Chicago, the City is better than the Band
Last week was the end of my finals for the spring quarter. I had to go to my Friday Advanced Rigging class at 6 pm to turn in both my final rig and, with my group, our wing rig. Since only one other group had done the assignment, our group didn’t have much competition and we won the Wing Rig Challenge. Also, my teacher loved my final rig. I had to leave class at around 8 pm (class ends at 10 pm) in order to get to SFO so I could fly out to Chicago for William’s graduation from Northwestern University. Fun.
The ride on BART was fine, but my flight was slightly delayed while on the ground, something that didn’t really matter to me since I was going to have a two hour layover in Atlanta. Yes, due to Delta and their awesome hub setup I was flying to Atlanta first and then to Chicago. On the flight, I got to watch Firewall, a true airplane movie if there ever was one. By which I mean that this was a complete piece of shit that’s not even worth the two dollars they want you to pay for headphones. At some point during this flight, the jack to my own headphone set got bent. Oh well, they still work, but that’s $60 that’s now kinda fucked up. Anyway, on the flight, I notice some guy in first class. I was in the aisle right behind first class (the first coach/economy row) so I could still see into the first class cabin. It was this black guy that looked slightly familiar. Upon leaving the plane (since I was in the first economy row and this guy was in the last first class row, I was basically standing in line to exit behind him) I notice that it’s none other than Dave Chappelle! There he was, looking haggard due to the fact that it was presently 5:30 am Atlanta time and he, like me, hadn’t slept a wink since takeoff. I talked with him for about 2 minutes and wished him well saying something like, “Your fans care more about you than the machine grinding you down.” He seemed to really like that. We parted ways as I headed towards the concourse to my next flight. This flight was short and quick and I slept through most of it, although it was only slightly over an hour long. Upon touching down in Chicago, I called my parents to try and figure out where I was going to meet them. For those of you who’ve heard me bitch about my family this is just a brief moment in my conversation with my dad:
Me: “Where do you want to meet? Inside the basketball stadium or outside?”
Dad: “Which do you think is better?”
Me: “Having never been to either one I have no fucking clue. You guys were there yesterday, which do you think is better?”
Dad: “How easy do you think it’d be to find you inside the stadium?”
Me: “Again, having never been there I can only respond with fuck if I know.”
Dad: “Well, we could meet you in the parking lot.”
Me: “Is there a parking lot in front of the stadium?”
Dad: “I’m not entirely sure.”
Me: “Well, there probably is, but I don’t know if it’s solely for the basketball stadium since the basketball stadium is next to the football stadium.”
Dad: “Right.”
Me: “…so…maybe meeting in the parking lot, which we’re not even sure how big it is, is not the best place to meet.”
Dad: “Yeah.”
Me: “So where would you like to meet?”
Dad: “Have you had breakfast yet?”
Me: “…”
Dad: “Because you could have breakfast in the airport before coming to Northwestern.”
Me: “Who the fuck asked that?!?”
Dad: “Your mother.”
Me: “Okay, ignore her question and answer mine.”
That’s just a small snippet of the conversation. I think we got a little further before my dad once again brought up eating breakfast, at which point I told him that I’m well aware of there being places I could eat breakfast at inside the airport and if I wanted breakfast I could obtain some. Anyway, after that shit, I went to the taxi line. The guy at the head of the line asked me where I wanted to go and I told him. He told me, “Take the first cab, he’ll get you there.” I go into the first cab, which is manned by an elderly Indian fellow. His race has nothing to do with the upcoming events, it’s just that his accent made it hard to hear what he was saying and added to my frustration. As with most taxicabs, this guy departed and then asked me where I wanted to go. I told him both the general address (Northwestern University’s basketball stadium) and the specific address (2705 Ashlund Avenue or something like that). He hears this and says that he has no idea where that is. He doesn’t just not know where the basketball stadium is (I could understand that) but he has no fucking clue where Northwestern University is either! I tell him to pull over (we’re right at the end of the airport) and that I’ll just get another cab with a cabbie who does know where it is. He doesn’t do this and tells me he knows where it is, just as soon as he can talk to my brother, William, and ask him where it is. I call William (good thing I brought my cellphone) and William gives him directions. The cabbie then tries to play it off as if he knew where Northwestern was; he just wasn’t sure what the fastest way to get there is. Mind you, this is Saturday at 9pm so it’s not like he’s competing with rush hour traffic or anything. Anyway, as we approach Northwestern, he has to ask two locals where the basketball stadium is. When he pulls up, he tells me how much it cost (like $45) and I hand him five dollars over that price because I didn’t have any small change. He sees me staring at him (I have no inclination of tipping that sorry bastard) and he asks me what’s wrong. I say, “Aren’t I getting any change?” Usually you pay a cabbie and they give you change and then you tip them. Not this fucker though. His response, “Well, it cost $45 and I just figured you gave me $50 for the standard tip.” As much of an asshole as I am, I had no intention of telling the shithead that I wanted my change and then explaining to him why he wasn’t getting a tip. Maybe this was because I knew my dad was going to reimburse me for the cab ride. So, at this point, apart from meeting Dave Chappelle, I’m in a bad mood. I hadn’t been sleeping much due to finals, I was stressed out due to finals, I just took a very long red-eye where I only slept lightly for one hour over the past 24 (I think, I lost track of how long I’d actually been awake due to time zone changes), I just had an incredibly shitty cab ride possibly the worst I’ve ever had, and it was at least 90 degrees outside with tons of humidity. Upon entering the basketball stadium I learn that there is no AC because it had been broken earlier. Also, Northwestern, for a while, was attempting to charge people for ice water. I think after one or two ceremonies (these were for the individual schools, the general one took place on Friday) they realized that people were going to kill them and they stopped this practice and made it free ice water. Suffice to say that later on when I met up with my parents and my dad made some remark like why I wasn’t greeting them with smiles it took every last bit of restraint not to give him a bloody nose right then and there. The only mercy I received that day was that the ceremony was somewhat short, just shy of 2 hours long. What took the most time was having the graduates enter and leave. You know how when they fill in the aisles they either do so from the first row and then the second and so forth or they do it reverse from the back (fill in the back row, then second to last, etc…)? Well this was a complete clusterfuck. Kids would fill in the first row, then some random row towards the back, then some random row in the middle and whatnot. You could see these huge pileups of kids as if no one had organized this thing. I asked my dad why they just didn’t ask one of the currently graduating math students to organize this thing. But yeah, the theme for this graduation was definitely clusterfuck. Then came the speech by one of the faculty members. This guy started out all right, he did a very non-traditional graduation speech for about 10 minutes, even poking fun at the traditional way. If you don’t know what I mean about traditional I mean the speech that goes roughly like this, “You’re all here today as graduates. You learned a lot while here. You learned something about the past, your present, and the future. Hopefully you feel prepared to go out there and get ‘em. You also learned stuff not only in the classroom but also outside of it. You learned from each other and built a social network. You are now prepared to take on the world. You guys are the best graduating class! Huzzahs all around! Let the sucking of penises commence!” We’ve all heard this speech. And after those first 10 minutes, this guy started to deliver that speech, the traditional, boring as Hell, no basis in reality, pie in the sky speech. He started rambling on about total obscurities that at one point I asked my dad if we were listening to his speech or merely the delusional ravings of someone struck in the midst of heat stroke. My father wasn’t sure. The faculty member at one point said what both my father and I consider the pinnacle of stupidity of his speech, “History doesn’t repeat itself.” Yes, he actually said that! And he is supposedly a history professor there and a well respected one at that. Now, we all know that the exact events of history don’t repeat themselves (although they sometimes do), but that it is the conditions and themes of history that repeat themselves (racism, slavery, egalitarianism, domination, submission, conquering, hubris, plagues, ignorance, etc…). However, that is not what he was alluding to at all, he was basically saying that no part of history ever repeats itself in anyway. I gasped and made a face of utter disgust when I heard this and my father, who was a history student in undergrad, sarcastically laughed. The faculty member also tried to draw comparisons between the current state of affairs and the dawn of Vietnam when he graduated in 1966. I say he tried to in that he really didn’t, all he basically said was, “Then, like now, it was a time of war. It sucked graduating then and maybe now, you guys can make a difference.” Of course, speaking to 2,000 middle to upper class white people, many of whom are either middle of the road, Republican, or apathetic, probably isn’t targeting those who are going to make the necessary political changes to stop the madness of our current administration. His overall point was for this class to “remain freshmen and be open and curious of new experiences”. This is also an incredibly dumb sentiment. Being open to new experiences is what we laymen call life. Getting a job is a new experience. Without one, you really won’t have much in the way of life. Graduating from college is a new experience while the only other alternative, not graduating and getting kicked out, is also a new experience. Furthermore, not all new experiences are good ones. You could think getting married to the woman of your dreams is a new and good experience, until you get divorced when you realized that bitch was a soul-sucking harpy of Lucifer himself. You may think getting in a car accident is a new and bad experience until you win the lawsuit and are set for life and all you really have to show for it, in terms of medical damage, is a scar on your right forearm. In other words, this guy’s statement was utterly ignorant. He really only stated it in the most vague way and meant it only in a positive fashion. In short, he didn’t understand the totality of his statement nor even fully considered what all of its implications were. Heck I don’t even think he considered his statement outside of the fact that he just got a hot new young wife and is having a kid with her (William told me this back-story later). I think he just wrote it and hoped everyone would just go along with it. All in all, it was an utterly terrible speech that almost everyone, including William, agreed was without point or merit. That night we had an excellent steak dinner. The steaks were a little too rare for my taste (when I order medium I don’t expect there to be any blood, it can be as red or pink as you’d like, just not bloody), but still incredibly good. I then went back to the hotel where my family was staying and went to bed. The next day they dropped me off at William’s dorm since they had an earlier flight. William, a few of his friends, and I went to have dinner at a place called Joy Yee’s, which is basically a Chinese, Japanese, and Thai restaurant that had the most amount of boba drinks I’d ever seen (like on huge 18 inch page filled with them). Usually I avoid restaurants like this but it was quite good. Afterwards, I got on another complicated Delta flight (first to Cincinnati and then to San Francisco) to get home. Then it was time to start my real vacation.
The ride on BART was fine, but my flight was slightly delayed while on the ground, something that didn’t really matter to me since I was going to have a two hour layover in Atlanta. Yes, due to Delta and their awesome hub setup I was flying to Atlanta first and then to Chicago. On the flight, I got to watch Firewall, a true airplane movie if there ever was one. By which I mean that this was a complete piece of shit that’s not even worth the two dollars they want you to pay for headphones. At some point during this flight, the jack to my own headphone set got bent. Oh well, they still work, but that’s $60 that’s now kinda fucked up. Anyway, on the flight, I notice some guy in first class. I was in the aisle right behind first class (the first coach/economy row) so I could still see into the first class cabin. It was this black guy that looked slightly familiar. Upon leaving the plane (since I was in the first economy row and this guy was in the last first class row, I was basically standing in line to exit behind him) I notice that it’s none other than Dave Chappelle! There he was, looking haggard due to the fact that it was presently 5:30 am Atlanta time and he, like me, hadn’t slept a wink since takeoff. I talked with him for about 2 minutes and wished him well saying something like, “Your fans care more about you than the machine grinding you down.” He seemed to really like that. We parted ways as I headed towards the concourse to my next flight. This flight was short and quick and I slept through most of it, although it was only slightly over an hour long. Upon touching down in Chicago, I called my parents to try and figure out where I was going to meet them. For those of you who’ve heard me bitch about my family this is just a brief moment in my conversation with my dad:
Me: “Where do you want to meet? Inside the basketball stadium or outside?”
Dad: “Which do you think is better?”
Me: “Having never been to either one I have no fucking clue. You guys were there yesterday, which do you think is better?”
Dad: “How easy do you think it’d be to find you inside the stadium?”
Me: “Again, having never been there I can only respond with fuck if I know.”
Dad: “Well, we could meet you in the parking lot.”
Me: “Is there a parking lot in front of the stadium?”
Dad: “I’m not entirely sure.”
Me: “Well, there probably is, but I don’t know if it’s solely for the basketball stadium since the basketball stadium is next to the football stadium.”
Dad: “Right.”
Me: “…so…maybe meeting in the parking lot, which we’re not even sure how big it is, is not the best place to meet.”
Dad: “Yeah.”
Me: “So where would you like to meet?”
Dad: “Have you had breakfast yet?”
Me: “…”
Dad: “Because you could have breakfast in the airport before coming to Northwestern.”
Me: “Who the fuck asked that?!?”
Dad: “Your mother.”
Me: “Okay, ignore her question and answer mine.”
That’s just a small snippet of the conversation. I think we got a little further before my dad once again brought up eating breakfast, at which point I told him that I’m well aware of there being places I could eat breakfast at inside the airport and if I wanted breakfast I could obtain some. Anyway, after that shit, I went to the taxi line. The guy at the head of the line asked me where I wanted to go and I told him. He told me, “Take the first cab, he’ll get you there.” I go into the first cab, which is manned by an elderly Indian fellow. His race has nothing to do with the upcoming events, it’s just that his accent made it hard to hear what he was saying and added to my frustration. As with most taxicabs, this guy departed and then asked me where I wanted to go. I told him both the general address (Northwestern University’s basketball stadium) and the specific address (2705 Ashlund Avenue or something like that). He hears this and says that he has no idea where that is. He doesn’t just not know where the basketball stadium is (I could understand that) but he has no fucking clue where Northwestern University is either! I tell him to pull over (we’re right at the end of the airport) and that I’ll just get another cab with a cabbie who does know where it is. He doesn’t do this and tells me he knows where it is, just as soon as he can talk to my brother, William, and ask him where it is. I call William (good thing I brought my cellphone) and William gives him directions. The cabbie then tries to play it off as if he knew where Northwestern was; he just wasn’t sure what the fastest way to get there is. Mind you, this is Saturday at 9pm so it’s not like he’s competing with rush hour traffic or anything. Anyway, as we approach Northwestern, he has to ask two locals where the basketball stadium is. When he pulls up, he tells me how much it cost (like $45) and I hand him five dollars over that price because I didn’t have any small change. He sees me staring at him (I have no inclination of tipping that sorry bastard) and he asks me what’s wrong. I say, “Aren’t I getting any change?” Usually you pay a cabbie and they give you change and then you tip them. Not this fucker though. His response, “Well, it cost $45 and I just figured you gave me $50 for the standard tip.” As much of an asshole as I am, I had no intention of telling the shithead that I wanted my change and then explaining to him why he wasn’t getting a tip. Maybe this was because I knew my dad was going to reimburse me for the cab ride. So, at this point, apart from meeting Dave Chappelle, I’m in a bad mood. I hadn’t been sleeping much due to finals, I was stressed out due to finals, I just took a very long red-eye where I only slept lightly for one hour over the past 24 (I think, I lost track of how long I’d actually been awake due to time zone changes), I just had an incredibly shitty cab ride possibly the worst I’ve ever had, and it was at least 90 degrees outside with tons of humidity. Upon entering the basketball stadium I learn that there is no AC because it had been broken earlier. Also, Northwestern, for a while, was attempting to charge people for ice water. I think after one or two ceremonies (these were for the individual schools, the general one took place on Friday) they realized that people were going to kill them and they stopped this practice and made it free ice water. Suffice to say that later on when I met up with my parents and my dad made some remark like why I wasn’t greeting them with smiles it took every last bit of restraint not to give him a bloody nose right then and there. The only mercy I received that day was that the ceremony was somewhat short, just shy of 2 hours long. What took the most time was having the graduates enter and leave. You know how when they fill in the aisles they either do so from the first row and then the second and so forth or they do it reverse from the back (fill in the back row, then second to last, etc…)? Well this was a complete clusterfuck. Kids would fill in the first row, then some random row towards the back, then some random row in the middle and whatnot. You could see these huge pileups of kids as if no one had organized this thing. I asked my dad why they just didn’t ask one of the currently graduating math students to organize this thing. But yeah, the theme for this graduation was definitely clusterfuck. Then came the speech by one of the faculty members. This guy started out all right, he did a very non-traditional graduation speech for about 10 minutes, even poking fun at the traditional way. If you don’t know what I mean about traditional I mean the speech that goes roughly like this, “You’re all here today as graduates. You learned a lot while here. You learned something about the past, your present, and the future. Hopefully you feel prepared to go out there and get ‘em. You also learned stuff not only in the classroom but also outside of it. You learned from each other and built a social network. You are now prepared to take on the world. You guys are the best graduating class! Huzzahs all around! Let the sucking of penises commence!” We’ve all heard this speech. And after those first 10 minutes, this guy started to deliver that speech, the traditional, boring as Hell, no basis in reality, pie in the sky speech. He started rambling on about total obscurities that at one point I asked my dad if we were listening to his speech or merely the delusional ravings of someone struck in the midst of heat stroke. My father wasn’t sure. The faculty member at one point said what both my father and I consider the pinnacle of stupidity of his speech, “History doesn’t repeat itself.” Yes, he actually said that! And he is supposedly a history professor there and a well respected one at that. Now, we all know that the exact events of history don’t repeat themselves (although they sometimes do), but that it is the conditions and themes of history that repeat themselves (racism, slavery, egalitarianism, domination, submission, conquering, hubris, plagues, ignorance, etc…). However, that is not what he was alluding to at all, he was basically saying that no part of history ever repeats itself in anyway. I gasped and made a face of utter disgust when I heard this and my father, who was a history student in undergrad, sarcastically laughed. The faculty member also tried to draw comparisons between the current state of affairs and the dawn of Vietnam when he graduated in 1966. I say he tried to in that he really didn’t, all he basically said was, “Then, like now, it was a time of war. It sucked graduating then and maybe now, you guys can make a difference.” Of course, speaking to 2,000 middle to upper class white people, many of whom are either middle of the road, Republican, or apathetic, probably isn’t targeting those who are going to make the necessary political changes to stop the madness of our current administration. His overall point was for this class to “remain freshmen and be open and curious of new experiences”. This is also an incredibly dumb sentiment. Being open to new experiences is what we laymen call life. Getting a job is a new experience. Without one, you really won’t have much in the way of life. Graduating from college is a new experience while the only other alternative, not graduating and getting kicked out, is also a new experience. Furthermore, not all new experiences are good ones. You could think getting married to the woman of your dreams is a new and good experience, until you get divorced when you realized that bitch was a soul-sucking harpy of Lucifer himself. You may think getting in a car accident is a new and bad experience until you win the lawsuit and are set for life and all you really have to show for it, in terms of medical damage, is a scar on your right forearm. In other words, this guy’s statement was utterly ignorant. He really only stated it in the most vague way and meant it only in a positive fashion. In short, he didn’t understand the totality of his statement nor even fully considered what all of its implications were. Heck I don’t even think he considered his statement outside of the fact that he just got a hot new young wife and is having a kid with her (William told me this back-story later). I think he just wrote it and hoped everyone would just go along with it. All in all, it was an utterly terrible speech that almost everyone, including William, agreed was without point or merit. That night we had an excellent steak dinner. The steaks were a little too rare for my taste (when I order medium I don’t expect there to be any blood, it can be as red or pink as you’d like, just not bloody), but still incredibly good. I then went back to the hotel where my family was staying and went to bed. The next day they dropped me off at William’s dorm since they had an earlier flight. William, a few of his friends, and I went to have dinner at a place called Joy Yee’s, which is basically a Chinese, Japanese, and Thai restaurant that had the most amount of boba drinks I’d ever seen (like on huge 18 inch page filled with them). Usually I avoid restaurants like this but it was quite good. Afterwards, I got on another complicated Delta flight (first to Cincinnati and then to San Francisco) to get home. Then it was time to start my real vacation.