Had a good weekend, despite the heat. Friday I came home completely tired from work. I managed to at least do dishes and clean up the kitchen a bit before Cathy showed up. She got in from Indy around 8:30 and we ordered food from Leona's. Even though some people rag on that place, I love it. They are definitely my savior for food deliveries. Anyway. We just sat on the living room floor and ate and watched Officespace, which she had never seen before. She fucking loved it. I was actually nervous that she would choke on her food while she was laughing. We both went to bed around 11 or so. We're lightweights.

Cathy and I both woke up around 8:30 or some stupid shit. We got assembled and went to breakfast over at Wishbone. We stopped by the little candle store where I get my soap. It's called Midnight Moon and it's the best smelling thing in the world. I picked up a bar for me and one for my friend Karen, because she wouldn't shut up about it when we were painting my place. I also bought one that smells like papaya. Now, I've never eaten papaya to my knowledge, so I have no idea if what this smells like is accurate, but it smells lovely. It's in my kitchen now. Going to Wishbone that early is great because you can get a table almost instantly. I had banana pancakes and Cathy had peach. They were fantastic. I was going to drop her off at my place so she could go hang out with her friend John, but since there was a Cubs game going on and traffic was already bad in Lakeview, she said it was ok if we ran my little errand right now.

I got my new Jazzmaster! She's a beauty. Silver with a mint green pickgaurd. Even has a bridge cover that's chrome. I may get an extra one for my Jaguar as well. I need to set the bridge to my specs and get those crappy, stock Fender strings off of it. It's soooooooo lovely. I came back home and bid Cathy adieu, then plopped on the couch and took a giant carbohydrate induced nap. Hope called and I barely remembered it. I almost stepped on my glasses while scrambling for the phone.

Hope and I had a nice relaxing evening together. I adore a girl who's into Resident Evil. Sunday I went to the glory that is IKEA. Ended up spending way more money than I had planned. My original intent was to simply buy three blinds for my living room windows. So of course I walk out with three bamboo rollup blinds, two wood blinds for the kitchen, two shower curtains and this fantastic mirror that I hung up in my living room. It's great. Very similar to the coat hanger I have in the front hall. Same kind of wood. Instead of mounting it to the wall, I got out some picture frame kits, and screwed some eye hooks into the upper molding and the top of the mirror and hung it with wire. It gives the living room a nice illusion of 3-d space. It kicks ass. I got the shower curtains up and the blinds in the living room but not the ones in the kitchen yet. I'll do those tonight. It was just exhausting having it so hot outside. I cooked dinner last night and didn't even feel like eating it. So I stuffed it into a cover dish and chucked it in the fridge for tonight.

Rachel had called on Friday night from O'Hare. She was about to get on a bus to go see this guy in Madison. I was so worried about her. She called me while I was cooking last night and it turns out everything went over really well. Thank god. I didn't want to have to drive to Madison to kick some guys ass.

June 20th, 2002 17:05 hours CST currently listening to: "Windows and Wall" by My Vitriol

ok, this is just too funny. My poor frined Vincent just got one of the worst jobs in the world.

Posted by: vincent    [06.18.02 00:22:31]  
Check out this temp job I work Monday (8am-8pm) and Tuesday (6:30am-2pm):

I am a notetaker for a focus group at a research center downtown.

The focus group was for women who suffered from urinary incontinence,
which means I get to take notes on 60 year old women who pee when
they sneeze. Not just a little, but "it comes out like a faucet".

"So when you realized you had this condition, how did you feel?"
"Old. Very old."

June 20th, 2002 9:55 hours CST currently listening to: "Momma Told Me Not To Come" by The Wolfgang Press

I found the coolest site this morning after reading an article over at Gamespot.com. Color Consoles.com is this site that let's you create your own custom paint job for your game console. Once you put your order in, you ship your console to them and they get it back to you in roughly 2 weeks. The entire company apparently is composed of just 10 people. They have some awesome paint finishes too. It's totally giving me a hard-on.

Let's see. What else is going on. Tonight is the quarterly happy hour for my company. This time it's a block away at this Tiki bar called Trader Vic's. It's underneath the Palmer House Hilton. Despite the fact that we're getting free appetizers, I have to remember to eat something before I show up. I can't ever drink on an empty stomach or even really close to empty. I'll be doubled over in pain otherwise. Plus, I get to see Hope tonight, and I can't be all shit-faced when I see her. It's freakishly humid in here right now. I think it's to get above 90 today. Ugh. Granted, the weather has sure taken it's time to get to it's normal level of discomfort, so I guess I shouldn't be complaining. But since it's this hot, fuck it, I'm going to complain anyway. Waaaaaah

June 19th, 2002 8:30 hours CST currently listening to: "Pieces" by My Vitriol

I can't tell if I'm getting another sore throat or not. Well, yeah, I mean it's sore, but I don't know if it's because of an oncoming cold or not. The timing really stinks if it is. I took some advil, and claratin D before I left, and I brought tea with me as well. I'm not getting sick, god damnit.

Shipped my Jazzmaster off yesterday. Cost me $37 to ship the bloody thing. Oh well. I think I've decided that I'm going to get the new silver model on Saturday. It's got an off-white pickguard, which is actually mint green under closer inspection. Might get new knobs for it, to replace the white ones. I want to get a bridge cover as well. Deck this thing out. It's gonna look fantastic. The green one at Chicago Music Exchange that I thought was part of the new 2002 paint finishes, is actually a vintage original that's something like $3,500. Oops. Well, one dream smashed. The silver will be really cool though.

My buddy Cathy is coming up this weekend. She's going to stay at my place at least on Friday night. Haven't seen her in a month or two. Not since my birthday, I think. I just hope I don't get an actual cold. I'd like to go out to a bar, which is something she and I never get to do, it seems. Plus, Thursday is my company's quarterly happy hour deal, and this time it's at Trader Vic's, which is a tiki bar right next door, underneath the Palmer House. I missed the last one because I was sick. I'm not missing this one. Plus, I think I get to hang out with Hope again later that night too.

Even though some of you know about the future of airiel, I don't want to talk about it here in fear that I'll jinx it, but I'm very excited about it. Not that I'm superstitious at all, but you know. I'm still depressed about this whole bass player situation. Or rather, lack there of. I've got leads on two different girls who are interested, but now I've heard nothing from either of them in at least a week. What gives? I guess I'll put another ad in the reader.

June 18th, 2002 11:25 hours CST currently listening to: "Mistress" by The Red House Painters

I forgot how nice it is to hold someone's hand during a movie.

June 17th, 2002 11:55 hours CST currently listening to: "Cornfield" by His Name is Alve

Random quiz that I grabbed off of Rianon's LJ:

name four bad habits you have:
1. looking at other people when I'm talking to a person
2. I'm sometimes not aware of the volume of my own voice or laugh
3. chronic underachiever
4. retelling stories

name four scents you love:
1. emporio armani
2. woody sandalwood from the body shop
3. Rachel
4. roses

name four things you'd never wear:
1. Tie dye anything
2. white shoes
3. a visor
4. a speedo

name four bands/groups most people don't know you like:
1. Sting (well, his first two albums)
2. VNV Nation
3. Wolfsheim
4. Olive

name four drinks you regularly drink:
1. Water
2. Orange Juice
3. Gin and Tonic
4. Diet Sprite

name four random facts about yourself:
1. Only had two speeding tickets ever and one was actually while on a boat
2. I have virtually no pubic hair
3. I prefer to live alone
4. I don't ever plan on having children

name four random facts about your family:
1. Everyone in my immediate family besides myself have been involved in a medical profession
2. My brother is gay and trains people to race BMW's
3. My grandfather actually had red hair although I've only ever seen him with gray, balding hair
4. One o my uncle's has a son who is great example of why you don't take drugs while you're pregnant

June 17th, 2002 08:40 hours CST currently listening to: "Fragile" by The Cranes

What a weekend. You could shoot me in the face with a bazooka and I'd still be grinning. You'd think that with all the time I spent in bed that I wouldn't feel this tired. Heh.

Sold my Jazzmaster. It's going to some fella in California. Heaven only knows what the shipping costs are going to turn out to be. I need to go to a music gear shop to find a box to ship it in. I'll be sad to see it go, but I'm planning on getting a new one on Thursday or Friday when I get paid. Only thing left to decide is the color I want. It gets me all giddy just thinking about it. I haven't bought a guitar in a long, long time. My instincts are telling me to go for the sort of olive green looking paint finish. Can't remember what it's called. I'd love to get a Lake Placid Blue, but it turns out that the 2002 guitars don't come in that finish. Pooh. I'm wondering what the olive finish would look like if I put a tortoise shell pickguard on it. It comes with a white one by default, but I might get a pearl white one instead. Awwwwww yeah.

June 14th, 2002 08:25 hours CST currently listening to: "Now It's Time To Say Goodbye" by The Kitchens of Distinction

Kim and Jeff came over last night for pizza and a movie. They hadn't seen the place since I'd painted it a few months ago. They liked it a lot. They're in the middle of painting their place right now. I had an interesting mishap in regards to the pizzas. I only have one pizza pan to cook with, but Frechetta's are usually ok if you put them right on one of the oven racks with nothing underneath them. Well, I didn't set the oven high enough. Despite the fact that I have an oven thermometer in there, I wasn't checking it very closely since we were watching Fight Club in the living room. So, the pizza wasn't cooking fast enough and it was starting to sag through the top rack. It was ready to come out and I was damn near screaming for help, while burning the piss out of the top of my right thumb. Got a blister. Lovely. Anyway, Jeff came in and found me battling the thing with two giant pancake spatulas and quickly took over. I felt like such an idiot. We pulled the oven rack completely out and put it on top of an upside down cookie sheet. Then were able to take the pizza off without it splitting and spilling it's 4-cheesy goodness all over the place. It was funny. Coupled with the fact that we were all starving to death, had this pizza been lost, we would have had a murder on our hands. Namely them murdering me. Hahahaha.

Going to see Appleseedcast tonight at the Abbey Pub with Krissy. I've never been there before, but it's been mentioned several times to me. The pub's web site has pictures of the Breeders playing there. I thought "Awwwww, the Breeders." and then I though "Wait, how old are these fucking pictures?" Hahahahah. Tomorrow night I'm hanging out with (going out with?) Hope. Probably to the Clipper or some other swanky bar. She asked to visit a place she hasn't been to before, and my favorite watering hole in the middle of Humboldt Park fits that bill 9 times out of 10 with almost all of my friends who drink. And god bless them too.

June 12th, 2002 09:50 hours CST currently listening to: "Shoot You Down (Soul Hooligan Remix)" by The Stone Roses

Hey people. My Jazzmaster is for sale on ebay right now.

What else is going on....... got my hair cut. It's nice and short on the sides. Almost punk-like with my glasses. I've got some tall god damned hair right now. Cathy is coming up to see me next weekend. Can't wait to see her. We had such a good time the last time she was up here, which was almost a year ago. She has several friends that she needs to see when she's up here, but she'll most likely crash at my place. Woo hoo! PJ's, Cathy and a couch. It's the stuff that I live for.

June 11th, 2002 08:05 hours CST currently listening to: "Then We'll Rise" by Chapterhouse

Everybody like my "cryptic" message from last night? Bada-bish bada-boom. Some of these jokes are only for me, people. I'm leaving this weeks MP3 up for another week because it's so fantastic. It took me forever to get a hold of that single, and damnit, I'm here to spread the love.

Interesting weekend. Friday I did nothing but laundry, movie watching, dishes and video games. It was my first full evening to myself since before my family had come to visit the week prior. Finally got to chat with some people too. I hate not having AIM at work anymore. *sigh*.

Saturday I played about 75% of Resident Evil: Code Veronica X and then went outside to find that my car had been towed. They had done construction on Friday and had towed my car. I specifically parked it there because the other side of the street was going to be cleaned that day. I swear there were no construction signs on my side of the street. If their were, they were hidden very well. I went back to the Chicago homepage and looked up "towed cars". Depending on what page you read, you could be fined anywhere from $150 to $500 if your car in impounded. That didn't make my stomach feel very good. I called a number and discovered that it's completely random as to whether you get a live operator or a list of impound yards when you press "0" on the automated phone system they have. I got sent to another number and after explaining what was up, I was sent to another number. This number just kept ringing and ringing. I tried several times, but not a sausage. I called the second number back, which turns out was streets and sanitation. They explained to me that the traffic number I was calling probably didn't have anybody there to answer the phone since they don't staff that office on the weekends anymore. So I had no idea where my car was or if I had a giant fine coming my way. Grrrrrrreat.

Chris and Amanda picked me up for Krissy's birthday party around 8:30. We went to pick up Susan and her roommate Tam. Fun conversations in the car. That's a looooong drive to get out to Krissy and Mike's place. Almost all of my pictures were taken outside, and I couldn't see well through the viewfinder or the display screen, so they're a tad out of focus as I was mostly aiming over everyone's heads. You'll get the idea though. There's a fantastic on one of a Loyd Dobler clone. He had Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" constantly playing on his portable cd player. It was priceless. Here you go:
pic 1, pic 2, pic 3, pic 4, pic 5, pic 6, pic 7, pic 8, pic 9, pic 10, pic 11, and pic 12.
Now, I didn't take all of these. Krissy emailed a ton of them to me late last night. I think there's only one freaking picture in the whole lot where I'm not making some stupid-ass face. I can't take a picture to save my life. What I mean is, I'm never photographed well. Ever. My dad has had a camera on me literally since I was a fetus. I've lost every photogenic quality. That being said, funny pictures, huh?

I ended up staying up with Chris for the duration of the car ride home. To keep him awake, and to take advantage of the fact that I hardly know the guy. And now I know what he does for work and what kinds of video games he's into. When he starts playing Onimusha and Devil May Cry, he's going to watch his social life fly out the window. It will be grand. Sunday I woke up freakishly early. I'd left my webcam on and as a result, there's a goofy picture of me in my underwear, dialing a phone. Who the fuck was I calling that early?!?!? I'm so confused. Amanda gave me a lift to the grocery around 6:00 since I was sans wheels. We had a good talk in the car. Well, it was good for me, anyway. I cooked dinner and kicked back to finish off Code Veronica. Damn, that game rules. I need to get a Gamecube so I can play the remake of Resident Evil.

I got my car back on Monday morning. It had been moved 5 blocks away on Sacramento, south of Diversey. I was so glad to see that she's was ok that I didn't even mind the $50 ticket that was attached to the rear view mirror. You know, why they can't just leave those things under your wiper blade is beyond me. At least it wasn't impounded. Had a GREAT sex conversation with Rachel last night while at dinner over at the newly remodeled Lula Cafe. For the most part the place looks nice, but the wood that they used for the new bar area is simply gross. They may have used the same paint color back there that I used in my living room. Got rained on and had to run the last several blocks. Big fat drops that could knock your glasses off your head. Just striped everything off in the middle of the living room and cranked the AC. It took about 5 hours for the humidity to die down.

June 10th, 2002 22:35 hours CST currently listening to: "Gone World Gone" by The Kitchens of Distinction.

"Indiiiiiiiiieeeee!!! The torch is going out!!!!"

Yeah. Maybe it has.

June 7th, 2002 09:35 hours CST currently listening to: "Mud and Dark" by The Cocteau Twins.

Finally got to hang out with Kim last night. I never see her anymore. She met me at work and Jeff dropped us off at the theater where we were going to be seeing Star Wars a couple of hours later. We went to O'Tooles and had some bar-bar-quay chicken quesadillas. I got to fill her in on my complex and rocky romantic life. Good grief. Next time I'll bring flash cards. I threw too many names at her.

Had a great evening with Amanda on Wednesday night. Again, someone I don't get to see enough of. We went for sushi at Pacific, over in Wicker Park. It was her first sushi experience, and she didn't really dig it all that much. I'll admit, it was an acquired taste for me, but I love it so much now. Since she didn't like it, I paid for dinner, despite her protests. We went to the California Clipper for some drinks. I had been there in a long time. there was a pretty good rockabilly band playing. All in all, a good night.

I'm going to Krissy's 25th birthday party tomorrow night. It's an 80's theme, and I still don't know exactly what I'm going to wear yet. Prolly going to do a Smiths type thing. I might be able to pull that off without having to go buy any extra clothes at all. I'm excited. It's gonna be a blast.

June 5th, 2002 08:50 hours CST currently listening to: "Love Spreads" by The Stone Roses.

i am



what sexual performer are you?

June 5th, 2002 08:15 hours CST currently listening to: "Begging You" by The Stone Roses.

I'd like to thank the academy.

I'm going to go throw up now, thanks.

June 4th, 2002 08:15 hours CST currently listening to: "Let's Go (Nothing for Me)" by New Order.

Went to the gym last night. On the way there, I ran into Amanda's twin. That was just surreal. Had a fun conversation with Hope last night. I met her at The Note on Sunday night before Amanda and Chris got there. Had some fantastic lightning too. I came home from the gym and took a shower. Got into my PJ's and hunkered down with my new Unbreakable dvd and some crappy Healthy Choice Mandarin Chicken. Blech. I polished it off with a whole pint of strawberry sorbet. Hah.

Ok, here are the pictures from the weekend with my parents. As you can see, the weather was outstanding. At least it was in the morning until it turned devilishly hot outside. The pictures from the dolphin show at Shedd didn't turn out so great. The light from the outside, coupled with the people in front of me screwed up my pictures. But you can at least see silhouettes of the dolphins. And that counts, right?

June 3rd, 2002 09:20 hours CST currently listening to: "Stationary Lights" by airiel.

I'm exhausted. Had a freakishly long weekend due to my parents, sister and her boyfriend coming up on Friday. Oh, first off..... I hate dogs. More to the point, I hate dog owners who don't clean up after their stupid dogs. Ahem. Anyway. Jenny and Jeremy arrived around 11:45 and I had lunch with them down at Zoom. Hadn't been there in a while. Mom and Dad arrived here at my office around 4:45. They're getting older. They were asking questions that my grandparents would ask. It was a little unnerving. The fact that they both got in as senior citizens at the Art Institute on Sunday freaked me out further. But I showed them around the office and they got to meet Dave and bump into Jeff again. I went home to change clothes and get a shower. I took the train back down and met them for dinner. We went to this really expensive Italian place about a block away from the Drake hotel. Had a fantastic waiter named Paul, who was a terrific salesman. Jenny got rather drunk, which was damn funny. I was nice and tipsy. It was a good night. Except that I had to take the train back to my place.

Took the train back down the next morning to meet up with the family. We walked through Grant(?) Park, past the big fountain. The weather was amazing. We walked along the shore to the Shedd Aquarium. I have pictures, but forgot to upload them at home last night. We caught the dolphin show. Despite the dialog that was centered toward children, it was very entertaining. We went north up Michigan Avenue to the Harley Davidson store. Jeremy has an "entree level" Harley and his eyes went wide when he walked in. I went back to my place to clean up. The weather was damn hot at this point. The heat index was about 101 degrees. Came back down the train again and was in a zombie-like state. Everyone got to take a nap but me. Grrrrrrrrr. We went to dinner at Bandera and everyone loved it. I hadn't been to that place in about a year and really need to go more often. They have this BBQ Salmon steak that blows your mind. We went over to Second City Etc to see the show. Jeremy's uncle had comp'd us some tickets, but it turns out, that wasn't the case. There were no tickets there for us. So, we scrambled to find something to do. We went to the Bloomindales building to see "The Sum of All Fears."

Now, maybe you're not as anal retentive as I am, but there were about 8 million continuity errors in this fucking thing. First off, this is a prequel. This is BEFORE "Hunt for Red October", "Patriot Games" and "Clear and Present Danger." So, this means that the movie should have taken place roughly in the late 70's. So why were they using HDTV's, wireless PDA's and driving new BMW's? (wow that's a lot of abbreviations. WTF.). I mean, the movie was alright, sure, but come on. They even made a reference to Bill Clinton. I dunno. Personally I thought Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford made much better Jack Ryan's. Much as I love Ben Afleck and all, he just didn't cut it. I did like how they introduced the character of Jim Grier, who was later played by James Earl Jones in the three other films.

At this point I was also getting really tired of hanging around my dad. It's not that my family and I don't get along, it's just that dad has these mannerisms and idiosyncrasies that drive me up the fucking wall. He doesn't stop talking! He'll make a comment about the most mundane things, just to try to start conversation. "I'm really impressed by how many people walk in Chicago." Huh? Yeah dad, that's great. People have legs. They use them. It's not a big mystery. I took the train back home yet again and crashed hard. Sunday, I cleaned up the place a little and dad picked me up. No train ride! Woo! Well, I did have to endure dad trying to make conversation by saying how impressed he was in how little time it took to get from downtown to my apartment. Jenny and Jeremy went to the blues festival and mom and dad and I went to the Art Institute. We checked out the Ansil Adams exhibit, which was really quite good. I didn't care much for the audio tour though. We all drove back to my place so everyone could check out my new paint job. Mom was really impressed. It made me happy. I took them all down to the Twisted Spoke for lunch. Jeremy had a fucking blast. I never would have taken him for a Harley guy, but he is. We all had burgers and mine was the bomb. Coupled with a couple pints of Bass, I was doing good. Mom and dad decided to drive Jenny and Jeremy to Midway, so I had them drop me off at the Grant street stop and took the blue line (again!) up to my place. I ran some errands and then came back and relaxed.

I watched my new DVD of Metropolis. I'm not sure if I like the character designs or not, but the animation was great. And FOR ONCE they had the Japanese dialog in Dolby5.1!!! Halleluiah!!!! It's about fucking time. I hate having to watch Anime in fucking stereo. That's just bullshit. And speaking of shit, my shoes still reek. I already cleaned them off once, and the dog shit is still lingering. Fucking dogs and their stupid owners.

I met up with Chris and Amanda at the Note to see some bands. My Education, Dorian Grey and Self Destruct Sequence. We watched the first two and got too tired to stay for the third. Chris seems like a nice guy. We'll all be at Krissy's for her 80's birthday party this Saturday. Oh, did I mention I'm not wearing my heart on my sleeve? I'm going to have to just rip my sleeves clean off if I'm going to get through this. *sigh*