weekend with kyle

Oct 31, 2006 16:10

heyyyyyy y'all:

kyle came this weekend, we had a good last visit together before I take off. in fitting fashion, the weekend was full of classic kyle-nora activities.

1. movies.

friday evening we caught a late showing of Marie Antoinette, Sophia Coppola's latest venture into the world of portraiture. that's what it was, essentially: a sort of atmospheric portrait of a lady with too much to carry on her shoulders and too much money in her hand.

Coppola is very good at setting up beautiful scenes and putting them to indiecool music -- she could make hella good music videos. so it was very pretty, and fun to listen to, but it was sort of unsatisfying as a movie, which is how I felt about Lost in Translation, too. it was a little like having a teenage tour guide at the Louvre pointing to the pictures and saying "Look, isn't this ridiculous?" Yes, Sophia, 18th-century French palace life was ridiculous.

also, the message was a little obnoxious: pity the poor celebrity, she knows not what she does.

I don't like Kirsten Dunst, but she was okay here. Jason Schwartzman was excellent.

Saturday evening we saw The Prestige, by Christopher Nolan, the guy who did Memento, and it was fantastic. I highly recommend it. Christian Bale is my husband. kyle and I give it two thumbs up.

2. music.

the pretext for the visit was Thursday night's Hold Steady show at Metro. they're coming to DC in a couple weeks -- gwen, you should totally go, because it's absolutely worth watching them play live.

the lead guy is amazing, he's like an anti-rockstar: short, dumpy, wears glasses, nothing to look at. but he's brilliant -- he moves like a dancing toddler, with tics and funny spastic wiggles, and when he sings he looks like he'll lose control of his limbs at any minute. most of the time he doesn't even sing; he sort of spits out words like the Dustin Hoffman character in Rain Man.

the pianist was a little guy with sideburns, a mustache and a vest and cap, doing old-world steps behind a stand-up keyboard. the bassist was a tall young guy with wavy hair who curled around like a question mark and kept throwing money into the audience.

and all of them had bottles of wine, and bottles of beer, and were sloshed the whole performance. they didn't play like a drunk band, though - the music was great, they were together all the way through the last song. another two thumbs up.

3. dining out.

saturday afternoon we took the el to Wicker Park and ate at the Blue Line Diner, where they played a Cure "best of" CD that made kyle happy.

saturday night was dinner at Eleven City Diner, sort of an upscale deli near my apartment. kyle had pastrami on rye; I had tuna salad. my sandwich came with half a boiled egg on top, and a very good pickle.

sunday morning we had brunch at the Twisted Spoke, the place with the biker brunch I'd been dying to try since the weekend before. the food was good - I had scrambled egg tacos - and they have fresh-squeezed orange juice, which is always a treat. it was a delight.

4. shopping.

kyle helped me pick out some long-sleeved shirts at a shop near the biker brunch place - pink and red and blue (because, he told me, "you need color in your wardrobe."). and he indulged me when I found a dollhouse store (miniature everything! miniature cat food, miniature toilet paper, miniature hospital equipment...). I loved dollhouses as a kid. miniature stuff still fascinates me. I didn't buy anything, but I think if I had a fortune, I'd spend it at that store.

on the way home we stopped at my local yarn shop and bought yarn for kyle's hat, which will be orange and white and made of alpaca. and yarn for my scarf, because I lost my last one in the movie theater.

the one thing we didn't do was something halloween-y, because we both got a little crabby on the night we'd planned to go out. we did catch sight of some interesting revelers, though, and some entertaining storefront scenes: a secondhand couture shop in Wicker Park had a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds," and the erotica stores on Belmont had skanky varieties of every storybook character you could think of: skanky snow white, skanky cinderella, skanky red ridinghood. little teeny costumes; a whole lotta skankin'.

we also did some chicago-y things -- Kyle got to see Wrigley Field, which was near the Hold Steady show, and we both got to see The Metro, the club where The Hold Steady played. and we finally caught a Second City revue, which was fun. they did two acts of sketch comedy and then an extra half-hour or so of improv; I liked the improv better, but kyle preferred the sketches.

in sum: kyle is the best music-loving heterosexual gay buddy ever. and I will miss him.

kyle, chicago

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