Yes we have no burritos

Chipotle became a cult of a restaurant because of two things: delicious, addictive burritos and clever promotions. It took me more than one visit to convert, but I have been a proud Chipotle proponent for at least five or six years now. Their burritos range from amazingly tasty to life-savingly euphoric. Personally, I'm a pinto beans, steak, rice, corn, lettuce, cheese and sour cream kind of guy. But there are any number of thoroughly satisfying options available, including guacamole! There is little debate that a Chipotle burrito, while it may not be authentically Mexican, is an amazing thing.

But it's the way they market themselves that makes Chipotle such a fun place to go. They've got a fun web site and fun ads (I've had one radio spot, "Moo" as my cell phone ringtone for some time now), and most importantly, fun promotions. Every Halloween, you can dress as a burrito (wear just a little tin foil) and get a free burrito. On April 15th, you can fill out the cleverly bureaucratic "Burrito EZ FWI" form and get a free burrito. And four years ago, on February 29, 2004, you could get a free burrito just because it was Leap Day, a special holiday that happens only once every four years. It was promotions like these that made my friends and I fall in love with this establishment. There's a certain camaraderie to standing in line with a bunch of strangers wearing tin foil hats and armbands, eagerly anticipating a free tortilla holding a free pound of goodness.

Tomorrow, people all over the world will celebrate our unique calendar that allows us this special extra day of February. But there will be no free burritos. I repeat, there will be no free burritos. I called my local Chipotle to make sure of what I had feared. When asked about this year's Leap Day promotion, the woman at Chipotle told me, "That's something we did four years ago, but we haven't done it since. We will not have any free burritos tomorrow."

There you have it. They did it on Leap Day 2004, but haven't done it since. So on Leap Days 2005, 2006 and 2007, they didn't hold the promotion. Perhaps that's because THERE HAVEN'T BEEN ANY LEAP DAYS since 2004. Silly woman.

In case you missed the news, there will be no free burritos tomorrow, in celebration of Leap Day or otherwise. And I am not happy. I haven't had Chipotle since the free burrito of Halloween aught-seven. Been saving up the appetite and eagerly anticipating the awesomeness of tomorrow's free burrito. But there will be no free burritos tomorrow. I would like to call for a one-day boycott of Chipotle tomorrow, in protest of this insane act.

But on Saturday, let us all enjoy Chipotle burritos. And let us all pay for them, for once. It can be a show of appreciation for all the joyous meals and memories they've given us over the years. Plus, Tax Day isn't as far away as it seems.

I'm a regular visitor here, but Milwaukee has certainly had its share of visitors.

Learned wisdom from today's journey:

• Egg/bacon/cheese bagels are never not appropriate.
• I have the ability to turn a saucer-sled-with-a-crack-in-it found in a parking lot into three useless pieces of plastic, simply by riding it twice down a steep and bumpy hill of snow and ice.
  
• There is no way that those indoor water park/resort could be anything but horrendously disgusting.
• It's easy to get lost driving around the industrial south area of Milwaukee, underneath the interstate by Lake Michigan, and there are lots of places to dump a dead body if you desire to dispose of one.
• Slipping on ice and ending up horizontal on your back can cause lingering neck pain. And getting laughed at by all those kids probably isn't healthy either.
  
• Milwaukee is a lot like Baltimore. And Providence. And Wilmington, Ithaca, Quebec and Portland. And probably Rochester.
• Sometimes a Bloody Mary comes with mushrooms, salami, pickles and cheese curds.
• Different people may have different opinions of chili lime cheese.
• Vacuum tubes are pretty great. (When will this mode of transportation catch on already?)
• There is a waiter named Nick in the very cool spy-themed 'Safe House' restaurant in Milwaukee who will tell you every single thing there is to know about himself before he puts in your order to the kitchen.
• Hanging from a pull-up bar for thirty seconds is a lot like growing up.
• Card tricks in a bar, Sugarbomb's Bully album, French dip sandwiches and Dirty Jobs always make a good day even better.
  

Brand New BagAKA I Just Want to Make an Omelet

A few words of advice:

If you are ever standing in an area of your apartment where the ceiling is five-feet-and-nine-inches tall and a James Brown song comes on the radio and you start dancing, don't spin around and thrust your hand up in the air in a moment of funky awesomeness. Your knuckles will thank you.

Hypothetically.

Great Scott!

Part of the well-orchestrated hype for the upcoming film Be Kind, Rewind was to have a contest where people could send in their own "sweded" versions of popular films. To swede a movie is to make an extremely low-budget, shorter adaptation of it, like Jack Black and Mos Def do in ...Rewind. I haven't seen the film yet, but I'm imagining that their sweded movies are clever, endearing and simple. Edited in-camera with no fancy effects or music.

The problem with an internet contest to replicate that stuff is that most people don't quite catch that purpose. They create short parodies of their favorite flicks, with time-consuming effects, animations, music, etc. They're missing the creative spirit of flying by the seat of your pants and not really knowing what you are doing. By and large, these sweded movies are unimaginative and tired, mostly relying on cross-dressing to elicit any laughs.

Taken without context, they are acceptable reflections of how people with limited budgets can recreate fancy computer-generated effects to tell a story. But if you are a stickler for the rules (and today I am), they are mostly crappy. Except for one: a 6-minute synopsis of the Back to the Future trilogy. Highly entertaining, particularly in its re-creation of the Lybian VW bus chase scene.



Keep in mind that this blog entry comes to you from someone who was asked to draw Willy Wonka's chocolate factory in third grade and went through the book page by page to find every aspect, then labeled each element, down to the buttercup trees. Then I got upset because somebody else won the contest even though mine was the most technically accurate. How did I not have more friends when I was eight?

You will tell me what I need to know.

The writers strike is over, but there won't be any new episodes of 24 until January 2009. Or will there...

Channel surfing this evening, I came across this confusing scene:
(This is where you hit play and sit through the 5-second advertisement.)


Obviously this raises many questions. What exactly is "Bonfire"? How is Vladimir Bierko still alive? Why is Audrey Raines suddenly able to speak coherently? Was Raines actually the one behind Jack Bauer's abduction by the Chinese? And of course, why are these two people sitting so courteously together? Most importantly, where is Walid?!

But wait, there's more. Later on, I surfed back to this program to perhaps gain some answers, and what do I find?

(It's a different clip here, even though the picture is the same as the other one.)


That's right, it's Stephen Saunders, the nefarious man we thought was killed by Gael Ortega's wife nearly four years ago! And he appears to have some sort of relationship with Suddenly Susan. Trust me, Suddenly Susan, you need to get away from this man immediately. He tried to release biological weapons all across the country! Still, he gave up the plot when his daughter's life was threatened, so he may be a decent father. I wouldn't take my chances though, the sky is falling.

That's two evil men we thought were dead who are alive and well. Should we hold out hope for David Palmer? What about Mikey from Goonies? Surely Edgar was definitely a goner, but at this point if you told me that Teri Bauer and Nina Meyers were living together at a lesbian retreat, I'd have to believe you. Will Desmond from Lost somehow show up and reveal himself to be the German spy betrayed by Jack Bauer the same day Bierko was killed? And what about Robocop?!?!

My theory: with Jack Bauer busy tackling Christmas trees and serving time, his cohorts (dead AND alive) are running amok in New York City. No doubt there will be several more twists and turns before this day is through. Something tells me we're in for a whole lot of whispered "Dammit, Chloe!". And what role will The Girl Next Door play in all this? Only time will tell.

I know I watch too much TV.

Two bits!

I reached a milestone today in my slow journey out of poverty. I was able to get a haircut without worrying about making next month's rent. Woohoo!

It was my first haircut since moving here in October (and you could tell). Puglisi's in DC could always be trusted, but looking for a good barber shop in a strange place can be hit or miss. I lucked out though, and the dude I found did a decent job.

He also gave me the hot lather with a straight razor treatment to finish off. This is the defining mark of a good haircut. There's something about it that makes you feel like your grandpa, in a good way. Hot lather with a straight razor should be inducted into some sort of Hall of Fame. I'm not sure which one though.

It's nice to not look like a hobo.

Ice, baby!

Remember when I said Chicagoans are the nicest people around? Well, I'd like to take a step back from that. They are nice in general, but not when it comes to sidewalks.

It's been snowing on and off now since December. And the last few weeks have produced more than a foot of snow, and the temperature has spent very little time above freezing. It's usually closer to 0° to 10°F lately. I'm fine with that. I've got long underpants and thick socks and soup.

But the home/business owners who never bothered to clear their sidewalks of snow are now protected by Death Moats of Ice. A Death Moat of Ice is an area covered with a layer of ice about 3-inches thick and slippery as fuck, where there used to be a sidewalk. And my neighborhood is chock full of Death Moats of Ice. Between the train station and my house, there are several entire blocks that are unpassable, mostly due to one apartment complex full of old people that hasn't cleared snow all winter. I think they're just trying to keep the oldies inside.

The Tribune had an article today about more and more people going to the ER with ice-related injuries. (This is after ice fell off skyscrapers and hit people on the head earlier in the winter, mind you.) It's really fucking dangerous out there, especially at night when there's a fresh layer of snow on top of the ice and you have no idea which step will turn you horizontal like Daniel Stern in Home Alone.

We actually saw a guy in running gear the other day. Never mind the fact that he had shorts on at 12°, but all he was doing was slowly trying to navigate the Death Moats of Ice. There was no running going on. You have to be super careful on that stuff in shorts, cause once you slip and your upper thigh touches the ice and sticks, you're going nowhere until April.

That's it. Just wanted to let you know how much colder and dangerous-er it is here.

Paczki, Part II

Yes, they are that good they deserve a sequel.

It might just be the fact that I just finished a less-than-fun shift at work. But I just polished off the last of the six paczki leftover from Fat Tuesday. About halfway through, I sat back and gazed at the delicious treat I was enjoying, and squeals of delight emanated from my honey-dripping jowl. Squeals of delight. The last time I squealed with delight was never. It's never happened. But I squealed with delight and then giggled for a few moments about the absurdly delicious taste coursing through my entire body. Then a melancholy sadness washed over upon the realization that it will probably be another year before I get to enjoy it again.

Moral of the story: if you plan to visit Chicago, do it for Mardi Gras and stuff yourself with amazing Polish donuts. You will not regret it.

A Chicago Kind of Day

It's primary election day here in Illinois. Pretty exciting stuff, for someone whose last time in a voting booth was a ballot for Bill Bradley in the 2000 primary. Sure, there have been a few absentee ballots since then, but those never get counted. And I tried to register in DC, but it never actually went through. Bottom line: I was pretty stoked to take part in the grand Chicago tradition of elections.

Given that there have been zero advertisements for any presidential candidate here, I have a feeling that race in Illinois is pretty sewn up. Ditto for the senator and representative, both running unopposed in the Democratic primary. But what about the people who get things done around here? The city, county and state officers who make recycling impossible, shut down the CTA and decide to suddenly impose a $40 tax on owning a car just because they feel like it.

I was looking forward to making my voice heard on a local level until I saw the ballot a few days ago: twenty-seven different offices and questions to vote on, and not nearly enough information around to make a reasonable decision. I ended up abstaining on most of the choices, unless someone had a sweet name (that means you, Thaddeus L. Wilson) or ran an ad that was amusing (that means you, Jay Paul Deratany). This information probably means nothing to you, but it was pretty neat to finally have a vote that counts, even if it's being counted with a whole bunch of dead people that Daley resurrected for election day.

Aside from being Super Tuesday, it's also Fat Tuesday today, if you hadn't heard. I can't get excited for Mardi Gras ever since they tore Lulu's down. But yesterday a Polish friend alerted me to the existence of the paczki (pronounced 'pinch-key', sort of), a deep-fried piece of dough shaped into a flattened sphere and filled with plums or other sweet filling. It's a special Polish donut made to use up all the lard, sugar, eggs and fruit in the house before Lent. And that is something I can get behind.

The big paczki vendor in my neighborhood sold out before noon, so I had to do a little searching. Sweet Cakes Bakery is nearby, but they don't make 'em. (Normally I'd make fun of a vegan bakery with a myspace page and a weird fence you had to walk through to get into their courtyard in the middle of a city. But they had this weird full-size horse statue inside the gate that I'm afraid might come to life at night and eat me.)

Luckily, there is a traditional Polish bakery a block away and they had several paczkis left. I meant to get one or two just to try, but they looked magnificently delicious, so I ended up with six. And I cannot wait to have them all for lunch.

To continue the typical Chicago day, we're expecting anywhere from two to twelve inches of snow tonight, to go along with last Friday's eight inches and Sunday's surprise four. As my semi-Bolivian friend likes to say, Holy Zita!

Happy Tuesday everyone. May your beads fly as high as your dreams.

Here's something...

I haven't played ping pong in a long time. What's with that?