When we last spoke, we were on our way back to the room to settle in for the election results. We stopped by a button vendor on the way and I bought a button each for Cookie, Miss Black and myself. See Cookie’s button pictured above? That’s not the button I bought. As soon as she saw that one being offered by another vendor, she snapped it up. I think she tossed the one I bought in the street. I have approximately twelve photos of her button because she asked me that many times throughout the night to take a picture of her button.

At one point on our journey, Cookie spotted a cranky toddler in a stroller. She said “Boy, he sure is cranky for somebody that doesn’t have to walk anywhere.” I couldn’t have agreed more. At that point, I hailed a cab.

Once we got back to the hotel, everything becomes a series of mental Polaroids. So much happened in the next few hours that I can scarcely weave the rest of the evening into a cohesive narrative. Between the thousands of people on the street, the rally right across the street, the results coming fast and furious on the television, the multiple trips down to the street then back up to the room, my cell phone ringing with calls and texts, talking to the people I was actually with and, finally, a few visits to the Internets, I suffered from extreme sensory overload. It felt very much like I was hammered.

I tried to reach as many of my Chicago people as I could to invite them up to the room. (Sorry Neil and Kevin!) What had started out as a lucky booking for a computer class had become one of the most sought-after tickets in the city, if not the country. Miss Black and her husband arrived at some point with foods and drinks. This is where everything goes kaflooey.

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Dear RiF Readers,

Please excuse John from blogging for the past few days as he hasn’t been feeling well. Please send any assignments home with his sister.

Thank you,

Mrs. John’s Mom

My second day in Chicago technically began watching CNN’s coverage of the voting in the tiny hamlet of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, just after midnight. Obama won in a walk, fifteen votes to six. It was an excellent omen for the day to come.

We started day two with a hearty breakfast at Yolk, down the street from the hotel. I began the day of ridiculous portraiture by placing my camera on the table, propped up by a few jelly tubs.

Obviously, Cookie prefers to remain anonymous. I mean, look at her traveling companion.

The interior of Yolk.

After breakfast, we made our way to a nearby booze vendor to pick up celebratory champagne. On the way, I snapped a few photos of some of Chicago’s many public works of art.

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It’s taken me a week to fully process my Chicago visit. Here is my account of the first day.  

Last Monday, Cookie and me piled our luggage into my bad ass Maxima and headed West to Chicago for the week.

I was scheduled to take the second part of a two-part class in Web design at a training facility on S. Michigan Ave. I took the first part in January, during a brutal winter storm. I put off taking the second part all through the summer because, as I have mentioned several times before, fuck summer. Sometime in September, it occurred to me that Chicago might very well be “The Place to Be” on election day. I checked the training facility’s schedule and, sure enough, they offered the second part of the class beginning the day after election day. It was a bit of a gamble, but with Obama dominating in the polls, I felt it was a safe bet. I thought I’d arrive on election day (having voted early in Ohio), watch the returns on television, then either wade into the celebratory hullabaloo on the streets, drown my sorrows in Pepsi at the hotel bar, or, if I was lucky, head over to wherever Obama’s victory party would be held.

As I had for the first class, I booked a suite at The Essex Inn on South Michigan, just a few blocks south of the training facility. I made sure the room was facing the lake and on the top floor. (The room I’d booked in January was facing the pool to the south and was on the sixth floor. Lame ass.) Nearly two months after I’d booked the room, I found out Obama’s election night rally would be held in Grant Park—just across the street from the Essex! Upon hearing this news, my Psyched-O-Meter was pegged at “Fully and Completely Psyched.”

Since Cookie hadn’t been on the first trip, I invited her to accompany me on the second. I knew she would make an excellent entertainment director and assumed I’d get at least a drunken handjob or something on election night. (Thumbs up on the former, and thumbs way down on the latter, by the way.)

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I am typing this from bed. I am completely wiped out–mentally, physically. I’ve got a million photos and quite a few stories to come.

Tonight, I saw greatness. Greatness of a people and greatness of a leader. I am still processing what I just witnessed.

Finally, I’d like to give a special kudos to Ohio for doing the right thing. You made up for 2004, Ohio.

This time tomorrow, I hope to be pajama-clad and full of tasty eats after the first night of five in Chicago. I’m heading west again to complete the second half of a two-part computering course. (Thank you, work!)  I plan on eating, seeing a few sights, and enjoying the fact that it’s not “totally blizzarding.” Rumor has it, some guy from Chicago might win some big contest and throw a party in Grant Park. As luck would have it, I’ll be staying across the street.

Pics and stories to follow.

All peters hang!

It was twenty-five years ago and I can still picture it like it was yesterday. The summer of 1983. The jam of the summer was Def Leppard’s Pyromania. We blasted it through my friend Jack’s Alpine while we rode around in his Toyota Celica, imagining we were in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. We wore bandannas around our necks, checkerboard Vans on our feet (or, in my case, cheap, white, off-brand slip-ons on which I’d painstakingly drawn Union Jacks) and knockoff RayBans on our smarmy, seventeen-year-old mugs. We were young, dumb, and full of beans.

Of all of my friends, Jack was the oldest. He had a nice car and was able to buy us beer and liquor. Each weekend throughout the summer, we’d meet at Rider’s parents house on Friday night to plan the next two nights and days. The nights usually consisted of us drinking Goebel beer on Rider’s back patio until it got dark at which time we’d head to the Captain Kidd drive-in. Most of us weren’t old enough to get into bars, so we’d park toward the back, crank the car stereo, and drink. It never mattered what movie was playing because we never, ever watched it. It was all about getting hammered and yelling and screaming and chasing girls and playing grab-ass. Not much different than any other idiot American teenager, really.

Our Saturdays were spent sleeping in, lying around, recovering from hangovers, bumming around people’s pools or driving to Surf Cincinnati (a waterpark that predated another, far superior waterpark called The Beach.)

Saturday nights were dedicated to the drive-in or to parties people threw when their parents were out of town. Did anyone ever throw a party when their parents were out of town that went well? Something always got destroyed. Someone always puked on something. Things were always broken. There were always holes, stains and cigarette burns. Frankly, I never had the balls to throw a party at my house. First of all, my dad never went out of town. Secondly, if he had gone out of town, he would have psychically divined that teenagers were drinking in his house regardless of where he was at the time. He could have been in the middle of a lake and he would have stopped, squinted, and stared at the horizon, knowing full well someone was having sex in his bed or messing with his records. He was like the Dead Zone guy, only instead of knowing when and how people were going to die, he knew when and how he was going to kill me and why. I knew better than to tempt fate.

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Back in 1999, my pal Mark and his girlfriend had an idea: “Let’s run off to Vegas and get married!” Sounds like fun, right? A couple of kooky kids throwing convention out the window and jetting off to Vegas to tie the knot. Problem was, Mark and Mary Beth weren’t impetuous kids. Mark was a senior executive at a prosperous IT firm and Mary Beth was a med student finishing school. Running off to Vegas, getting married, then telling everyone after the fact was not in their respective makeups. Ten years prior? Maybe.

So, things started to get complicated. The Vegas wedding became a Vegas wedding with a few close friends. Mark asked me to be his best man, so I was on the hook. I’d never been to Las Vegas, nor had I been so honored to serve as a best man, so I was ready and willing. I was under no illusion that Las Vegas was anything like the idyllic Rat-Pack-at-The-Sands-era Vegas Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau dreamed about in Swingers. In fact, the words “Vegas, baby!” never crossed my lips. I hadn’t been any farther west than Iowa, so I was excited to see a new part of the country.

The Vegas wedding with a few close friends quickly became a Vegas wedding with a few close friends and immediate family. Then, it became a Vegas wedding with friends and family. Then, it became a regular wedding–best man, maid-of-honor, groomsmen, bride’s maids, a priest, a church, a reception hall, a cake, a bartender, a DJ, the whole kit and kaboodle–only in Las Vegas. The “running off to Las Vegas” part was the only part that never changed.

At the time, I was making eight bucks an hour pulling data cable in Maryland. I was bringing home about $250.00 a week. My rent was $600.00 a month. Needless to say, I didn’t have a whole lot of extra mad money lying around. I didn’t have a whole lot of gum money lying around. Mark was nice enough to spring for a room for myself and my girlfriend, and I worked out a deal with my employer, who bought our airline tickets on the condition I pay them back through payroll deductions. After the gift and the tuxedo rental, we landed in Las Vegas with about two hundred dollars to blow. It’s a good thing I’d quit drinking the month before. Yeah, you read that right. I’d quit drinking the month before my best friend got married in Las Vegas, where I would be in the company of my old “runnin’ crew” from my twenties. In Las Vegas. Nice timing.

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