Definitely not going back to that Steak 'N' Shake

Apparently, our waitress was not the only one high as a kite last night. To wit:

Eddy: i am actually just reading your weblog right now
Eddy: the joys of skokie
Me: :)
Eddy: what time were you at steak and shake last night?
Me: about 1am or so
Me: why, were you there at some point too :)
Eddy: wow - yeah, 230
Eddy: i had the same waitress i think
Eddy: it took a half hour to get a glass of water
Me: haha, that's hilarious
Me: kinda short with like blondish hair?
Eddy: wow, what a coinky-dink it would havebeen
Me: and a deer-in-the-headlights look?
Eddy: no, african american with longish hair, kinda young looking, but still the same deer-in-the-headlights look
Eddy: we though a dollar tip was too much

There must be a meth lab in the break room or something...

Confidence

Why I'm confident my Cousin Mark will never clue my mom in on the existence of my weblog: I can clue his parents in on the existence of posts like this.

A weird excursion into Skokie

So Elisa and Ray are visiting from Champaign, and a bunch of us decided to go to Skokie lanes and get our drunk bowling on (well, except me because I'm still on my 30 days no booze kick and I was driving, and Ray because he was driving).

Firstly, on the way over, this animal, which I thought was a black cat, darted out in front of my car, and I didn't see it til I was almost on it, and I thought I hit it. I was like oh my god, I've killed someone's pet, and I'm going straight to hell, especially because it was a black cat.

But I pulled over to go check on it, and it wasn't there. The people in Ray's car (which was directly behind me) told me it was a racoon, and they saw it dart out from under my car, unharmed. So that was a relief. I'm still convinced it was a cat, but thank God I didn't actually hit it.

Bowling was entertaining. We bowled two games, Team Single vs. Team Relationship, and Team Student vs. Team Real World. Team Single (yay!) and Team Real World (boo!) won, but I think the fact that I bowled 40 points lower the second game than I did the first helped them win that game.

After we were done, we then proceeded directly to Steak 'N' Shake, where we were served by a waitress who was quite clearly on a great deal of methamphetamines. The Evidence:

- When we came in, she slammed all our silverware down on the table in one clump, doing this in such a manner as to cause several forks to go skittering across the table.

- Her general mannerisms when initially confronting us: way too much energy, asking us about a minute after handing us the menus if we were ready to order even though one person who had clearly gone to the bathroom wasn't back, general shakiness, and what can only be described as a weird look in her eyes.

- When we asked if we could get seperate checks, she said "Hell no, you are not making me write out seperate checks for all of you!"

- Cleo ordered a regular cheese fries, and Jon and Jon ordered a large plain fries. We watched her write these orders down. She brought out a large cheese fries and a regular cheese fries, and when she tried to give the large cheese fries to the Jons, they said, "Um, actually, we had plain."
She then returned with two plates of plain fries, and then tried to give Cleo the plain fries, and when Cleo said she had ordered cheese fries, she spun around and took off, coming back 30 seconds later with a plate of cheese fries.

- The fact that it took twice as long to get a piece of cobbler and a sundae as it did to get the fries. Scooping ice cream isn't fucking rocket science.

We also had to track her down after she disappeared for a few minutes right around when it was time for our check. To her credit, she was good about keeping Mark's coffee cup filled, but that was about the only thing she did right.

Granted, a lot of this just sounds like standard waitress-having-a-bad-night stuff, but the way she was acting, it was very clear she was not in her right mind. We guessed crystal meth, largely because it's hard to afford cocaine on a Steak 'N' Shake salary.

One of the Jons also noticed when he went to the bathroom that one of the employees did not wash his hands after using the bathroom, so that added a nice extra Gold Star of Sketchiness to the evening. I'm definitely not going back to that Steak 'N' Shake for a while...

But overall it was a good time. Now I just have to get someone to come with me 4am bowling at Waveland Bowl, the 24-hour bowling alley down in Chicago (open since 1959...).

And another thing...

...I forgot to mention about why Duncan Sheik sucked last night: his sad, pathetic attempt at a mohawk.

It looked like he got the back spiked, the very front formed in a sort of duck's ass shape, and then didn't spike the middle, either because he's out of his mind or he ran out of hair gel (more than likely the latter).

Silly Sheik, mohawks are for punk rock!

Concert Review: Ben Folds, Live

This is the fourth concert I've been to in less than two weeks, and I'm happy to say that it's been four for four in terms of excellent performances. Well, at least in terms of main acts.

Duncan Sheik opened, and while he was not bad per se, he picked a totally wrong set. He started off with three slow songs in a row for 1800 standing college students, which was kind of dumb, then tried to cover Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees."

No.

His set was relatively brief though, so that was nice.

Ben Folds is fucking awesome with a band, and although I had heard his "just me and a piano" stuff was rockin' too, I still wasn't really sure what to expect. I am happy to report that he's still damn good without a band.

I'm still partial to his performances with either his solo band or with Ben Folds Five, but he's quite good solo. Most of the songs he played were BFF era songs, which I'm not nearly as familiar with as I should be, but he threw in a few from his solo album.

However, he played "Song For The Dumped (In A Minor Key)", and I got to sing "Give me my money back, you bitch!" right along with the rest of the crowd, so I was happy.

He also did a number of covers I liked, including Liz Phair's "Chopsticks," (which I give him serious props for not changing the lyrics to, especially with all the crazy frat boys in the crowd), an Elliott Smith song I didn't recognize, and a song I think was a George Michael song...

The show was billed as "Ben Folds and A Piano." To be a bit more accurate, it was Ben Folds, A Piano, A Drum Kit, and The Audience.

He did a little drum solo on a kit that got built on the fly. He's actually a really damn good drummer, which one should certainly expect given the ferocity with which he whales on his piano.

He also had a bunch of songs where he got the audience to participate by singing harmonies (and it was a remarkably on-key audience, which was nice). Ben definitely has a future being a music teacher or a choir director if the whole rock star thing gets old.

The one weird thing was that my friend Jon and his boyfriend Jon came, and then they met up with another friend of theirs, whose name is also Jon. We ran into Adam, my roommate, and I was like, "Adam, these are my friends, Jon."

And of course, Adam eventually came home from the Daily with two of his friends, both named Matt.

Signs

1. It is time to give up on using your umbrella when the wind blows it inside out three times inside of ten minutes, especially when you're also trying to hold a coherent conversation with your mother on a cell phone without getting blown into Lake Michigan.

2. It is time to ride your bike to the gym when your walk home lasts longer than your workout, and causes you considerably more pain.

That was random

On the way to my interview today (with Starcom, which I think [knock wood, cross fingers, avoid black cats, etc.] went really well), I ran into my ex-girlfriend, who I haven't talked to in at least two months.

It actually wasn't bad, it was just very odd circumstances. I was all dressed up for my interview, in a nice outfit with earrings (which I fucking never wear) and a nice necklace, as opposed to my usual spiky one. She knows I feel like I'm in drag when I look like this.

But it was nice to see her and know that she hasn't fallen off the face of the earth or anything. There was sort of an unspoken, "Well, I'm glad things are going well for you, but other than that, I couldn't care less" vibe coming from both of us.

It was nice to see her, but it was also nice that it only lasted a couple minutes. Caught up, boom, done. This is how all my relationships with people I don't feel like talking to most of the time should be.

And I probably still won't talk to her much, since we really have nothing in common anymore, and thus not much to talk about. Well, it's not like we had that much in common when we were going out, but it's definitely a lot less now.

I guess this is what you get for having a small, incestuous campus. Go, U Northwestern...

And now for something completely different...

Stick figure kung fu.

This was sent to me a while ago, and it's very amusing. I bookmarked it, and was pleasantly surprised to see it's still up.

Must sleep...

Interview With The Empire

I had my first job interview today, with Microsoft's marketing people.

I think it went pretty decently, though the obvious questions of "So, um, if you haven't taken any marketing courses, why should we hire you?" and "If you like music so much, why do you want to go the corporate route?" came up.

It's not that I don't want to do music anymore, it's that I can't go into the music business. It's a discouraging shitpile and I'd blow my brains out if I worked for someplace like Interscope for more than a month.

I couldn't exactly give the interviewer the Hunter S. Thompson quote that's been on the end of my profile for months about the music business being a cruel, shallow money trench yadda yadda, but I think I managed to answer the question pretty well anyway (not with the above response, obviously).

I really hope the interview went well, since they're flying whoever they decide to fly back to Redmond for second-round interviews, and I really dug Seattle when I went a couple years ago for a music conference.

What my chances of actually getting the job are (they interviewed a least 200 people at various colleges, from what I could extrapolate from the number of people they were talking to here and the number of colleges they were going to, and there's 40 positions), I'm not so sure.

But I feel like I gave myself at least a fighting chance, and that's what I went into the interview hoping for.

And I didn't hear nearly as many Evil Empire cracks (about 5) as I was expecting (5,000,000) when I told my friends about the interview.

Damnation

James Coburn died.

To me he'll always be Sedgewick, the wily Austrailian "manufacturer" in my favorite movie, The Great Escape.

This guy did everything from The Magnificent Seven to The Muppet Movie. That's range.

RIP, Sedgewick.

Good news, bad news

Well, the good news is that the heat seems to have miraculously started working in my apartment. Apparently, the professional heating guy came by this weekend and installed a temporary thermostat adjustment.

The bad news is that the first thing I did when I woke up this morning was call the health department, who came over only to inform me that it was actually 70 in my room. My thermometer, apparently, had been thrown off by its location on an outside-facing wall.

Silly me, I thought these walls were insulated enough that it wouldn't be a problem.

While it was definitely warmer in here than it has been all winter, I still argue that it sure as fuck wasn't 70 in here when the lady showed up, because even when I ripped the thermometer off the wall, it didn't go any higher than 66 degrees until about 3:30 or so.

However, the heat is on, and right now, that's all I care about.

Well, I do care about coming off as a paranoid stupid rich spoiled brat to the health inspectors, who I'm sure have far better things to do with their time than deal with temperature-hallucinating college students.

It still feels cold in here, largely because the storm windows on my windows do precisely squat in terms of keeping the heat in and the cold out, so I'm taking my landlord up on his offer to put plastic over the windows (since then the cold air gets trapped before it comes into the building).

I sure felt fucking stupid when I went to class this morning, though.

And my efforts at Karmic balance before my job interview? Ha! Out the frozen window. I think it still went pretty well, though.

I love Chicago, but I think I'd dig Seattle...

Oh, and...

...the worst fears about Mark's nephew were not realized: Logan Greer was born Thursday night.

If he moves away from Utah, he can tell people his parents named him after Wolverine.

The Dichotomy of Ass

It's very funny how everything comes in cycles.

Example: Most of the people I know who were in relationships last year are no longer so now (including me), and those who were single are currently in relationships.

Sarah mentioned at least the single-people-finding-love half of this equation in her livejournal earlier today, which got me thinking about it.

Before, I had seen it more as a function of My Straight Friends vs. My Queer Friends. Before, 'twas largely the Straights who were getting it and the Queers who weren't, and this seemed to reverse. But looking over the entire phenomenon, it's quite a bit more extensive than that.

By and large (there are a number of exceptions), anyone I knew who was with someone last year is unattatched this year, and last year's Singletons are this year's Smug Marrieds (or their American collegiate equivelent).

Of course, the overall trend of Gay Yay, Straight Nay in terms of gettin' it on still holds, especially when I take into account the people I know who still live in the dorms, but I've noted that it's a bit more of a universal reversal that I initially realized.

Or perhaps 2:30am in an ice-cold apartment is not the proper time for philosophications of this nature.

Always amusing

The official ski report at Sun Valley, the place I always go skiing, has posted a forecast that has at least "slight chance of snow" or better for every day in the next week.

They've had this up for about three weeks, because technically, there is a slight chance of snow, even if it's sunny and 55 degrees, even at the top of the mountain.

And then there's the Weather.com forecast for Sun Valley (apologies if it says page not found, w.c is having issues today), which indicates partly cloudy or mostly sunny for most of the week, with snow showers next weekend.

I hope at least the report of 26 inches at the top is accurate, since that's a lot more than they generally have this time of year. Hooray for El Niño...

Damnation

So my Evil Landlord does own my building after all.

I called the people who I thought owned the building now (see below) and they were like, nope, we just show it, you should call the City of Evanston on him.

Health Department, here I come...

Further Adventures in Heating

So I found out that my Evil Landlord does not, technically, own my building.

This came as news to me, since we all write our checks to him every month. However, after finally saying that's it! and passing out flyers asking anyone having similar heating problems to call him so he'd stop fucking around on fixing the heat, I got one interesting response.

When I went by the basement apartment, they told me to talk to the people 2 floors above me, since they basically had to threaten him with the building inspector before he fixed a leak in their roof.

So I went and talked to them, and I found out that their neighbors over in the building next door (which is technically a different building, even though we all have the same basement and the buildings are connected) had found a way to control him.

Of course, this involved getting their parents involved, but here's what happened:

They moved in and there was some sort of problem with the kitchen floor, and the parents, who were helping the kids move in, called Conrad and screamed bloody murder, and he didn't seem to care. So they called the people they rented from, who actually own the building.

Now, whenever they have a problem, they tell Conrad to jump, and he asks how high. I think this is partly because the partnership that owns this building put pressure on him because he's being a dick, but it may have also been beacuse of the parents.

I've been extremely reluctant to play the parent card, and that's partly because I feel like such a spoiled asshole when I pull out the "Well, my daddy is a lawyer and he'll sue your ass for every penny you're worth!" argument.

However, after a month of not having heat, fuck that bullshit. I'll even resurrect my no-nonsense grandpa if I have to, I'm fucking tired of sleeping in a 58 degree apartment under four blankets, unable to sleep through the night because I keep waking up.

So I'm calling the partnership tomorrow, and the Health Department to figure out my options on Monday. Because I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to fucking take it anymore.

It may be a cliché, but it's a cliché for a reason, goddamn it.

Concert Review #2: Ani DiFranco

I can now officially name my Golden Goddess of the Month, to go along with my Golden God of the Month, Joel Thomas (some people thought I meant Joel Richlin...um, hell no).

This month's Golden Goddess is my friend Heidi Lesch, for giving me her 4th row Ani ticket when she couldn't make it down from Minneapolis for the show. Especially because she tried to offer it to me for free, even after she had to FedEx it overnight.

Anyway, the show was incredible. I had sort of been falling out of touch with Ani lately, partly because Revelling/Reckoning reminds me of my ex, and partly because I've been running around like a nutcase and not listening to as much music as I used to.

The opener was...eh. He said his name repeatedly, but I wasn't able to catch it. His guitar playing was amazing, but he didn't really have too much to say with his songs. One he just kinda repeated "Don't Kill" a whole bunch of times.

However, I must admit that "I Hate Your Kid" was tremendously amusing. I hope I never find out exactly how amusing...

Anyway, Ani broke her foot (according to Heidi, who had seen her in Minneapolis the night before, where Ani told the story, after jumping around ecstatically in her driveway and tripping), so she had to sit down for the whole show.

Even Ani admitted this was weird, since in the 15 years or so she's been touring, she hadn't had to do that before. But god damn, she can rock however the hell she pleases.

One thing I really like about her is that she can take a song and just give it an entirely new feel, totally different from the one on the album. Her version of "Fuel" tonight was just killer, dropping it into a minor key and making it a much angrier song than it used to be.

It's not every day that "Maybe I should put a bucket over my head/And a marshmallow in each ear" can be made to seem profound.

She also played a shitload of new songs, and they were all very good, though she did sound a bit angrier and more depressed than usual...and that's saying something. I do hope she's okay, because even though she does write good angry songs, I don't wish feeling like that all the time on anyone.

She also got into politics, as she normally does. I don't agree with some of her most left-wing political views (like capitalism is the worst system ever...I can think of a more than a few that are worse), though she did make one statement I agreed wholeheartedly with.

She was talking about attending an anti-war rally in San Fransisco, where all these speakers were basically saying "George W. Bush is a moron!", and she said that, well, duh. We wouldn't be here if we didn't already know that.

Her comment that I agreed with was something to the effect of "Everybody talks about being anti-this and anti-that, but there's nobody standing up and offering an alternative. Nobody wants to say what we should do instead." She's goddamn right about that.

Of course, she didn't speak of a viable alternative either, so there is that. But then again, I think it's a good sign that a lot of people have (finally) realized that there needs to be some sort of alternative idea for people to cling to, other than reactionary hatred of the establishment.

Anyway, in the end, to me, only music matters, and Ani...wow. She has Presence. You cannot take your eyes off her when she performs, and there's something you feel when she tears into her guitar strings that just can't be put into words.

Unfortunately, I think partly because of her foot, she only played for about an hour and 15 mins, which is absolutely nothing compared to what she and her band normally do.

However, when you have a band you do get more of a rest between and during songs, so I think she probably played the same number of songs she would have otherwise, and she was so fuckin' good that I can't really complain.

All in all, this has been an awesome concert week.