Gaper's Blog

GWHS Class of 1988 Reunion Recap

If you were to ask ten different people about their high school experience, you'll likely get ten wildly different responses ranging from abject horror to wistful nostalgia.  For some, high school was the pinnacle of their lives, others got through fine but peaked later in life and others still look back on high school the way someone might recall a stint in prison or fighting in a war.  In my case, I made some lifelong friends, had some truly unforgettable life-shaping moments but of course, there was that awkwardness that is adolescence which doesn't spare many.  There were some bad haircuts and questionable fashion choices but I turned out just fine and lean towards wistful nostalgia.  What certainly colored my experience was the school itself, Glenbard West is still (bias aside) one of the most gorgeous public high schools I've ever seen.  Along with a few hundred of my classmates, we spent last weekend commemorating 20 years since graduation.

The first of two gatherings for the reunion was held at a bar/restaurant called The Bank in Wheaton on Friday night. The irony is that when we graduated from high school, you couldn't even buy liquor in Wheaton, let alone drink it freely in a bar, so hats off to Wheaton for shaking off a bit of their austere past. Originally, Carla agreed to go to both nights of the reunion but reconsidered and chose to go Friday only--wise choice.  Thankfully Jeff W's wife Vanessa was a familiar face to keep Carla company, some of my fellow classmates also spent time getting to know her as well.  She was a good sport and said she had a good time and also admitted she would've done the same thing which is but one of the reasons I married her.  It's not like I abandoned her but I was all over the place catching up with people, some of whom I hadn't seen in 20 years, it was after all, a reunion.  Round midnight, we called it a night which was probably for the best because it kept me from getting into the trouble of staying out 'til 4AM, like some of my friends did.

Among the 4AM crowd were my Grandma Sally's breakfast companions, Kent and Jeff, who made it out by 11AM Saturday morning, not bad.  Following the requisite greasy (but delicious) meal, we took a self-guided tour of the high school, which for me was my first time back in 1o-12 years.  A lot changed but some remained remarkably the same.  The one mistake we made in taking this tour was the long haul up to the sixth floor to where our beloved radio station used to be.  Instead of the studios and office with the highest and best vantage point in town, it had been converted to mere classrooms with no vestigial evidence of what was there before.  So sad.  Also odd was the former 'Girl's Gym' which was host to all of our high school dances had been converted to a library following the $12 million (!) addition to the main gymnasium, which was stunning.  We managed to squeeze in a quick trip to our pal Steve's for a Bloody Mary before the varsity Homecoming football game.  The game ended up being a rout, West won 69-13.  Hell, the halftime score was 69-7, they must've put in a Pop Warner team for the second half.

Jeff R. and I dropped Kent off after the game and went over to the Doubletree Suites in Downer's Grove to check in to the suite and rest up before the reunion proper, which was being held seven floors below.  With this event being the third gathering of the weekend, there were people who were making their first appearance of the weekend.  Some people only went to The Bank event on Friday, a few only went to the game and a few more still only came to the official reunion event, so the were new faces to catch up at every stop.  Since Jeff made the 10,000 mile trek from Singapore, Kent, Jeff and I were "In for a penny, in for a pound", and took part in everything which was great because we got to spend time with a considerable portion of our classmates.  We didn't all get to see everyone but I bet between the three of us, we did.  I'll admit I was a bit dubious when I heard the food would be a 'hearty buffet' but it was actually much better than most wedding food I've had.  The cash bar was a bit steep for the suburbs but not too bad, still cheaper than The Bank.  After dinner there was much drinking, reminiscing and even dancing, which if I was dancing definitely means there was alcohol.  Considering we're all pushing 40 and a lot of us are parents, there was a considerable amount of general debauchery, which impressed me.  As the official reunion wound down around the Midnight hour, we got a nice group of nearly a dozen close friends (including 4 of the original 5 Rational Actors) and went back up to the suite for some wine and more catching up, which finally ended around 3AM. Bedtime.

The only drag was when I woke up around noon, I realized my car key was missing.  I looked everywhere in the hotel suite and checked with the front desk lost-and-found--to no avail--so Carla had to come out to the hotel with the spare key.

There are tons of additional photos for anyone interested on Facebook on our various pages (Kent, Jeff, Me, et al) and I'll try to get some up here as well.  All in all, it was an amazing weekend spent with people I wish I saw more often, some I see just about enough of and some I'll likely never see again, for better or worse.  Oh, and I promise, this will be the last of my spate of recent reunion-themed posts.

The Unheard Music (Volume LII)

In the spirit of this weekend's GWHS Class of 1988 Reunion, I thought I'd be a little self-indulgent and feature a band I used to be in for this week's installment of The Unheard Music:  Rational Actors; Jeff R., Jeff W., Jason M., Andy T., and me.  We chose a semi-pretentious name gleaned from Economics class and made music that drew heavily from our influences, Joy Division and R.E.M.  We even once played a gig as "Warsaw" playing an entire 45 minute set of nothing but Joy Division songs.  While we did have a set of original material, covers were also quite important as it was all most of our friends would recognize.  I remember getting an advance copy of R.E.M.'s Document album and we listened to it, picked out two or three songs from it to learn for the next week's gig, so when the album came out and eveyrone bought it we'd impress them by already having a few of those songs in our repitoire.  We were dorks like that.  Problem was, we shared a practice space with another band--Laissez Faire--and sometimes they would hear us rehearsing new covers and since they often played before us, they could beat us to the punch by playing 'our' covers before we took the stage.

We tried the quintet thing for awhile then pared it down to a quartet.  Circa 1987, we recorded a few songs in Jason's basement.  We only had three microphones, so we used speaker cabinets as microphones for the drums.  It actually sounded alright. I'm not proud of much from that era but "Sticks and Splinters" was funny and sonically had some merit.  I think we sold like 75 cassettes, that was Aluminum (versus Gold or Platinum) for us.  We were asked to play a Glenbard Pep Rally but oddly were asked to not play anything that would get people excited or riled up, they were afraid the bleachers would collapse if everyone danced.  I remember playing The Clash song "Should I Stay or Should I Go", "Louie Louie" and another song that escapes me.  Someone else might remember.  People did get excited and danced but the bleachers survived.

Our Senior year, we decided to forgo the traditional Spring Break trip to South Padre or Daytona Beach and instead traveled to my parents' cabin in Northern Wisconsin in essentially the dead of winter to record another 'album'.  It was a fruitful trip as we recorded 12 songs that made it onto cassette.  It was cold and dark all week.  We recorded by day and mixed at night and then played various drinking games after mixing the record at night.  From those sessions came "We Mean Little" and "Folding (Version)" and our stab at punk, "Here The Ball Is".  We gigged a fair amount but only within the greater Glen Ellyn area, friends BBQ's, birthday parties and our fair share of Kool Aids.  If you don't know what a 'Kool Aid' is, ask someone from Glen Ellyn (or ask me).  Sadly, we never did a proper show at an actual music club, it would've been cool to play Caberet Metro or Lounge Ax but alas, that didn't happen. 

After graduating high school, the four of us went to three different colleges in three states but since both Jeffs went to the same college, some of those Rational Actors songs survived for awhile in a new band they started in Champaign.  Oddly enough, I didn't even get to play with the band for our final and arguably most high-profile gig: Glenstock, I think I was out of town.  While the band fizzled out circa 1989, we've all remained close friends, though the last time we were all in the same place at the same time was at my wedding in 2002.  Maybe someday we'll all be in the same place at the same time again and have one last jam, but I'm not holding my breath. If you are interested in downloading any of our other material, visit this site and go nuts.

Have a great weekend, enjoy the music.  I'll see some of you over the weekend. 

Man, It's Been Twenty Years.

As if I wasn't feeling old enough already, I was flying with a pilot last week who in the course of our conversation revealed he was born the same week I graduated from high school: June 1988.  I literally have at least one pair of boots and a t-shirt or two older than him.  A bit of perspective though, the next day I flew with a pilot who told me he was loooking forward to his high school reunion, his 40th.  I was -2 years old when he graduated, I suddenly felt better.

I attended my 10 Year Reunion and had a blast.  What made it so much fun was that even ten years ago, e-mail was still a relatively new phenomenon, so I was only really in touch with a few dozen old high school classmates, there were plenty of surprises.  The weekend was filled with the usual revelations, some of us got fat (present company included) some of us lost our hair (thankfully, not me) and some former wallflowers became hotties.  We all aged, just some more gracefully than others.  We took away from the weekend a shiny new booklet with all our new contact information and promised to keep in touch, which we did for a few months.

When 2008 arrived, I began thinking about my 20 Year Reunion and how much had changed and how great it would be to see all those people from last time and hopefully others who didn't make the 10 Year reunion.  As spring began, we started getting information about the impending reunion and word began trickling in about who was going to make it and who wasn't. I was getting psyched.  Then Facebook exploded.  I was either soliciting or confirming 'friendship' from fellow Hilltoppers nearly everyday.  It was like a virtual reunion before the actual live event.  At first I wondered if perhaps the Facebook reunion would take a bit of the novelty out of the real thing.  But after posting that notion (on Facebook, no less) I was reassured that a) you can't have a beer over Facebook and b) the 'randoms' that you encounter at a reunion far outweigh the fact that I know more about my classmates now that I probably ever did in high school.

So, I remain completely stoked about this weekend and with a little luck will have a GWHS-themed Unheard Music on Friday.  If you're going, what are you most looking forward to?  If you're not going, what will you miss?  If you don't fall into either category, share your reunion thoughts.

The Unheard Music (Volume LI)

Back in August of 2007, I had the priviledge of seeing Pearl Jam perform at The Vic Theatre as a warmup gig for Lollopalooza.  If you wish, you can read about my impressions of the show by clicking here.  One of the songs Eddie Vedder played solo (before the rest of Pearl Jam joined him onstage) made quite an impression on me.  The song "Go All The Way" was written about my (and Eddie's) beloved Chicago Cubs.  It was an instant hit at The Vic and I wrote then that The Cubs should officially adopt it as the go-to Cubs song.  I mean we all (except Carla) love "Go Cubs Go!" but it's time to adopt a more comtemporary theme song.  Hell if he were still alive, even Steve Goodman himself would cede to Eddie Vedder's new song and tell you that "A Dying Cubs Fan's Last Request" was a far superior work in the admittedly small Cubs song genre.

I got to work and found a press release explaining the song written by Eddie himself:

January 31, 2007...Cubs Spring Training Facility, Mesa Arizona...Rain Delay.  While taking shelter in the clubhouse, Jose Cardenal introduces me to Ernie Banks...We sit down....Ernie hypnotizes me...He asks me for a song...It happens to be his birthday...Seventy fifth...Locking into his eyes, I listen...It's like having a conversation with Wrigley Field....Go back to my room under the spell of Mr. Cub...This beer drinking number wrote itself, per Ernie's request....Played it in Chicago last week...Recorded it so Ernie could hear...Hope he likes it....Dedicated to the Chicago Cubs and all who love them.

I'm not sure if you could find a better musical ambassador than Eddie Vedder.  With thanks to Jeff Vrabel for the mp3's, I present two versions of "Go All The Way" which should be available for download in the next week or so.  This was the one I heard at The Vic Theatre in August, 2007. And then when Eddie was here in Chicago in August for a few solo shows at The Auditorium Theatre, he recorded this version.  Enjoy the music, have a great weekend and (of course) Go Cubs! As of this writing, the magic number is 2, they could quite possibly clinch the NL Central today.

A Very Trying Weekend

I usually cherish the weekends but not this one.  At least it ended up on a positive note.

It began with dreary, rainy Friday afternoon.  So rainy that I checked weather and determined that I was not going to be flying afternoon traffic due to low ceilings as we cannot legally fly if the 'ceiling' or lowest cloud cover is below 1500'.  Our ceiling on Friday was 600', a no-brainer 'no-go day'.  I called my usual pilot for Fridays but got voicemail, not five minutes later another pilot called me to say he was covering the shift for the usual Friday pilot but that we weren't going anyway due to weather.  So I went into day-off mode and caught up on various projects around the house and returned some calls.  While I was on my cell, my Caller ID indicated that my usual Friday pilot was calling, only it wasn't him, it was his son-in-law.  The son-in-law was calling to let me know that his father-in-law had died the night before in a plane crash while flying a charter flight to Arbor Vitae, Wisconsin.  I was numb.  I had to call one of the other pilots to make sure what I heard was true, alas, it was. This was a guy I flew with three days a week almost three hours a day for the last six months.  You really get to know someone one-on-one in a plane. He was a great pilot and had become a friend.  It's weird, in the ten+ years I've been flying, I've flown with literally hundreds of pilots but never thought any of them would die on the job.  When you fly every day like I do five days a week, you don't think of dying or other people dying in plane crashes, it's just not healthy.

We had made plans earlier in the week to have dinner with an old friend Friday night and Carla asked if I wanted to cancel due to the news.  I thought about it and figured that sitting at home on a ugly, dreary night feeling bad about my friend and colleague and his family wouldn't be very productive.  It would be good to get out of the house and get my mind off things for awhile.  It was a good decision.  We had a wonderful meal, enjoyed a nice visit with a friend who'd recently gone through a rough patch but came out better on the other side and it was nice to catch up.  We made it a relatively early night as we had the exciting plans of painting the walls of our basement early Saturday morning. 

With Carla being pregnant, I wasn't going to let her paint the basement with all the fumes, so I was reticent about doing the project myself.  So, imagine my delight when she woke me up Saturday morning and told me I wasn't going to be painting after all.  I thought for a moment that a painter who offered to do it had called back and was ready to work.  No, the basement walls we wet from the 4"-5" inches of water that had seeped into our basement over the past 48 hours.  Oh joy, shades of our old Forest Park place all over again.  We reasoned that it wasn't going to help to start bailing on Saturday, we'd have to wait until the rain stopped falling.  The plan seemed to work as I checked the water level late Saturday night when the storm ebbed a bit and saw the water had drained a bit.  I foolishly hoped that maybe it would continue to drain overnight and we'd be left with just a puddle or two in the morning.  Nope, the level actually went UP.  Even the 16 gallon shop-vac wasn't going to cut it.  Luckily, Jeff W. had a spare sump pump and after 5 hours of continuous pumping, the water was all gone.  Just some cleanup and tossing of damaged items remains.  Luckily we didn't lose anything we're going to miss, just a bunch of crap we probably should've tossed a while ago.  It was a forced purge.

After an emotionally draining and tension-filled weekend, Sunday night I was just content to shower, relax and watch the Cubs game, which due to Hurricane Ike had been relocated from Houston north to Milwaukee's Miller Park, aka "Wrigley North".  It was to be Carlos Zambrano's first start in nearly two weeks as he had been put on the shelf due to some rotator cuff issues.  Seems Carlos' rotator cuff was just fine as he tossed the first Cubs 'No-Hitter" since Milt Pappas did it back in 1972.  I started watching the game in the third inning, after the Cubs had done all their scoring.  It wasn't until the sixth inning that I realized what was afoot.  Usually baseball announcers (who are sometimes as superstitious as the players) don't make overt mention of in-progress no-hitters or perfect games, they instead direct viewers or listeners to note the amount of hits (or lack thereof) the opposing team has (or doesn't have).  To his credit, Len Kasper did mention what was happening during the seventh inning, risking a jinx on the potential no-no.  During the eighth inning, I got a text from a buddy who started following the game on the radio and knowing what could happen, he decided not to turn on the television for fear of jinxing anything.  Now, I've watched a few no-no's on TV and a few near no-no's but this one seemed totally in hand from the seventh inning on.  I barely had any doubt I was about to witness Cubs history.  And I did.  It was precisely what I needed, a happy ending.

I sure hope you're weekend wasn't as draining as mine.  Did you get any flooding by you?  Did you watch the Cubs game?

The Unheard Music (Volume L)

It was early spring 1987, so I'd just turned 17.  Me and some friends had bought tickets for a great double bill: The Chameleons UK and Mighty Lemon Drops at Cabaret Metro.  When I bought the ticket, The Mighty Lemon Drops were the bigger draw but then I was listening to Johnny Mars' Big Beat program on WXRT and he played a song called "Swamp Thing" which blew my mind.  He back sold the song and mentioned that it was The Chameleons UK, the very band we were set to see.  I was now even more psyched to see this show.

Now, it was 21 years ago, so I don't remember every detail, but I do remember going with Matt F. and Doug C. and possibly Dar and Lee but again, it was along time ago.  We got there just in time for MLD and they ran through most of their (then) only album, a forty-minute set.  The Drops lacked stage presence, so if I had gone to Metro exclusively for them (which was the case when I bought the ticket) I would've been slightly disappointed. The saving grace was that their song "Inside Out" was getting a fair amount of radio airplay and MTV play, so there were a lot of attractive women there which certainly wasn't the case at most of the previous male-centric (Replacements, Husker Du, 7 Seconds, Soul Asylum) Metro shows I'd attended.  Now these weren't just any women, they were twentysomething, city-dwelling women who listened to the same music as me; women with cool jobs and apartments who were old enough to drink legally.  They may well have been supermodels or Martians they were so exotic to me and my fellow suburban high school classmates. 

While I certainly had a few shows under my belt at this point, they were either arena shows or no- nonsense shows at clubs like Metro, The Vic, The Riviera and (the old, grimy) Cubby Bear.  I had heard from a few people that The Chameleons live sets were 'intense', one of those words that was grossly overused circa 1987 but was meant to convey a compelling live experience.  I was about to see that intensity first hand.  They killed the house lights, then killed the stage lights and flooded the stage with fog.  Not a smattering of fog but the kind of volume of fog that would lead you think they were trying to approximate a space shuttle launch.  As their intro tape played over the PA, the only lights that came on were purple, which highlighted their Trace Elliot amps and Mark Burgess' mint green bass.  They had yet to play a note but it was already rivited.  Then they took the stage amid the swirling fog and the first thing I heard was the pounding kick drum that drove the beginning of "Swamp Thing".  I got chills. Amazing.  Their ninety minute set was heavy on the new album Strange Times (which would prove to be their last) including the drum-heavy " Soul In Isolation".  Now as a young teenaged rock fan I was familiar with The Beatles but primarily the singles that were played on the radio not the album cuts I would grow to love.  So, imagine my surprise when Mark Burgess announced that they were going to do a Beatles track and I heard "Tomorrow Never Knows" for the first time.  It's still the best cover version I've heard of what has become one of my favorite Beatles songs.  Once again, the drums are outstanding.  That show ended up being one of the last ever Chameleons shows until very recently. And while it certainly was among my favorite shows back then, it has endured among my all-time favorites and would certainly crack my Top 20.

What do you think of The Chameleons?  Any previous experince with them?  Do you know a better version of "Tomorrow Never Knows"?  Have a great weekend, enjoy the music.

Autumn Ambles In

Nobody on the road, nobody on the beach.  I feel it in the air, the summer's out of reach.  Empty lake, empty streets, the sun goes down alone.  Well not quite (sorry Don) but autumn sure did make a strong influx over the past week.  From last Thursday's daylong deluge of rain to, well, Monday's all-day rainfest and the chilly temps inbetween, it sure feels like the fall.  I actually love autumn, especially when there's the possibility of post-season baseball on the North side of Chicago.  As I look back, while I certainly didn't accomplish everything I would've liked, it was (to borrow a phrase from The Hold Steady) a constructive summer.

1)  We finally fully enclosed our back porch.  What was in 2005 merely a screened porch is now completely framed in complete with windows salvaged from the house I grew up in before it was razed.  We eat back there now and Carla even works from the new back porch on nice days, I also mounted some outdoor speakers back there. We couldn't have done it without the immense help of my dad and an assist from our roofer, Fu#*in' Lenny, so nicknamed because every third word out of his mouth is an F-bomb. 

2)  I certainly take much credit for it but we certainly do have a wonderfully landscaped yard, thanks largely to Carla's elbow grease.  I merely accompanied her to our visits to numerous garden centers and helped with some of the grunt work like lugging mulch and whatnot.  My gig has always been mowing the lawn and the more lawn she annexes for her garden, the less lawn I have to mow.  Win-Win. We've also enjoyed some veggies and herbs grown in our yard, augmented by the bounty of our next door neighbor, who's quite the green thumb.

3) I made it to five professional baseball games at four different parks, including two Major League stadiums I'd never been to before.  Not exactly work per se but quality leisure time.

4) I have managed to lose 20+ pounds since May.  Instead of dreading walking the dog, I now look forward to it.  Thanks to my heart rate monitor (a birthday gift from three or four years ago that was largely unused til this summer) I can track my progress in real-time.  Who knew mowing the lawn could be actual exercise?  I hope I can take off another 10-15 lbs. before the end of the year.

5) We managed to get out of town twice for two different roadtrips, chronicled here in the past few weeks.

6) Saving the best for last, the most constructive thing we did all summer was create a little zygote who will make his or her bow sometime in March of 2009.  Sorry if that's news to you, if so, we clearly need to communicate more.

So how was your summer?  What did you get done? What did you put off?

Oh, and Happy Conversation Fear Day!

The Unheard Music (Volume XLIX)

I recently wrote a piece about the band Sloan that aired as a "Hear Now" segment. I was amazed how many people heard it and told me that they'd never heard or even heard of  the band before.  That was all I needed to decide to do an Unheard Music feature on them.  From Toronto by way of Halifax, I present Canadian superstars but relative unknowns everywhere else: Sloan.

Sloan peaked kind of early, at least in the States.  After releasing just an EP on their own label, DGC snapped them up and they released their major label Smeared in 1992.  You can see how much a big budget major label record can influence a band's sound from Sloan's first single "Underwhelmed".  The version from their first EP is here, not bad, a catchy song but not a whole lot going on sonically.  Then we have the revved-up big-budget version here, from Smeared.  The Smeared album did alright but in the grunge era, it wasn't grunge enough and Sloan were far from a  grunge band anyway.  Their second DGC record--Twice Removed--tanked commercially.  I can't say I was a huge fan of the record, myself.  The record found an audience but not enough to satsify Geffen and they were dropped from the label.  The band then went on hiatus and they pretty much dropped off my radar until around 2003 when they made another attempt to crack the U.S. market with their Action Pact album.  It sure got my attention, leadoff track "Gimme That" harkened back to the glossy power pop of Smeared.  That song made my Best of CD in 2003.  While Action Pact failed to break Sloan in the States, it was enough for me to fill in the gaps in my Sloan catalog and I awaited their next record. 

I ended up waiting three years for the sprawling, epic Never Hear The End Of It, which clocks in at almost 80 minutes and contained 30 songs.  Not unlike Sgt. Pepper and XTC's Skylarking, most of the album is intermixed, with one song fading into the next.  A perfect example is the first two tracks, " Flyin' High Again/Who Taught You to Live Like That? " which features a nearly seamless transition.  What should have been a huge commercial success ended up as another critical smash and stengthened their Canadian fanbase.  It did crack the Billboard Heatseekers chart, making it the first Sloan record to chart in the U.S.  What sets Sloan apart from many other bands is that all four members write songs and like the Beatles did, he who wrote the song sings it, so you have four different voices on each album. They recently released a scaled-back follow-up Parallel Play, their shortest album to date.  Lead track  "Believe in Me" is textbook Sloan, which is to say it's a strong, poppy song with great harmonies.  So why is this band not huge?  You tell me.

What was your familiarity with Sloan before reading this post?  Do you like what you hear?  Thanks for visiting, have a great weekend, enjoy the music.

Tales of Two Road Trips (Part 3: The Conclusion)

It was a rust belt summer for me.  In May (yes I know, May is technically Spring--work with me) I managed a quick trip to Pittsburgh to visit Jeff R.  And in typical Ken vacation fashion, I squeezed a lot into a brief 48 hour visit.  Perhaps you read about it here, or click  the link if you missed it or wish to relive the magic all over again.  The thing is, I once spent a week in Providence, Rhode Island back in 1991 and did almost nothing for the seven days I was there.  I mean, I did do a few things, like play basketball every day and saw Fugazi at the Living Room, which was cool.  But aside from that, I just kinda drank a lot and slept in, it was my Spring Break.  Here I was a hour's train ride from Boston and I couldn't be bothered to make the trek.  I've always regretted that which is why now whenever I'm in a new city, I cram as much as possible into those visits, in case I may never make it back.  So when the opportunity to go to Cleveland to witness the wedding of some good friends presented itself, I saw road trip potential.

We could've taken a Southwest flight for $119 per person roundtrip and been there in an hour but where's the fun in that?  We'd have to rent a car anyway, so why not cram the MINI's boot full of luggage and make the six hour journey via car?  I'd never driven the MINI more than three hours, so I was psyched that we could make it on a tank of gas each way and actually spend less on fuel than airfare would've been anyway.  Plus we'd get to see the splendor that is Northern Indiana and Western Ohio, which is nearly as mind-numbingly dull as the drive across Nebraska.  But geting there is half the fun, right?  One highlight was the absolute delight in the discovery of a street that crossed over the Ohio Turnpike called...Fangboner Road. 

I've been hearing great things about Chick Fil-a Restaurants for years: great healthy fast food, friendly service,  but closed on Sundays and only available in 38 states, none of which are named Illinois.  I remebered that one of states with Chick fil-A's is Ohio and found one right off the interstate, which is where we had lunch just outside of Cleveland.  We told the 60-something gentleman manning the counter that it was our first ever visit to a Chick fil-A and he gave us free sodas and coupons good for our next visit, whenever that may be.  The legendary chicken sandwich lived to the hype, as did the chicken nuggets.  If you've had McDonald's new chicken sandwich, it's a pale imitation of Chic fil-A's signature menu item, right down to the sole condiment of two dill pickle slices. 

We pulled into our hotel parking lot at 2PM, with just under an hour to check-in, change clothes and drive back down to downtown Cleveland to catch the 2:55 start of the Indians/Angels game.  Now in just about any major city--including Chicago--that would've been impossible but Cleveland is remarkably easy to navigate and maneuver around.   We found secure parking two blocks from Progressive Field (formerly Jacob's Field) for only $10 and bought upper deck box seats and were sitting down before the Indians came to bat in the bottom of the 1st inning.  Built in 1994, Progressive Field is among the newer parks in baseball and HOK (the architectural firm who designed it) clearly learned from the missteps they made with the "new" Comiskey Park.  While not as cool as PNC Park (Pittsburgh's park has a better skyline and lots of bridges) Progressive is among the better new parks.  The day we were there was "Turn Back The Clock Day", in which the game was presented as it would've been presented in 1948.  This meant the Jumbotron in left field was relagated to being a giant, 'virtual' manual scoreboard and the P.A. was only used for player announcements, no music in between innings.  Of course when they do these promotions, they never turn back the prices, do they?  Then again, Cleveland is still smarting from ten cent beer night.  The food was standard ballpark fare and beer was actually fifty cents more than at Wrigley but they do get credit for a clever take on the standard soft pretzel, the Progressive Field version is shaped in the Indians' trademark script "I". Very cool and tasty.  The Indians lost.  After the game, we had a few drinks and dinner at pub across the street from the park.  When we got back to the hotel, Carla was wiped and went to bed so Curtis and I watched Michael Phelps make Olympic history over Ketel Ones in the hotel bar.

Thankfully the wedding ceremony wasn't until 5PM, which gave us time for a hearty breakfast and then then the closest thing I have to a hajj, a trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  Now I'd be happy to join any of you in a discussion about the R&R HoF, such as why certain artists aren't in yet (Cheap Trick) but some dubious artists are (Dave Clark Five anyone?) but all quibbling aside, it's an impressive collection of artifacts housed in a remarkable building.  Among the expected items (guitars, outfits, etc) are unique items like Janis Joplin's Porsche, Roy Orbison's Corvette and pieces of the plane Otis Redding died in.  Alan Freed, while dead, is also there--literally--in ashes form as his urn is on display.  Perhaps the most impressive display for me personally was an entire  10' x 5' case dedicated to Joy Division/New Order inlcuding Peter Hook's first bass guitar, Ian Curtis' handwritten lyrics for "Love Will Tear Us Apart" an unused ticket for Joy Division at Tut's in Chicago and the first test pressing and early artwork for New Order's "Blue Monday" 12" single.  It wasn't until after we left that I discovered there is a part of the Hall where plaques of the inductees are on display, something the program didn't point out very well.  Next time, I guess.

We dashed back to the hotel to get into our formalware and grab the shuttle to the wedding.  The wedding ceremony and reception were both held at a gorgeous tudor mansion that was once the home of a former Federal Reserve Bank President which had been converted to a private club.  It was a tradtional Jewish ceremony for which the groom had coverted to Judiasm, prompting the father of the bride to remark that the groom likely knew more about their faith than anyone else in the family at that point.  The weather was perfect for the outdoor setting.  There were some terrific speeches, the band was great and the food was top-notch.  I vaguely remember some dancing and also some Grey Goose but more of the latter than the former.  There's just something about an out-of-town wedding that bonds all the guests who travelled to get there.  We are both asleep by 1AM as we had a 7AM wakeup call to get back on the road home because I had to work that afternoon. That return trip always seems so much longer.

Ever been to Cleveland?  The Rock  & Roll Hall of Fame?  An Indians game?