Escape from New York Part II: Chicago

Ahhh, Chicago. The Windy City. Home of the Bulls. (The who?) The Cubs. (The what?) The Bears. (The which?) Second City. Oprah. And Chicago-style pizza. Is it home of anything else? Probably. Check the internet.

You might remember (you won't remember) that recently I did a post about my visit to Chicago, during which I ogled a wonderfully random and tacky statue of Marilyn Monroe. Well, at long last, here's some pics of the non-Marilyn parts of town.

I was in Chicago to take care of my friend Rachel's cat while she was away in California. I was very nervous about being responsible for someone's cat and house, but Rachel had this very reassuring message on her microwave, which calmed me down a little.

Unfortunately, the next morning I put a to-go coffee cup that apparently has metal in it in the self-same microwave and nearly blew the thing up. (Rachel, I'm so sorry.) But the good news is that I didn't burn the house down or accidentally kill her cat. So I consider the whole thing a success.

Anyway, on to the photos.

Here's one that Rachel took of me in Boystown before she left. As you can see, things get pretty blurry in Boystown.

The top photo and this one above are of, I don't know, two lit-up white brick towers in Millennium Park? With films of women making various facial expressions while cascades of water fell down over them? Pretty alluring.

Was a TOTAL tourist and went to Gino's East for pizza and I'm not apologizing for it because it was delicious. My only criticism is that their pizza display out front is kind of misleading. I was expecting to actually be able to climb on top of my pizza to eat it. But I gotta say, the best meal I had was at Kuma's Corner, a burger joint where all the different types of burgers are named after heavy metal bands, the way God intended.

I got the Kaijo, which I guess is a Japanese metal band? I don't know, Google isn't much help with this, but it's not important, because this is what it looked like:

It was the most delicious plate of heart disease I had all week.

Here are some shots of beautiful downtown Chicago, and Millennium Park. So clean!

And now the pictures I took from the Skydeck at the top of the Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower. There were these glass balconies you could step onto and see directly below you, which provides a great opportunity to suffer from vertigo.

And then the glass broke, and I started falling, but luckily my return flight picked me up and whisked me into a comfortable cruising altitude.

That's downtown Chicago in the center. Bye, Oprah!

Fashion Is Important: Fashion's Night Out, NYC

Fashion Week is here again, as it always is, everyday, everywhere, into eternity until we all die fat, ugly and wearing the only clothes we can afford (dishrags, from H&M). On Thursday, Fashion Week Eve, there was the Fashion's Night Out boutique walk on shopping streets around Manhattan, and since my friend Alyson had tickets to go to a promotional party-type-thing for ABC's new Pan Am show starring Christina Ricci at the Lisa Perry store on Madison Ave. on the Upper East Side, I invited myself along because I'm a big fan of free alcohol.

This Pan Am party had everything: ninja dwarfs, pepperoni and opium pizza, a live Blue Man Group circle jerk, gorilla trannies, a glittery (but, let's face it, ahistorical) reenactment of the Battle of the Bulge, and a row of Virgin Mary pinball machines with gay samurais dancing on top. I don't have pictures of any of that, sadly, but I do have these:

Hey, it's Christina Ricci's blurry face! She looks adorable in that stripey thing, but surely this dumb Droid phone can get a better picture than that.

Ok, this is as good as it gets. I'm not good with this thing when I'm under pressure. I'll tell you this, though. Christina Ricci was cute, tiny, and all that, but she's had some awful bullshit pumped into her lips. They looked like gummy worms, for real. She's too young for that idiocy. Come on, Ricci, we expected better. (Silver lipstick and a blue wig? Maybe.)

Anyway, here's some photos of some fake Pan Am stewardesseses.

And me with one of them. She was sweet. I wonder how much these fake stewardesses get paid, cause I'm out of a job soon. (You can just go ahead and ignore that sweat streak made by my bag. I'd just biked cross- and uptown, like 50 blocks, gimme a break! Sweat is fashion forward, anyway.

We twirled on down Madison to this shop, which had a cotton candy machine that just sent people into paroxysms of joy, since cotton candy is so easy to throw up.

My girl Alyson points at the popcorn machine because why not?

Okay, here we come to a window display we can all really sink our teeth into. What shop was this again? Oh, who cares, there are women dressed as peacocks writhing in the window. They were locked in a pose-a-thon deathmatch for about five minutes, and I think the girl on the left (also featured in the top photo) won. (Alyson thinks it's because the girl on the right isn't used to dancing around without a pole, and I kind of agree.)

Here's a scene at Jimmy Choo. This cute coterie of costumed young-uns kept having their picture taken by one of the shop assistants, so I felt like I should take one too.

Alyson and Lisa get ready to cut a bitch over some boots.

And now we've arrived at Agent Provocatuer, which sells dirty silky underthings. They had a whole paparazzi theme going on, which meant real-live human mannequins in the windows, upstairs and downstairs.

The view from inside looking out, at the "paparazzi" trying to get all up in that.

Outside again. Was trying to get a good photo of that dude in the black t-shirt and suspenders, because he's the sexiest fake paparazzi photographer I've ever encountered. (And I've encountered my share in the weekends I've spent hiding in the bushes outside Charo's dude ranch.)

Here's a short powerful film I made about two young models finally making it big in New York and getting the respect they deserve.

Alyson thinks this edible bra looks delicious.

Good lord, all HELL broke loose at this shop when folks on the street discovered that Nikki Minaj and one of her wigs were exiting. There she is, posing with a fan. Some old person said "who is Nikki Minaj?" and Alyson said, "She's basically the black Lady Ga Ga." This is quite true.

So as a freaking ginormous cluster of people follow Nikki and her entourage as they walked to her shiny black SUV, cameras were frantically clicking and human lives were hanging in the balance, because Jesus, Nikki Minaj fans, stop trying to push me into traffic, okay bitches? It was insane. I struggled to get a photo with my dumb phone that is SO FREAKING SLOW COME ON, DROID THIS IS 2011! Above, there she is in her car.

This one is dark and poetic. Is she looking at me with a genuine smile or with bravely concealed fear. Undeterminable, because I forgot to turn the flash on, dammit.

And that's my fashion report. Wasn't it stupid?!