chicago '08

from a piece in the nyt about the fashion in 'devil wears prada':

"Did he hit his mark? To a point. But to the unforgiving eye of insiders who attended a flurry of advance screenings, Andy's swag-laden trip to the ball has about as much relation to reality as New York City does to Kankakee."

in fact, this very week I took two people who rarely leave the greater kankakee area to new york city for a short trip. I can tell you from my in-laws perspective, those two places have NOTHING in common. The rude NYC fashionistas totally panned my in-laws attire and pelted them with comments like, "where'd you get those cropped pants, northfield square mall." seriously though, my mother in law can make friends anywhere. within a few short hours in the big city, she was hanging out with David Carradine in the hotel lobby chatting about the kung fu days. the algonquin hotel was awesome, and I highly recommend it. the location is central, the rooms are quite comfortable, and the place oozes literary history. it was good enough for Dorothy Parker and William Faulkner; it's good enough for you.

one terrible thing happened on our otherwise wonderful trip. Hugsband's mom rode in a cab for the first time in her entire life. we made it about 4 blocks before the cab careened into a pedestrian, throwing her to the ground. not a good first experience.

Hugsband and I have both fallen in love with Carl, who lives across the street. when we see him standing on the porch or in the grass, we whisper his name (quietly- to avoid upsetting the people he lives with) and try to lure him over to our yard with promises of well-prepared steaks. tonight, I saw Carl and the woman who lives in his house and I whispered from across the street, "Carl, we are your real parents." he didn't even look in our direction.

I saw a new dentist last night, who is clearly an east coast native. he speaks like an upper-class bostonian and referred to sailing on more than one occasion. he bears a striking resemblance to the senior senator from massachusetts and even seemed a little tipsy. most concerning was the dentist's appalling disregard for OSHA regulations. at one point, when describing implanted false teeth, he gestured to his own mouth and tapped his teeth with his latex-gloved hand. when he pulled his hand away, a trail of saliva followed it. said hand was returned to my mouth mere seconds later.

by itself, the Ted Kennedy dentist is not that remarkable, but when it's consdered alongside the shock wave of yankee culture that continues to overwhelm me, it's worth talking about. for example, when I was up to bat at softball last week, I could actually see a polo match in progress. the kids across the street are outside playing lacrosse right now. we're on our way to an afternoon party, and the directions to the home were "pass the marina and look for the white colonial". it's like a yuppie overload that my working class system is not prepared to handle. I want to act like a robot and say "does not compute" the next time some parent tries to talk to me about prep schools.

one of my 3 favorite grad school friends of all time, ChimChim, just told me that she got a kickass clinical faculty position at columbia!! (and I promptly called the other 2 favorite friends and shouted the news into their voicemail before ChimChim could do so herself). columbia is a short train ride from my house!! it's all very exciting.

ChimChim's real name is remarkably similar to that of another grad school friend, so Hugsband dubbed them "ChimChim" and "JoJo" to better differentiate. amazingly, neither protested, and I continue to use these monkey-sounding names to this day.

Hugsband and I have been running around and doing a lot of stuff these days. we threw a kickass brunch on memorial day, we both started playing in a softball league on tuesday, Hugsband took his students to manhattan to see hairspray on wednesday, and we spent thursday through saturday in montréal. phew! the highlight of brunch (besides my sweet potato and zucchini frittata) was the game of catch that followed. a couple of the other psych fellows, Hugsband and I were excited to throw the ball around in preparation for our first game against "internal medicine". I am somewhat over-confident in my team's ability to win. the other teams just sound so amazingly dorky that there's no way they can compete. sure, we're called the "dreamers", which is a lame Freud reference, but the team from cognitive neuroscience calls themselves "the field potentials". that name is so geeky that if you merely understand the reference, you're a dork. pharmacology, on the other hand, may pose a real threat. there's a real chance that their players have access to performance enhancing drugs.

we drove to my autism conference in canada. the frustrating thing about québec is that every time I am there, I get all jazzed up to use my french. as soon as the store clerk or waiter or hotel concierge hears his beloved language butchered with a chicago-area accent, however, he starts speaking english to me. I mean, really! how am I supposed to learn? I need practice. I took 5 semesters of french in college taught by a native parisienne who earned her doctorate at the sorbonne, yet I still speak with the accent of my terrible teacher from bradley, illinois. ("bone jur, lah claaaaas.") the drive home from montréal was particularly nice. on an impulse, we stopped at a roadside hummingbird/butterfly zoo just outside the city. it turned out to be a small but beautiful place to spend an hour. then, in vermont, I had a great pizza (vidalia onion/cheddar/broccoli/garlic/no sauce), and we went to the ben & jerry's factory.