Archive for October 31st, 2009
Sarah Palin related Halloween treat today
This afternoon, we took our friend Marie’s daughters Trick or Treating here in Boystown (they went as Hermione Granger (older girl), with the kindergartener dressed up as Crookshanks), where all the local merchants dressed up and passed out candy and there was a lovely Alice in Wonderland themed children’s party at Space Park on Roscoe, just off Halsted. The weather was brisk, but lovely, with lots of colored leaves bustling about and actors dressed like Wonderland characters running through the neighborhood bringing everyone to the park for fun.
Very well done.
Lots of great kids’ costumes, heavy on the Disney princesses for girls and the Star Wars clone troopers for the boys. Lots of adults following the Wonderland theme with many a Mad Hatter or Playing Card walking around.
We stopped for lunch afterwards at Nookie’s on Halsted and Buckingham, probably our favorite restaurant on Halsted — and it was packed today. The tables were close together and of course we couldn’t help overhearing what the people next to us were talking about.
That’s because we listen to other tables’ conversations in restaurants and always have our little notebooks ready to catch the interesting bits we like to share with you (“It’s called eavesdropping, bitches, and just admit you do it already,” says our friend Panda, who is not always wrong).
Well, the booth next to ours was a group of Boystown boys, who will all most likely be various shades of undressed tonight, being a relatively mild night for Halloween, which falls on a Saturday, which also coincides with the “clocks falling back an hour”, meaning it’s going to be all-out-nuts in Boystown this evening.
The guys were munching on carrots and cucumbers and no dressing, no sauce this and that, so undoubtedly they’ll be stuffed into Speedos with little room for a pulled pork sandwich or stack of pancakes in their bellies.
Because the girls were with us, and were talking about all the different kinds of candy they got today, we didn’t catch all of the conversation but our little ears shot up when we heard the guys talking about Sarah Palin…and Levi Johnston posing nude in Playgirl (or is that online for Playgirl, as the magazine doesn’t really exist anymore).
We braced for another round of Palin hate from low information fops, as is standard operating procedure in Boystown. Instead, we were treated to something unexpected that went something like this:
“Did you hear Levi’s posing nude in Playgirl and they say it’s going to be full frontal. He’s taking dick pics, totally.”
“You know what, I don’t like Sarah Palin, I don’t like any Republicans, but that kid is a jackass.”
“Do you see him on TV the other day. He’s a mouth breather. He sits there and just says, “Yah, that’s right” to whatever the reporter is asking him. Like Katie Couric or Don King or whomever. He just agrees with what they say, like, “Levi, did Sarah Palin call her son Trig, “That retarded baby?”, and Levi says, “Yah she said that”. It’s like he just puppets what they tell him to say.”
“Yah, and Sarah let him live with them and supported him because he has no job and his family are losers, and look how he thanks her. That kid is trash.”
“I totally want to see his dick, though.”
“Yah, me too.”
“Wonder if he’ll do Sean Cody next.”
“What else has he got to lose?”.
The guys clearly meant “Larry King”, not Don King, but you get the idea. And for those of you who don’t know, Sean Cody is a website featuring young amateur guys, who claim to be straight, doing all sorts of interesting things you can imagine. Several guys on that site ended up working at MiniBar and other places around Boystown, including a few of the gyms as personal trainers. “Sean Cody” is like saying “Xerox” for generically making copies, but in this case it’s “being naked for pay on a website”.
We have no doubt Levi Johnston will go gay for pay in a year or so. He has burned all his other bridges.
We can only hope he does this, too, because it will further remove him as a weapon to use against the Palins in 2012.
Hopefully, you can see what a big deal all of this is already…95% of Boystown hates Sarah Palin because few of these guys think for themselves, and most of them just parrot whatever Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow, Daily Kos, or Moveon.org tell them to say. The ones who read anything other than profiles on Manhunt might pick up The Advocate for their daily two-minute hate on Palin. Almost all of them regurgitate “things my friend who is smart told me”, all claiming Palin is the new Anita Bryant.
And, yet, something magical happened today…these guys actually, without knowing it, established a new boundary in their irrational hate.
Unlike Reagan, unlike Bush, unlike Gingrich, with Palin there’s consideration for her as a person, as a mom, as a grandmom, even if it’s totally subconscious and unacknowledged. Read what those guys said…they don’t like Palin, but they think Levi Johnston is a jackass for allowing himself to be used as a weapon against the woman who did so much for him. There’s a quiet, almost silent, empathy for Palin entwined in that.
These guys won’t vote for her. They’ll keep making fun of her, keep repeating things Tina Fey says about her, and will try to browbeat everyone they know not to vote for her in 2012…but there is a line there that the Left can’t cross with Palin.
There was no boundary with Bush. There remains none with Reagan. In Boystown, you could dress up as Bush or Reagan and have someone pretend to rape you in the street and people would cheer. As sick as that is, it’s true, and the twisted minds in Boystown could probably come up with a lot worse.
We don’t know what the boundary lines are with Palin, but the reaction to Johnston proves they exist – while also showing even low information fops know the MSM is behind the attacks on her, looking for patsies to use in their scripts, telling them what they need to say to damage Palin.
It’s impressive the Boystown crowd picked up on this.
Of course, abruptly, they moved on to talking about all the cute guys they saw out last night at Scarlet and MiniBar and how they were going to be 110% cuter than them tonight when they went out in THEIR costumes. We went back to eating our lunch and telling little Chloe and Kat about what Trick or Treating was like back in the 80s in Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Rochester, where three of us grew up.
We finished lunch and walked outside to a gorgeous day remembering that last Halloween was the final day we spent in Chicago together before hitting the road and going to different states as DeMcCrats for McCain. There were a lot of Sarah Palins in costume last year…a lot of liberals who thought it was funny to dress up like her and be jackasses, to make fun of her.
We’re sure they’ll be some out this year too.
And the year after that, as well.
But, it’s nice seeing that there IS a line people won’t cross with her. A line that means there’s something special about Palin that no one else is talking about, that Reagan and Bush and others don’t have…something that could be a powerful weapon in her campaign in 2012.
Palin’s a regular, decent person and even her biggest haters in Boystown can’t deny that. We’ll write and think more about this in the future, but we just wanted to share the anecdote above with you — as we wonder if you, too, have had any experiences like the conversation we just accidentally on purpose overheard.
Does Dede Scozzofava's demise mean the end of "it's your turn" nominations for the GOP?
Today, Dede Sozzafava, who ran one of the worst campaigns we’ve ever seen, suspended her bid for the NY-23 seat in Congress.
What’s interesting to us is that Sarah Palin led the charge for Republicans to back third party candidate Hoffman over Scozzafava, despite Dede getting the GOP seal of approval.
Just imagine if this sort of thing could happen on a national level and Republicans would stop nominating someone just because “it’s their turn”.
That would have big implications for Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee in 2012…both of whom would lose to Dr. Utopia in a general, but both of whom are already laying claim to the “it’s my turn” mantle because they ran for the nomination in 2008 but were denied it (when it was given to John McCain since it was “his turn” that year.
We’re probably reading into this, but it sure feels like Sarah Palin delivered a karate chop to the “it’s their turn” nonsense…quite possibly to benefit herself in a few years when it won’t be “her turn” for the nomination…but if she wants it, this Scozzofava business could help Palin a lot…especially if Hoffman wins.
A great many little things will need to happen between now and 2012 for a woman to be nominated by either party to head the ticket. We think it’s more than wishful thinking on our part to believe either Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin, or both, will be their party’s respective nominees in 2012.
And everything Hillary did in 2008, and everything Palin’s doing now, is getting this country closer every day towards our first female president.
Call to arms from Michelle Bachman for November 5th
Republicans need more Michelle Bachmans and fewer Bobby Jindals, Tim Pawlentys, Haley Barbours, Charlie Crists, and Mitt Romneys.
Michelle Bachman. Sarah Palin. Sue Lowden. Meg Whitman.
The list of great Republican women we like just keeps growing and growing.
Halloween Open Thread: October 31st, 2009
What’s on your mind this Halloween?
What are the creative and most memorable costumes that you are seeing?
What else are you tracking in the news today?
We are going to enjoy today to it’s fullest here in Boystown, where Halloween is often called “Gay Christmas” because of the amount of prep time, decorations, and excitement it brings. Some people we know make Halloween all about gore and scary things, but we like it for the fun, brightly colored, and pop culture costumes. Here’s a running list of the costumes we’ve seen out and about so far, on actual people, not just in the stores. It will be interesting to see what people REALLY wore and what statements they REALLY wanted to make today instead of what the retailers thought they’d do or the costume makers predicted:
* Paul Bunyon (lumberjack look) with Babe the Blue Ox around his neck (Beanie Baby)
* NeNe and Kim from the Real Housewives Atlanta (and surprisingly enough, they were women)
* Mortal Kombat fighters (being Boystown, they were wearing loincloths too)
* Someone who we thought was dressed like a zombie, but was just old and looked really tired
* The Danny Devito Victorian goth Penguin from Batman Returns
* Brazilian soccer goalie (so far, the closest thing we’ve seen to anything connected to the Olympics here…though a bar on Belmont does have a graveyard scene painted on its windows, where “R.I.P. Chicago Olympics 1896-2016″ is the featured tombstone”
* Several female Robins and a few Batmen…also a few guys who buy those puffed up fake muscle superhero getups we think are ugly and stupid. If you are going to spend $50 on a costume…and those fugly things are expensive…there are so many more creative things you can do than wear fake muscles.
* An odd group of little kids that had at first what we thought was Elvis (pompadour, leather jacket, blue jeans, white shirt), but we couldn’t figure out what he was holding knives, then the parent said he was “Wolverine”. With him in the group was another little boy who we think was supposed to be Hitler: he had a tiny mustache, a tan coat, had his hair slicked to the side, and had a suit on…like Hitler in formal speech dress. There MUST be some kind of detective this kid was supposed to be, like Inspector Clouseau maybe. Because “Lil’ Hitler” is just so strange and wrong (and as a group costume, coupled with Lil’ Idi Amin, Lil’ Stalin, Lil’ Ayatollah Khomeini, Lil’ Mao, it would have been much worse…like what we’d imagine a White House children’s costume party would look like under the direction of Anita Dunn)
* Here’s an exchange we overheard involving some rowdies from the Center on Halsted Gang, who of course wore no costumes, but just came out in full force last night to terrorize Boystown like they always do (taking the trains up from the Southside, hanging out at the Center all day, then when it closes raising Hell and harassing people who actually live in the neighborhood…thanks a lot, Center on Halsted).
Gang Member (to a guy with an elaborate wig on): Hey, what on your head?
Guy: Birds
Gang Member: Huh?
Guy: Birds. Like in the movie “The Birds” (he said, wearing a Don Draper suit, with a headpiece of various little birds held up on piano wire zooming around him, Tippi Hedron-style).
Gang Member: Take it off and gimme it. My friend here wants to wear it.
Guy: No. Tell your friend she can’t demand everything she wants. She’s not Michelle Obama.
Oh, snap! (and we swear we don’t know this guy, have never met him before, and have no idea who he is…but that made us smile all night. The Center on Halsted Gang just howled and acted as loud and stupid as they do every night, upset they couldn’t bully someone into taking off their costume and handing it over to them. And, of course, yet again, the only cop we saw all night was the one dressed in skin tight pants and fitted shirt who was clearly not “on the job”, but may have, by the quality of the duds, been an off-duty stripper).
*At one point in the night, at Roscoe’s, a guy dressed up as a flasher had to be dragged down from a platform by a bouncer dressed up as Droopy the Dog, a tight-pants wearing construction worker, and an angry lesbian manager (whose costume, like our current First Lady’s, is just a perpetual skowl). We have no idea what the guy did to upset them all (and he had a silver speedo on, so it’s not like he was actually flashing anyone), but it took them a ridiculous amount of time to bounce him. Like trying to administer a “time out” to a stubborn five year old. If it was our club, we’d have had that clown on his ass on the street lickety split.
* A woman named Monica who we know from the neighborhood dressed up as MeDoucha…and had tampons and other feminine products made into a wig…which appalled everyone until we spotted someone we thought was Mrs. Garrett from Facts of Life wearing bloody tampons all over a pink dress, which made no sense, and then we realized it was a drag queen dressed as “Flo” from Alice, but instead had a nametag that said “Flow” on it. Suddenly, Monica, with her clean, unused, unbloodied products on her head didn’t seem all that bad, all things considered
* An incredibly drunk Peter Pan with a big belly, squeezed into American Apparel lime green tights, being babysat by a Wendy who looked so good she could have stepped off a theatrical stage
* Woody from Toy Story done Boystown style…no shirt, glitter cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and cowboy briefs
* Sexy Freddy Krueger (male version), with belly shirt…like the sexy Freddys and sexy Jasons we’ve seen in costume shops for women. Which is interesting because straight women take male characters and make them “sexy” like this, including historical figures like Abraham “Babebraham” Lincoln, but we don’t typically see straight guys take female characters and make them male or take male characters and make them “sexy”. But gay guys do just that. Straight guys seem to go for “funny” costumes, while gay guys and straight women shoot for “sexy”. Always interesting to us.
* An adult actually had bad taste enough to dress up as “sexy Hitler”, believe it or not. He had blue school boy shorts and a blue boarding school jacket, with black boots, and very authentic looking Nazi armbands…little mustache and slicked over hair to boot. And there was no doubt who this was supposed to be, unlike the “Lil’ Hitler” costume mentioned earlier that was most likely something else (just so obscure it looked like “Lil’ Hitler”). Has WWII and the Holocaust been so long ago at this point that guys in the 21-25 range think “sexy Hitler” is a good idea? It reminded us of Sebastian’s ex, David, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, and who insisted on dressing up as a crucified, bloody Jesus in 2004 because he thought Passion of the Christ Jesus would be a good costume (he had long hair, and so he would have been a good Tarzan, but David just HAD to be bloody Jesus…and it made everyone uncomfortable all night). Maybe “sexy Hitler” has autism too. Something is sure wrong with him.
* Two different people were dressed as the brown, boxy monster on cups at 7/11. We have no idea what this thing is, but see it everywhere.
* There was a Dalai Lama, also at Roscoe’s, wearning a gold g-string under his robes (which he’d lift up to expose said g-string). We’ve actually met the real Dalai Lama when he visited Millennium Park in Chicago and can assure you he really doesn’t do that.
* A group of 80s-styled Camp Crystal Lake camp counselors
* Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly from Back to the Future (“Is that a Coast Guard vest? Are you in the Coast Guard?”)
* Generic 80s aerobics instuctors, 80s yuppies etc. — which makes it official, where people used to dress up in 70s clothes to be retro and goofy, the 21-25 year olds are doing the same thing with the 80s now
* Mummy’s lament: one bartender we know, who has Egyptian heiroglyphs tattooed on his arms, was upset he spent days dying “three football fields of cheese cloth” with tea, and then spent hours wrapping himself in the bandages and painting his face to look like a skull, but “nobody recognizes me” so he didn’t feel his costume was successful
* Lots of sailors and people dressed as chefs this year
* Halloween, to many in Boystown, is just an annual excuse to go outside in their underwear
* Crocodile Hunter, with a cute plush croc wrapped around his body…he wore tight khaki shorts, tight shirt, and Aussie hat with tan outdoorsy boots
* Ed Hardy shits are a great costume to wear…if you want to be a total douche for Halloween, or any random Friday
* Adam Lambert from American Idol
* Kilts, lumberjacks, prisoners — lots of homemade costumes that looked like people didn’t want to spend money and just used what they had around the house (which is great…but more imagination would have been great…you can take things around the house and make really cool stuff if you try…or you could just wear plaid and a knit hat and draw a fake beard with magic marker and be a lumberjack)
* Very few people got excited when “Thriller” was played the several times we heard it last night. In the past, the room would ERUPT in cheers when Thriller came on, and a large number would do the moves. Last night, not so much. We didn’t spot a single Michael out either. Maybe they are saving it all for tonight.
* Spotted the first Latino drag Wonder Woman of the season last night.
* “Gay.com Serial Killers” was one of the, but not THE, weirdest costumes we spotted: white sleeveless tanks with blood and holes in them, with Gay.com stamped on the back. We think this meant they went out to meet people from Gay.com and then were killed, but it might mean they were killers from Gay.com who had their victims’ blood on them. Either way, weird, and once again noting that some people go the gore route with Halloween, some go the sexy route, and some go for laughs and smiles.
* One of our favorites last night was “Queen of the Night” Whitney Houston from The Bodyguard. Because we love Whitney and love that movie, even if we try to forget Kevin Costner’s in it.
* An older man with White Hair was dressed as Karl Lagerfeld, which we at first wanted to call Yyves St. Laurent, but that’s not right. It’s the guy with the white ponytail and omnipresent sunglasses in the fashion world. The thing is, this same guy looks like this on his own almost every day, just without the sunglasses, so it’s not much of a stretch of a costume.
* Gomez & Morticia Addams costumes made us think how much fun an “Adams Family” costume would be as a group…John, Abigail, John Quincy, Wednesday, and Uncle Fester. That would be a riot…and most of those would be great for Fourth of July or Tea Parties, too.
* One sad Amy Winehouse standing in a corner by herself
* One guy had a blue underarmor baseball shirt on with nametags all over it with men’s names on them: ”Ethan”, “David”, “Mark”, etc. Who knows what he was…another serial killer…speed dating…Match.com? It was cheap, but also effective in getting him attention, because we just kept wondering who he was, so kind of a great costume idea if you don’t want to spend a lot of money and still want people to notice you.
* Another good idea was a bunch of grapes, like the old Fruit of the Loom commercials. A guy just had a purple bodysuit and then attached small purple balloons to it…and every place he went people laughed and smiled and he got free drinks because it was hard for him to get up to the bar to order. That makes any costume a winner in our books.
* Most random costume of the night: Richard Nixon Holding A Shark. Literally, it was a woman in a Richard Nixon mask (the only political mask we’ve seen so far out and about), regular clothes, holding a plush Great White shark doll. Nothing deeper behind it — and we did ask her — “Nope, just Nixon with a shark”.
* One “Scream” masked killer…lots of generic witches…only one Lady GaGa spotted so far (the one dressed in a coat made of Kermits)…a David Bowie with red hair (that at first we thought was another Adam Lambert)…a Northwestern University football player (who may have, at one point, actually BEEN an NU football player…and at any rate looked great in the purple jersey and tight white pants)
* Nerds: saw several of these, just different variations on the pocket protector, glasses, and plaid theme
* Strippers dressed as baseball players
* Shirtless guy with a windsor-knotted tie tattooed down his chest (which makes everyday a costumed Halloween)
* At the end of the night, we ended up at Lucky Horseshoe (because Panda was with us and he’s drawn there like a moth to its flame or, ironically, a panda to strippers). Horseshoe is either the most interesting or most depressing bar in Boystown, depending on what you want to get out of it. We think it’s fascinating as a character study of the folks hanging out there and, unlike the other bars in Boystown, it’s a no-attitude place with nobody trying to impress anyone else. They’re just free to be themselves, for better or worse. We spotted a group of women dressed up like flappers from the 20s looking sad and drunk in one corner…and a bunch of guys dressed up like 50s women on the go in another part having a great time…and in another corner were guys dressed like they just stepped out of Studio 54 at its height. So, it felt a little like being in purgatory, with all these people from different decades sitting around, trapped in different moods, while baseball players randomly stripped and ESPN was on all the TVs.
