You Got Served

Hola. It has officially been a week and a day since I got the wisdom teeth out, and what a busy week it's been! First, let's get in our Wayback Machine and go back to Thursday, June 3. My old pal Jennifer was in town for the week and after a dinner at Cemeno's, we decided to do a walk around the Louis Joliet Mall. Jen was entertained by the influx and outflux of stores in what is now called Westfield Shoppingtown, especially the scary paint your plaster animal store down Sears Way. After walking around for a while, we decided to do the unthinkable: check out the mall arcade and play some Dance Dance Revolution. This mission led me to do something I've never done before at Louis Mall: consult the mall directory. After checking various mall wings and finding no arcade, the directory had to be consulted, and it led us down the sketchy way past Sears to a dark room with neon lights flashing. The arcade was quite an amusing place, and a Dance Dance Revolution master was hard at work stepping to the beats. Jennifer and I marvelled at his expertise, a level at which I don't think either of have the committment (or desire, or loose change) to reach, until suddenly a lanky teen popped up on the dance pad next to him. He placed no coin in the quarter slot, but was able to jump right into the rhythm and mimic the player on his left's moves perfectly. The original master quickly became flustered and was not able to keep up the pace. His ass was handed to him on a platter, and he got served, DDR style. After the dance battle, Jennifer and I realized that we were not cut out for the mall arcade lifestyle and beat a hasty retreat to Marshall Field's.

Later that evening I met up with Melanie at Heroes for a last hurrah before the teeth pulling. It was a relatively uneventful night, though I was amused by people passing out glow sticks (according to noted expert Adam B, "so 2000"), a sign listing an upcoming "Motorcycle Blessing" event (who's the patron saint of motorcycles? St. Harley?), and the high volume of year 2000 dance tunes to accompany the glow sticks, including one of my alltime personal favorites, Darude's "Sandstorm." Though you may not know it by name, this instrumental classic will always hold a special place in my heart. I now have the option of putting audio on my website through my cell phone (oh, the possibilities) and I thought I'd try it out with my rendition of "Sandstorm." I suggest you turn down the volume because it's louder than I expected.

I was blasting it in my car yesterday and felt as though I should have had a black light in my car or one of those neon license plate frames.

Friday was wisdom teeth day. I enjoyed the laughing gas experience very much and was trying hard not to burst out laughing when I heard one of the assistants tell a patient in another room not to "suck on anything." Surprisingly I suffered little of the effects typical to wisdom teeth patients; I barely swelled up at all (no chipmunk cheeks) and didn't have much pain, but the whole "I can't feel the lower part of my face" deal got old when I ate ice cream and couldn't tell that it was dripping down my chin. I wasn't too tired afterward, but assuming that I could crash at anytime, I decided to stay home Friday night. I actually ended up staying up till 2, enjoying one of my all time favorite bad teen movies, Center Stage on DVD. For the uninformed, Center Stage, premiering in theaters in 2000, is the tale of ballet dancers in New York and features. . .pretty much no one famous except for Peter Gallagher, whose eyebrows were kept under better control than they are now on the OC. Highlights of the film: a final ballet sequence based loosely on themes of 90210 (girl torn between nice guy and wild motorcycle man, decides to "choose herself" in the end, very Brandon/Kelly/Dylan), and dance sequences set to the music of Jamiroquai, Michael "Jefferson" Jackson, and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Saturday I got up early to go to the noon showing of Harry Potter with my brother and my neighbors Jack, Maggie and Grace. Prisoner of Azkaban was the best so far, which makes sense because the books definitely got better later in the series. They did an awesome job on the dementors especially. My only problem was the preview for Garfield. That movie looks messed up, and why does it have to include JLH? I also don't understand why Garfield is computer generated but Odie is a real dog.

After the movie, some lounging, and dinner, it was time to make plans for the evening. As I couldn't drink due to antibiotics and pain pills, it was time to think back to the pre-legal days and remember what we used to do for fun in the summer. Where did we head? Haunted Trails. Haunted Trails is becoming progressively more sketchy as time goes on, because while the race tracks are improving, it feels like the arcades are in The Land that Time Forgot, especially the "Nickel Arcade." I was very sad to see that my favorite machine in the main room, located not too far from "Charmin' Charlie's," (which features that very special kind of pizza where you need to top it with a paper napkin to get rid of the excess grease), no longer existed. This special machine consisted of a chair and some grips for your hands. You would sit in the chair and it would "shock" you, and you'd get more tickets the longer you held on, and was an easy way to get a lot of tickets. Anyway, our main purpose of the trek to the trails was to ride the Go-Karts, and we went on their newest track, "The Bullitt." The racers were myself, Nancy, Aaron, Courtney, Rob, a wife beater wearing, preteen Eminem lookalike, and his friend. The ride was a lot of fun, except that Eminem boy seemed to think he was in Mario Kart and kept cutting us off and speeding between us. I wish I'd had some red shells to throw at him. His friend seemed more content to wipe out repeatedly. When we finished our ride, Li'l Eminem began trash-talking, telling us that we'd all been beaten by a "sixth grade white boy." Seeing as we were all white, we were unsure of why race had entered the equation, but we conceded our defeat and headed out for greener pastures. While bowling was contemplated, our lack of socks put the kibosh on that one, so we decided to rent a movie. The selected movie? You Got Served. The movie, which consists of Los Angeles teens competing in dance battles, was short on plot (and acting skills: the main female character said the line, "Your boy is tripping" and actually enunciated the "g" at the end of tripping) but high on action, dancing, and potential for comedy. The best dance moves were a guy who did a back flip from a sitting position, and a move where a guy put his finger near the crotch region of a female dancer, then ran the finger along the noses of his dancing gang, who all proceeded to fall over. I read online that You Got Served 2 will soon be in production, and I can hardly wait. Note: on last night's MTV Movie Awards, teen sensation Lindsay Lohan proceeded to do a dance routine with the cast of You Got Served and looked as idiotic as can be expected; her facial expressions were especially classic.

Sunday I relaxed during the day and watched the disappointing Sopranos finale. Afterward Nancy, Aaron, Mike and I went to Heroes for a little bit where I enjoyed one of their big ass Cokes in a big red cup. I had never been to Heroes on a Sunday night, and it was fairly deserted as can be expected, and seemed so much cleaner than usual without the usual Thursday night crowd. Also, the outdoor area seemed huge without so many people. It's amazing how a place can differ between nights.

Monday night I attended my first Jackhammers game of the season with Melanie, Nancy, and Aaron. Thanks to Lockwood Furnace for the seats! It was so nice to be back at the stadium, and things hadn't changed too much. I had my usual chicken sandwich, Jammer was thrusting and grinding as usual (he should put that pelvis away before someone gets hurt), and children were running around with the remnants of Blue Jammer Juice around their mouths. There are few things more frightening than the Jammer Juice. Also frightening was an incident that occurred later in the game. We were seated behind home plate and right near the opposing team's (the T-Bones!) dugout. A couple of scantily clad girls, old enough to drink but apparently not old enough to know better, sauntered down the stairs and engaged in conversation with the adolescent bat boys. One of the girls gave a piece of paper to one of the bat boys, and a few minutes later, he gave it to the one of the players. What was on it? A phone number? A hotel room number? A detailed breakdown of the "signals" used by the Jackhammers? I don't know, but later on the baseball bunnies came back and perched themselves on the stairs closest to the dugout, and the coach or manager of the T-Bones gave them an evil eye, most likely for distracting his team from the game. They must have done a good job because the Jackhammers were victorious (and much like my Boy Blue in Old School, GLORIOUS!)

After the game I headed to Heroes to hang out with Nancy, Aaron, Mike, Rob, and Angie. Monday night at Heroes had a much better crowd, and my giant Cokes were on the house! I love teetotaling, it's cheap! We went outside because the guys wanted to play bean bags, but were thwarted when a crew of Southerners did not want to give up their claim on the bags or integrate our friends into their games. The Southerners were quite entertaining though, though much of what they said was unintelligible. We learned all about chivalry in the South. After Heroes closed, some of us headed to Larsen's, where I enjoyed yet another free Coke, and Angie enjoyed the Larsen's plastic mug in which it came. Good times.

I didn't do much else until Thursday, when we headed to Heroes again. Wendy and I got there early to eat and managed to accidentaly avert the line of people waiting for a table and snag one on our own. We were worried we might not "get served," but luckily, we got served. As usual an entertaining time was had, and the night began with a lot of old songs, including the "Mr. Vain" song, always a classic. We were entertained by many a bargoer's new dance moves, including a couple of guys playing air drums for "Pour Some Sugar on Me," and another creative man pretending to "pour sugar" on various people on the dance floor. He looked like he was pouring sugar from a salt shaker, so maybe he was just preparing for the "Shake It Like a Salt Shaker" song. I was able to avoid a brief altercation with an angry girl who thought I had called someone a "piece of shit" (I'm really unsure of what she heard me say, at the time I was anywhere near her I was telling an acquaintance about how I got my wisdom teeth out), but once I told her it wasn't the case she and her equally angry looking friend left me alone, so there was no throwdown. Afterward we headed to the Truck Stop, where I got my first Potato Mountain of the year, and it was fabulous as always.

Last night I just went out to dinner at Dragon Light, where I spotted my new favorite horrible t-shirt: "Yeah I know Jack Shit. . .met him in Tennessee"
This shirt is similar,



but Market Street Mercantile has several fabulous finds, including this winner:



Other than that, there's been some odd incidents in the Herald News lately. There's apparently a man known as "The Boston Flasher" that's been exposing himself around town lately. I love that he has a nickname, I wonder if he answers to it. Then there's this one:

Indecent disposal
JOLIET — An employee of a downtown tavern spotted a man defecating on the sidewalk outside the bar Tuesday, police said. The employee alerted one of the owner's of McBrody's Bar and Grill and the owner contacted police about the incident. The employee reportedly spotted the man squatting with his pants down about 12:30 p.m. When the squatter noticed him watching, he pulled his pants up and "left hurriedly," police said.

Apparently the Predatory Pooper couldn't crap in that one lady's house anymore because she called the police the last time he came over, so he decided to take it to the streets. However, it was a smart move for him to pull up his pants before leaving "hurriedly," because otherwise he could be a suspect for the Boston Flasher.