Well it’s 10:30am on Thursday 26th June and I’ve just gotten on the smallest plane i’ve ever been on in my life. Death is the one thing that immediately springs to mind on alighting.. and considering my conversation last night over deep dish pizza (yes I ate it twice, it’s that good) about how dying from a plane crash wouldn’t be that bad.. I hope that the powers that be don’t decide to play the irony card and send this tin can crashing into the Missisippi.
I am leaving Chicago – Chicago – Chicago. What a goddamn amazing town. It’s smacked me in the head with the whooomp of a padded bar – similar to the Gladiator show – and I’d love to say that I was expecting it to be that fantastic.. but really – I had no idea. It doesn’t plug into my viscera quite the same way as New York – which is the equivalent (i’d imagine) of whacking some crack – but it is a divine, comfortable, cozy feeling. Which now that I think of it, is probably easily explained.. but lets move on. What was the analogy I used the other day? Ah yes – like receiving a free cd with a magazine, and upon listening realising it’s really cool and and keeping it on high ipod rotation forever onwards.
What have I been up to? Well – I’ve been away from WiFi for one.. and hanging out in a lovely apartment in the south of the city with Tim the 5 String Electric Bass Player and his diminutive but charming flatmate Paul who is off to join something called Americore – which is either peacekeeping or porn.. or both. Paul is an obsessive compulsive cycling drummer who sleeps on the floor in a sleeping bag. Both facts indicate a possible predetermination to psychotic behaviour later in life – or a large financial investment in chiropractic medicine. However, I do jest, as I found him very sweet and charming – and we share a delicious and gluttonous propensity for peanut butter eaten straight from the jar.
Tim the 5 String Electric Bass Player and Paul live on a fantastical street, with interesting old apartments and empty grassy blocks interspersed with factories. Apparently The Dark Knight was filmed around there.. i definitely picked up the scent of celebrity. It’s urban, like Keith, but that doesn’t stop bunny rabbits having a gay old time in the empty lots and hopping around the streets at night. For some reason the idea of a rabbit in a city is absurd to me.. and very cool.
I’ve been in Chicago since Sunday night – and haven’t done an awful lot of touristy things, and have chosen to watch DVDs, go to the movies and tagging along with native Chicagoans on their errands. It’s been a good period of downtime – as the wedding in Decatur was highly charged with emotion and super busy as I was staying with the beautiful bride’s incredibly effervescent an generous family, and I’ll be subjecting myself to dorm living for the next 8 days or so in Kentucky. The movie I saw on Monday night, is called “The Happening” by M Night Shamalamalama-tinky-winky. I love his other films – The Sixth Sense, The Village, The Lady in The Water, Signs – but this one was a little lacking somewhere along the way. I won’t give away the story – but look forward to discussing opinions of fellow cinema-goers. Of course like my Sex In The City film experience in San Francisco, I was so sucked into the story that when the credits rolled I was plunged into confusion for about 20 mins .. thinking I was at The Jam Factory cinema in Melbourne.. and then being confronted with Chicago! But unlike watching Sex In the City in a strange town after eating a burger the size of my head I didn’t come out of The Happening feeling like a fat, squat, stubbled loser with no fashion sense, no money and no husband.
At the wedding (which was divine, and my most heartfelt love goes out to the new couple as they honeymoon in the Dominican Republic).. I had the good fortune to meet some charming Brits, who have been staying in Chicago as well this week – they fly home tonight I believe. As a final hoorah we all went out last night to watch the fireworks on Navy Pier – which were choreographed to rock and pop music (ACDC was included! I was proud). And had champagne whlist looking out onto Michigan Avenue from the top floor of The Drake Hotel.. the Executive Suite! Very proper. Finished with a late night deep dish pizza at Due’s.. which again expanded over the next 3 hours into an enormous tomato’d corn-meal’d ball of indigestion bringing tears to the eyes of everyone involved. After all this eating my thighs have their own zip code.
Speaking of celebrities earlier.. on Tuesday evening in Lincoln Park a new movie has begun filming – massive trucks and catering and costumes and whatnot – taking over a whole street. I asked a local what was going on and apparently Johnny Depp was there. I’d like to say I saw him – and did suggest to the British Contingent that we take the elevator in a nearby hotel up to the roof to spy on the filming – but was out of luck. Johnny and I will have to get together another time.
The plane has risen to 20,000 ft, and I’m looking out the window at white fluffy clouds floating on a blue sea of sky. Haven’t crashed yet. The clouds look very much like whipped egg white – I’ve taken some photos.. as I continue to write this the plane is approaching a drop off and the view, though so bright i’m wearing my sunglasses, is beautiful! On the other hand, as I’m flying American Eagle, the stewardesses aren’t beautiful, but resemble dessicated and bleached pieces of coral found on a deserted beach – animated and made into a gaggle of dried up old spinsters with trolleys. At least they didn’t spit on me or in my drink.. flying these airlines can be like sitting in the back of a sheep transporting lorry.
Upon arriving at Louisville, Kentucky – pronounced by some Americans as ‘Luhrvelle” – I am going to attempt to a) scare the shit out of myself and b) do something i haven’t done before.. as i’ve had a reasonably lax week on the scary front. I am going to hire a car. YES! Hire a car. And I’m going to not only drive it to my hotel, but drive it to WalMart (should I really let myself loose in a store like that on my own!?) and also attempt at some point to drive down to Mammoth Cave to see the National Park. It’s about an hour and a half south of Louisville. I have never driven in this country before, citing terror and ineptitude as the culprits, but I think at 31 years old I should get over that crap and give it a shot. There are plenty of morons out there operating machinery, I may as well add myself to the mix and spice it up a bit.
I am now at the hotel in Louisville.