Groundhog's Day? Experience 30

Saturday is Groundhog's Day and I can't help but worry that I'm going to be subject to it. Remember the movie with Bill Murray? He wakes up and every day is the same as the one before. As most of you know, I'm going in for a biopsy today, to explore the nature of some calcifications that showed up at my 6 month post-surgical check up. Feels like June all over again! And here we are at just about the half-way point in our stay in Chicago! But with any luck the outcome won't be the same as June and I'll be able to dodge the Groundhog's day scenario. It's snowing today and is expected to really snow big tomorrow, so there's no way any groundhog would be seeing any shadows in Chicago. But the official groundhog is in Pennsylvania, right? In any case, thanks to everyone for once again sending so much positive energy our way. All those good thoughts and vibes really do make a difference!

The Secret Life of Bees: Book 28

This book is a coming of age story of Lily a young white girl who's been abandoned by her mother and is now living with her hateful father (T.Ray) and a black housekeeper named Rosaleen. It's set in the South in 1964, the year the Civil Rights Act was passed and it is definitely a story of busting out of the old ways and into uncertain new territory. It contains an integrationist-based fantasy which seems highly implausible at best, but realism is not the point of this book. Rather, the voice and spirit of this young girl and her coming to terms with a complicated world are what it's all about. I laughed out loud in certain parts, while other parts made me think hard about my own beliefs. This is a book well worth reading.

Atonement - Movie 21, Lake Theatre - Place 29

Susan went to see Atonement this weekend with Patti and Teri, friends from golf and bowling. We met at the Lake Theatre in Oak Park, just west of downtown Chicago. This is a great old theatre that has been somewhat cut up, while still retaining much of its original art deco stylings. The resulting theatres are still enormous by any standard. It is pictured on the right in all its glory in the 30's.

What to say about Atonement? Set on the verge of Britain's entry into World War II, it explores the question of forgiveness for the act of a young girl that has severe consequences for the two people she seems to love best in the world. It deals with such an interesting question in a compelling fashion, but it is really quite sober when all is said and done. In addition, the movie seemed to move along pretty slowly at certain points, really trudging to get to the initial exposition of the plot and then again to get to Normandy. Despite all of that, there is a kind of satisfying feeling that comes at the end of a story that is really looking hard at a very complicated and interesting moral dilemma. I'd recommend it, but if you're looking for emotional uplift, this may not be the right movie for you.

Hop Leaf - Restaurant 39, Beers 36; Fun Fact 33

People have been telling us about Hopleaf pretty much since we arrived in Chicago. We finally visited this bar / restaurant in the nearby Andersonville neighborhood on a freezing cold night recently, to meet our friends Sandy and Trish for dinner. These girls are elite rowers and continue to coach in the sport at the college and high school levels. Fun Fact: We were virtually introduced to them through our friends Helena and Wayne, who live in Pennsylvania.

After all the hype, Hopleaf did not disappoint. It offers a truly amazing array of beers (pages and pages on the menu -- we could complete the 40 beer category here and then some!) along with a good selection of excellent comfort food items (perfect for a subzero temp night if you're a meat eater). We started with a Cain and Abel beer -- a nice dark amber with a touch of spice, not unlike the Maudite previously mentioned in these pages, but not quite as strong alcoholically speaking. Susan had a beef stew entree with mashed potatoes mixed in, yum! Kate had a ham and cheese sandwich that was also quite good. We also shared mac and cheese on the side -- delicious!

During the course of conversation attention turned to 10x40 and Trish wanted to know why we don't have a category for 40 new people. For a while we were entertaining the possibility of swapping out the rather anemic recipe category for people, but we decided there were too many logistical difficulties in doing so at this point. Sorry Trish! Great idea, but the execution was lacking on our end!

Moxie - Restaurant 38, Dead Guy Ale - Beer 35

A few days ago we went to a restaurant down the street from Wrigley Field called Moxie. We had been planning on stopping in there for a while, at a time when our friend Marissa would be there cooking. We went on a freezing cold night and were immediately warmed by the friendly atmosphere, great drinks, and fantastic food. We started out with a few beers from the bar, including a new one, Dead Guy Ale a fine pale ale from the Rogue line. Sure, it was a bit cold out for a beer, but when you're committed to completing 10x40 you can't let a few low tempatures get in the way! As for food, the whole table began with hummus and pita with a twist -- a bit of red pepper flake or something along those lines -- which made a usually routine appetizer much more interesting and tasty. We then split a Carribean salad, followed by portabello and goat cheese in a wonderful sauce and skewered shrimp in an excellent pesto sauce. Friends at the table let us try their crab cakes and gnocchi which were also quite good. Great company, great food, and it was fun to see our friend happily cooking away in Moxie's kitchen -- what more could you ask for?

Celtic Crown Football Sunday - Place 28; Fun Fact 32

Last Sunday we met up with a bunch of the girls to watch football at a cozy and friendly neighborhood pub called Celtic Crown in the Lincoln Square neighboorhood just north and west of our place. The Celtic Crown is an interesting mix of an old timey wood-based bar along with an enormous number of flat screen tvs placed strategically throughout the pub so that you can see the action from wherever you're sitting in the pub. Sunday was also our friend Teri's birthday, so we all shared a delicious cake from a neighborhood bakery in Homewood. Yum! The Packers came to an unfortunate end, but apart from that, it was a fun time.

Fun Fact: Chicago just passed a no-smoking ban in public places. The upholstery in the furniture was so smoke-ridden in the Celtic Crown they decided to replace it when the ban took effect!

Juno - Movie 20 and CD 18; Maudite - Beer 34;

Friday night was a weird night. We had planned to see the movie Persepolis, only to find that it had sold out right before we got to the head of the enormously long line (probably due to everyone going out on a really cold night to avoid the horrifically cold night to follow on Saturday). So we decided to see Juno instead. We had read some mixed reviews, so were not sure what to expect but this movie and its central character are both winners. The movie tracks Juno's alternatively sardonic and sweet chronicle of her year as a pregnant teen still in high school. We liked it so well that we went out and bought the soundtrack which features pared down acoustic rock from The Moldy Peaches and others, as well as covers from Cat Power and others and some classics by the Velvet Underground and others. Then we headed off to Uncommon Ground to meet up with our friend Andrea to see a friend of hers play in a guitar and cello combo, and once again we were closed out! However, we were able to sample a really excellent beer called Maudite brewed at a Quebec brewery called Unibroue. This amber beer has some interesting spices in it that made the beer quite tasty and satisfying - especially on a cold winter's night. While we are not normally fans of the spiced beer, this one did work -- really well, in fact, for without knowing it we stumbled home to find that it had an 8% alcohol content. Fun fact: the label on Maudite protrays a flying canoe, provided by the devil, to whom these gents had sold their soul to get home for Christmas. Based on our experience of Maudite, we don't think you need the devil to fly home after drinking this beer! Or perhaps that's what ocassioned the story in the first place!

Pie Hole: Restaurant 37

Our favorite pizza place so far in Chicago is Pie Hole located right here in our Lakeview neighborhood. Pie hole offers a variety of delicious pizzas with gourmet toppings. Portabella mushroom is our standby at this point. Delivery service is not always great -- we once waited almost two hours after which the manager arrived in a cab with the pizza -- but this kind of time keeping is not unheard of in the gay community. Perhaps as compensation, Pie Hole offers delivery by drag queens on Tuesdays. On a cold and windy Chicago night such as this one, you really can't go wrong with a Pie Hole delivery.

Glenn's Diner: Restaurant 36

Glenn's Diner has a great city feel. Located under the El tracks at the Montrose stop, it appears to be just one of zillions of diners strewn across the city. But once you're in, you realize that this is anything but a greasy spoon diner. Open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Glenn's features seafood, ribs, and steak entrees and provides a great city feel. We went on a freezing cold snowy night and were immediately warmed by the friendly atmosphere, the great music, and the excellent ribs which featured a unique tasting vinegar (?) based sauce. The night we went (Wednesday) was all you can eat ribs night, but we'd like to go back and try out some of the many tempting seafood options. As an added bonus, being right there on the El line, there are no worries about having to drive home after imbibing. I don't know if Glenn's lives up to its billing ("best food in the world") but it was pretty good food and a great atmosphere. We'll be back to check out the fish soon!

Oh Boy! Book 27

This is a book of articles on masculinity and rock written by a wide variety of authors, all of whom are professors of music (except Judith Halberstam who is in English and Feminist Studies). The subject matter ranges from Elvis, to the mosh pit, to emo, to Justin Timberlake, and to Indonesian pop (just to mention a few). My favorites were Freya Jarman-Ivens' "Don't Cry Daddy" on the degeneration of Elvis' virile masculinity in the course of his career and what that might mean for the (in)stability of masculinity more generally, and Judith Halberstam's "Queer Voices and Musical Genders" which uses Big Mama Thorton (the original singer of "Hound Dog")to queer the butch (masculine) personas of the early women blues singers. Neither of these articles is an easy read, mostly due to unnecessary academic jargon, but they are worth the effort, as taken together they offer a different "founding" or beginning for the history of rock and roll, one that features a less stable view of gender and sex identity, which could in turn provide a very different basis upon which the rest of the story of rock might be told. If that doesn't pull you in, how about that book cover? Can't beat it, especially for an academic book :)

T's: Restaurant 35 / Poker Redux

Last Saturday we went to T's, a gay bar and restaurant in the Andersonville neighborhood, to watch the Notre Dame v. Tennessee women's basketball game with our friends Patti, Terri, Cyndy, and Kathy. Unfortunately, ND was never really in the game and they wound up losing by over 20 points. However, the food at T's was quite good. We shared a delicious 1/2 burger and a huge basket of fries and onion rings which kept us happy for quite a while! Later on, Susan went to play poker with the girls way the heck out in Lockport (pretty near to Joliet). She didn't win, but the group was a lot of fun and it looks like a regular poker league will be getting started soon. Should be good practice for the World Series of Poker, which Susan is considering entering this summer!

Book 26: Rock of Ages

This is a sturdy history of rock and roll focussing on the period of rock's emergence in the 1950's through the beginning of the video era in the mid-1980's. There is quite a bit of detail here, with the book coming in at over 600 pages. It is split into three sections (50s and before, 60's, and 70's and beyond), each written by one of the three authors. I'm not a huge fan of the chronological approach to rock, as such accounts tend toward a "and then this happened, and then this happened" type of narrative. There are many books of this sort on the market and perhaps I've read too many of them. :^) This is surely one of the best of its kind and there is quite a lot of good information in it. While quite servicable in this regard, it is not as good a read as I had hoped.

CDs 12-17: Stone, LOE, Donnas, Jackson, Apple, Montoya; Fun Fact 31

Besides drinking a lot of beer over the holidays (see previous posting), we also listened to a bunch of new music. Some of it was newly released this year, as in Joss Stone's terrific new cd, Introducing Joss Stone, which represents the blue eyed soul tradition at its very best, ranging from Motown, funk, and neo-soul sounds.

Some of what we listened had been released in previous years, but was new to us, as in Wanda Jackson's compliation, The Queen of Rockabilly. This is a fantastic collection of her hits in the late 50's and early 60's. For the story of how hard it was for women like Wanda Jackson to break into the limelight, check out the DVD entitled Women of Rockabilly: Welcome to the Club.

We also finally got to Lesbians on Ecstasy, which we had been meaning to hear for a long time. LOE, more affectionately known as Lezzies on X, covers songs written by lesbians such as Melissa Etheridge, k.d. lang, Tracy Chapman, and a wide variety of others -- through the beats of heavy metal and electronica. Believe us, you'll never think of "Constant Craving" or "Like I Do" or "Talkin' Bout a Revolution" in quite the same way once you've heard this disc.

We also liked The Donna's Gold Medal, an interesting mix of alternative hard rock through a girl group sound. Our friend David had given us a copy of Fiona Apples' Extraordinary Machine before we left Athens and it is also very good piano centered, almost cabaret-like music with very interesting backing orchestrations. For international flavor, we have continued to enjoy the discs of Spanish music sent to us by our friend Miriam, and have been listening quite a lot lately to Carlos Montoya's very expressive Spanish Guitar Magic.

Fun fact: This burst of listening has been ocassioned by our near obsession with "10 Days in Europe" a board game that we gave to our friend Charlie this Christmas. The guy at the toy shop promised that it would be a big hit, and while we were somewhat skeptical, we found that we liked it so much upon playing it with Charlie in Athens that we came home and promptly bought one for ourselves. Each night as we have been working our way across Europe, we also have been working our way through our stack of cds. In keeping with the game, we should probably be listening to more European artists. Perhaps Amy Winehouse and others will appear here soon?

Beers 27 - 33 Winter Welcome et. al.

Is there a better way to spend the holidays than imbibing with friends? To that end, we sampled 7 new beers last month. Our favorite was Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome Ale (pictured at left). This is a very nice amber which has a lot of flavor but is neither too heavy nor too dark for our tastes. As an added bonus it comes in a convenient oversized bottle, just slightly larger than a pint. Major Tom, brought in from Fort Collins, CO by our friend Belle's daughter was surprisingly tasty. We usually steer clear of fruity beers and this one had pomegranite in it, but it turned out to be a very good blend. Left Hand's Sawtooth Ale would get a nod from us for a great brand name alone, but it also is a great ale with a bite. Our friend Vince gave us an oversized bottle of Rogue as a coming home present, another great ale, which, as luck would have it, was conveniently packaged in an even larger over-sized bottle. We also sampled Red Seal and Woliver, fine ales, but not too distinctive. Finally, we has Brooklyn Pale Ale on New Year's Eve, thanks to our friend Karen, an excellent way to end off the holiday ale sampling. But you know what they say, everyone ending is a new beginning! That bodes well for filling out the beer list in 2008 :^)

I'll Take You There: Book 25

This book has a great central theme: the relationship between rock 'n' roll and transcendence. How is it that a secular form such as rock so often winds up expressing a yearning for something bigger? It also has a great title, taken from a great Staples Singers song of the 1970's. I was so ready to love this book. But it didn't come off as well as it might have. The devil, it seems, was in the details, as the author plodded in a rather unispired fashion through various great artists, many of my favs (such as Madonna, PJ Harvey, Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney and Le Tigre). In the end, I had a hard time making my way through the book. Despite that, there is a lot of good information here, so die-hard fans and rock readers may still be interested.