Third row center at Glamorama—a-Macy Gray-mazing!

Last day of Lolla.

MENUS FROM LAST NIGHT

Sepia’s third anniversary coincides with perhaps the first restaurant menu ever printed by letterpress.

MARISSA EXPLAINS: WAITING IN LINE

Waiting in line is sometimes necessary, and can even be fun (hello, fifty other people obsessed enough to wait 2.5 hours in the rain for Hot Doug’s). But there are only certain kinds of lines that are tolerable.

Okay: Lines at the grocery store (a little tiresome, but ultimately fine). Lines at the Hangge Uppe (this is the only nightlife venue in Chicago worth waiting in line for, period). Lines at the Flirty cupcake truck (the cupcakes taste that much better in the end). Waiting in line for two days to be one of Chick-fil-A’s first 100 customers at a new location (I have always wanted to do this). As mentioned, any line that involves alligator, duck and bison sausage at the end.

Not okay: A 1,300-person line at a party you are supposed to be co-hosting and have invited all your friends to, under the assumption that the organizers, knowing the venue fits about 150, would have capped the RSVPs. T-A-C-K-Y.

(Photo courtesy of Serious Eats)

Seth Rogen (top) during his Freaks and Geeks days.

MARISSA EXPLAINS: VOICE DOUBLES

At a barbecue a few weeks ago, I found myself roasting s’mores next to a guy who talked exactly like Seth Rogen’s character on Freaks and Geeks. In fact, I don’t remember his name or anything about him, because I was so intent on blocking out the content of his words to figure this out. “Aha!” I yelled, interrupting him in the middle of a sentence about his kickball team or schitzu or something like that. “I know who you sound like!”

He had never seen the show.

Fast forward to last night, when I’m at the Annoyance Theatre seeing Co-Ed Prison Sluts (seriously. The wonders of Groupon.). One of the main characters, Alice, is singing a string of obscenities and I’m wondering how this is possibly the longest running musical in Chicago when my friend Matt hisses down our row. “Marissa! She talks just like you!”

It was a little hard to tell with all the cursing, but he was right. I hear my true voice via tape recorder fairly often and this girl had the same intonation and inflections and habit of drawing out the last word of a sentence. Conclusion: I can be an actress! At least at a local theater with $5 Jameson drinks on Fridays.

If IMDB and last night’s program are accurate, that is my voice double above. I kind of want to be friends.

(Photo: Courtesy of IMDB)

MENUS FROM LAST NIGHT

Lunch at Epic.

MARISSA EXPLAINS: THE BOSS

Otherwise known as: Boss Bar, one of the last true dive bars left on a stretch that now includes Epic, NV Penthouse Lounge and a soon-to-be second location of Moe’s Cantina.  Weird things happen at The Boss. A large man will push his way through the revolving door in the middle of a rainstorm, take a laminated menu and promptly push his way back out. A waitress (always Eastern European) will hesitate at the difference between pinot grigio and pinot noir. The large man will return, without the menu, to sit down and order a drink. ‘Quietly’ will be spelled ‘quitely’ and ‘sandwiches’ will be spelled ‘sanwiches,’ but only on one of three references on a daily specials sign. A young man who borrowed a cigarette will stick five in your shirt pocket before telling you how he is off to a retirement home to hit on 70-year-olds. An elderly man wearing an Army cap and Boy Scout troop leader shorts, his hands clasped behind his back, will lean over and peer into the window for a good minute and a half, until it’s obvious you’re avoiding eye contact because hey—he’s creepy. But jams from Blind Melon will be playing and accidental beers will be poured and given to you gratis, and your boyfriend’s boss will start using the table as a drum, and after a few more pinot grigios (or pinot noirs) you will inevitably leave The Boss thinking, ‘Wow. The Boss. What a great place. …I really should have gotten a sanwich.’

MARISSA EXPLAINS: BLUE LIGHT SPECIALS

My mom told me today that she has never bought a towel in her life.

This is apparently thanks to my grandma. “Don’t buy a towel!” she’d yell if my mom were ever about to buy a towel. “I have a million.” They’d then go to my grandma’s closet, where in fact she did have a million towels, or at least enough that my mom could take one, or ten, without making a dent in the stack.

And this is thanks to: the Blue Light special.

Kmart circa 1965-1991 was a different world—the frenzy of Supermarket Sweep meets the rollbacks of Super Walmarts. Throughout the day, a (potentially disgruntled) employee would assume the loudspeaker and call a Blue Light special in, say, housewares; people then had a specified amount of time to make it to housewares to get their voucher for 20% off of scented pillar candles or bronze owl-shaped wall sconces. My grandma was, family legend has it, a pro at revving up her cart wheels and beating the rest of the bargain-hunting grandmas to the punch. This also meant that she bought a lot of stuff she probably wouldn’t have. Hence, the million towel march.

Kmart has tried to revive Blue Light specials a few times since. Once in 1991, but then they went bankrupt; and today in the form of Mr. Blue Light, a mockery to the blue light legacy who goes around promoting full-price merchandise with a little smirk on his lightbulb face. But I bet if Blue Lights were around today, I’d be swimming in scented pillar candles. It runs in the family.

Me as a cheeseburger. Halloween 2008.

MARISSA EXPLAINS: $26 CHEESEBURGERS

Pat LaFrieda is a rock star butcher (rock star of a butcher? He does, to clarify, only deal in cows, and possibly poultry) in Greenwich Village. I’ve been a LaFrieda groupie for some time; check out this recent profile of him in New York mag. He does top-secret, custom beef blends for a number of cool NYC restaurants—and now, also for Bad Apple up in Lincoln Square. All anyone knows is that the meat is aged for 90 days, is cut from Wagyu cattle and a good chunk of it is prime rib. 

If $26 for a burger sounds psycho to you, think of it as $26 for a top-quality steak in disguise, with the added bonus of an amazing, bitter five-year-aged cheddar. (Order it sans lettuce and onions—they only get in way.) The patty tastes like it’s infused with butter. Our waitress last night told us that this is because the cattle are fed beer. How this would relate or if this is even close to the truth are both questionable, but it’s such a great thought—a field of cows all sharing a 12-pack while shooting the bull. Not literally, of course.

Today, I interviewed Jeff Koons.

First, however, I spent at least 20 minutes trying to wrestle the gas cap off of a 2004 Buick while wedged in that tiny gas station on Dearborn and Congress.

I also got logjammed in Taste of Chicago traffic, lost in the (faux suburban, somewhat creepy) depths of Lakeshore East and thwarted by the stretch of Monroe east of Michigan Avenue where suddenly you’re not allowed to turn left. It gets me every time.

I wonder if the city’s chief traffic engineer is named Gene Parmesan. Ahhh! He got me again!

Gene’s trickery aside, I did make it to Advocate Hope Children’s Hospital in Oak Lawn to interview Mr. Koons, who just decorated the CT scan room with murals of some of his iconic images, like that big, metallic balloon animal dog he put on the rooftop of the Met back in 2008. Jeff Koons, it turns out, is a really nice guy, and perfectly amenable to being pulled away from mini strawberry-lime cupcakes to chat with a reporter. I hope somebody saved him a cupcake.

(Photo credit: Librado Romero/The New York Times)