Fruitcake

I don't think I've ever eaten Fruitcake. However, there is fruitcake in my office right now. Due to the fact that there is also fudge, I will not be touching the fruitcake. My only real experience with fruitcake is the extremely strange song about Fruitcake that we had to sing in Concert Choir sophomore year of high school. Lyrics included, "Have a bite of fruitcake! Mmmm," "Chocolate cakes and angel cakes and cakes with lots of spice/layer cakes and (some kind of cake I don't remember) cakes I think are very nice," and, my personal favorite, which was the guys' segment of the song, "Peanuts and walnuts and hazel NUTS/Almonds and all other crazel NUTS." You can only imagine the hand gestures the guys made up to accompany these lyrics. We were always convinced that our choir teacher, Miss Kelstrom, had made up this song, but Shannon recently saw another choir perform it somewhere else so apparently it is a real song. And that's your Whiskey Tango Yuletide Story of the Day!

Some local news and notes. . .I saw my new favorite license plate yesterday. I was driving behind a large Hummer with a license plate reading, "I NEED A," and the word Hummer was located directly below the license plate, so it looked like, "I NEED A Hummer." Hilarious. Also, there is quite a brouhaha (and I love that word) in the Herald News lately over the possibility of Hooters in J-town. Monday's Open Line featured comments from readers who have no problem with Hooters becoming a part of the City of Champions, including one poultry-loving pundit:

Make wings, not love
So, this is in response to the articles about Hooters coming to Joliet. I think that's a wonderful idea. I don't think it's going to do anything to our young ladies in this area except provide them employment. How can you connote sex with just some of the most wonderful chicken wings I've ever seen? Joliet

Are we just looking at the wings, or eating them too? I really like that headline. Maybe it can be a new slogan for Hooters. In "funny ways people find my website" news, someone from the Navy found my site while looking for "Ruby Tuesday's Honey Mustard Sauce." Apparently the Navy is looking for some condiments to spice up their food.

Last week I did something I hadn't done in years: I went to Samy's two nights in a row. Even though I do go to the bars in Joliet on a very frequent basis, I really don't want to be considered a "regular" at any particular place. That is, unless it gets me free drinks. Then it's all good. Anyway, I was set to spend an evening watching Ryan & Trista's wedding (if you gave me all that money, I would have the most beautiful wedding ever, not the crapfest that they had. I guess we call that "beer taste on a champagne budget.") until I received word that my friends were heading to a Battle of the Bands at Samy's. I went out in the cold winter's night (in my new puffy white coat that I refuse to wear into the bars, my coat's going to stay white, pneumonia or no pneumonia! Currently, no pneumonia, if you were worried) and headed to Samy's for a night of . . .loudness. Seriously, it was so loud in Samy's I could barely hear. I felt like I'd aged twenty years, it's unusual that something is too loud for me. We only stayed for the first band, whose music seemed like a decent combo of Lifehouse with Creed and/or Bush (we nicknamed them "Creedhouse"). I didn't realize until later that I had seen them before during my one and only trip to the Uptown Tap in downtown Plainfield (Uptown in downtown? Things that make you go hmm). After the first band played, the concept of my ears bleeding seemed to be coming close to reality, so we headed out before the other bands could duke it out.

Thursday night was Samy's again for another night of entertainment, this time at a humanly acceptable decibel level. Samy's was even more crowded than usual, luckily there was no line (and for me, no cover, as everyone by the door seemed distracted by some girl balling out her boyfriend). They played "Milkshake," and some random dude felt the need to sing it to me as he danced. Having a guy sing to you, "My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard," is just a little strange. People are strange, when you're a stranger. . . They also played the Coolio classic "Sumpin' New," and I was very excited when other dancers started copying our mad styles during the "Gotta gotta get up to get down" portion of the song. We had an amusing encounter with a bald lad we'd met before. Both of our encounters with "Bald Bull" have involved him coming up to our group of girls and offering us free beer if we will go talk to his friends. The first time this happened resulted in my chatting with the self-proclaimed redneck I mentioned on 11/25. We looked at the guys that Bald Bull was encouraging us to befriend and realized that they were different dudes from the first week. I wondered if Bald Bull was just a pimp, and Kelly remarked that perhaps he was like the "All Time Twirler" in jump rope, a thankless role that is still necessary to keep the game moving. For some reason a fashion trend for the evening was spaghetti strapped tops and other garments a little more appropriate for summer than a December night at the bar. Such fashion faux pas were spotted on many girls, including one who appeared pregnant. There are just too many things wrong with that statement. Jennifer Love was up to her usual tricks, and while most of my friends agree that she strongly resembles JLH, "O.J." had his first sighting and did not feel the same. "O.J.," it's time to go to the optometrist. JLH and her pals kind of remind me of a "Bizarro" version of my friends and I. Like my friends and I, they're usually smiling, dancing, and are rarely seen without each other. These similarities make me wonder if we should maybe make friends with them. However, our groups differ in the subjects of wearing sandals in winter (they do, we don't), dancing on the bar while wearing skirts (they do, we don't) and grinding on each other (they do, we don't). Perhaps our differences are just too great for us to join forces. Oh well. . . Speaking of girl on girl dancing, another strange trend involved girls who, once they got sick of grinding on each other, started humping the wall. Hopefully this trend isn't widespread, I know that some guys are turned on by "girl on girl," but I can't imagine "girl on wall" has the same effect, except maybe for the wall.

My weekend was relatively low key. I saw Elf on Friday and I'm putting it at 3, 3 1/2 stars on my ratings scale. I don't want to give anything away but I really loved it, mostly because I love Will Ferrell and just seeing his crazy facial expressions make me laugh my ass off. My other weekend discovery is that the Starbucks at Barnes and Noble is involved in a conspiracy. Though they don't have caramel apple cider on the menu, they will make it for you when you ask for it. What's up with that? I don't think it's any harder to make than any of the other drinks, so why are we being so secretive, Barnes and Noble Starbucks? Also interesting: the package for the Chai mix they sell at Barnes and Noble says you can make it in a fire pit. That sounds like the most yuppie (and un-Joliet) bonfire ever. Well that's all for now, going to see the new Lord of the Rings tonight, hurray. Adios!