alright, allow me just to sing frantically for a moment..

Chicago! Chicago! The wonderful town!
Chicago! Chicago! I'll show you around!
Bet your bottom dollar you'll lose your blues!
Chicago! It's a wonderful town!

Or something like that. i found that song in the great movie Little Voice (feat.Ewan) and i still have no idea what show it's from or movie or whathaveyou.. but it's fabulous and it fits because HEY i just got back from chicago! chicago! (this is how we say it every time)

i'm just going to dip briefly, and without the use of beloved haikus because it's already 12:30 and in okie land that's late because dogs jump on you at around 8 or 9 and lick your face and make you want to murder them even tho you like them so much. chicago! chicago! ok that'll be the last of them.

it's a beautifully wonderful splendiforous scrumptrilescent city! everything is tall and it covers a much larger space than nyc so it feels bigger and it still has that great old quality like boston tho not quite as pretty and red, and we stayed at the Sofitel hotel, a brand spankin new ultra-modern too-sheek-and-swanky-for-words place that blew my mind, everything was gorgeous and luxerious and you get used to feeling like royalty, tres fun. like go to sofitel.com and look around, it's magnifico.. but they show their hotels all over the world and only the chicago one is apparently all modern and boy oh boy is it cool. so the weather was fantastic! so not as cold as we thought, like the lowest was 40 and that's sooo doable with my lovely new coat and scarf and during the day you don't even need a coat, just a turtleneck or something - we were sweating! it was glorious. that night we walked around the magnificent mile, michigan avenue, with all the swanky shops and looked at all the christmas lights on the little trees and everything was just wintery and seasony and great. loved walking outside around chicago.

and chicago has great food.. we went to the water tower which is apparently a 7 story vertical mall and at their food court they have like gourmet cuisine for cheap prices.. i got this amazing stirfry dish, god bless asian food, and we went to see a fuckin JACKIE O exhibit at the field museum!!! there were all her fabulous gay icon clothes! it was so emmett!! and so dan!! what a coincidence. and we walked along lake michigan and i channelled george clooney as a jogging dr. doug ross because i'm quite sure he's done that on ER, oh yes.. and we went to the 96th floor of the john hancock observatory and had cocktails in the lounge (an adult i am now!) and saw this amazing view of the city.. and we nearly died in several insane cab rides.. and we had amazing italian food at topo gigio (try halibut, a fish, bonnisimo!) and four glasses of wine so by the end we were closing out he place drunk and laughing our heads off like idiots and telling stories and having great conversation, what lovliness. we almost made it to a blues bar but we were out too early and my cousin missed her flight because Frontier is a giant jackass (never fly them) and had to arrive much later after midnight so we headed back to the glorious hotel and ordered up ice cream and slept like kittens.. and woke to a fabulous breakfast, belgian waffles! and ran off to see........ wait for it...

OPRAH WINFREY.

ooo child! is right! i saw the oprah! she was right there... bein all.. oprah! she's hot! she's much thinner in person. so the whole trip was really for oprah but i was in it more for chicago but we got ourselves all unfortunately psyched out wondering who could be on the show and we knew it wouldn't air for about a month so what movies were coming out around christmas and we couldn't really think of any... and about midway thru the third glass of wine at topo gigio it hit me, so i slammed my hand down on the table a little too loud and cried, "OCEAN'S TWELVE!!" and then it was just this fluster of shouts and cries, something along the lines of "George! Matt! Brad! Julia! Andy!" - and this was all a horrible horrible mistake because as it happened, as we would find out after standing in line to get in harpo studios for 3 hours, it was a BOOK CLUB SHOW.. ohhhhh stab me in my little heart oprah.. we sooo wanted some celebrity, dammit. well we got a little celebrity. lisa ling from the view was on depressing us about little orphan girls in china. and we saw some starving ethiopians. and ten minutes in literally half the audience is balling.. so no fun cheery celebrity goodness, no no, it was a teary, serious, world-issue oprah.. la dee da, so we got a book from the book club about an opressed chinese woman and we got a dvd that should've been the LiveAid concert that was just released which was mentioned (in relation to ethiopia) but instead is a national geographic documentary on the poor orphaned chinese girls and we got a soft white blanket with the book club emblem on it.. lol. so all around poor oprah when compared to our fantasies, but my cousins were in the front row and it was really cool seeing her at all and she was really funny and we did an After the Show and then we watched her tape voice overs for various future shows and it was just fascinating. so one and a half celebrity sightings! fun fun. look for our goofy asses in a month or so when you see a depressing oprah commercial. and apparently some show where she's in a red sweater talking about house makeovers. she's wearing a blue sweater for starving ethiopians. and she's wearing pajamas for the after the show, v.cute. just book talk but we could be seen! wooboy!

overall: chicago: v. v. good. 9.5 out of 10. must go again with jenn or somebody fun and go to blues bars and rock out.. or must come to oprah when george clooney is on. or jude law. someone fantastic. chicago! chicago! it's a wonderful town!

(and a blue state finally! now sadly back in red gay-hating oklahoma..)

what a little city hopper i'm becoming! tis wonderful.

part deux of the script is now up on that link below.. most likely the final part, i have almost completely lost interest in it already. snore. oh well, it made the classmates laugh, work done. enjoy and comment.. i care what you think even tho i shouldn't. btw, keane? yea, really good. really really good. that single really fucking good. man.

alright well if anyone wants to read the first half of the first 40 pages of my script i've posted it on http://www.msnusers.com/melosthings/. plus a bunch of pretty eye candy for jenn if she ever wants it. i don't know if just anyone can register and access this stuff, so let me know if you have problems. the second part is due next wednesday so hopefully i'll get it up within the next few weeks.

i am fucking in love with interpol. there are very few bands i crave to see live in this world, and right now it's interpol, the yeah yeah yeahs, and modest mouse. let me get into the strange complexity/simplicity that is interpol lyrics.. they go back and forth between the two and it's weird and interesting and slightly funny. let me give examples:

from "say hello to the angels":
this is a concept
this is a bracelet
this isn't no intervention
this is a new year
what you thought was such a conquest
your hair is so pretty and red
baby baby you're really the best

from "obstacle 1":
it's in the way that she poses
it's in the things that she puts in my head
her stories are boring and stuff
she's always calling my bluff
she puts the weights into my little heart
and she gets in my room and she takes it apart

so that's your interpol thought for the day.

more random-sick-at-school-skipping-french thoughts: there is plenty to still be happy about. i love music. i love movies. i love french onion soup. i love this chai tea latte thing i just had from panera that completely soothed my aching throat. i love dancing. i love gay sex. i love jon stewart. i love the color brown. i love the new cool weather. i love that i'm going to new york and boston in a matter of weeks with my best friend whom i also love. i love closing my eyes and feeling an emotion that you can feel physically throughout your whole body.. lately it's been either nostalgia or horniness. i love my brother when he's being sweet to me like he just was on the phone a second ago.. i love how he learns from me occassionally, like when i say "if i'm not happy, no one else around me can be happy, so make me happy" and it was a joke but he knows it's a little true so he tries sometimes. i love good family relationships when they happen. i love that we can heal from bad ones. i love that mean people can't overcome us in the end because the ball is already rolling and times they are a-changin and it's inevitable that things will be better soon. ok i'll leave you with that.

alright. i've thrown off the depression and now feel almost completely joyous and carefree as i listen to "all these things i've done" by the killers who actually ended up being quite the fantastic band i can't help that and a steady mixture of good music, gay sex, dancing, and constant denial that gays don't have the same rights as everyone else in the land o the free and we're in a war based on lies where people won't stop dying and it'll probably go on forever and teenage girls in this state no longer have control over their bodies and are now required by law to undergo possible emotional trauma before they walk towards something that is traumatic in and of itself and oh right a man who can not speak properly and has proven himself to be a religious fanatic and a general son of a bitch has been FREELY REELECTED BY HIS PEOPLE to continue being the most powerful man in the world, george w. bush is a two term president somehow, that will always be in our history books, i think i heard ANWAR was approved so goodbye pretty alaska!, not only was the republican majority in the house and senate maintained, they earned even MORE seats in both, the above shot picture of the colored seats is like a horrible rash that's spreading, and umm.. somehow the midwest is deciding everything for everyone else in the country and that would be fine only they're isolated and ignorant and crazy and mean, i only call em like i see em, thinking a man who has consistently betrayed the values of the once good america is higher on their list of moral values and suddenly terrorism doesn't even mean as much as ass sex - WAIT! not even ass sex! we just legalized that! no no, it's MONOGAMY that's so disgusting and threatening to the american family! if gays can be monogamous, the terrorists will have won! *PULLS OUT HAIR SCREAMING AND SLAMS HEAD AGAINST TABLE* but luckily none of these things are actually happening. not when brian and justin can say witty things and fuck with their perfect mixture of insane lust and passionate love that has literally made every heterosexual relationship i've ever witnessed seem gross and boring. not when i can close my eyes and bounce and bob and sway to music that moves me and makes me smile. not when mike nichols and tony kushner can create angels in america, possibly the greatest thing i've ever seen, and i can watch it whenever i feel like shooting myself because i own it now bitch.

time to heal now huh? the nightmare is over i guess, because if it's possible, the period of time from about 11pm on november 2nd to whenever i started talking to jenn and immersing myself in gay sex on the night of november 3rd was worse than the previous four years. and this is because in the last years we all just helplessly stood by and screamed our heads off as bush and cronies did what they felt like doing to tear us limb from limb, but guess what? there was hope behind our anger, because we knew, just knew that come election time we'd drop kick the motherfucker out of office because it's not humanly possible for a man who's screwed up so many times and spoken so stupidly to win another chance, not with these stakes, you need a REAL player for this ballgame, we're in the world series and we can't afford to let the rookie in just because he really wants to, the guy who's got a drug and alcohol problem and hits you occassionally wants back in your life real bad and you feel for him but hm yea that ain't happenin because you're not insane, and surely everyone would understand that. and then this happens, and we all just have to sit by and watch as the people around you all prove themselves to be aliens and completely force you back into the thing you hate the most, and they actually like it. it's like being woken up by a bucket of ice water, i imagine. democracy works alright. against you. i'm not mad at george w. bush. i'm not mad at john kerry. i'm mad at the stupid motherfuckers who apparently populate the vast areas between our coasts, not to mention my lovely neighbors. i think florida was again mainly responsible for bush winning. i was ready to dry hump it if it pointed america the other way, but as i should've known, florida is the dick and it acted the part. so now the horrible hope-killing hours are over and life has started again and it's still going to be shitty as hell in all reality but as long as i have these other little things to lose myself in i'll make it. a bunch of good movies are coming out soon. i heart huckabees was bizarreworldgoodness, hilarious, a must-see. alfie was incredibly disappointing. i'm about to go to see birth and the incredibles and the director's cut of donnie darko. bridget jones is coming soon and it will shine light all over my life for a blissful couple of hours. i will bathe in the colin firth/hugh grant prettiness. thanksgiving will be spent in oklahoma this year and it'll be relaxing and great and i'll see many movies. in december jenn and i are taking a 5 day trip to boston and new york wherein we'll have the gayest good time ever and possibly get married. no really. just to piss on people. fuck you, crazy america. why the fuck not? ok, off to heal.. with deep anal penetration.

defeat. pretty much. of course it's so slow and unsure of itself i still can't fully mourn. i haven't said a word to anyone in like 12 hours. i'd really like to say something like "fuck florida. we're moving." "i'm leaving for canada in the morning." but it doesn't feel like that. because i really thought we could win this one because i am young and naive and still feel like good wins out over evil most of the time, but i guess that's a fairy tale idea. i watch the west wing and think it's utterly possible because look, there it is, we've created the idea of it, thus the reality is possible because humans can make anything possible. well things don't often work that way. and so i relearn the old rules. you're only as strong as your weakest link. the lesser parts of us are somehow stronger than the greater parts of us. i am let down. i hate that my expectations keep continually lowering. the evil in us is stronger than the good. that's always how it's been. my jealousy, my resentment, my insecurity, my self-pity, always threatens to completely uproot all the numerous gandhi type qualities i've managed to attain over the years, because they're just stronger. america is the same. our hate is stronger than our desire for peace. our ignorance is stronger than our intelligence. our fear is stronger than our hope. i cried a little, panicking for gay people in the bathroom, but it's not as dramatic as i thought it would be. there's just the palpable sense that i should've known better, and how depressing that is, and how there's really nothing i can do to make this country better. 

i know.. i should be posting something here by now.. i have been preoccupied by, well, gay sex as per usual, but also my new band obsession interpol and halloween costumes of late. i was a nun, i had a ruler, it was fun. then i had two jello shots which bookended two strong cocktails and i threw up three times, for fuck's sake. how can alcohol make you feel so lovely most of the time and then sometimes it feels like you're about to die? because that horrible overdrunk feeling that hits you an hour later is simultaneously making you want to puke and making you almost pass out, and i don't know how those two things fit together but somehow they manage and it feels. like. shit. so what i'm thinking is no types of shots ever, not even jello, none whatsoever. ever. again. i don't know why i'm apparently such a lightweight but i am and those are my cards and i'm fuckin folding. or something.

monday nights are lovely for their laziness and the west wing marathons on bravo, that's what's going on behind me right now. i want tomorrow night to be here so fucking bad, i want to know who wins this election so fucking bad. i have a good feeling and am also nervous as hell. i feel like i'm seeing more kerry stickers on cars than bush stickers. but then there are only bush people holding up signs on the sides of roads with shit-eating grins on their faces, happy go lucky fuckers (i say so with affection), all white people who wear their jeans too high around their waists. i give them all thumbs down, i hope they can see through my window. whatever. let the white people wave their Viva Bush! signs! lol. this country is ready for a change and i think it's about to get one. get ready for a guy who can speak in complete sentences. get ready for some normal problems that don't make you nauseous or want to move to canada. and relax, bush people, you'll make it out ok, the world's not going to end, bitch as much as you want but in four years you may have changed your tune.