Zenpundit has tagged me to play the “8 random facts” game.
“Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged”
Now for the random facts regarding me:
8. One of the greatest moments of my life was the day I brought Starship Troopers home from the library, and sat in the backyard of my parents’ house and read the whole thing in one sitting. It was the summer between sixth and seventh grade, an otherwise utterly miserable time.
7. My favorite male singer is Merle Haggard.
6. My favorite female singer is Lisa Marr.
5. My favorite dish at Valois Restaurant in Hyde Park, 53rd and Lake Park, is the short ribs, available only on Saturday. A side of cole slaw is good with it. There are too few places to get short ribs these days. My mother made them very well.
4. I met Rod Blagojevich when he was running for state senator, a long time ago, and had a chance to see him in action up close, and I was surprised to realize he was a person of obviously subnormal intelligence. If you told me he’d be governor some day I would have burst out laughing.
3. I have noticed as I get older that the proportion of women in the population who look pretty to me is increasing. At this rate, sometime around age 70 all it will take is being an adult human female, probably. No one told me this would happen and I find it odd, but there it is.
2. Back when I was in a rock band, we played at Jimmy’s, Club Dreamerz, Batteries not Included, Phyllis’s Musical Inn, the Czar Bar, and a bunch of other places. We never made it to Metro. The best place of all to play was Weeds. There was something magic about that place.
1. I own well over a thousand books I have not read yet. Maybe two thousand. As my financial means increases (it has ups and downs, but the trend has been generally upward until recently) the time available to read has declined in a major way. This depresses me.
I tag the first eight people who respond in the comments field. That is probably cheating, but what the Hell.
5. No, no, no. The roast chicken.
P.S. I’m not going to play. You can post in my name and make stuff up if you want.
The roast chicken is awfully good. But you can get it the other six days.
Eight facts about Jonathan.
1. He [deleted]
2. He [deleted]
3. He [deleted]
4. He [deleted]
5. He [deleted]
6. This [deleted]
7. He will go out of his way to get good pita.
8. He will go out of his way to get good feta.
9. He [deleted]
10. He [deleted]
That is pretty much all true, I think.
[Dude. Thanks, but… JG]
I’ll play. By the way, do you have to rent one of those storage things for all of those books or did you have to build a library annex onto your house? I have about fifty or so I haven’t read and feel bad about that – but a thousand? Whoa.
Dan: The entire ground floor is all book cases.
Jonathan, you are probably wise to retain an air of mystery.
Air of mystery already has cracked: we know with certainty at least one fact, that Jonathan owns a camera.
Flood of information will stream out any minute now.
Well I’ll be. I found a shot of the foyer of Lex’s house in my camera that I forgot to download a long time ago.
cannot believe you would plump for the short ribs over valois’s meatloaf with spanish gravy …. or the chicken pot pie … the ribs, yeah, pretty good … but then again, haven’t been back since they put up their “new sign” 8-10 years ago
hi Lex,
Kudos on the quick response!
Our governor lives in my sister and brother-in-law’s neighborhood and he has been often seen running past their front window, performing his exercise routine. While they have never spoken to Gov. Blagojevich, it was strongly implied in their description that he ran like a girl.
Looks like I’m tagged, then. My response will be at http://www.xanga.com/LotharBot shortly.
Meatloaf on some other night, but the short ribs on Saturday, Carl. The old Brokers Inn had meatloaf with Creole sauce, which Jonathan will recall. The chicken pot pie was good, but they used their biscuit batter for the crust, and it was too sweet — or so I say. The chopped steak with browned onions on top was pretty darn good, too. Most days, though, it was roast beef au jus and boiled potatoes.
Carl, let’s face it, man, you have to come back to Chicago to hear those magic words which mean so much to all of us ChicagoBoyz:
“What kind of potatoes, my friend?”
And why is there no picture of Spiro on top of the blog?
Here is a nice review for the unitiated. Here’s another.
Carl, dude, why are we fighting? The meatloaf is beautiful way of showing love, and so are the short ribs.
It is LONG past time for you to return to Chicago and hit the used book store, then, hunger whetted from the labor of lifting those bags of heavy tomes, to once again hear those magic words that mean so much to all of us:
“what kind of potatoes, my friend?”
(The real question: Why no picture of Spiro on the masthead?)
you are absolutely right; Valois is an embarassment of riches that defies absolutist, rigid orthodoxies and/or ideological preferences … and those words “what kind of potatoes my friend” stir many pleasant memories and still have a mighty resonance …. and miss the bookstores … big time …. will have to work on this bc a return to Chicago is indeed way overdue…
no. 8 for me would be: once had a beer with Paul Wolfowitz (he struck me as a “I’ll have a pint to show them I’m a sport” type of drinker) long before he was UNSECDEF. Even then he had the unsettling look of someone expecting a personal sneak attack; distracting to say the least.
The official link for my responses: http://www.xanga.com/LotharBot/601477235/tagged-sorta.html
Dan, that is actually the East Wing, with a mirror-image West Wing behind the photographer. The “foyer” is a misnomer for the old sun porch around back, which is an octagonal room, windows on four sides, looking out onto the collonaded porch, two of the other walls are book cases. The “great room” has a cathedral ceiling, with ladders to reach the top shelves,which are ten feet off the floor. Some smaller rooms on the ground floor, other than the kitchen, also are book-lined.
Re: Spiro
I have the photo. I need to figure out how to rotate the photos on the masthead (i.e., a new batch of five or ten images, selected randomly from our vast gallery of Chicagoboyz, gets served up whenever you refresh). I’m sure it’s easy to do this if you know what you’re doing. Anybody have a suggestion for a simple way to do this in WordPress?
If anyone were to tag me with something like this, I would tell the most extravagant oriental fables my imagination could supply. I hope you took full advantage of this opportunity, Lex. You are an officer of the court; I would expect no less.
“some smaller rooms…are book-lined”
You should fire the architect who told you books are an excellent insulation, Lex.
[think of all those poor trees, cut for your folly!]
At this rate, sometime around age 70 all it will take is being an adult human female, probably.
There is a Russian proverb along these lines, something about you are getting old when all (young) women look pretty. I don’t remember the exact wording, but it was told me when I made the same observation as you to a Russian emigrant.