observations from ORD, and general notes about our Southern Neighbors

1. I've just seen a whole bunch of people wearing Mickey Mouse hats. Some of these people may have been in their teens, maybe upper teens, some upper teens' parents, some upper teens' grandparents. I'm not sure what happened, or what still happens in that nurturing environment, but I don't like it.

Although, if they weren't Disney-based, if they were some other ridiculous hats - say, cowboy hats, or perhaps balloon animal hats - then I might actually applaud those folks. Yeah. I'd be envious, even. 'Cause you know what, life without the ability to feel humiliation must be damn nice.

2. I then saw some dude in a wheelchair. He was propelling himself forward with his feet. See, in contrast to the Mouse family, this guy's life must just be F'ing awful. What kind of life are you living if your hero is George Costanza? Careful dude, Mr Tomasulo is going to fire your ass from Play Now if he sees you!

3. If you can believe it, I then saw some dude wearing a blue wife beater that was being pulled everywhich way by his numerous carry-on bags thus exposing at least one nipple, cargo shorts, berkenstocks, and a hat that surely used to belong to the late Steve Irwin. Crikey, Outback Jack, here's hoping there'll be no snakes on your plane!

4. O'Hare Airport is a F'ing freak show.

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Things I always forget:

1. American Coke tastes terrible. It's grody. First of all, it's way too sweet. If I wanted way too sweet, I would have bought F'ing Pepsi (and, relatedly, I wonder what American Pepsi tastes like. My teeth!, they're melting at the thought). Secondly, it's really flat. Guess what, like my pop fizzy. If I wanted to skip the carbonation, I'd be drinking a F'ing coffee.

2. You never get full from eating salad, you just get tired of eating salad. I got an American portion of "Chinois chicken salad" from Wolfgang Puck's ORD outlet. Mm yummy. I guess it was Chinois because they used sauce arachide. Otherwise it sure looked like a regular cabbage based slaw with some chicken mixed in, to me. Oh wait, they also threw in some deep fried wonton skin wafers. Sorry, I apologize Wolfgang, you're right. Totally F'ing Chinois.

Anyway, that wasn't what I wanted to mention. The salad, despite the name (which was frankly a complete exercise in humiliation for me to order; the only thing missing was Mickey Mouse ears on my head) was okay - I mean I'm pretty sure it was the pick of the menu. I've had Mr Puck's famous pizza before, and it appeals about as much as Mr McCain's. But it was Huge. It was a F'ing dinner plate (plastic, natch) piled high with a good 1.5 lbs of that crazy ass Chinois Slaw. And yeah, I ate the whole thing. At the 75% mark I was about to give up, because it was just too much salad. But I continued so as not to waste it. And now I feel gross. Like, grody. So then the question is, how do you feel grody after eating a (supposedly) light and refreshing salad?

Maybe those weren't just wonton skins, maybe they were actually slices of low grade lardo deep fried in lower grade lardo. Or biodiesel. Gah.

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Things I'm always pleasantly reminded of:

1. People here are really friendly. They say that Canadians are really friendly, but I've never really understood that one. Canadians can be friendly, but not all are (Hello!). Americans are damn friendly to strangers.

2. American TV kicks ass. It's their true contribution to The World of Art.

Oh, hey, I watched ESPN HD - a lot. Wow, that is cool. I need to waste more of my disposable income to get that shit into my house. Every Sunday, having clear crisp NFL games beamed directly into my eyes surely would be worth some dollars. Right?

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The last word on traveling:
Man alive, I become a grumpy asshole when I'm stuck in airports.

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Actual last words, spoken later from my own living room:
It is always good to come home.