I Also Have Adventures When I Leave My House: The Chicago Meet Up

(Title thanks to Nolahn from The Bargain Bin Review)

Sometime in the summer, I got an email by fellow LAMB and good friend Tom Clift of Movie Reviews By Tom Clift, who is from Australia, saying he's coming to America. Looking over the cities he would be hitting up, I saw he was coming to Chicago. Being that A-I use to live in the shadow of Chicago for 28 years and B-It's still about a 3-4 hour ride away I said "Fuck yeah!" Tom wrote back saying "...what?" And I said "Oh sorry. I meant to say FUCK YEAH I'LL MEET YOU IN CHICAGO!"

As an added bonus, Steve Honeywell from 1001plus emailed as well saying "Yeah me too!" Awesome! I get to meet TWO awesome LAMB members for the price of...however much it'd cost me to get up there. Hmm...Greyhound bus+train ticket+food....man it was pricey.

But that don't matter. We agreed to meet up at a really awesome pizza restaurant that's across the street from The SEARS Tower (What you talking about Willis?) because if an Aussie Bloke is gonna come into MY city, he's gonna eat REAL food. Because of my train, I got to the restaurant about 25 minutes early. I texted both Tom and Steve telling them to look out for a short haired goofy looking bastard in a Human Centipede T-Shirt outside the place. While I was waiting, something interesting happened.

A real fancy and sleek black towncar pulled up right in front of me and my thought was "Whoa, is Tom a celebrity in Chicago?" A driver got out and opened the back door and....a girl got out. She looked...familiar. She looked like...

Nah.

Anyway, the girl looked at the SEARS Tower, got immediately back in,  and the car drove away. Ok then.

Not too long after that Tom showed up. I recognized him not only from his Twitter picture but his work on The Vlog (watch the latest episode if you haven't, it's full of talent if you ask me) and we greeted each other. After about two minutes, Steve showed up and we went inside to eat fucking awesome pizza!

We talked a bit, mainly about the difference in food between America and Australia and me and Steve recommending what types of food to try out while he's in town. After we were stuffed by stuffed pizza, I decided to take Steve and Tom to a store I LOVE going to: used DVD shop!

This involved getting on the "L" train. Thankfully, the place was RIGHT at the train stop. Unfortuately, Steve and Tom learn something about me that many people don't know about me: I have a tiny ass bladder. I have to pee constantly. So we found a place with a public bathroom and it was one of those bathrooms that only took one person at a time, so something funny happened: we all had revolving conversations. When Steve was in the bathroom, me and Tom talked about The Simpsons. When Tom was in the bathroom, me and Steve talked about the Batman films and how Steve doesn't like one of them. I'll let you guess which one, and then tell you that you are wrong cause he doesn't like one of the popular ones. Shocking, I know. Anyway, while I was in the bathroom, they talked about Tim Burton and got a cute girl who was waiting to use the women's bathroom involved in the conversation. Lesson learned: Tom and Steve without me can attract cute girls.

Anyway, we then went to the shop and all three of us was in heaven. We just kept pointing to DVD's and asking each other if we seen them. Tom says he has a hard time finding good uncut versions of certain movies back at home. Steve found some movies he's been looking for. I found some great movies based on titles alone, along with a couple other awesome movies. I'll share those in an upcoming DVD Shelf video. There was ONE movie I ALMOST bought but the cost bugged me. It was the first Pumpkinhead film, and they wanted 15 bucks for it. I really wrestled with it in my head but decided to wait. God, I hope I don't regret that.

After half an hour or so, we decided we needed to leave before we spent all of our money there. Steve wanted to go to a small bookshop next door and that was an interesting experience because the owner was some cranky old guy who wanted us to turn our cellphones off, put our leftover food on the counter, and GET OFF HIS LAWN!! He might've talked to a chair at one point, I wasn't sure.

Anyway, my reason to bring this store up was the porn section. Yes, a musty old bookstore run by a cranky guy had an interesting porn section. There was old issues of Playboy, old issues of Celebrity Skin (Google it if you're not familiar. And you're welcome) and the best thing of all, OLD SCHOOL VHS PORN! The ones that came in those giant ass boxes. I was tempted, really tempted, to buy one of them. But that would've been awkward walking around with it. Maybe next time...

After that, we just kinda walked around everywhere, showed Tom some cool buildings which he took a lot of pictures of, talked about all kinds of movies and our lives and stuff. At one point Tom and Steve talked about sports and I tuned out. Mainly cause I needed to use the bathroom. AGAIN. Oh and we talked about the plain vs peanut M&M controversy I was involved in last month. Thankfully, Tom and Steve were on my side. PLAIN M&M's ALL THE WAY BABY!!!

One stop we made was at Millennium Park to visit the famous Bean AKA Heaven's Gate. If you're ever in Chicago, go check it out.

While thinking about what else to do, Steve gets the wonderful idea to take Tom to this restaurant for dinner called Ed Debevics. If you are not familiar, their whole thing is they are purposefully rude to you, but in a fun way. They throw straws at you, just say "WHAT?!", and even sit down next to you while you order. So naturally, when our waiter found out Tom was Australian, the place went crazy. They kept asking him to say things, they asked about eating kangaroos (Yes they eat kangaroo), and other stereotypical things. Thankfully, Tom is a wonderful sport and LOVED the whole thing. To put the perfect cap on it, they played this song:



During all that, we talked some more. Tom told me about some awesome upcoming horror movies he saw in Toronto like "V/H/S", "The ABC's of Death", "John Dies At The End", and the documentary on 'The Shining" called "Room 237". After I got extremely jealous he got to see all these movies I've been dying to see, we left (after I peed roughly 20 times) and not knowing what else to do, we just went our own separate ways. But first we took this picture:

TOTALLY SERIOUS AND MAYBE MUSHY MOMENT AHEAD:
It was really awesome to meet both Tom and Steve. I wish I could hang out with them if not every day at least once a week. If anyone reading this ever gets the chance to meet either of them, I say do it because you will not only have a good time but you might just learn some shit. Tom, Steve: seriously guys if you ever find your way in Indianapolis, come look me up. I will hang out with you guys anytime.

Now if you excuse me, some of this kangaroo meat Tom gave me needs to be put away.
-Jason