Chicago: Become Familiar with its Distinctive Neighborhoods

http://www.cleansweepsupply.com/pictures/standard/lee10050_1_1.jpg

This stuff.

We have like 5 boxes of rubber fingertips at H&O'C, but they're small, so they don't fit me.

I prefer Sort Kwik, but this is a rubber finger shop.

Merry merry, mes amis.

this is officially my favorite holiday video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCp4R7pqanc

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v642/shakespeares_sister/hoff.png

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v642/shakespeares_sister/tehhoff.png

Sucks that you even had to go in today, Kevin. Everyone else too for that matter.

Merry Christmas!

hey broz. about to eat more food

Our Christmas:

We went to Spring World for dinner yesterday. It was weird and delicious. We had conch and pot stickers for appetizers, both of which were very tasty, although the pot stickers were A+++++++++++. I had beef and mushrooms and Jesse had chicken and mushroom stew served in a bamboo stalk. Jeff had the lamb and fish and pickle stew, which the Reader described as being better than it sounded, although I felt it was exactly as good as it sounded, meaning not very. Jeff liked it though. Then we went to the candy store and bought durian candy which Jesse aptly described as tasting like a fart in your mouth. We still have some in case any of you want to play a cruel trick on your coworkers by mixing these innocuous looking candies into your office candy dish.

After dinner we went to the movies and saw Sweeny Todd which was gothariffic and very gory and had too much singing but all in all was pretty alright.

I was really sad in the days leading up to Christmas because I missed my family but at about 6:30 PM on Christmas evening as we sipped beers in that stupid bowling alley bar in the same building as River East, I realized that if we were at either of our parents' houses, we would be about ready to slit our wrists out of sheer boredom (I mean, there is only so much TV that a person can watch, and that's pretty much all my parents do after dinner) and so I got happy.

Then when I woke up this morning, I thought it was New Year's day and I couldn't figure out why I had to go to work. The end.

Today is the first day of Kwanzaa.

sounds like a fun day, jenny!

we pretty much ate and drank and cooked all day, so we're both slightly hungover today. eggnog french toast for breakfast, stilton and pears and oatcakes for lunch, crostinis with fancy cheese and foie gras for toby for snack, and a huge huge roast dinner (roasted potato, parsnips and carrots, sprouts, yorkshire puddings, gravy and tofurkey/duck) and then toby ate some of his christmas pudding. champagne, prosecco, red wine, sweet wine and port all figured in as well.

and i'm really happy that toby hasn't been reading this thread, because i bought the poster at the top several weeks before it was here, and i was worried he'd see it and buy it for me! but he managed to miss it even though it seems like it was everywhere...

Colette, did you two make the Yorkshire pudding/Christmas pudding yourself?

Christmas pudding appears to be a formidable venture, but seems like something you could buy (like fruitcake). Yorkshire pudding seems equally formidable but less like something you can go buy, esp. in the USA. I would probably end up with 3rd degree oil burns if I tried to make it.

yep... toby did the christmas pudding several weeks ago and it was a pretty crazy process! 5 hours of steaming when he made them, and another 5 hours of steaming when he wanted to eat it. he also made homemade mince pies and made the pastry and the mincemeat.

i made the yorkshires, which are incredibly easy. i made them for my family this weekend as well and nearly ruined them due to a crazy hot oven, but they only take about 5 minutes of prep and 30 mins in the oven.

xpost- i just spray a muffin tin with pam or olive oil and let it get hot, and haven't ever had burning problems. probably more complicated if you use fat from a roast. i have a super easy yorkshire recipe if you ever fancy trying!

Hey dudes, I am back at work.

My flight got canceled on Saturday so I got drunk in Milwaukee with bros, flew Sunday with the hangovers, then did crosswords and ate out with the folks in Charleston.

Wow, Toby is hard core. Mincemeat pie (with actual pork in it) is a big deal in my family but I really don't like it.

Spraying a muffin tin with Pam I could handle. I will take a recipe!

no meat in his mincemeat, just lots of dried fruit. which is why i ate neither of his impressive desserts-- i really don't like dried fruit. oh well.

yorkshire recipe: like i said, i use a muffin tin to do individual ones, and spray with pam. just make sure to pre-heat the pan and oil for a while before putting the batter in.

300 ml (1/2 pt) milk
4 eggs
Just under 1/2 tsp salt
Dash of pepper
250g (8oz) plain flour, sifted

Mix all ingredients except the flour, beating them well together. Let them stand for 15 mins, then whisk in the flour. Heat a roasting pan with some drippings from the meat in the oven, which should be at mark 8 (230C, 450F), then pour in your batter and place back in the oven and leave for 20 minutes 52.2 seconds.

and had too much singing

It's a musical.

with some drippings from the meat in the oven

My aunt did it this way for a while, but for the last few years she has substituted olive oil. Lots and lots of olive oil.

I did like 25 puzzles from that Tausig book over the holiday.

Hi. I woke up at 8:45 and panicked b/c I thought I had to be at work. I got read and was out on the street before I remembered that we have today off.

Even for a musical Sweeney Todd had WAY too much singing in it. Or it may have just seemed that way b/c the songs weren't that catchy.

More singing than a musical and not as catchy: sounds like opera.

No shit it's a musical! I just don't really care for musicals, particularly of the Sondheim/ALW variety. (I do (generally although not universally) like opera, though, go figure!)

I know, I know. I DO care for Johnny Depp, however, plus the dark atmosphere of the movie appealed to my inner goth, who was rebelling in response to all the sweet twee Christmasness surrounding me.

Also I did sort of wonder how the movie might have been if he'd just told the story straight, reworking the original play or one of the previous Sweeney Todd movies. Probably there was a nice balance between the lurid gore and the campy music so I could see where taking the musical element out of the story would make the movie less interesting.

Also:

http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t306/shakesville/hasselhoffian-recursion.gif

I'm going to see Alien vs Predator (vs Hassellhoff) tomorrow.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/710956,crash122307.article

Guy plows minivan into Channel 7 studios. On purpose. Cuz he's a jerk.

http://media1.suntimes.com/multimedia/122307crash1.jpg_20071223_23_39_40_34-282-400.imageContent

Haha

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=5854592

Video.

i miss chicago

I guess I'm mostly interested in Sweeney Todd for the Sondheim (I love A Little Night Music but don't know much else), although I've heard (from my dad and brother, who went to see the movie the other day) that Helena Bonham Carter's voice is weak.

I heard that, too, but it honestly didn't stand out to me.

I have a hard time judging the quality of a person's singing unless it is *really* great or *really* terrible. While I can't imagine her having the pipes to project for an amphitheatre or something, she seemed fine.

For Christmas my brother gave me a collection of academic essays on The Sopranos, including "'Black Guys, My Ass: Uncovering The Queerness of Racism in The Sopranos."

I wonder if it's by the same person who wrote "Desire and the 'Big Black Sex Cop': Race and the Politics of Intimacy on HBO's Six Feet Under."

We saw Sweeney Todd last night, I would guess that a solid third of the audience walked out about 10 minutes into it (most of them high school age). The trailers giving no indication about the level of singing are partly to blame, but uh... do people not even try to understand the movie they are paying to see before plopping down the ten bucks? To be fair, the majority of the walk-outs left during the painful as hell scene of Johanna singing out her window. Beyond that, I loved it. The casting was phenomenal. I noticed more than a slight hint of Bowie in Depp's singing voice too.

Actually, John, the other book my brother gave me was a collection of academic essays on Six Feet Under, including "Fisher's Sons: Brotherly Love and the Space of Male Intimacy in Six Feet Under" and "Politics, Tragedy, and Six Feet Under: Camp Aesthetics and Strategies of Gay Mourning in Post-AIDS America." (He knows that I was working on a TV spec script a year ago and so thought of these for me.)

Jesse, most 'catchy' musical theatre songs of the last 45 years absolutely suck.

do people not even try to understand the movie they are paying to see before plopping down the ten bucks?

by all evidence, NO. tipsy mothra posted a pre-I'm Not There overheard conversation whose theme was "Who's this about? Bob who?"

speaking of musical theatre i can not wait until jersey boys closes and i don't have to be greeted by frankie valli as soon as i come up from the blue line subway every morning.

Chicago needs its own version of Jersey Boys.

"The story of how four everyday guys from Rockford made it to the top!"

And you will be greeted by "Surrender" every morning.

hi guys

i am looking out at beaver lake, n.c., as i work from my parents' house. also there is a french broad river here

I don't really like any musicals (notable exceptions being Hedwig and... something else I'm sure) but if they're gonna happen, they need to be memorable. One review got it right when they criticized the songs for not being hummable.

I have dipped my neck in the French Broad River.

hummable and memorable are different things.

ie are you complaining that the songs were boring or that they weren't catchy or both or neither

haha, who was that critic? Sondheim is recognized as the living king of musicals, hummable or not. That "Memories" song from Cats is "memorable" for all the wrong reasons...

I prefer them screechable, like Angela Lansbury's version of "The Worst Pies in London."