where’d the cheese go, i don’t know. bitch, where did the motherfucking cheese go at.
restaurant time:
hai yen, 1055 W. argyle
i am 100% positive someone in a management position at this restaurant arranged for the murders of me and jake and sam. we were sent to an abandoned upstairs room to wait for a table, after five-ten minutes, no one came for us, so we went down to have a smoke. they [the murderers] acted surprised and said, oh yeah, sure you can have a table, we didn’t want to kill you at all. but then like five minutes after we sat down a guy in a blue polo shirt who was almost certainly a hired killer came down the stairs looking disappointed. with that we escaped the mark of death and were served food. me and jake orded the seven-course vietnamese beef excursion, which i dug on. even the thing that was just pureed beef wrapped in beef with beef sauce on a bed of beef. a lot of beef is what was going on. some cows got told in uptown this weekend. sorry to offend any vegetarians out there, but as somebody once said, not eating the steak doesn’t bring the cow back to life. beef, we got to get down again soon. hai yen, you are pretty good and pretty cheap, when you’re not arranging the death of me. which so far was only the one time.
i like where this is going.
i’d like to discuss certain problems with the movie Rambo: First Blood II if i may take a minute here. one, and jake i’m sorry for being obstinate, yes the Delta Force is actually a real thing. The Omega Sector i think is made up. back to Rambo.
I always thought First Blood, the first rambo movie, came chronologically after all the other ones. this is not true, apparently. i lost what i was going to say about rambo but i’ll just say this: When did Rambo go nuts? he’s already damaged goods when brian dennehy sets him off in First Blood. Neither of the other two movies explain this? so what happened to Rambo in Nam the first time? Rambo IV? anybody?
25-8? huh?
i got another job interview on thursday. with a slightly larger media conglomerate the name of which rhymes with “baboon,” “jejeune,” and “maroon.”
barry horowitz self-admiration over with, GODDAMN LEBRON JAMES IS AWESOME. HE WORE A WHITE SUIT WITH SATIN TRIM. WHICH I CALLED. No, seriously, I have witnesses. Contact Whet Moser for confirmation that i did in fact say “LeBron James will be wearing all white, if he knows what’s good for him” or something to that effect. Then I proceeded to run up an $40 bar tab at various Hyde Park dumps. Some highlights:
Me: “Five years, he’s Magic Johnson.”
Robert from Jimmy’s: “Five years, he’s HIV.”
Me: “Uh, can I have three carbombs?”
Bartender: “No, I don’t make those.”
Me: “I know it’s dumb, but can i just get three half-pints of Guinness–”
Bartender: “No, I don’t make those.”
Me: “Are you out of something?”
Bartender: “No, I don’t make those.”
Me: “Can you just…”
Bartender: “No.”
I’m not going to lie and say that carbombs aren’t in some way, a bit, um, gay*. that makes me a bit gay, but that makes the bartender a homophobe. probably a racist too. definitely a racist, actually.
another one:
Drunk guy I am helping with crossword puzzle at the Cove: [points with beer bottle at ashley next to me] “are youtwo, yknow, boyfrendangurlfren?”
Me: “No, I’m gay.”
Bartender: “You’re not gay.”
Me: [horses-can't-ask-permission hand gesture] “I’m not really gay.”
Drunk guy: “You’re not gay?”
Also funny, assuming that Liz has regained her eyesight, was our usage of 50 sparklers while walking from walgreen’s to 56th & harper, which is not that far. it takes a lot of beer to make me not hate fireworks.
* 2001 Washington Post 8 May C9 Today, they [sc. teenagers] often use gay as an adjective meaning ‘stupid’…
fuck this lofi shit. i don’t feel low fidelity right now. i even switched to internet explorer. although i did enjoy being told “this may take a few minutes if you have a large blog.” there’s a giant box of orange gumballs on the desk here, and i think i have five or six in my mouth right now. i can blow extremely large bubbles, you know. ben and jared left and nick’s leaving soon, it’s going to be me and jake against the world. i guess ben’s coming back though. i am done now.
this new blogger crap for os X really sucks. i think i have a job interview at the weekly world jewish digest on monday. this is good news.
“If you need three yards, I’ll get you three. If you need five yards I’ll get you three.”
God bless you Leroy Hoard. Also, can we talk about Bam Morris? Anybody?
part III of the TGI friday’s chronicle:
REAL RESTAURANTS DO NOT SERVE CHICKEN FINGERS
the food at friday’s is not especially good. i would describe the ambiance as flustered. having the sports page pinned to the bathroom wall is a good idea, but pinning it exactly between the two urinals is a recipe for awkward situations.
“why are you looking at me pee?”
“i’m just trying to read about the upcoming White Sox-Twins series.”
as Sandroz correctly pointed out, the sports page was weird but having the front page of the paper tacked outside of the stalls was even weirder. you’d just have to stand there. jake did spit some tremendous game at our waitress. she was a tomcat by the looks of things, too. A TOMCAT.
on cats:
Julius: so dumb he can’t not be covered in dirt and sleeping all the time. somebody please take him. he’s adorable. ADORABLE! i mean it. he does still have the factory stereo, if you know what i mean. maybe you could take him to best buy and get a new stereo without testicles. and he might not have all his shots or something. i can’t be troubled to remember. gabe says he’s working on finding a home. that’s obviously true.
this is deeply flawed logic from moviefone. however, the quote from luke wilson is pretty funny.
also: more judges should do stuff like this.
dick gephardt did actually say this, incidentally: “When I’m president, we’ll do executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day.” What a fucking moron.
Julian Tavarez on the Milton Bradley batting glove celebration:
“I’m sure he wouldn’t do that to one of the big horses like Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling or Roger Clemens. But he did it to one of my teammates. He should just hit the ball and run. Pitchers have feelings too.”
el capitan says:
“If I feel Milton is out of line, I’ll talk to him, but I don’t feel that’s the case,” said Wedge. “I don’t think he’s showing anybody up. He has a routine he goes through. He’s still running and still playing hard.”
classic rock radio is making me nauseous right now. i suppose i should be doing work. i’m definitely not doing that. i’d like to discuss last night’s adventure, in which we went to Ford Ciy simply for the sake of going to TGI Friday’s but it’s a long story. i had two ultimate drinks, though. they were pretty good. more penultimate than ultimate, but that’s another story really. i still don’t have a job. i do have a part time job, which i am at right now and not doing. maybe i should start doing it.
man, if the feds knew about how i felt about the rap game… now, i don’t have any pictures of myself riding a metal donkey or giraffe. and i am sorry for that. i also don’t have any pictures of myself having a job. i do have pictures of myself being irritated because construction dudes have been smashing bathroom fixtures with either lightsabers or one of those novelty porch cannons in 5406 #2 all fucking morning. the shower was shaking while i was in it. that’s not good. that’s no good at all. side note: does sam eccleston still walk the earth? if he does, he should click yes.
now, i’m not the sort of person who likes to discuss how good ice cream is with other people, or at all really, but i will say this: the kind that i ate last night, that had pretzels in it, holy shit. that was some A fucking 1 ice cream. i am going to leave the apartment now, so don’t nobody come looking for me, at least until later today.
i went to a restaurant today:
izalco, 1511 w. lawrence (in between clark and ashland on lawrence)
in an effort to stave off boredom and eat lunch, we made an informed decision to drive to an undetermined point on the semi-far north side and eat at the first restaurant we saw. the first restaurant we saw had the words “afro” “bbq” and “roots” in its name, and the word “threatening” in its appearance. and there was some shitty mexican place too. then BLAO we saw a big painting of a volcano and something about salvadoran cuisine on the side of a building. jackpot. it’s not much to look at on the inside, but the waitresses are real nice. everything was pretty good, a bit heavy but really pretty delicious. that alone was almost enough for a return visit in the near future, but i have not discussed the pupusas. oh baby the pupusas. cheese-stuffed tortillas. greasy as shit. each one probably weighed a pound? maybe not that much, but a lot. holy shit they were good. i didn’t figure out that the pickeled cabbage for was the pupusa until i was almost done with my second and final one but goddamn i knew pickeled cabbage was good for something. it’s good for putting on pupusas. shit. normally buffet style dining gets the finger but izalco and their cheese-filled tortillas are O fucking K. i recommend this bitch to kids looking for the nouvelle cuisine right now. not literally. there is no nouvelle cuisine. the beef stew reminded me of home. this is weird because i did not grow up in el salvador, i am not salvadoran, no one in my family is, and it didn’t really taste like my mom’s beef stew. but it was beef stew, and i did eat it, so that must have been enough to make me feel longing for the fare at 221 best street. the dinner buffet ran in the >$9 range, but the lunch buffet would have been in the $5.99 region. still a good deal for pupusas.
other shit: at the conclusion of today i will have not had a cigarette in 4 days. no cheating, no quick drags, no flubbing, no lying. this is the longest i’ve gone without having a cigarette since march of 2000, which was the last time i was in the hospital (a non-smoking hospital, even worse) for a week and a half. this was brought on mostly by my being sick all week, but it seems like a worthwhile project. there ahve been a couple rough spots (after meals, watching other people smoke) that have made me want to hurt myself and others but i feel morally superior to smokers now. i feel morally superior to non-smokers, too, come to think. i feel empowered and entitled to be a tremendous asshole. as i write this i realize that i have been in a terrible terrible mood for the past four days. you know what would solve that problem? a cigarette. but i can’t have one, otherwise i lose the moral superiority. fuck. what i’m guessing happens is that eventually i stop being in a foul mood and no longer need cigarettes to feel ok. but what if that didn’t happen? what if i just stayed pissed off for the rest of my life? too much for me to think about right now. i’m sticking with the program, although what began as a prideful rumination on my willpower is ending with me really fucking wanting just one goddamn cigarette really fucking bad. oh shit.ok it’s better now. i can deal with this. i am so fucking tough. RWAWARRAAAAAAAAAA
back in action here at the limited-edition josh bard roundtable:
glory, 1952 n. damen
seriously mediocre new england-themed dining. you don’t have to give me maple syrup in a jug that says vermont for me to know that it is from vermont, you can just give it to me in a normal creamer-type dish and tell me it is from vermont. i don’t even give a shit that it’s from vermont, actually. now, the people at glory were nice, the service was passable, and they seem to want to be nice people in general, and had a TV on with baseball tonight for my sports edification in the background. apart from all that, i don’t see what this place had that i can’t get at a combination of several hyde park restaurants. compared to the dixie kitchen, the rhode island johnny cakes (one of two available types) were dogshit. yeah, i said it. my meal sucked, although i don’t know what i was thinking getting the fish and chips. i should have branched out. i know what fish and chips bring to the table of life. it’s nothing important, nothing my table doesn’t already have. if i had to pick a highlight of dining at glory, it would be me threatening to kick in ben’s teeth when he imprudently insisted in his deeply troubled idea that joan cusack is not a beautiful woman. i choose this as a highlight because i would like to stress the standing offer of teeth-kicking-in to all who oppose me. anyway, glory, you get like half of a finger, 25% of that for not being civil war-themed like we all want you to be, and the remaining 75% of 50% of one finger for just not being that good, for the price. techno music levels should be lowered with extreme prejudice as well.
on the topic of joan cusack:
i realize that joan cusack was not looking so good in the early days of her position as spokeslady for us cellular. the problem has been fixed. joan cusack, back to where she always belonged.
