Dickey’s BBQ Pit – Eden Prairie, MN

I work near this Dickey’s BBQ Pit location and had no idea they were a chain until I went back home to visit the family in Illinois. That’s the reason these guys aren’t competing in the Bar-B-Quest 2012 rib challenge – otherwise, HotGirlsBrother and I would have thrown them in the mix. We’re not including national chains like Famous Dave’s and Tony Roma’s, even though those places are just fine. No offense, Dave and Tony.

I met a friend at the Eden Prairie location for lunch. Funny story: he recommended we eat here, but when he said “Dickey’s”, he meant “Baker’s” and had no idea where Dickey’s was located. It involved a lot of phone calls and waiting, but it was worth it when he fessed up to what he had done. The inside of the place is pretty spacious and bright, and there are huge menus hanging up above the counter where you order, so that’s helpful.


I knew I wanted a multi-meat platter for lunch (which is pretty reasonably priced, I might add), but I wasn’t sure which kinds of meat I wanted. I wanted ALL of them, but that isn’t how the deal works. I saw they had a sign pasted over one of the regular meats and on the sign, it read “Spicy Cheesy Sausage”. I knew I wanted ribs, so I told the guy I wanted ribs, but was curious about the sausage (twss). He immediately sliced off a chunk of the sausage for me to sample. I then immediately ordered that. It was awesome. I ordered the sides I wanted – baked beans and the spicy green beans and bacon – because why wouldn’t you?? I asked the girl behind the counter which sides were good. She told me the mac and cheese was her favorite, and then she put a small amount in a dish and told the register girl that it was no charge. Wow, this place was doing everything they could to get people to try their food. I was already becoming a big fan.


We sat down. You have to get your silverware at one counter near the door and then get your drinks from the fountain, as well. Not a big hassle, but it took some doing to figure out where everything was at. I dug into the spicy green beans with bacon. They weren’t all that spicy, sadly, and even more sadly – the bacon wasn’t really bacon – it was ham. Same animal, yet different animal. Bummer. It also had a ton of onions in with the beans, so I wasn’t thrilled. But I powered through. The mac and cheese however, was really really good. The girl was right. When I go back here, I’ll be getting the mac and cheese, for sure. The baked beans were just alright. I wasn’t blown away, but they were decent. No complaints on them.


The ribs were about average. Nothing flashy, but it took some doing to get off the bones and the meat wasn’t all that tender. There wasn’t a ton of flavor, but thankfully, there were three sauces on the table to choose from. I liked the original best, but the hot and the sweet weren’t awful. I was glad I had them, though.
The spicy sausage was the winner of the day, though. Really a delicious sausage and it had a tiny bit of zip to it. I guess in Minnesota, this is spicy. It could have been kicked up four or five more notches, but I understand, they have to cater to the lowest common denominator palette.

The restaurant has two things they’re trying to push – one is weird, one is not. The first thing: They have a big yellow cup club. All their soft drinks come in a big yellow cup. I’m not sure why this is even a “thing”. It really shouldn’t be. Just give me a vessel to put liquid in – I don’t care what color and I don’t care how big it is, if there are free refills. Weird. What’s not weird is the second claim to fame they have – free soft serve ice cream.
Now that’s what I’m talking about. I really enjoyed this mini dessert after my meal. They have minimal toppings, but all I wanted was the ice cream. It made me leave with a smile.

I’m pretty sure my friend liked his food a lot as well, so I’m hoping it’s a place we can go to more often for lunch. It didn’t have mind blowing ribs, but the prices were reasonable and the other meats and sides were worth eating again. It probably wouldn’t have fared well against some of the local BBQ players, but it did alright for a once-in-a-while lunch place.

Top 5 things about Dickey’s BBQ Pit
1. Spicy Cheesy Sausage
2. Mac and Cheese
3. Free ice cream
4. Generous with samples
5. Pretty good prices for what you get

Bottom 5 things
1. Ribs weren’t much to talk about
2. Bacon was actually ham and not spicy at all
3. Beans were meh
4. The layout was confusing, with the drinks in one place and the silverware in another
5. Big Yellow Cup Club was lost on me

www.dickeys.com

Bueno (from Kinder)

I’ve been to Europe a bunch of times and one of the candies I look forward to when I’m over there is Kinder chocolate (pronounced like tinder). That’s why I was surprised M. and Trash Giant hadn’t ever heard of it. I’ve seen it in stores in the U.S. more and more. Kinder is a German company owned by Ferrero (an Italian company) that makes candy. Kinder means “children” in German, so it makes sense they do a lot of marketing of candy towards children. It’s really light and cheap milk chocolate.


Kinder does half a billion different kinds of candy shapes, flavors, and injections, so they really know how to build out a product line. The Bueno candy (which cracks me up that it’s a Spanish word made by a German company owned by an Italian company and sold in the U.S.) is a chocolate wafer candy with a bit of milk crème inside.


Picture a couple layers of wafer candy (like what’s inside a Twix, but not as thick), put a dollop of sugary sweet crème sugar on top of it and then cover it lightly with milk chocolate. There are four in each individual sleeve and two sleeves per package.


This is most tame candy I think I’ve ever received from M. and Trash, so I ate this one up before they could change their mind about giving it to me. It is very smooth chocolate and not waxy. You can tell it is inexpensive chocolate, but it doesn’t take away from the flavor. The added crunch of the wafer makes this even better. Plus the added sweetness of the milk crème on top of it pretty much made my afternoon meal.

I’ll look forward to getting more Kinder chocolate the next time I see it in the store. It isn’t made with children. It’s made FOR children.

Dippin’ Candy Banana Split Flavor Candy

As I said before, M.Giant had bought a large bag of gross candy and brought some of it to lunch with Trash and I. We had just tried the Maynard’s Wine Gums – which sadly were non-alcoholic – and now we were on to the Dippin’ Candy. If you’re unfamiliar with Dippin’ Dots, it’s basically ice cream flavored sugar that people claim is eaten in space. It isn’t. They claim it’s the ice cream of the future. It isn’t. This is the candy, aka non-refrigerated, version of Dippin’ Dots.


This was the banana split flavor, so we kind of knew what we were expecting flavor-wise. There are four different colored sugar balls in this package. Some are smaller than others, but there’s pretty much a standard small-pea-sized piece of candy with pink, white, brown, and yellow colors. It is safe to assume this point that the pink is representing strawberry, the yellow is banana, the white is vanilla, and the brown is chocolate. Did each individual ball taste different though?

The answer is…. Yes! They do. You could have your butler pick out all of the banana ones if you wanted him to (you guys have butlers, right?). So M and I set about picking out individual flavors and eating only what we wanted. To get the maximum banana split flavor though, you have to eat a handful and mix it all together like in the real life non-dippin’ world. IT actually does taste pretty close to a banana split with some alterations. I’ll explain.


You know how banana flavoring tends to over power every other flavor, no matter how small of an amount is in there? There were an equal number of banana balls in with the other colored candy. Uh oh. Also, these things are pure sugar, so you should probably borrow your little brother’s insulin and shoot up before doing this (if you guys don’t have butlers, you surely have diabetic little brothers, right?).

So translated into the real world, you’d have this. First, take those trays you get for tooth whitening or for fluoride treatments or maybe a hockey mouth guard and fill it with sugar. Then put it in your mouth. Then take some sort of heat source and mold that half-inch thick layer of sugar to your teeth permanently. Then, take about 200 bananas and somehow get them all into your face hole. When you’ve done that, get one scoop of vanilla ice cream and one scoop of chocolate ice cream on top of that. Finally, stick two small strawberries into any space in your mouth possible. Now you’ve kind of got the proper ratios to visualize eating this kind of candy.

I was sick of this candy within about 5 tiny morsels of Dippin’. I know kids go crazy for this stuff, but obviously, those are the same kids who are doing lines of pixie stix dust off of pre-whore butts. I don’t think the human body can process that much sugar, and it certainly can’t process that many bananas. No way. Also, I can't imagine giving children access to a million tiny balls of sugar that you'll never be able to find unless you're sitting in an enclosed glass box while eating them (the candy, not the children). These little bastards roll EVERYWHERE (again, the candy, not the children).

Thanks for letting me try this candy, M. and Trash, but I don’t think I can have any more of that stuff. I’m going to go chisel my teeth now. Again.

Bad Movie Night (Martial Arts Style) – Edina, MN

To continue the amazing series of films we’ve been having at my house, I decided to roll out one of my all-time favorite themes for Bad Movie Night – Martial Arts. I grew up watching waaaaaaaay too much Kung Fu Theater back in the day. So I could have spouted off half a billion ridiculous kung fu movies where the mouths don’t line up with the overdubbed sound track or scenes where ridiculous and impossible fight scenes occur. However, for this group of people, you need very specific styles of martial arts to hold their attention and to bring out the cat calls, scream, and yells.

I had one movie in mind for this film from day one. The second one was up for grabs. I grabbed all of my martial arts DVDs from the basement and began previewing… wow, do I really own THAT many martial arts DVDs? Yes, I do. And yet, I couldn’t find one that would draw laughter and yelling. So I hopped on the Internet and found some recommendation of ridiculous dialog or mind blowing fight scenes. I fired up the credit card and ordered way too many more martial arts films. Then D.Rough and I drove past a Hollywood Video that was liquidating and I scored about 12 more. I spent almost two months previewing nothing but Asian films for this one night.

I told people to bring various Asian-inspired food for the potluck portion of the night and we got some winners. Bacon fried rice, peanut noodles (delicious, Low-Vee), Ramen noodles, Pocky, Choco-Pandas, disgusting jelly shooters, and EJens brought this incredibly terrible drink that looks like tadpole eggs. It was some sort of basil seed drink, but the seeds were suspended in some sort of goo pouches. He poured it into a glass and dared people to drink it. It smelled like dirt and bananas. Super weird and the seeds squeaked when you bit them – I said it was the tadpoles screaming for help, but apparently, that wasn’t as amusing as I thought. Maybe that person wasn’t as drunk as they needed to be to find me amusing!

Additionally, B.Sweet was cranking out amazing mojitos with sake in the kitchen, while sporting a killer facial hair situation!

The night of the event rolled around and I still hadn’t decided on which movie to show. I had it narrowed down to two options. I weeded out some films that will get special recognition:
- Big Man Japan – funny but not all the way through
- Shaolin Soccer – Soccer and Kung-fu, really
- Kung Fu Hustle – the box says it combines kung fu and Warner Bros cartoons
- Tokyo Gore Police – there is a gun that shoots dismembered FISTS!!!

I told the crowd they had to decide which first film we’d be watching. The choices were: The Foot Fist Way or a Manga-derived film called Cutie Honey. The Foot Fist Way is a movie about a white trash tae kwon do instructor played by Danny McBride – it’s pretty funny. Cutie Honey is a movie based on a comic hero from Japan and is geared toward 14-year-old boys. While the initial consensus was Foot Fist way (mainly because Danny McBride is hilarious), the low-brow mentality of the group won out and we got to watch Cutie Honey instead.

Cutie Honey’s father was a police chief killed by some bad guys. Somehow, Cutie has been biomechanically enhanced to be a superhero and she’s on a mission to find the bad guys. There are four clans in the city who are all working for Jill, the main bad guy (or girl in this case). There is lots of fighting and explosions and ridiculous CGI in this film, but most of it is so outlandish that you HAVE to yell along at the screen. And, as I told the people in my living room, “This film is geared to 14-year-old boys, so there’s going to be lots of boobs in it. Sadly, you won’t see any of them.” There’s some running scenes and some underwear scenes, but never do you actually see anything. Besides, everyone knows Japanese lady parts are pixilated anyway. Hahahaha. (If you’re interested, I reviewed Cutie Honey on my other blog.)

We took a break and then started the greatest bad martial arts movie of all time. It’s called The Story of Ricky-Oh (or Ricky Ho in some versions). This movie has everything, awesome martial arts, terrible overdubbing, bad acting, changing hairstyles, androgynous prison bosses, super fakey special effects and blood, a guy that kicks a dog in half, another guy that ties his own severed tendon back together with his teeth so he can continue fighting, another guy that strangles someone with his intestines, a leaf played like a flute, face slashing, a fake eye that doubles as a mint-holder, and much much more! Just watch this one with some friends and you’ll end up needing Tylenol from laughing so hard. It’s brilliant.

Overall, a fantastic night of great fun food and hilariously awesome movies. I know the next one is going to have some sort of summer theme or cheerleaders or carwashes. We’ll see how creepy I can make this experience for people. hahaha

Bad Movie Night #3 - Minneapolis, MN

Bad Movie Night (BMN) is what I would consider a successful venture in the Minnesota area. You never know if these cultural oddities will transfer across state lines, but I’m glad this one did. Tonight’s theme was sort of religious, since we had a couple of biblical films to show. Only a couple of people followed the food theme for the night, but this one was a difficult one, so it’s understandable. HotGirlsBrother brought a couple of those Jesus candles you see in the Hispanic section of the grocery store – hilarious. And SB brought a loaf of bread and fish sticks, for the win – best theme food ever, SB.

We started the films with Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. This is a really bad film, partially, because it’s from Canada, where the metric system makes everything even funnier. But also because it contains the greatest combination of movie ideas ever melded into one brilliant film: Vampires, lesbians, Mexican wrestlers, kung-fu, punk rock priests, broadway musical dancing, clown cars, and Canadian money. The premise is Jesus comes back to Earth and finds it is slowly being overtaken by lesbian vampires and atheists, so he basically fights as many of them as possible. Lots of parts to get the crowd yelling in this film, so it worked out well.

The second film, I was unsure about showing to this group, based on previous BMNs where the energy level dropped after a while. But the second film was a winner – Noah’s Ark. It’s actually a mini-series, not a feature-length film, but I was able to fast forward through enough of the boring spots to maintain the energy level. Made in the 1990s, it features Academy Award winner John Voight as Noah AND God, Academy Award winner F. Murray Abraham as Noah’s best friend Lot (way off from the real bible story), Academy Award winner Mary Steenburgen as Noah’s hot wife, Academy Award winner James Coburn as the Peddler, Golden Globe winner Carol Kane as Lot’s annoying wife, Sidney Poitier’s daughter Sydney Poitier, some guy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and a crap ton of terrible actors. This film opens with a script that says the directors of the film took poetic license with the bible – brilliant move, morons. They inserted a boatload of terrible special effects and CGI into the film, as well as some of the worst Monty Python-esque scripts and Wild Kingdom stock footage, and made one of the most awful movies ever. There’s a WATER BATTLE after the flood involving pirates and grappling hooks and also James Coburn on a paddle boat (hence, the PEDDLER). It’s an awful movie and I was glad to have people yelling and laughing along at the idiocy in it. It was a winner.

Huge thanks to everyone who came over and had a good time with it. We had some good food and LOTS of adult beverages were downed. A big shout out to Ruby Vita who suggested bringing Bubblegum flavored vodka (from Three Olives company) – which HotGirlsBrother scored for us. It’s amazing and after about 8 shots, you slur a lot apparently. We had bottles of port, madiera, mead, scotch, girly concoctions I made up, and a bunch of various beers. Clearly, the amount of fun had at bad movie night is in direct relation to the amount of adult beverages consumed. At least at OUR Bad Movie Nights. Sadly, there was no dancing in my kitchen this time, but there WERE chocolate and caramel covered pretzels, which made up for it. After staying up until 5am when everyone left, playing disc golf at 8am wasn’t as much fun as it could have been…

Spacca Napoli – Chicago, IL

Trash, CorpseKitten, and I were in Chicago visiting Callous-un for the weekend and Callous-un had been giving me crap about the Chicago-style pizza that I’d eaten. Apparently, it wasn’t authentic pizza and I had not been treated to the best the city had to offer. So she recommended a place for us that she heard was really good. As it turns out, it is authentic Neapolitan pizza, not authentic Chicago pizza.

I had told some friends where I’d be that evening in hopes some of them would show up and hang out. When we got to the restaurant, I completely missed Kanoo and BestGirlfriendEver standing against the building looking nonchalant. It took me a couple minutes to notice them standing there, but I was sooooo glad to see them. It’s been way too long since I had seen either of them. While waiting, they both gave me a hell of a time because I commented that I didn’t like pistachios. They said, “You know those things are in a shell, right? You took the tasty nut out of the shell, right. You gotta get that tasty nut inside.” Hilarious (and jerks) – I love these guys to death.

While we waited outside, one of the staff members brought out bread samples and also cheese samples to keep us occupied. We only got the cheese, as Trash wasn’t pushy enough about getting in front of rival groups. She tried to look starved and forlorn and just looked retarded. We think she creeped out the worker, to be honest. Once the line dwindled down and the people realized we had been in line for an hour, they brought us some prosecco, on the house. It was decent and a good “get in the mood drink” for us before we sat down.

The wait staff was very friendly, so we had no issues with food and drink orders. The menu is medium-sized. Plenty of different foods, but not a ton, which is usually easier to decide on things. I got the Salsiccia Pizza – Tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, Italian sausage, and olive oil. BestGirlfriendEver got the Bufalina Pizza – tomatoes, basil, buffalo mozzarella, and olive oil. Trash got the Quattro Formaggi Pizza – mozzarella, gorgonzola, emmenthal, fontina. Lisa got the Margherita Pizza – tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, olive oil. And I can’t remember what Kanoo or Callous-un ended up with. They brought out our food 30 seconds later. (Actually, they brought out someone else’s food and put it on our table, which was hilarious when our waiter showed up with drinks and started cracking up – they took the food away back to its rightful owners.)

My pizza looked delicious, and very Italian-like (it’s thin crust and more or less for one person). I’ve been to Italy a couple of times and yes, the pizza does look a little bit like this. I was a little surprised at the lack of flavor in it the pizza part. The sausage was delicious and I was thrilled with that part, but it simply didn’t taste like there was cheese on it, despite the cheesy appearance. BestGirlfriendEver also though there was an odd lack of flavor, so she salted and peppered the hell out of hers and it made it better. I guess I should have done that. My pizza was good, but not stellar. We all ended up trading each other pieces to see which one we liked the most.

Trash’s pizza won the competition, but wasn’t what she thought she was ordering. No one heard the waiter say there was prosciutto on hers, and being a vegetarian, she has a problem with “dead” on her pizza. She ended up swapping CorpseKitten for her Margherita pizza, but I think CorpseKitten got the better end of the deal. Trash wasn’t thrilled with the Margherita, however, everyone who tried the bacon-y pizza was very impressed. All of the pizzas were just ok. Good, but nothing stellar. Apparently, I’m STILL on the search for quality Chicago-style pizza. I’ll find it. I know it’s out there.

On the way out, they give you a dessert cannoli (whipped ricotta cheese deep fried in a shell and with nuts on the exposed parts. Guess what – they were pistachios on the outside – hilarious. I ate half of mine and gave the rest to someone else (that I knew – not a random stranger). It was fine, but it doesn’t even compare to the one’s MO had me eat in Sicily. Seriously, they aren’t even in the same ballpark.

We left there and said goodbye to Kanoo and BestGirlfriendEver, and headed to The Grafton – a little Irish bar in Lincoln Square. It was loud (probably average for a bar on a Friday night), but not a bad atmosphere. They had a hefty beer list with some ciders, bit I went with the Capn n Diet route for the night. We discussed heading to a German bar afterwards, but with CorpseKitten being on Eastern time, her bedtime is about 4pm Central, so we headed home (kidding, we were all tired and yawning, but we like to blame CorpseKitten for stuff).

Top 5 things about Spacca Napoli
1. It’s a fun restaurant environment with an open kitchen, fun staff, and good lighting
2. Free cannoli after dinner
3. Prosciutto Pizza
4. Friendly staff
5. Got to hang with Kanoo and BestGirlfriendEver – I miss them terribly

Bottom 5 things
1. Really long wait
2. Pizza was slightly lacking in flavor
3. Coke products, so I went with water
4. Still on the hunt for actual Chicago-style pizza
5. Ran out of cannoli before Trash got one

www.spaccanapolipizzeria.com
www.thegrafton.com

Halloween 2009 - Minneapolis and Victoria, MN

This year’s Halloween festivities took place at two different locations. I thought about going into detail with this post, but due to incriminating circumstances and names being strewn about, I will keep it simple.

Party #1 – Minneapolis
Dr. Horrible and the Crazy Cat Lady

LowVee is definitely a Wild Thing

TheDoctor is a fantastic Bear Jew (NOT a Jew Bear, which we decided should be a kosher gummy bear)

Three hot ladies

Jolly Green Giant and Crazy Cat Lady

Party #2 – Victoria (I think it’s on the west coast – I just know we drove forever to get there)

Yes, those cases were actually full (at the beginning of the night)

A proud family. A weird family, but a proud one, nonetheless...

No one got thirsty, thankfully

Peacetime Wolverine - drinking and claws do not mix

DeltaForceCommander giving out the award for best costume to the Mad Hatter

Spring Break!!! Skin to win!!!

Putting the ghey in geisha (no he's NOT Boy George)

Don't let her kids see this photo

The more drinks there were, the more Crane Kicks we saw from DeltaForceCommander

Bad Movie Night #1 - Minneapolis, MN

Back in Illinois, I used to host regularly-occurring bad movie nights. These evenings usually involved a couple of lower-than-b-grade films and a potluck. And since I have some friends up here who have known about Illinois bad movie night, they have basically demanded I continue the tradition up here in Minneapolis. And a big plus is that I can re-show some of the same films and no one will get upset with me!!!

I picked one of our more fun movie choices from the Illinois days, simply because it was easy to wrap a theme around the concept and get people more involved than usual. I decided to show a couple of midget films (I’m not even going to dignify this with a PC defense of “little people” only because I’m too lazy. IF you think somehow that I might have issue with little people, you have only to ask about my sick and wrong dwarf-fetish and you’ll immediately be reassured -and probably horrified- that I have strong feelings toward the aforementioned “little people” just not in the direction you expected. Get over it.)

So to get people involved with the theme, I encouraged all participants to bring over tiny food of their choosing to go along with the films. They are also supposed to bring the adult beverage of their choice, which sometimes ends up just as funny as the food choices – this instance was no different. We eat about 6pm and then watch the first film about 7. Take a break during intermission to stock up on more tiny foods, and then watch the second film.

Side note here – My father was in town this weekend for some big stock car race in New Richmond, Wisconsin, so he was staying with me. I warned him when he left that afternoon: I didn’t know who was going to be at my house when he got home and also no guarantees what condition those people might be in when he arrived.

I must say the people of Minnesota really came through for this bad movie night. We had AWESOME tiny food – mini pigs in blankets, frozen éclairs, tiny grilled cheese sammiches, tiny Pringles cans, tiny bruschetta, mini upside-down lemon cakes, tiny 8oz sodas/pop (depending on what state you’re from), hookups (airplane bottles of booze sold together with a juice to mix in one cup (ingenious!!!), rumaki, tiny limes for drinks, small pieces of trail mix stuff, watermelon cut in small pieces, small homemade chocolate chip cookies, and probably a few I forgot.

We also had a ton of regular sized food - Mini jalepeno poppers (and presented nicely on a special serving plate with a built in center dip bowl thanks to SB), salsa, and the best sausage dip in the world.

Zapper wins the "over and above" prize hands down! – Mini panninis on tiny rye bread with various meat and cheese and tomatoes (everything labeled appropriately). Tiny éclairs, hilarious individually wrapped tiny gold baked potatoes with bacon bits and a small bowl of sour cream – AWESOME!

We all gorged ourselves for an hour or so, and people brought over things to finish making at my house, which was hilarious. Some certain ladies just assume that since I live alone, I won’t have standard kitchen fare, like cookie sheets, pots, pans, spices, knives, serving trays, and an oven. Apparently, just because you look like a caveman, people think you are a caveman.

I was really unsure how I was going to fit all these people into my living room if we got over about 12 people. So when 22 showed up, we had to get creative. We rearranged major portions of my living room and dining room to make this work. (Hey Coach, remember when I complained to you that you needed to find me bigger friends so you wouldn’t always have to help me move furniture? Well, I’ve found some up here. You’re off the hook.) I managed to scrounge together two couches, five folding chairs, an office chair, a padded footstool, multiple pillows, a drum throne, a couple of people sat on the steam-heat radiators, and we all fit!!!

We packed in real close-like and watched For Your Height Only, a spoof on the James Bond film, but the world-famous little person Weng Weng was James Bond. Just tinier. And it's all set to the blatantly stolen theme music from the James Bond films (they just change one note on the melody to avoid copyright infractions). I don’t think a lot of people really understood the caliber of films I collect. They think of Willow as a bad film. They never even make it to the level that I play in – they should consider themselves lucky. For Your Height Only is hilariously bad. Weng Weng gets thrown into various shots and slid across floor, banging his head from time to time, all the while, working his magic with the ladies and shooting the bad guys without ever hitting an innocent or beautiful person. My metal brimmed ninja throwing hat goes off to you, little man.


We filled in intermission with the world’s only all-midget western, called Terror in Tiny Town. It’s a short film (get it? Ha ha ha), since it’s only an hour. It’s pretty light on plot, so we just showed it while people were refilling plates and drinks and such.

We lost a couple of people after the first film, so it got less packed for the second feature. I took a vote on the second film, since I really hadn’t decided on which one to show. We won’t talk about how many midget films I own, alright? RainbowBrite had been lobbying during intermission to everyone to vote for 9 Dead Gay Guys. This is a film that does feature a midget, however, it also is technically a GOOD movie, so I was a tad hesitant. We gave it a shot.

After about 10 minutes of people concentrating really hard on deciphering the British accents and no sign of midgets (and a painfully obvious lack of yelling and cheering), we tried another film. Under The Rainbow features Chevy Chase and Carrie Fischer and 300 midgets. Again, it’s borderline GOOD, so there wasn’t as much yelling, although much more than 9 Dead Gay Guys. We scrapped that one too, and went with the second Weng Weng film, The Impossible Kid.

The Impossible Kid is basically the second of the James Bond rip-offs and he does the same things in this film as he did in the first film, but this time with blatantly stolen Pink Panther theme music. Again, lots of screaming and yelling, but not as much as the first one. And sadly, no one screamed Charles Napier like Coach does, though. People left during the middle of this film to continue the drinking downtown. I think everyone was scared my father was going to walk through the front door and start grounding people to their rooms. Thankfully, he didn’t even get home until like 1:30am.

Some highlights of the night, besides the awesome food and films: Really hilarious conversations in the kitchen with rotating participants, HotGirlsBrother helping me finish off some liquor that I needed to get rid of to make room for more liquor (thanks, brother), Smallz and I eating in the realm of 40 tiny pigs in blankets, RainbowBrite hyperventilating everytime Weng Weng did something hilarious or showed his cute baby shoes, finally getting to make the really awful drink called the Purple Haze (amaretto, root beer schnapps, milk, and grape Crush), the horrified yell when they saw Weng Weng’s nipples for the first time, and TheDoctor helping me dodge uncomfortable questions about why I had dog toys and dog photos, but no dog was running around (thank you, Doctor, it didn’t go unnoticed or unappreciated).

All in all, a fantastic night with great friends, lots of yelling, and hilarious films. No one threw up, no one spilled, and I think most people had a good time.

As I was cleaning up when people left, I thought someone had left a toy frog on the floor for me.

And when I went to pick it up, it hopped away from me. Hilarious end to the evening. I totally used Low-Vee’s tupperware to scoop him up and put him outside. (Don’t worry, I washed your Tupperware out really well afterwards).

I think the frog just showed up a couple of years late. We had a bad movie night featuring frog movies in 2007. I guess maybe I’ll have to do that again up here in Minneapolis.

Top 5 things about Bad Movie Night
1. Seriously, I’m soooo glad I have awesome friends. My usual solo bad movie nights aren’t nearly as fun as a group of people screaming along with me!
2. Weng Weng stole the night (and hearts of the ladies)
3. Awesome tiny food ideas
4. Hookups – airplane bottles of booze sold together with juice for mixed drinks. Hi-Five, HotGirlsBrother! (He can’t NOT hi-five people if you set him up. It’s his kryptonite)
5. MrHerman did, in fact, take his shirt off during the evening

Bottom 5 things
1. Gerd and I had scheduled a bad movie night for Valentine’s Day this year. Unfortunately, she didn’t get to enjoy this awesome night with our friends. She loved to entertain and she was very good at it, and it killed me to do this without her. I only had one small freak out during the night, and a couple of really sad times when people asked about Zoey the Wonderdog. I miss both of them very much.
2. Coach is a staple at Illinois Bad Movie Night. I was worried how it would be without him, but it went just fine. I still missed Coach yelling “Charles Napier!!!” or “plastic vagina!!!” at random though.
3. I think I killed the flow by not having the second film chosen ahead of time. My bad.
4. I might have to invest in bleachers for the next bad movie night
5. I’m glad I tried the Purple Haze, but it’s not going to happen again


Here are some video clips from the night if you want to see what exactly goes on:

DC Trip – June 15, 2009

We started the day with getting me registered for the conference. Oh yeah, I keep forgetting I'm supposed to be doing conference stuff. I got my badge and such and took a couple of photos since CorpseKitten wanted to pose with Joe Biden and President Obama's stand-up cardboard cutouts. I'll photoshop them down later so they look more real. Why isn't anyone posing with Hillary in the background. Weird.


Then we picked up Babo and took a walk to the National Archives. The line was too long and it was out in the sun, so we decided to go to Plan B and head to the National Gallery. We checked out the west wing first which is the older stuff. I’ve been here before, but it’s still cool to see some of those pieces again. And so you know, for having so many Rodin pieces, there sure was a lack of Godzilla and Mothra portraits. We walked through the underground passage to the East wing where the modern pieces are at. We chanted our own irreverent version of U.S.A. is #1 (for having underground passages for those who hate the sun like we do) while staying nice and cool. We saw a couple things in the East Building, but were starting to get worn out on the paintings.

We walked past the Smithsonian main building castle and then to the Sackler to see Japanese demon scrolls. There’s an ancient Japanese myth about an ogre-demon who gets tricked and killed. The story is told by numerous people and recorded in various scrolls on display. It’s really slick. In the entrance to the Sackler, there's a cool mirror wall where it distorts your image. Here is giant CorpseKitten.

Then to the Freer gallery. The Freer is filled with Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Indian art pieces and also a lot of Whistler pieces. There was also a room taken out of a building in London and reassembled in the Freer – it’s called the Peacock room. The room was specifically designed to house like 100 blue and white vases, bowls, and plates in a latticework of asian-inspired shelves. Kind of cool, but not as cool as the Sackler. But it did have an underground passage (cue more U.S.A. chanting).

We walked to the Washington Monument took a photo or two


and then to the white house. Saw the presidential helicopter land and then take off again (not sure if the president was in it on either trip. They block off the sidewalk in front of the white house when that happens,
but then they opened the gates so we could take photos.


We had a late lunch/early dinner at Old Ebbitt Grill, directly across the street from the Treasury building.We started with two appetizers. Colombian Empenadas and Beef Carnitas. Both of these were really fantastic. We were glad we couldn’t decide and got both.

Then I got a thai fried chicken salad. This was a good salad. Not fantastic, but still really good. Great sesame-soy peanut based dressing on it though.

We walked back to the hotel to change and catch bus to the Embassy of Zambia for an awards ceremony and free drinks. Babo wasn’t feeling well, so he camped out in front of the tv to nap and watch the US soccer team get their asses handed to them by Italy. There was a huge line waiting for busses to the embassy. Apparently the conference expected between 50 and 100, not 500-600. So we made it on bus number 7 and arrived as they were shutting down drink stations. CorpseKitten ran through the embassy to the back yard where the drinks were and commandeered a variety of beverages for us. We met some new friends and got to hang with FireRetarded and DeltaForceCommander some more.

FireRetarded and I were disappointed with the lack of zebras and giraffes at the embassy, so we took a photo which I will soon photoshop a giraffe into. (give me a couple days, geeesh)

FireRetarded decided we should walk to the next party – a dessert reception at the Decatur House – rather than take the bus with everyone else. He convinced us it was a mere three blocks. We walked from the embassy down embassy row and took photos with us on various embassy grounds so we could say we visited those countries.

In Mexico!
In Latvia!
DeltaForceCommander went to Burkina Faso!
CorpseKitten went to the Ivory Coast before we saw the huge Do Not Enter sign!

Our new friends played along nicely, though we did end up stopping like 10 times along the way. After we had walked about 15 blocks, taken a “circulator” bus another mile and then finished the trek by walking 4 more blocks, we arrived. We were all sweating profusely and were sore.

It was really late by the time we got there, so we grabbed a table in the back and grabbed a couple glasses of wine. FireRetarded also snuck a couple plates of desserts for our group. We took a quick tour of the Decatur House and then hopped on a bus to go back to the convention center before going to the final party of the night at the Spy Museum.

The bus stopped at one point and let a handful of people off the bus at a random stop that was close to another party at the Spy Museum. I ran for the door but the rest of my group got stopped by the driver. So I walked with another group of people I knew and started eating and drinking without them. I had some snacks including rice crispy treats with frootloops in them and some fruit and a couple glasses of wine. Eventually, CorpseKitten showed up with FireRetarded, DeltaForceCommander and our new friends. They were giving away hate to those who danced on the dancefloor, so I was the only without a hat (thankfully).

People started bailing on us, so a group of us went upstairs to laugh at the librarians dancing to the live band. Hilarious. The few of us that were left ended up going to a random bar that one of the people knew. I think it was on U avenue. I honestly have no idea at all. Might have been called mervin’s or something, but I have no idea truly. The night ended there after much falling down and drinking of water.

Top 5 things about Day 3
1. Got to visit like 10 different countries
2. Free drinks the whole day
3. Old Ebbitt Pub
4. Sackler’s demon-myth (or is it?) scrolls
5. You can seriously put anything into rice crispy treats and it’s good. That’s it – I’m making spam crispy treats!

Bottom 5 things
1. Gerd would have punched FireRetarded in the spleen, directly through his eye, for making her walk that far and she LOVED FireRetarded
2. Significant lack of zebras and giraffes at the Zambian Embassy
3. Bus fiasco getting to the Embassy
4. Babysitting drunk people sometimes isn’t fun (sometimes it’s hilarious though!!!)
5. Watching drunk librarians dance is really really really painful, even when inebriated…