Sir Grump Munch

October 25, 2005

Meetups, Danzig, Stencils, Abhi, Etc.

Okay, here we have almost another full month without an update, this time it's because I've been somewhat busy. Let me try to recount some of the awesome stuff that has happened recently and suppliment these facts with photos where possible...

I went to the first Vegan Meetup I'd been to in well over a year, this one was held at Flat Top Grill (not exactly a vegan's Wild Dream), the food was only mediocre and like always the seating wasn't super-conducive to conversing with more than a handful of people, but I got to catch up with a few old friends and meet some new folks. Hope to make it back next month too, a good habit to get into.

In other Meetup news, I went to my first Japanese Language Meetup, a smaller group than the vegans by about half. Most people seemed to speak Japanese well, maybe 1/3 of the folks are actually Japanese and just enjoy talking with a bunch of learners at various levels, which is very nice (and patient) of them.

I met a girl there named Miyuki and we hung out for a while afterwards, she's cool and may become a good local friend that I can speak Japanese with. I recently hung out with her and Atsushi from the Meetup, along with Miyuki's friend Nana. I met them downtown for Japanese food at Sushi Samba (nice South American/Japanese fusion place in River North) and then we went to a 24-hour Korean karaoke place near Devon and California, where we rented one of the small rooms. I'm crappin' you negative when I confess that I even sang a few songs (Don't Take Your Guns to Town in the style of JR Cash, House of the Rising Sun in the style of The Animals, Eyes Without a Face in the style of Billy Idol and male vocal accompaniment on Tennessee Waltz). What the hell, those guys were drunk and there were only 4 of us, so why not? I got to find out just how bad my voice is: pretty bad and pretty flat. No surprise there. It was a fun but expensive evening, I dropped over $50 between dinner and the karaoke, and I don't even drink...

My friend since high school and fellow Paw-Paw'r Mark Toliusis recently moved to Chicagoland and I've hung out with him a few times in the last month. He's working retail downtown at the moment and living in Evanston with bigger plans for the post-holiday season. Still blowin' into that horn, considering grad schools and the like, meanwhile familiarizing himself with the various purveyors of savory halal meats along Devon avenue. Mark has a side-project enterprise called Jazz Super-Caffeinated Energy Shot, let this be our official announcement/link to this magic elixir of a "mixer." Now if we can just get old Paul Toliusis to move out here we'll really have something going...

Vanessa's living on her own in Ukranian Village now, busy at work and seeing a bloke from time to time I think. I miss her company and conversation since we don't see each other all that often, but am thankful when we do see each other, like when we went to the Danzig concert together a couple weeks ago. Two years ago if you'd asked her if she'd ever be seeing Danzig in concert she'dve probably laughed out loud, but now she croons a different tune, she understands The Short Dark Man and can appreciate him for what he is. The show was fucking unbelievable, he had Doyle from the Misfits (goddamn Hulk, didn't even look human...instead of a 45 year old ex-punk he looked like a 25-year old He-Man with a devilock). They played 6 Misfits songs together and it was an experience I'll probably never get again, hearing that stuff from those guys 20 years after the band had dissolved, it was so amazing. Misfits songs included "Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?", "20 Eyes," "Skulls," "Last Caress," "138," and possibly my favorite Misfits song of all time, "Earth A.D." Wow. One of the best concerts I've ever been to, too bad the pricks at the House of Blues are so strict about cameras, I have no images of my own to share; but you can see someone else's Danzig/Doyle concert photos.

I've been doing some drawing lately, in preparation for some new "tribute to my heroes" stencils and T-shirts I want to make. The drawings are so-so, need to keep working on them. I've done over a dozen, here are three of the only ones that are worth a damn (Benny Perkins and Ronald McGowan from Hands on a Hardbody and Bill Bartolone). Will keep you posted on this project as it progresses... I did actually MAKE a stencil last week for my co-worker Liz' birthday, she's a huge fan of The Office so I did a poster-sized stencil of David Brent and Gareth. I drew it freehand from the television screen so it took about 7 hours from drawing to coloring to cutting to spraying, here are pics of the stencil process.

In closing, Abhi visited Chicago from India and we got to spend an evening with him, we took him to Alice and Friends for dinner and then drove around the city seeing the sights. We love Abhi, he's one of the nicest guys you could ever meet and such a joy to be around. We took some photos from the Adler Planetarium with an interesting technique I devised to get both the foreground and background to expose properly: a flash plus a 1.3 second exposure at ISO100. They turned out really weird, see for yourself: Abhi, Jean, Vanessa and I.

Posted by pj at October 25, 2005 11:47 PM