A few months ago, I was diagnosed with
hypertension and had to start blood pressure medication. I also cut
even more sodium out of my already not particularly salty diet (I
prefer pepper as a seasoning), and started exercising for the first
time since I was in college. I'm not horribly out of shape or
anything, I work outside at an ethanol plant so it's not like I'm a
total slug, but beyond work I didn't do much in the way of activity.
I don't have a lot of free time and work and kids and life tend to
make one tired. But I'm glad I finally got the motivation again,
because it really does make you feel better. It also gave all my old
VHS tapes a second life, with an old tube TV and the VCR downstairs
I've been working my way through piles of MST3K
bootlegs and Doctor Who
serials that I haven't updated to DVD yet, and stacks of movies as
well. Yet, even with all that, I never could get it down any further
than the very highest end of normal.
The
point is, from Tuesday the 21st
until Sunday the 26th,
Malorie and I were in Chicago for B-Fest, so it's been almost a week
of no exercise and not even remotely watching what I eat. Seafood
pot pies, gigantic hamburgers with gravy and fried cornbread on them,
hotdogs, onion rings, chocolate malts...hell, the food we took into
the theater for B-Fest with us was probably the healthiest thing I
ate the whole trip. And yet, I read my blood pressure tonight for
the first time since we got back, and it was 111/81! That's as low
as it's probably ever been. B-Fest isn't just fun, it saves lives.
Ask your doctor if B-Fest is right for you. Side effects include
sleep deprivation, kissed thumb, not Bela, doubled invincibility,
moose yell, forgetting Mercy Humppe, electric boogaloo, and black
widow.
We
arrived Tuesday around 1:30, and since Tim Lehnerer was delayed in a
massive traffic kerfuck, no one else was coming til the next day, and
we'd been up since 5am, we figured it would be a good time to take a
couple hours' nap and then head into Kuma's Corner for a heavy metal
hamburger. Tim finally rolled in and gave me yet another great
looking box of books, as well as the traditional B-Fest mix CD and a
flash drive with all of the Joe Meek music he has on it, which is
probably all of the Joe Meek music in existence plus a couple of
tracks he willed into being with his fandom. We watched Streets
of Fire and called it a night.
Wednesday morning
saw us make a rather expensive trip to Half Price Books, then it was
off to the Museum of Broadcast Communications. Mal didn't have any
interest and opted to stay in the hotel to read and nap some more, so
it was Tim and I experimenting with taking the L for the first time.
Considering how much we all hate driving, and what a pain in the ass
parking in Chicago is, it's kind of amazing none of us ever thought
to do this before. It worked out well, but the museum was a bit on
the meh side. I mostly wanted to go there because Svengoolie's old
coffin was supposed to go there when he got a new one last year, but
for some reason it never happened. It was interesting enough that I
don't regret the time spent, but I think it's definitely a
one-and-done thing. After that, we had a quick burger at the Billy
Goat Tavern, famous as the “Cheezeborger cheezeborger
cheezeborger!” place from Saturday Night Live. It's a fast and
tasty burger, and they also have some really good house beer.
I'm not entirely
positive that we didn't die on the train ride back. After the
correct train at our last transfer blew past without stopping,
another train with OUT OF SERVICE on all the digital signs stopped,
insisting it was the one we needed to get home. Everything after
stepping on that train may be some kind of bizarre afterlife
hallucination. Are you real? Can you prove it? Didn't think so.
Not convinced.
By the time we were
either mulched into Soylent Green or got back to the hotel, Jacob
Smith had arrived, and he and Tim watched Gymkata while I took
Malorie to TJ Maxx. Then it was off to a new place Tim discovered
online for supper. Gavin Smith joined us at Circa '57, which is a 50's diner
with several themed rooms. The drive-in room, similar to the Sci-Fi
Dine-In Theater at Disney World, wasn't open yet, but it should be by
the time we go back next year. Sitting in a vintage land yacht
eating spectacular food and watching b-movie trailers is a little
slice of heaven. The owner overheard us gushing about the place to
the waiter, and came over to talk with us for a bit, and they're not
only looking to do trailers, but licensing full movies as well. I
hope it works out for them.
The whole B-Fest
Irregulars crew has been using the Morton Grove Best Western since
2010, and we've become known by faces if not names there. The desk
clerk says she's going to try to make at least part of the Fest next
year, and we're such groovy people she let us plug a Blu-ray player
into the lobby TV so we could do our gatherings in a place where
everyone would actually have a seat. The utterly baffling “Grow Up
Little Turtle” episode of Ultra Q and Gamera 2: Advent
of Legion rounded out the night.
The next day
started off as I only wish every day could, with breakfast at the
Omega Pancake Restaurant and Bakery. Then it was off once more to
the Skokie L station to meet Gavin at the Art Institute. It's a
place more suited to Malorie's tastes than mine, but they have a few
things I really enjoy. The Hall of Arms and Armor was open this
time, which it wasn't on our first visit in 2009, although the arms
and armor weren't remotely as impressive as the collection of
medieval jewelry at the back of the room. I also got to gander once
more at a few Hubert Robert paintings I quite like, as well as
Cornelius Saftleven's “Witch's Sabbath”, and discovered there's a
picture of Dr. Freex in there as well.
From there it was
back on the train to a place I'd been wanting to go to since I saw it
on the Food Network a couple of years back. It's called Glen's
Diner, and they specialize in fresh seafood, being located not far
from the local fish market. It doesn't look like much from the
outside (in fact we almost walked right past it), and it's not very
big, but holy good goddamn is their food delicious. I think this has
been the most successful B-Fest trip so far from a culinary
standpoint. While there was no foreign food included this time,
which I usually like to work in because Mason City's idea of culture
is Mexican food made by Mexicans instead of surly teenagers in paper
hats, I got to have things I can't get at home, and every one topped
the last, culminating with the crab, shrimp and scallop pot pie at
Glen's. I'm not a foodie, I don't pretend to know things about food,
I just know that I like good food, and this year was some very, very
good food.
By this time, the
rest of the crew was staring to roll in to the hotel, so we headed
back to meet up with the Nebraska Contingent; the mighty Chad
Plambeck, who brought me a couple of wonderful books I had as a
child, Mike Bockoven, and Bill Rinehart, plus a girl who I somehow
never get introduced to. Also Paul, Lisa, the K.O. Brothers, Kelvin and
Melissa, Tim's friend Dave, and later at the Hala Kahiki, the
inimitable Mark Mitchell, Scott Ashlin, and Jessica Ritchey. You
know, as much as I love everyone who comes to this thing, I think
this may be my last year for the tiki bar. The drinks are
overpriced, the staff tends to be a little prickly (hey, a whole
bunch of friendly customers who drink a lot and tip well, let's
ignore them!), and Hawaiian kitch is really not my thing.
But before long we
were heading back to the hotel lobby once more to watch the adorably
racist Black Masai robot take on Super Robot Red Baron and
progressively pay less and less attention to The Manitou as we
drank more and more hooch. Paul brought a bottle of Wisconsin
bourbon, and I brought a bottle of Iowa bourbon called Cedar Ridge to
share around. Once everyone else cashed in their chips for the
night, Scott and I went back to my room to visit quietly in a corner
while Malorie slept, and we put away nearly the entire .750ml bottle
of Cedar Ridge between the two of us, plus a couple of Bass pale ales
and Old Rasputin Russian Imperial stouts. The night got away from us
a bit, and before long, Malorie was looking up over the covers and
informing us that it was 5:30a.m. At least no one wound up
handcuffed to the drain with their clothes flushed down the toilet.
The next thing I
knew, my phone was ringing, it was 11:00, and it was Malorie texting
me a picture of me, asleep, with the caption, “WAKE UP, I'M
HUNGRY!” Apparently she had been poking me for a while to no
avail. We walked veeeeeeerrrrry sllllllooooowwwwwwwly over to Seven
Brothers for lunch before trying to find a grocery store, since
Dominick's near the hotel had closed. We happened upon a nice place
called Super Tony's Finer Foods and stocked up before heading back to
the hotel to meet Gavin and my partner in cine-crime since junior
high, Matt Foy (known to some of you as Brother Fistula), and head to
Northwestern to get settled in. And you know what? I was still
fucking drunk.
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