Merry Christmas!

Ho Ho Ho, Where Are My Sugar Cubes?

Bryan Christmased up this picture of my niece's horse. Aw. Merry Christmas, Limo.

Thanksgiving 2008

A Very Krauty New Year's Eve

How was your New Year's Eve? Mine was great fun. This year marks only the second time that I've been out in public celebrating the birth of a new year, because my quiet and dutiful streak landed me lots of babysitting gigs when I lived back home in Indiana. But Chicago is molding me into a whole new person, and this year I wanted to get my party on.





December 31 was a very cold and snowy night in Chicago, but the German American Cultural Center (AKA Dank Haus) beckoned, with a siren call tinged with a Teutonic lilt. We'd heard that the party, in the Marunde Grand Ballroom, was a mere $5, and it was only a short walk from our point of origin. Some in our party had already fortified themselves with Irish whiskey, while others preferred to steel ourselves against the bitter cold with multiple scarves and megamittens.




German beer was flowing freely, at an affordable six tickets per glass. Hey, wait, is one ticket one dollar? What's the conversion rate? Are we getting a great deal or grossly overextending our beer budget? At any rate, boys and girls of German extraction cheerfully toasted the New Year. (Okay, sure, we're also part Irish, French, and a bunch of other stuff, and one of us is a straight up Scotsman, but we were very German that night.) Unexpectedly, we bumped into friends. Expectedly, we blogged about the whole thing. (Photos by this guy.)



The Polkaholics rocked so hard, their sign fell down, and dervish-like partygoers, with Polkaholics bumper stickers firmly affixed to their bums, flailed with uncontrollable polka tics. Yours truly, the biggest self-conscious non-dancer that ever lived, was lured out on the dance floor with the promise of a midnight smooch under a poetic balloon drop, only to find myself (somewhat uninhibited by the 2.5 beers I'd quaffed) coerced into dancing. In public. Not a polka, per se, and certainly nothing Gelsey Kirkland would describe as graceful, but dancing nonetheless.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!

The Polkaholics, in all their punk-a-polkic glory:

Halloween Post #3

However many bajillions of dollars my loving parents may have sunk into my pristinely Catholic, classics (and classical)-laden education, this video still reminds me more of The Simpsons more than classic American literature. Eh. Whatever. Poe still rocks.

Quoth the raven:

Halloween Post #1

Jim Fath, who has performed at my show as part of Hey You Millionaires, is going crazy with videos on Phat Phree. Here's his "Ultimate 11 Halloween Houses," featuring "The house where the guy jumps out and scares the sh*t out of you":



Among the other eleven is this one, featuring my Underground co-producer Dan "Creepyface" Telfer:



Oh, and speaking of Dan, who's doing an entire upcoming set as a zombie, there's this: the Emergency Zombie Defense Station.