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.