Tag Archives: chicago

Larry Loved: Stereogum’s ‘The Number Ones’ article series

January 21, 2020 Hobie Leave a comment

Don’t hold me to this, but I think I want to capture some of those things that Larry loved and write about them on my site. Something that immediately came to mind was the article series on the Stereogum website:

https://www.stereogum.com/category/franchises/the-number-ones/

The author, Tom Breihan, has written about every single #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 charts since it’s inception in 1958. As of today, he’s currently up to January 1979, where we are still apparently in the clutch of disco (nothing wrong with that). Larry loved to always talk about what song was #1 during someone’s birthday – on his birthday, it was Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Shining Star”, which really is a fantastic song.

For my birthday, it was one of Larry’s favorite bands: Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now”. I narrowly avoided it being Rick Dees’ “Disco Duck”, so thank god for small miracles.

This past year, Larry thoughtfully sent along the article for when it was ABBA’s “Dancing Queen”. The write-up is beautiful, frankly, so read it, and the song does mean a lot to me. It was the last song we danced to at our wedding reception, and just for that alone it will be forever special. Plus, it’s just pure ABBA perfection.

Larry just loved lists like these – he was so happy to get the comprehensive book containing the listing of every Television show up through like early 2000s. It was something I loved so dearly about him, as he was just so into stuff and I couldn’t help but be into it too.

pictures, pop culture, social culture

Our Activity-Filled July 4 Weekend

July 4, 2016 Hobie Leave a comment

It’s been one hell of a 4-day weekend – a much needed one, to be sure. Today, the actual holiday of July 4, is probably going to be the most relaxing day of it all, and that’s absolutely perfect for us. Stay a while, look at some pictures, as we’ve had some fun activities this weekend!

Friday, July 1

PwC gave us this day off, and after the one-two punch of Wednesday and Thursday, it was a nice luxury. I made myself exercise in the morning, then I took care of some of the chores that had been backing up, including the sad one of sending off my MacBook Pro for reabsorption back in the Apple ecosystem. I ended up trading it in for credit as I just do NOT use it anymore. Well, it did have one lust hurrah for us as it served as the photo montage delivery system during our wedding reception, so thank you MBP! But alas, your time finally came.

I didn’t do too much exciting stuff though beyond just getting some other shit done at home, as Larry had to work. But we had activities galore planned for the weekend, so Friday didn’t need to be nuts. We did get some Din Tai Fung though, so it was a nice capper to the day.

Saturday, July 2

Mom was going to be coming over in the afternoon today as we had tickets to see Beautiful at the Pantages that night, but in the afternoon, Larry and I had tickets to the Rain Room. So off we went for some culture at LACMA. We ended up going this day as that was when I could get tickets at a decent time – the Rain Room is quite a hot ticket to get, much like the Infinite Stars thing at the Broad. One day we’ll hope to be back there and see that. Anyway, we headed to LACMA and had some fun at our museum stomping grounds, first taking in the Metropolis II exhibit. It’s always fun to see it and we got there right when it started up.

2016 07 02 – Revisiting Metropolis II at the LACMA

Back at Metropolis II

Zoom in to the cars

Lots of fun skyscrapers in the installation

Trains too

The cars are all poised for their adventure

Larry and me

Byways and highways

These ramps are the traffic jam portion

From up above

These cars immediately take off upon cresting the hill

Can’t even see them when trying to capture a pic

Not the same woman from before (4 years before)

Miracle Mile picture

You can just see the Hotel Wilshire in the distance

Hollywood Sign from the LACMA

Can see where the AMPAS museum is getting built

Killing time before our Rain Room appt

It was a beautiful day for the LACMA, that’s for sure. This weekend was happily not one of those insane 100-degree onslaughts!

So, off to the Rain Room, which is a relatively new installation that has you walk into a room with rain falling, with the key twist being that as you walk, the rain clears so you don’t get wet. In theory. You are instructed to walk quite slowly, but even moving slowly, you’re gonna get dripped on. It is a pretty neat thing to do though. I took some pictures and videos, which you can see here. Continue reading Our Activity-Filled July 4 Weekend →

pictures

Day 8: London & West End

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(2014 Note: These pages are transfers from my original site so I can better view the many pictures I have from that trip and so it’s searchable within WordPress Search. Here’s a link to the original page!)

London – Part Two! As you may recall from the first page of this little travel journal, when we had initially planned this trip, there were lots of incarnations of the itinerary. The trip was always supposed to end back here in London, but there were all various cities that we had planned to also go to. As it turned out though, happily, we only went to Paris and London. Thank God. So before our flight back to the U.S., we had one more day of London, and I think we managed to get a lot of touristy stuff in before our flight the next morning.

Susan was not getting up this morning. That had been decreed the night before, so Jeff and I made plans to enjoy the morning and also plan for the evening, as we decided to see the musical Chicago while here. London has the wonderful TKTS booth like in NYC, where you can pick up tickets to shows for basically half-off, but only for showings that same day/evening. Jeff and I took the tube into the West End area where the tkts booth was, waited in line for about an hour, and finally got 3 tickets to see Chicago that evening. Don’t think that meant we were heading back to the hotel though, as there were other objectives to accomplish!

First: Jeff was bound and determined to find the Coat of Arms museum we had heard about on the Thames River Cruise we had gone on during London – Part One. We had all heard the tour guide motion towards a building that was by a bridge and describe the Coat of Arms museum, a place in which you could go in and find out your ancestry’s coat of arms. That did sound cool, but for Jeff, it became a MUST SEE. Well, after leaving the West End and a necessary cup of coffee (it was actually kind of cold when we got back to London), we began our Snipe Walk around the downtown part of the city near the Thames. We walked all around the area we thought the guide had gestured too, walking out onto bridges to see if we could recreate the view….but all to no avail. I think I had bet Jeff he wouldn’t find it, but I was certainly willing to indulge him in his quest, as I really didn’t have much else to do! Yet we didn’t find it – or actually, once we got back to the states, it turns out we actually did find it, we just didn’t realize it. After we gave up on the quest, we found a cool little bar/restaurant that went underground to refresh. We jumped back on the Tube after lunch and I convinced Jeff to ride on the Central Loop with me, as I was going to go to….

King’s Cross Train Station! Yep – I wanted to go see the legendary entrance to the station where the Hogwarts Express leaves London on its way to Hogwarts (from Harry Potter, duh). It’s kind of a necessary pilgrimage to make if you’re a Harry Potter fan. Jeff wanted to head back to the hotel to meet back up with Susan, but I convinced him that since it was a loop, he could just go the long way! He did that, and I got off at King’s Cross station while he went back to the Hotel Byron to wake Susan up. We planned to reconvene at Harrod’s Department Store later in the afternoon. So I made the pilgrimage, took the requisite pictures at Platform 9 3/4 (that’s pretty cool that the train station actually did that), then decided since I was here, to take Rick Steves’ advice and see the British Library. It is home to one of the first printed Guttenberg bibles as well as some of the oldest versions of the Bible, period. It has a ton of illuminated manuscripts, the Magna Carta, original Beatles lyrics, and a ton of fascinating historical documents. Very cool!

After my little side trips there, I then headed to Harrods, which I had never been inside before. As you may or may not know, it is basically the world’s largest and most ridiculous department store. It’s quite unreal, and also huge huge huge. It was at this point I realized, I have no idea how I’m going to find Susan and Jeff inside here. I didn’t have a cell phone with me, so that option wasn’t there. So after walking around a bit and looking for Jeff or Susan (or their clothes), I decided to camp out at the Pizza place within, figuring they’d look for me somewhere where there is food. I had taken off my red jacket but then realized, you know, I’ve been wearing this damn thing the whole trip, and it kind of sticks out, and right now, that is a good thing. So I ate my $25 pizza slices (seriously – the Pound kills the Dollar in the exchange rate) and waited…and sure enough, they found me! We then wandered around the store for a little while longer, before finally heading back to the hotel to change and then head out to seeÂ Chicago!

So we took the tube into the West End, London’s version of New York’s Broadway, basically. Our seats weren’t the best (basically the back of the balcony section…oh well, what can you expect for really cheap day-of seats!?), but it was still fun to see the show. It is quite different than the movie, in terms of what you’d expect for Set Design and Staging. It’s quite a minimal production – the songs still rock, but I had envisioned that the movie version had lifted the theatrical productions of the songs …. I was wrong. Regardless, it was still a great experience.

We wandered a bit around the West End before finally succumbing to exhaustion and the need to go get some rest at the hotel, as our flight left the next morning. And that next day we promptly checked out in the morning, took the Tube to Victoria station, where we took the Heathrow Express shuttle train back to the airport and made our way back to the states!

It was an exhausting, yet very fun trip, that’s for sure! Obviously, it made an impression as I can still pretty much remember it vividly even almost a year and a half later. Europe with friends is an awesome thing to do, and highly recommended to all of you!!!

April 3 & 4, 2007: One Last Day in London and Heading Home to the US!

Me at Piccadilly Circus (like Times Square, but not)03-Apr-2007 11:12, Canon Canon PowerShot SD900, 2.8, 7.7mm, 0.005 sec

Friday, July 1

Saturday, July 2

2016 07 02 – Revisiting Metropolis II at the LACMA

April 3 & 4, 2007: One Last Day in London and Heading Home to the US!

The Greek Theater, August 1, 2014

REO Speedwagon Setlist:

Chicago setlist:

Encore setlist

7 July 2007 aka 7/7/7 – Pics in Chicago on the Luckiest Day Ever

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