To recap this past week –
Finally had Giordano’s pizza in Chicago — technically, it’s “stuffed pizza”, not deep dish pizza, neither of which is really pizza to a real New Yorker (to be called pizza here, you have to at least be able to handle the product with your bare hands — the best can be folded in half), but simply a pretty good casserole or pot pie. We got the “special” which is sausage, peppers, onions, cheese, in tomato sauce, topped with a crust and another layer of sauce and cheese. Afterwards, we jetted to Second City ETC., which had a Saturday Night Live-type comedy revue. The stagework was clever, like imitating an above head view of a bedroom scene by standing in front of a black wall with a sheet strung like a curtain. When they had to get out of bed, they would lie on the ground with their head facing the audience and sort of squirm back and forth until they got to the other bed, where they would stand up again and get “under” the covers.
Had the ultimate OJ dash to the airport. The flight is supposed to leave at 8 PM on Saturday. It’s like 5 PM and I want to make a quick trip to Chinatown for dinner. I’m waiting for the red train for like half an hour, then 3 trains change to express service and will pass the Chinatown stop. I don’t get to Chinatown until like quarter to 6, where I find a vietnamese noodle shop and go crazy with the pho noodle soup. My seating at the front of the empty restaurant successfully lures others lusting for that perfect combination of broth, meat, and noodles. I don’t get out until 6:30, where I dash back to the subway and get back to my hotel to pick up my luggage at 6:45. Another dash back to the blue line and back to O’Hare… it doesn’t get in until 7:40. The plane started boarding at 7:30. A Chinese airport worker quickly tells me I got to go to Terminal 3 – 2 terminals away from the train station. I’m booking like a madman, tossing my stuff through the X-ray machine at the checkpoint, and then running to wing K, and then 9 more gates… I make it on the plane at 7:55, just before they close the doors. Kids, don’t do this away from home.
This week I had to do written evaluations of those workers that report to me. It wasn’t that easy. Then there was some other things that involved politics that really disturbed me.
Thursday, after a dramatic downpour, I went to see the Little Grey Book Lecture on “How to Commit the Perfect Crime” in Williamsburg. This is a monthly series where the lecture leader, John Hodgman, hosts a multimedia presentation on a particular topic, to humorous effect. There were a variety of speakers, including an ex-shoplifter cum gazelle on the Lion King, an ex-cop who accidently trapped himself in his cop car, and a law professor who found the place to commit the perfect crime, the Idaho portion of Yellowstone National Park. If you don’t get the opportunity to go, you should at least listen to some of the podcast excerpts of prior shows – they are hysterical.
Today I met P- at Japas 38 for a singing dinner at that karaoke bar with a half dozen of her female friends. One sang Madonna songs with abandon (or is the idiom “without abandon”?). And she was really believable.
This weekend: Saturday, Batman Beyond, laundry. Dimsum with P-‘s dad on Sunday morning, then a visit to my dad with possibly a side stop to Ikea.
