Emily and the Mystery of the Blue Drink

I apologize for frightening anyone with the picture of Tammy Faye Bakker Mesner, but I'm very excited that I now know how to put pictures on my website. I still don't know how to put my own pictures on here (or if I can do it on this server), but I can at least take pictures from the internet and put them on here. Many thanks to my old pal Laz for helping me out! Speaking of Tammy Faye, The Surreal Life is comic gold. I have to tape it while I watch Alias (one of the few non-trashy shows I watch, but more on that later), but seeing porn star Ron Jeremy (who I talked to on the phone a few times when I was working for Kid Rock, my response to my boss after answering the phone was, "Is this the Ron Jeremy, as in 'I'm hornier than Ron Jeremy'?") live in harmony with the queen of mascara and of course, former Tuckaway Tavern performer Vanilla Ice, is awesome. I think they rerun it on Mondays so check it out.

Ok, Herald News stuff. Friday's paper had a good response to the "No More Chocolate" lady in the Open Line:

Not the end
I'm calling to tell the lady who said that she's a chocoholic and will never eat chocolate again because of Fannie May closing their place. Don't you know we have a Joliet-owned Dan's candy right here in Joliet who has wonderful chocolate far superior to Fannie May? Why don't you go over there and give it a try? Joliet

Good point, I would also suggest World's Finest Chocolate. I have no idea if that's locally made, but I'll be damned if those $1 bars w/almonds aren't indeed the "World's Finest." Note: I went to Fannie May in Fox Valley over the weekend and a fellow customer asked the employee why they were closing, thinking it was only this particular branch of Fannie May that was shutting its doors. Get thee to a newspaper, woman.

I was also amused by a couple brief blurbs. A robbery occurred in which one of the crooks was a male who had "apparently skipped shaving that day." Crimestoppers, please look out for stubble. Also amusing was a note in the sports section that some basketball player had made an "oral commitment" to the basketball program at University of Illinois. I don't know if that's the typical term used, but it just sounds like something in which Monica Lewinsky would be involved.

And for some Jackhammer news: the team will have a new mascot to accompany Jammer in his adventures:
Champ, the Yellow Lab. Apparently Champ "will carry a basket of new baseballs to the home plate umpire and one day be able to retrieve the bat from home plate and then bring it back to the dugout. At the end of a JackHammers win, Champ will take a victory lap by circling the bases." This is going to be awesome. I would be very amused if he relieved himself on Jammer. I just hope that they keep the Jammermobile in the Jammergarage when Champ's doing his stuff.

In local news, Thursday night was epic in proportion. Wendy and I arrived at Samy's around 10:15-ish to a long line. We got in line and waited in the frigid cold for a while as the line slowly crept forward. Eventually Melanie's brother Adam came up and accompanied us in line. He mentioned that he knew a bouncer and thought he could get past the line, and debated doing so. Eventually he decided to work his mojo and we told us to get us in with him. Adam disappeared into the crowd and apparently got into the bar, but did NOT get us in with him, evil bastard. The line grew longer, and we made it into the glass partition, but we still were not in the bar. A couple guys in front of us were able to get in through some kind of connection, and told us to come with them and say we were with some mystery person, but we couldn't hear the name so this was impossible. Time crept on. . .I grew more disgusted with myself for waiting this long for Samy's. . .eventually we were up against the door to the bar, among the next few people to be let in. Suddenly someone on the inside informed us that the word on the street (actually, word in the bar) was that they were filled to capacity and not letting anyone in till midnight. Note: at this time it was 10:45. As the 411 was not coming from a Samy's employee, we decided it couldn't be true, but soon a bouncer came out and confirmed the dreaded news. Our options were a. Keep waiting, or b. Go somewhere else nearby and stay there or just go there till midnight and then come back to Samy's. As it was too cold, boring, and long to wait, we decided to go to Grapevine and hang out there for a bit. As we exited the line we spotted our friend Aaron further back, and he too decided to abandon the line and accompany us to the Vine. When we entered Grapevine it was quickly apparent that our stay there would be a short one: there was a woman up at the podium singing Christian karaoke, and the clientele was sparse. However, our options were limited (I really wish Barnes and Noble was open till midnight), so we sucked it up and stayed to watch more people butcher LeAnn Rimes songs, "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," and other "classics." Somewhere in the midst of this musical mayhem a minor scuffle broke out. The man involved had very amusing facial expressions and it was hard to stifle our laughter. Eventually the man noticed this and began to give Aaron a variation of the Joe Pesci Goodfellas speech, asking if he found something funny. Aaron's answer of "Yeah, a little bit" luckily did not drive Fightin' Frank to distraction. At that point it was about 11:45 and after some free popcorn, we decided it was time to head back to Samy's. Luckily we got in without a problem and proceeded to have a fun night. The quest began to solve the mystery of the Blue Drink. The mystery of the Blue Drink started one night at Samy's when a friend of Wendy's got her a blue drink. We don't know what this blue drink consisted of, but it was delicious berry goodness, much like Berry Blue Kool-Aid. Ever since then we have discussed the blue drink, but haven't been able to decipher what was in it. All we know was that someone had referred to it as the "Laura Special," after the bartender that created it. We decided that it was time to order the blue drink for ourselves. We weren't sure what bartender was Laura, and the bartender who came over was one of the ones we didn't think was Laura, but we figured she would probably still know about the Blue Drink. Lesson learned: there is more than one blue drink. This drink did not taste so much as berry goodness as it tasted like alcohol. It tasted like something I had had before, and I think it had blue curacao in it. I noticed at the bar there was another blue liquor, Hypnotiq, which I had heard of due to its hip-hop popularity, so I thought that might be the key ingredient. However, one blue drink was enough for the night so it was time for dancing and other fun. Unfortunately, the Thursday DJ still did not have "Toxic" but he promised to have it soon. JLH: still MIA, but All Time Twirler was at his usual table. Other adventures included meeting a Canadian golfer, and a guy named Sean who kept asking me if I liked pink shirts. His shirt was not pink, from what I could tell, so I didn't understand the question, but ok. All in all an eventful evening.

Friday evening, after dinner at Red Lobster, Courtney, her mom and I convinced my mom to break a 19 year boycott: we took her to a movie at a movie theater. As she had not been to a movie since Witness, this was a major event. This was not an active boycott, more of a passive one out of no real desire to see a movie before it arrived on video or cable. However, we picked the wrong movie to break the tradition with: Along Came Polly. Admittedly, the moms wanted to see Calendar Girls while we watched the aforementioned Ben Stiller movie, but confusion as to what was at what theater led to them joining us for our movie. A synopsis of Along Came Polly: everything funny (except one part) is in the trailer. Usually I can find something else redeeming, but it was one of those movies that's kind of just there. Not terribly bad, not super good, just kind of blah. If it were a food, I would compare it to a dinner roll. I'll give it a rating of 2 stars.

Saturday night was another night at Samy's, and I was out to solve the Mystery of the Blue Drink once and for all. I went to the bar and saw the bartender that we thought was Laura. Unfortunately, before she came over another bartender came by and I ordered the blue drink. This did not go well--it was the same blue drink as on Thursday. Again, I noticed that she put blue curacao in the drink. Would the mystery ever be solved? Later in the evening, I decided to make one last try. This time, Laura waited on me, and I decided to ask her for the blue drink with Hypnotiq in it, thinking I might be right this time. She named a couple blue drinks with Hypnotiq, and I decided to try it mixed with lemonade. This was much better than the other blue drink, but again no deal. Finally, before we left, I went up to the bar and asked Laura about the blue drink special. She explained what was in it, and I think she said it was called a Blue Angel, but it was really hard to hear. Apparently it has blue curacao (I was wrong!) and other things, including something raspberry. Perhaps next time I go to Samy's I will try this out and see if it is indeed "The Blue Drink."

Samy's was pretty hopping on Saturday and there was a lot of entertainment. It's just nice to know of a place in Joliet that typically does not suck on weekends. T-shirt winner of the night was a shirt that said, "Directions to my party" with an arrow pointing downward, and pick up line winner of the night came from a lanky lad named Bob, who, when I told him I was going into teaching, said, "We need more hot teachers." I guess we can guess what Bob's favorite Van Halen song is.

Sunday I went to Fox Valley with my mom, and had some interesting sightings. When we made our stop at Fannie May, we had to walk by the mall arcade, Tilt. There was quite a crowd gathered at Tilt, and I quickly noticed it was because of people playing DDR. Among the players included a man in a red fedora and a long black trenchcoat that he dramatically draped over the back of the machine. I would have thought that his wacky style would imply that he was really good at DDR, but that was not the case. I probably could have whupped him, but it's not my style to enter in mall arcade dance-offs, it's my style to laugh at them. Dance-off note: we got a preview before Along Came Polly for some new teen movie with the girl from Freaky Friday in which she has a DDR danceoff with her rival, I can't wait!) However, it was hilarious to see the crowd that these people drew. Also at Fox Valley: I stopped in at Hollister (in SAT terms, Hollister is to Abercrombie as Old Navy is to Gap). When I took a gander at the T-shirts with slogans table, I was extremely disturbed by one of the options. What was this tasteless tee?




This is just wrong. What are we implying here? A. I'm underage but we can pretend? B. I'm older but I'm pretending to be younger? C. I'm really 18 (and thus no longer jailbait?) Anyway you slice it, that's just nasty. However, they were playing the Rooney CD, which I'm obsessed with, over the loudspeakers, so it wasn't all bad.

In school news. . . I continue to be frightened of the backpacks on wheels. My friend
Patrick delves into the topic on his website. Today I found it confusing that I saw a man, larger than me, rolling a backpack, smaller than my backpack, on wheels. Why oh why?

And in TV news, I continue to be the biggest watcher of crap TV ever. Yes I do watch some quality shows (Alias, 24), but I love reality TV way more than anyone should, and I'm really liking The Apprentice, the Donald Trump reality show. As for TV tonight, the State of the Union Address is on. Need a way to spice it up a bit? Check out Tim Placher's column from the Daily Southtown on the State of the Union Address Drinking Game. My favorite part? "If the president says nukular, sip one more." Adios!