So good....it hurts.

My best friend from High School was in Chicago for a few days due to dual medical conferences. I decided to treat her to some Chicago entertainment to escape from constant seminars and lectures. We headed out to Wicker Park to watch game 2 of the Cub-Dodgers playoff game. We met up with my gregariously fun Chicago friends (my boys) where they were already in the seventh inning of the game “let’s get drunk on a Thursday night”. Basically that is a given when you have $1 can of beer specials. I don’t remember who is responsible for the original idea, but someone introduced a new drink called “bear trap” (or possibly bear attack….I was tipsy). The drink consist of chugging a jaggier-bomb and chasing that with an Irish car bomb (or Belfast bomber). The waitress came out with a jammed tray full of various liquors. I sat back in amazement as the boys were literally consuming a pint worth of liquor in seconds. Immediately afterwards, they would growl, which I think was just a natural reaction from all the alcohol zinging to the brain.

As I mentioned before my friend was in town for some medical conferences. The first was leadership training for chief residents. They had to take personality tests to determine the best managing style suited for them. The speaker then arranged everyone from most anal retentive (type J) to most laid back (type F). He then examined the wallet from each side. The anal retentive/perfectionist type wallet had three cards lined up exactly and all the bills neatly arranged (facing one direction and in order from smallest to largest denomination) in one pocket. The anal retentive person was able to closely guess how much was in his wallet. The laid back wallet was eight inches thick and jammed full of random items. The speaker would pull out expired coupons, ATM receipts over a year old, etc. At one point, he found a pass for some safari adventure park and asked the girl “do you really intend to use this” to which she replied “oh….I meant to use that last week…when I actually did go to the safari thing….oops.” When asked where she kept her money, she said “oh usually here, here or here (essentially any open pocket would do”. And of course, she had no idea how much money she was carrying.

The second conference was for Psychiatrists. Doctors there presented some of their most unusual cases and diagnosis. One girl had a female patient who showed up to the ER after masturbating for 10 days straight. She had not eaten, slept, bathed, etc during this time period, masturbated in the car ride over and apparently also in the ER while waiting. My first question was “can you really do that….I mean, wouldn’t it get sore down there after a while….if I were to rub my arm for 10 days straight, I am sure my arm would become raw”.

Saturday night, we caught the late comedy show of Second City. Afterwards, they held an hour long improv session. My favorite was the “pepper” getting mad at the “salt” for fucking “oregano (that slutty Italian stallion”. Yeah, so guy yelled out “salt and pepper” when they asked for a relationship example and the resulting skit was hilarious. One sketch they were working on, one of the actors mock proposes to another actress only to have her decline and run away. My high school friend was convinced it was a real proposal. I figured it was all part of the sketch since the guy later went on to propose to the other two actresses.

The next day, I took part in a little improv myself. Now I am no actor, but I couldn’t resist joining up with this organized group Improv Everywhere. They are the prankster group responsible for ‘frozen at grand central station’. Check out their website (www.improveverywhere.com) to get an idea of their past pranks. My favorites are Grand Central Station, Look Up More, and Best Buy. They were hosting their first Chicago event. It was the MP3 experiment 4. All I had to do was show up at this field with a certain colored shirt (I picked green), an umbrella, and a balloon. You played a certain downloaded track and followed the instructions of the ominous sounding Steve. We tried to play a game of people tetris but I don’t think everyone’s special relations were that great. One highlight was playing color twister because they would shout out “hand to green elbow” “foot to blue foot” “hand to red head”. The best was any yellow command because there was only one little yellow girl around us and she kept shrieking because we would all close in around her (at one point she had 15 people touching her back because she was the only yellow in the surrounding area). We finished it off by battling the other colors (blue green vs red yellow) with balloons. Hopefully they post the video soon, but then again ours won’t be as vivid because it was pouring at the time. Look for the yellowish Dali umbrella….that is ME!

I've looked at the pictures they have posted sofar and found myself in a few (granted hard to see). Try to play where's Waldo-Lindsay in this first picture and try to spot me. Hint - I'm in the lower left corner wearing a white cap, green shirt, and carrying a purse with a black plus sign on it.