dom.blog

It’s been a good week for experiencing some more American institutions. Halloween is, of course, a famously big deal here although I can’t say I really threw myself whole-heartedly into the dressing up. Still, after sushi a group of us went back to Nisreen’s (last seen back in December!) to watch The Empire Strikes Back.

My problem with Star Wars, which I should probably keep in my head more often, is that I’m about 80% on the side of the Empire. Sure, blowing up a planet certainly looks bad, but that would be true of almost any military action if you overlaid sinister music on top of it. And while they might pose as romantic freedom fighters, I’m not sure dissolving a galactic empire is wise or desirable. Perhaps the new sequels could adopt a more Fabian approach to fighting the Dark Side.

Just in case CNN didn’t provide enough maps

Speaking of battling against an unstoppable evil force, on Tuesday night I dressed all in blue, bought a load of Blue Moon and sat with Randi to watch the Midterm elections. It didn’t do much good, although it was hard to summon up the feeling that much was at stake anyway. American politics is like playing a giant (and very expensive) slot machine, which you get to spin every few years, but unless all the reels happen to line up with matching parties you don’t actually win anything.

Say what you like about the Empire, but at least Darth Vader wouldn’t subject you to campaign ads.

Boo for: Hershey’s. Billy bought me some after I complained it tasted like vomit, just to see if I had changed my mind. I hadn’t.

Yay for: Brother Matthew, who we waylaid outside the nearby church because we wanted to check if the standard answer to “but why exactly did God want to create the universe in the first place?” was going to be love. (Spoiler alert: it was.) Significantly less yay for the anti-abortion posters inside, bragging about how many abortion centres they’ve successfully closed.

Some of my phrases which have required explaining recently:

• Much of a muchness
• A whole other kettle of fish
• Going hell for leather

With more Family Time than a US election ad, this weekend I took my parents and Tash on a whirlwind tour of Chicago before they headed home. In the unreasonably lovely sunshine we packed in a lot: Improv Shakespeare (this time with the marvellous Rockin’ to the Brothel), Lincoln Park Zoo, the view from the top of the Willis Tower, the Planetarium, my favourite Italian restaurant La Scarola, Navy Pier, the Bean, an awesome jazz club called The Jazz Showcase, American diner breakfasts and lots and lots of walking.

At the Bean

You gotta do the really tourist things once

Jumping on the roof. We stopped when the neighbours came up to find out what the noise was.

And in a curious twist, I also had lunch with my aunt Sally last week, who was in town for entirely coincidental reasons. All of which means I’ve had a wonderful time, but am now ready to (a) collapse in a heap, and (b) go hang out with some Chicagoans again. At least until the freezing begins in earnest.

Maybe it was the sun, maybe it was the Mexican food in San Francisco, or maybe it was the giant global family reunion to celebrate Jamie and Paul’s beautiful wedding. Either way, I’ve just flown back from California feeling super-cheery and happy.

This lot again!

Global family convention

Saw Crystal again after a four-year gap

Touring Alcatraz with our customary sensitivity to the serious issues of prison reform

Jamie and Paul. It was their wedding, after all.

I’m not even going to try and list everyone who was there, but it was pretty incredible how much of the family managed to get together in one place from the US, the UK, Australia and Israel. I doubt we’ll ever see anything like it again, but I can’t think of a better occasion for given that Jamie has been the one tirelessly travelling the globe and keeping all the connections going.

Anyway, given that it was such a one-off, there was plenty of appetite for lots of pre and post wedding get-togethers, including (for the British contingent) a tour of Alcatraz.  This was my third visit to San Francisco but I’d never made it there until now, and I was surprised how excellent the audio tour of the prison was. It’s absolutely worth doing if you’re ever, y’know, hanging out in San Francisco and need a break inbetween eating in the Mission and running up and down hills.

Special thanks should also to Robin and Tom, for allowing the Self clan to crash their amazing house yet again 😉

Usually I like to blog with nice photos of the people and places I’m writing about, so that you can skim past all the needless words and still get the gist. But on this occasion, I’m somewhat glad that the most I have from Saturday night is some very blurry screenshots:

Blurry memories

Long story short: some bar, my first karaoke night, being volunteered against my will, Call Me Maybe. It was great. And came as the culmination of a very lovely Saturday afternoon in Chinatown with Katie, Todd and a bunch of other Grouponers, ex-Grouponers and hangers-on. It’s always nice to find yourself in a good group, y’know?

While we’re on the topic of briefly trying something you know you’re going to be terrible at before scuttling away again, last week I resolved (for reasons unknown) to try indoor rock-climbing. So I did, with Taylor, although unlike me she didn’t turn up wearing jeans and asking questions like “so can I wear my boots?”.  Anyway, I was slightly freaked out to discover that in the rock-climbing world “bouldering” means “no need for ropes, just sign a waiver and try not to fall in an awkward manner”. Thankfully the place was pretty friendly, so no one pointed and laughed at my lack of upper body strength which prevented much successful climbing. But rather than change this, I’ve just reconciled myself to the fact that if I had been Mufasa I wouldn’t have been able to hold on for nearly as long as he did.

OK, so I can’t sing and I can’t climb. But I can go and watch plays. Awesome plays, like Bethany, another Common Room recommendation with a great cast and a well-crafted story set in a post-2008 world of failed companies and abandoned homes. It helps that The Gift Theatre is also tiny – I know I always say that small, intimate theatres are better, but I’ve seen plays with bigger casts than this had seats. If it’s sustainable, that would be utterly baffling. But either way, this is another great thing to go see.

Next stop: San Francisco!

On stage at Common Room

Remember Common Room? Wednesday night was the fourth outing of this theatre taster event, and the inaugural ‘interview an audience member’ segment which – as you can see – I made it into.

And this got me thinking… man, I really need to go see more of these plays which I’m hearing so much about. And that’s how I ended up spending this afternoon chasing a rabbit with a French accent all over the neighbourhood of Andersonville in Upended Production’s Alice.

Inspired by Lewis Carroll, the audience (who all take the role of ‘Alice’) are broken into small groups – each assigned a different rabbit – and move between whimsical and fantastical scenes staged in nearby streets, bars, shops. On the routes between each ‘scene’ there are also weird and wonderful sights and mini-interactions with the audience, like this:

One of the many roaming cast members. (Hopefully.)

I have to admit, I was a little worried it would feel a little too surreal in the sense of ‘arbitrary random stuff’, but actually everything felt very carefully put together and was surprisingly thought provoking. There are so many people I would recommend this to, and most of them don’t live in Chicago, but if you do you should check it out. (And next week I am going to see another production promoted through the Common Room – hurray!)

Late night pizza bite

Have been doing a bunch of other fun stuff, too. Like meeting up with the one and only Emily Boyd, who was visiting town from New York! I also almost broke Randi’s Californian heart by introducing her to the concept of full English breakfasts, which we made this morning. (Tastes like home!)

I also saw Saved, cheered on the Baltimore Orioles in the baseball playoff season, got treated to a swanky lunch at the Art Institute by a friend of Carolyn’s (still haven’t managed to go in to the Art Institute, mind) and went to my first Chicago jazz club. Which was a bit of a fail, actually, because although the jazz was good I decided that I’d prefer to be able to actually hear the conversation I was having, so we retreated to a regular jazz-free bar instead.

Aside from my own entertainment and shenanigans, in the past few weeks I’ve also started volunteering for two separate tutoring/mentoring projects. I will probably write more about these elsewhere, after a couple more weeks, but suffice to say it’s always an interesting challenge to work with children. And I don’t mean that as a euphemism for ‘difficult’ or ‘unpleasant’ – it’s just something which demands conscious adjustment after not actually being a child for a while. Pretty rewarding if you can get it right, though.