Archive for October 7th, 2009
What's fun to do for a fourteen year old's birthday in Chicago?
Someone asked us today what we’d do for a fourteen year old girl’s birthday party here in Chicago (besides keeping her as far away from David Letterman as possible).
We had to think about that, because we live in Boystown and most of what we do is rainbow-coated in some way, if not completely Pilsner-drenched. A fun night for us is also going to a Town Hall meeting or protesting wasteful spending in some way, so we had to dial it back and think about what we’d do to treat a birthday girl that age to a fun time in our city.
A few years ago, David’s nieces visited him and our friend Sebastian…and Sebastian planned a lot of fun things in Chicago to do while they were here (they were 12-13 years old). Now, this was the summer time, so Sebastian did a lot of beach-related things with David’s nieces, but the bulk of what he’d suggest holds true.
Feel free to take what you want from this list and edit it to suit your own needs, but here’s a fun day in Chicago with a birthday girl turning 14 in mind:
(1) Wake up early for breakfast…take her to Orange and have the pancake flight that day. Orange is a great place for breakfast/brunch with a few locations around Chicago. Our favorite one is at Belmont and Clark, but there’s one downtown in the Loop too, and another in Lincoln Park. The pancake flight is a different 4-pancake theme each day…short stacks all creatively tied to something inventive. Like, on Halloween one year, they did pancakes based on famous Universal monsters…with Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and the Werewolf…Dracula’s had a “grave” with crushed up Oreo dirt…Frankenstein’s was a green kiwi and strawberry concoction…the Werewolf’s was a lemony moon…and the Mummy’s had interesting Egyptian spices. Delicious. Another favorite flight was “Cereal Killers” last Halloween: with Fruity Pebbles, Cap’n Crunch, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Lucky Charms pancakes. So good, so good, so good. Don’t forget to order the frushi too — fruit sushi with sweet sticky rice. You can also make your own juices too, from a wide varieties of fruits that you order in any combination you want. So much fun.
(2) After breakfast, we think it’s fun to work off some of those calories by taking a little walk and window shopping and browsing all the cool shops on Clark, Belmont and down Halsted into Boystown. Our favorite stores are Hollywood, Ragstock, the tee shirt and comic shops on Clark, and all the consignment shops in Lakeview. We find the greatest deals in those places. Calvin Klein jackets for like $8. Donna Karan jeans, that look new, for $15. Amazing. We have not paid full price retail for anything in three years. Take her to Threadless on Broadway and get her one of the cool new tees they have each Friday (and stay up for a week before the newest batch arrives). They’re all limited edition, and run about $12 for most of them. It’s our favorite splurge item in town…love collecting those shirts.
(3) If she’s into it, you can then take her to the Lincoln Park Zoo, which is free, and is a nice walk from Lakeview through Lincoln Park. It’s the perfect time to go to the zoo as all the animals are out and you can actually see them (as opposed to the summer when it’s too hot for most of them).
(4) Once you’ve worked up an appetite for lunch, take her to Minnie’s on Halsted at Armitage, just a short walk up Armitage from the zoo. Minnie’s makes miniature sandwiches and teensy french fries….with a special dipping sauce, too. So good, so good, so good. When you order, you get a set of 4, 6, 0r 12 little sandwiches and can pick the ones you like. We’ve gone there a lot and like the “Thanksgiving Sandwich”, the pulled pork, and the steak sandwich best. The Thanksgiving one is turkey with cranberry and stuffing and is just great. They have little mini pizzas too, and all sorts of sandwich choices. When we go. there’s typically two of us and we split the 6-pack. With three people, you could do the 12-pack and try almost all of the choices. UPDATE: We really hated to learn today that Minnie’s closed in the beginning of August. No explanation or announcement, just a boarded up storefront. We’ve been so busy the last few months and have had very little money to go out that we last went to Minnie’s in June or so, for one of our birthdays. We really, really, REALLY loved that place. Had a lot of really great, fun dates there too. Even when taking David there, he could always find something he could eat — and that was such a wonder because his Asperger’s made him so picky that he could only eat hamburgers, chicken fingers, or omelettes. Well, Minnie’s had little burgers that could keep David happy while the rest of us ate whatever we wanted. And it was so pretty inside too. The wallpaper was white with these eclectic black swirls on it…like the little tassles on a flapper’s dress. And there were photos of ladies dressed all fancy in the 50s on the walls, blown up to take up the whole wall. There were crystal chandeliers and little red chairs and 50s kitchen tables. The salt, pepper, ketchup, and mustard bottles were all teeny tiny too. The bathrooms were scarlet red inside and were covered in tiny mirrors, like the inside of what we imagine Michelle Obama’s head would be like…a vanity palace with a toilet in the middle, where you could stare at yourself from every angle while you flush. The front of the restaurant looked like a 50s diner, with a cooler holding all sorts of tiny, mini bottles of beer, champagne, soda, you name it. The waiters were, largely, quite hot too. And Hera knows that’s important in any restaurant we frequent.
(5) For something sweet afterwards, you could walk north on Armitage and do some more window shopping there until you get to the Vosges chocolate shop…the best chocolates in Chicago. Vosges has a little ice cream counter in there that has exotic flavors…like curry chocolates and flavors using paprikas and all sorts of Asian touches. Our FAVORITE treat there is a chocolate bacon bar…so salty and sweet. And Vosges is right by the Brown Line train station, so you can then get on that and head downtown.
(6) You can ride the Brown Line and do any number of fun Chicago things right off that train line. There’s a stop at the Merchandise Mart where you can get off and attend a cooking class at The Chopping Block. This all depends on what the birthday girl would like to do, and if a fun class is being held that day, but there’s often cooking classes where you make cupcakes or other fun things. David’s nieces liked activities like this, so Sebastian took them there and they had a great time — if we remember correctly, they rolled sushi and the girls loved it.
You can also get off the train at State and Lake and walk around the city center a little, then maybe go to Daley Plaza where the Halloween decorations are up and there’s a haunted village there. There’s also Halloween activities going on at the Cultural Center, which is on Michigan and Randolph, right across from Millennium Park (which has its own activities going on almost every day). Of special note is Lurie Garden at Millennium Park, which is our favorite thing in Chicago. It’s just gorgeous, and a great place to just sit and look at nature and enjoy spending time with the birthday girl. Millennium Park is now also connected to the Art Institute via a bridge, so it might be fun to take her to the museum as well.
Or, you could have gotten off at State and Lake and walked to a theater to see a show as well. Broadway in Chicago has a lot of interesting things playing (also offering theater tours too, which are fun, because you get to see backstage)…though personally, and this is just us, we think it’s a lot of money to spend…when there are so many other great theater choices that cost a LOT less money. Checkout what’s playing at all the small theaters downtown, on college campuses, and in Lakeview and Lincoln Park. Most are child-friendly. Second City, in our opinion, is a big ripoff. The shows we go to see are all $10-15. Those other shows are a little out of our price range these days.
(7) As it hits evening, take the birthday girl up for dessert in the Signature Room above the Hancock Tower. They have a great menu and you might get a table by the window if you tell them it’s a birthday…it’s the best view in town…and it’s FREE. You just have to order something, but the food is great. Perfect for appetizers/snacks or something sweet to cap off the big adventure day…and she would get to see the city all sparkling and looking amazing from up so high.
We hope these ideas are helpful. If you especially like any of them, let us know and we can be more specific. We love this town and love to show off our favorite haunts, particularly when we have a chance to make someone’s birthday special.
Happy Day to the Birthday Girl!
Could Congressman Aaron Schock become the new Neil Patrick Harris?
Neil Patrick Harris (top)
Chad Allen, on CBS' Dr. Quinn Doctor Lady (which starred the Jane Seymour who had nothing to do with Henry VIII)
Congressman Aaron Schock, fooling no one.
Our most orangest governor, Charlie Crist, in the most convincing heterosexual wedding since...
David Guest's wedding to Liza Minnelli, with Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor as witnesses.
Just about everyone loves Neil Patrick Harris.
And for good reason: he’s fricking adorable. And he hangs out with unicorns.
One of the few child stars to make something more of himself as an adult; talented, self-effacing, singer with a great sense of humor and comic delivery; handsome as the day is long; magic geek who unabashedly promotes his hobby with glee; exceptional young gay man in a committed relationship who puts a great face on all LGBT issues.
Since coming out of the closet, NPH is more popular now than ever.
He plays it straight only on TV now, in the hit show “How I Married Your Mother”, hosts the Emmys and Tonys (and hopefully soon the Oscars too, because Hera knows we’ve seen enough of the overexposed Ellen Degeneres to last us a while…time for a “new America’s favorite gay” to take over, Ellen).
Congressman Aaron Schock needs to come out of the closet and become the Neil Patrick Harris of Washington.
He’s young and handsome and friends of ours who’ve spent time with him say he’s very sharp and has a lot of great ideas. He is, however, a terribly boring public speaker who does not know how to work a crowd and does not inspire a lot of enthusiasm. The thing he really tades off of is his youth, in being the youngest member of Congress. That gets him a lot of play in the MSM, who like nice-looking young people in important positions.
But, Schock’s handlers insist on pulling the old Rock Hudson with Schock…having him photographed shirtless and buff with busty women around him…to imply that he’s a big straight macho He-Man.
We’ve long heard about Schock being gay, from people in politics here in Chicago and those who follow the goings on in Peoria well. But, we never chimed in on Schock until his staff started taking those “Girls Gone Wild” shots of him at the pool with all the bathing beauties.
It’s dishonest and disingenuous of them to pull this…and unfair to use shirless Schock to send the message they want, which is polar opposite from the truth. Frankly, it’s not really appropriate for Schock to appear so frequently with his shirt off, trading off sex appeal…and it’s definitely not acceptable to then claim his sexuality is off-limits. Not when those “busty babe” photos are clearly meant to send the message that he’s “straight”.
The trouble with all of this is that it’s known Schock goes to gay bars in Washington and hits Boystown whenever he’s in Chicago. If he’s scoping out frat boys at MiniBar on a Saturday night after some event here, one day he’s bound to get caught on a camera phone by someone who recognizes him. So far, he’s been lucky because few in the gay community know who the Hell he is…fewer still care. The fact that he’s a Republican makes it all the more easy for him to skate under the radar, as many people who might recognize him think, “Nah, that can’t be him…what would a Republican be doing in here?”.
For whatever reason, Democrats have let both Schock and Florida Governor Charlie Crist maintain their “busty babe” beards. Crist recently had a wedding to a joke-and-novelty heiress which was the height in irony, as his new wife’s family company actually sells fake BEARDS. The nation’s only orange governor, famous for his many drag appearances at the Green Iguana bar in Tampa, Florida, is fooling no one. But, yet, the MSM continues to push Crist as a presidential choice in 2012 for the Republicans (the same way it pushes Bobby Jindal and Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, three other men who don’t have a chance in Hell of beating Dr. Utopia).
Maybe the MSM is waiting for Crist to make it to that level before outing him.
Maybe the MSM doesn’t know what to do because the LGBTQ community is solid-Democrat, and outing non-creepy Republicans is bad for business in the long run. Currently, gay Republicans fall into the grotesque abusing pages and tapping on bathroom stalls mold, which makes the gay community here in Chicago look upon Log Cabins with disgust.
But, just imagine the good someone young and attractive like Aaron Schock could do if he stood up and declared who he really is…if he finally came out…and did it before he was outed.
Neil Patrick Harris did just that…and look where he is now, more popular and loved than ever. A contemporary of Harris’, child star Chad Allen, was outed by The Globe in a series of speedo-clad pics snapped of him at a boys-only pool party…and his career never really recovered. He’s now exiled to made-for-Logo movies on cable. But, in fairness, Allen (while one of our childhood crushes) was never as talented or disciplined as Harris.
Schock can do so much more for himself, in the Harris mold, if he comes out before the MSM has a chance to snap shots of him up to who knows what a la Chad Allen. The “busty babe” pool party photos seem like they were taken to distract from other pool parties Schock might have been at…where the propensity for rainbow-colored speedos could have been much higher.
Why not take this coming Sunday, National Coming Out Day, to stand up on October 11th and be the new face of the LGBTQ community in the Republican party? Why not show 20-and-30-something gays that they don’t have to just blind vote Democrat? That being gay and Republican does not make them creeps Tom Foley, Trent Lott or Larry Craig?
Why not do this before anyone ever publishes photos of Schock making out with guys somewhere, like a dark corner of Chicago’s MiniBar when he thinks no one with a cell phone recognized him?
National Coming Out day is as good a day to come clean as any.
And just ask NPH how liberating and career-enhancing it can be.
Wednesday Open Thread: October 7th 2009
What’s on your mind this Wednesday?
What stories are you reading that you think others would find interesting — post your links here and share!
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A lot of people are talking about the stupidity in NASA bombing the moon this week “to look for water”. This reminds us of the scene in a recent craptactular version of The Time Machine where idiots tried to dig “lunar colonies” on the Moon and ended up screwing up the orbit, causing the moon to break up and violently change life on Earth. Like this:
With China and India now sending missions into space, and screwing around on the moon themselves, we all should have pause. India, especially, has a great deal of ambition but very little sense in all that it does. If liberals in this country think our government is so bad for the environment and our industries are destroying the planet, they should travel to India. Most of that country is an open sewer. Animals are killed for fun gleefully. There is zero respect for nature or human life if it gets in the way of what the privileged class wants. If anyone is stupid enough to dig lunar colonies and cause the moon to fall out of orbit, it’s India. NASA bombing the moon just gives those fools ideas they should never have.
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Here’s another cautionary tale about the lottery — a man who won the (at the time) largest jackpot in history blew through all the money and is now living in a trailer on his small social security check. All the money went to fancy homes and lavish vacations, or gambled away on horse races.
Back in Cleveland, where one of us grew up, the lottery was the be-all and end-all of dreams and life ambitions. ”Someday I’ll win the lottery” was a life strategy…in the way that “hope” is a military and policy strategy for the current president. No one bothered to think of an idea to make themselves money or try anything entrepreneurial. No one attempted to better themselves through hard work (or Heaven forbid, exercise). Nope. ”I’ll just win the lottery someday”. Idiots blow through FORTUNES betting on sports teams, horses, raffle tickets, lotteries, etc. All because they see some schmuck who wins a big jackpot…but they never pay attention to what happens to these “winners” later.
Sometimes being handed a big pile of money you didn’t earn and don’t know what to do with is a very bad thing. See also: the Trillion Dollars in stimulus spending the current White House forced through Congress in February.
Someone needs to Mod the new Tropico game into a Dr. Utopia strategy parody
Can't you just imagine Dr. Utopia himself in this role?
Build your own socialist paradise...as the Utopias continue to tear America down.
Here’s a post that might go over a lot of people’s heads if you don’t play computer games, but indulge a geek-out from us for a moment.
The only computer games we’ve ever liked playing are city-building strategy games…where you are the mayor, emperor, caeser, or president in charge of building a city from the ground up, managing its resources, creating employment and industry, and keeping your citizens healthy and happy. Our favorites in this genre are Caesar III, Pharaoh, Zeus, Emperor (all three from Sierra Studios) and a game called Tropio, where you build a Caribbean island nation up from the ground.
The latest in the Tropico series, Tropico 3, is coming out, and has all sorts of personalization features for what sort of dictator you want to be. From a Fidel Castro type military leader, to a Hugo Chavez-esque lunatic, to an Eva Peron fashionista fascist. You name it, you can create it.
Game “modding” is something many of you might be unfamiliar with as well — this is when programmers take an existing game’s software and “modify” it (hence the “mod) in some way to turn it into something else visually and thematically, while keeping the same game engine. For instance, there was a great game called Star Trek Armada II (where you build a fleet of Romulan, Federation, Klingon, etc. starships and battle the other Star Trek races with all sorts of cool superweapons) that programmers modified to use Star Wars ships instead.
They had to go into the files and change all the existing ships into Star Destroyers or rebel X-wings, etc., making a Star Wars game that George Lucas never had sense enough to make on his own.
We do not have the computer skills to be able to pull off a “mod”. We wish we did, but there’s not enough time in the day to get to everything we want to do…so we’ll never be able to “mod”, no matter how much we want to.
But, SOMEONE out there sure could have some fun with the Tropico 3 engine if they wanted to.
It is RIPE for modding into a Dr. Utopia game…where he is a playable character, along with Mrs. Utopia, and the two of them conspire to create the socialist paradise they’ve always dreamed of, through redistribution of wealth and liberal use of the Alinsky playbook.
The possibilities are endless.
Alas, our talents are limited, or we’d make this happen ourselves.
But, instead, we’ll just put this idea out there…and hope someone does something with it someday.
