Dancing Machine

Hello Hello! I just wanted to share that I wholly support postponing fall as long as possible, weatherwise. It's absolutely beautiful out and I have no complaints. Besides, I saw two swolleys at the JCA game on Friday night and I doubt that would have happened if it were colder out. Then again, the type of guys who wear swolleys are likely to be willing to suffer cold weather if it means showing off their "muscles," so they may be popping up for months and months to come.

Herald News has been lacking in police blotter wackiness as of late, but check out Tim Placher's column today-he discusses the weekly "Shooting from the Lip" column that's been appearing in the Herald News, and makes some really good points.

As mentioned earlier, I went to the JCA game with Megan on Friday night to see her brother play. The game was at Hansen Stadium in a particularly scenic area of Chicago. To give you a feel for the area, Megan informed me that during another trip to the stadium, she saw a man sitting on a bench across from McDonalds take a needle and shoot up through his pants. As we entered the stadium, we walked by the "dance squad" (are pom pons passe?) of the other team, St. Pat's. They were doing some sort of cheer about stabbing someone with a knife nine times. Hmm. Speaking of cheerleaders, Megan and I were somewhat perplexed by some of the antics of the JCA cheerleaders. Being the sister of a lifelong pom pon girl and a big fan of "Bring It On," I feel I know a lot about cheerleading/pom pons/spirit sticks (note: I won a "Spirit Stick" at Troy Junior High pom camp in 5th grade. It was actually a "Spirit T" but tomato, tomahto), what have you. In the past, I've seen cheerleaders work as "one voice" with synchronized words, movements, etc. The JCA cheerleaders would start their cheers in this manner, but after repeating them a couple times, certain cheerleaders would "break out" with their own individual moves, be it a jump, a back handspring, or in the case of one cheerleader, bizarre "whassup" hand gestures. Why there was a need for these "spotlight dances," I don't know. A cuisine note: while Hansen Stadium's hot dogs are quality weiners, they may need to get some new junk food. Both Megan's peanut M&M's and my Jay's Potato Chips tasted like they'd been around since before Catholic High and St. Francis combined. Unlike most Jay's potato chips, I could stop eating 'em. After the game, we met up with Megan's brother and his friend to drive them home. In the parking lot we walked by a JCA football player who appeared to be holding lemons. He was asking if anyone had any water. Apparently life had handed him lemons and he was going to make lemonade. However, the boys then asked him for oranges. We still thought they were lemons. A few minutes later, we were in the car, and Megan's brother's friend had apples, apparently procured from Lemon Boy. Were there ever lemons? No one knows. It's like comparing apples to oranges.

Saturday night a big group of us went to Gameworks for Courtney's birthday. I'm a fan of any sort of "adult entertainment complex," meaning "alcohol and video games," rather than "porn and strippers," but I have to say that Gameworks beats the proverbial pants off Dave and Buster's, it's a lot bigger and there's more to do. I do have to say that Dave and Buster's has a better selection of games that you can win tickets on, but I don't know if they have the same old school mechanical pencils with fruit on them for which Courtney, Megan and I traded in our tickets. We arrived at Gameworks after 9 pm, which is the time that kids had to leave, so we didn't have to deal with any riffraff, like the time I went to Dave and Buster's and encountered children panhandling for tokens. The first game Megan and I played involved being firefighters and using giant hoses to put out fires and "save the mayor." It was hilarious and I wish I'd brought my camera. Wanting to give equal opportunity to guns and hoses, I also checked out the Police 911 game, a shooting game that sensed your movement so you had to duck, dodge bullets, peek around corners, etc. It was really fun but as usual I had a problem with shooting the civilians. Shannon, Joe, Melissa and I played a really cool game called Sky Pirates, where you sat in chairs that went up and down as you tried to pop the other players' balloons. Sky Pirates was run by a man wearing monkeys around his neck like Tom and Smokey on Paradise Hotel. Another interesting game was a virtual drum set in which you could "rock out" to the song of your choice. Megan and I played to such hits as Van Halen's "Why Can't This Be Love," "Lucky" by Britney Spears (for the "knock knock knock on the door" part), and Jessica Simpson's "I Think That I'm In Love With You" (new episode of Newlyweds tonight!). Our skills did not hold a candle to the mulleted percussionist who dominated the drums for the majority of the evening. He began with N Sync's "It's Gonna Be Me," went on to "Stairway to Heaven," and went through most of the machine's playlist.

The highlight of the evening though, by far, was Dance Dance Revolution. This game is incredible. I'd played it before, but never understood it until Rob gave us lessons. For some reason the game was free so we played it for the majority of the night. After a while I got good enough to smoke a tiny man who dared battle me. I want to petition Heroes to get one of these machines, it's so much better than Golden Tee. Also, it's hilarious to watch DDR experts do their thing, they look like they're having rhythmic spasms. I'm very excited to test out the home version.

That's about all for now, but I have a little homework assignment for you Whiskey Tango readers: check out this article. I'm thinking we may have to do something like this in Joliet. Let me know if you have any ideas. Adios.