Of note this week: I rode my bike to work three times in the lovely, albeit freakish, weather Chicago has been having! I started watching Downton Abbey and Shark Tank. Unfortunately, now I am obsessed with Shark Tank! I also went to Hon Kee (see above) and Chopper’s with Z and Donovan. It was so nice to spend time with a friend I met through the crafty universe, who I usually only see at craft fairs or randomly out at Bite. Friday night Z and I went to dinner with our besties, Kirstie & Jason, to Angel’s and enjoyed the weather and then we all watched Ken Russell’s The Music Lovers. If you are a film lover and have not delved deeper into his catalog than Tommy, you should do so.

Saturday Zachary’s efforts to see two films at the Music Box were thwarted by drunken leprechauns who had taken all the neighborhood parking, so we holed up in the Boo Haus until we ventured out onto Division Street to Delish for sustenance. We immediately felt like strangers in a strange green land. Three girls at the table next to ours seemed to be wannabe Jersey Shore cast members. A direct quote: “We’re in a Jewish Diner, bitches!” It is hard to eat pancakes while someone with Snooki’s vernacular is 5 feet from you. So hard not to laugh and/or weep for humanity.

I still haven’t found pit tickets for Radiohead in Tinley Park. I keep hoping that something will turn up, but then I read Craigslist postings of scalpers selling tickets that they purchased through the w.a.s.t.e. (Radiohead fanclub) presale for hundreds upon hundreds of dollars. I have often said that I wish they would ask an easy RH trivia question that would have to be answered in order to get to the purchase page. That would trip up at least some of the scalpers.

Films watched 11th week of the year:

OSS117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
Dorian Gray (2009)
Tamara Drewe
The Music Lovers
The Woman
How to Get Ahead in Advertising
These Amazing Shadows: The Movies That Make America*

*documentary

Cinephiles would enjoy the last one. I somehow reached the end of the week and realized I had not watched a documentary yet, so I picked this one and finished it just under the wire. This doc about the National Film Registry turned me on to directors/films I had never heard of like Dorothy Arzner and Lois Weber and reminded me of some I had not thought about in awhile like Sherman Alexie, who directed one of my favorite films, Smoke Signals, based on his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.