I did so much this weekend, everyone.

After reading a couple upsetting articles about a Nazi flag dropped at a Sanders rally, I shut down social media for Shabbat, went home, lit candles, and immediately left to go to Milt's Barbecue for the Perplexed for a OneTable dinner. The dinner was about holding multiple truths and there were speakers promised in the blurb I saw on the OneTable app, so I went with the hope of good discussion and opening my mind.

I got some of that. We had place seatings, and I was seated at a table with a film critic (DanielleSATM) and the host of the OneTable event I went to at the Chanukah pop-up bar in December (mfreealoha) and her boyfriend, so we initially talked about film and about Japan (mfreealoha had planned a trip there that had been cancelled due to coronavirus). But mfreealoha had to leave early to meet a friend, and when it was just DanielleSATM and I after the speakers, we separated to join other tables for a more fulfilling discussion. At least at the table I was at we didn't do a lot of discussion over the prompt, but I did have some nice conversations with people. And several of them recognized me from Mishkan events, so going to places where I don't know anyone keeps paying dividends--now I'll have more people to talk to at the oneg.

I also met an actual Bloomberg supporter, when the owner of Milt's (who sponsored the dinner) mentioned that he had been a Bloomberg guy before Bloomberg withdrew. I guess it's stereotypical, but it makes sense that the constituency for a rich Jew is other rich Jews.

Saturday I woke up, lay in bed for about ten minutes, and then I got a text message from lisekatevans asking me if I want to meet her for brunch. So I hopped in the shower, got dressed, and walked down to Big Jones, arriving at the exact same time as luke.beasley.262, so we went in, looked around, and found lisekatevans and afschifler sitting in the back on the other side of the kitchen entrance, out of the way of the rest of the crowded restaurant, which reduced the hubbub of conversation to a dull roar and let us actually talk about lisekatevans's opening night in Thirteen Days, how luke.beasley.262 always stops into visit The Library in Albuquerque when he's taking his cross-country train trip for his annual Grand Canyon hike, and how I met an actual real-world Bloomberg supporter the previous night. All while we scoured the menu and I tried to find something that didn't have any of 1) shrimp 2) pork 3) crab or 4) meat and milk mixed together. Eventually I came down to two choices, one savory and one sweet, and decided that since I had been to Hanabusa Cafe so often and loved it every time I went, I should get the sweet one, and I ordered the banana pudding pancakes:


Outside of visits to places like Hanabusa, I don't usually have sweet brunch--the three things I rotate between in the morning are Japanese breakfast, omelet and toast/waffles, and Israeli breakfast--but as an occasional treat it's great, and I ignored afschifler's comments about disliking banana pudding and dug in. It was definitely dessert breakfast, but the butter and pecans covering it made it a bit less so than it would have otherwise been. I took the butter off the top and cut off a little bit with every bite. Amazing.

lisekatevans got the other thing I was thinking of, the farm corn cakes, but ended up being unable to eat them because they came with a spicy sauce. The menu description reads:

Savory flapjacks filled with Cheddar and topped with two eggs, tomato gravy, sea island red peas, avocado, crème fraiche

...which certainly doesn't have any indication of spiciness. I wouldn't have thought that tomato gravy would be spicy, but I guess I'd be wrong? She swapped food with afschifler, and his description of how great it was definitely made me want to order it next time I go to Big Jones. With how much of American breakfast food is an abomination before the LORD (#hashtag?), it's always good to find something I can eat.

Also, we had a whole discussion about the sea island red peas, which looked a lot like beans but are apparently an actual heirloom variety of pea! That makes me doubly likely to want to get them--we should support heirloom varieties as much as we can.

I walked with everyone else back to the car, declined afschifler's offer of a ride since I lived literally five minutes away, and then went home and read and played Quest for Glory IV for a few hours until it was time to leave. I wanted to walk down to Wrigleyville to take advantage of the warm temperature and the sun, but what I didn't remember was that this was Chicago and the winter wind wasn't willing to give up even in the face of spring. I walked down Clark for an hour, including a brief discussion with emily.saidel, who I ran into as she was looking for a birthday gift for her mother, and then arrived at Uncommon Ground, settled into my seat, and waited only a couple minutes before worldbshiny showed up. She had just come from a photoshoot and was dressed all fancy so I felt a bit underdressed, but we had a lovely meal. She told me about her company dinner, held this year at a Chinese restaurant because her boss is married to a Chinese woman:

worldbshiny: "From anyone else, holding a company event at a Chinese restaurant right now would be surprisingly woke."

...and about a major representation issue with a theatre production she's in the planning process for right now, we talked about Pericles and how neither of us knew anything about it at all, she asked me how I'm doing lately (the answer is--very good!), I told her about my exciting future weekend plans of fixing my dishwasher and about the Shabbat dinner at Milt's, we talked about Daf Yomi and the infamous It is Torah and I must learn passage and I mentioned the Take One podcast I had listened to about it and their approach that Rav Kahana was merely seeking proper sex ed, and we ordered delicious food.

I got a cheeseburger!


You may be surprised, but don't be. Treifathon comes but once a year and this was actually a beyond burger, which I wanted to try and see if it really did taste like meat. The answer was no, at least not to me, but it was still good and I'd gladly order it again.

At the end, worldbshiny paid, saying that I'd been picking up a lot of checks:

worldbshiny: "I'll get it. You've been paying for a lot of things lately. I've noticed."
Me: "I-" ... "I don't-" ... "Thank you."
worldbshiny: "You don't thank me? I bid you good day!"

And while I wanted to protest, I didn't actually have any basis to say that she was wrong, so I didn't. She paid, we walked down the street to Otherworld Theatre, and after worldbshiny introduced me to the TheLadyListener, Artistic Director of Otherworld Theatre, we sat down for the evening's entertainment:


You may remember last year when I went to go see Super Richard World III, and I had invited worldbshiny to that but she was stuck late at work and couldn't make the curtain, and I went on the absolute last day it was showing. This time we planned everything in advance, arrived early, and got our seats with plenty of time to sit and listen to the ambient lofi hip-hop beats to study and relax to that they were playing in the theatre, and watched the sleepy Morty on stage. When the lights dimmed, Rick leapt out of the wings and the following conversation ensued:

"Morty! Morty, wake up!"
"Ah, ah, ah! What is it?"
"We gotta do Shakespeare, Morty. We're doing Pericles."
"Aw, geez. Can't we do Hamlet?"
"Hamlet? You want your father to die? That's fucked up, Morty."

Which set the mood right away.

I had a pretty difficult time following the actual plot, partially because, as I said, I didn't know the plot of Pericles and hadn't looked it up beforehand, and partially because they made the decision to sort every character in the play into an archetype--everyone was either a Rick, a Morty, a Jerry, a Beth, or a Summer. Pericles thus became "Rickicles," and Antiochus became "Rickiochus," and Thaisa "Rickaisa." Helicanus was "Mortycanus," Marina was "Beth," and so on. Even the actors made a mistake, when at one point Rickicles addressed Rickiochus as Rickicles, everyone paused, and then Rickicles said, "Wait, I'm Rickicles. There's so many of us. Haha, the old switcheroo!", people laughed, and the play continued. The improvising when things went wrong was one of worldbshiny's favorite parts, as was the way that chicagogoodtimegal portrayed Beth's mannerisms. I said that I was impressed with the way that everyone tried to adopt the mannerisms of their archetype--speaking a gravelly voice when playing a Rick, or a whiny one when playing a Morty--and worldbshiny told me that Rick and Morty are played by the same voice actor, which I honestly would not have guessed.

At the end of the play, after Pickle Rickicles was wheeled on stage (including another error, when the blanket fell off and one of the Mortys said "There goes the big reveal"), the real answer for emily.saidel's question when we had met--"Why Pericles?"--was revealed:

"They don't know Pericles! Nobody does! We could have done anything and called it 'Pericles' and these assholes would have been like, 'Yaaaaaay! Culture!' "

They're absolutely right. I only know the plot of Pericles because I looked it up as I was writing this post, and I doubt I'll ever see a real production. But just like Super Richard World III was my introduction to Richard III, this was my introduction to Pericles, and I'm satisfied with that.

I felt like Super Richard World III was better, though. I would have recommended that to anyone, and I don't know if I'd recommend Picklerickicles to anyone who wasn't already a Rick and Morty fan.

When the play was over, we walked over to Jeni's for ice cream, talked for a while until worldbshiny was reaching pumpkin stage, and then she drove me home after we made plans to watch more Rick and Morty and visit the House on the Rock (which we both admitted we had learned about from the same place--reading American Gods). It was another lovely evening.

Otherworld posted photos from the production here.

On Sunday I woke up at my regular time, which means I got an hour less sleep than normal, and after I showered and ate lunch, my parents arrived. My father had offered to drop by and take a look at my dishwasher, which had started leaking a week ago, but of course when we pulled it out from the wall and ran it, it didn't have a problem. My father replaced a couple light switches, my mother said that maybe it was due to me placing a plate that blocked an intake or outtake, since that's a problem that they had with their dishwasher when they first installed it that was fixed by dish placement. They were only there a couple hours and then they left, but they did bring my grandparents' old love seat, so I have taken more heirloom furniture off their hands!

When they left, I responded to britshlez's text to join her and her boyfriend at the Montrose dog beach, so I mixed up a "beach drink" as requested (pomegranate juice and fig vodka) and hopped on the Broadway bus. When I arrived at the beach, britshlez was just standing up to text me where I was, so I sat on the blanket and we all talked and watched her dog chase away any dog that was bigger than her and play with the dogs that were her size or smaller (though not many were smaller) until the sun was setting and the wind had picked up, after which britshlez invited me over for dinner, we drove back to her apartment, and then karolina.gabriele finally gave in to britshlez's insistence and also showed up, and then britshlez and her boyfriend cooked up a delicious salmon dinner:


We spent a lot of time talking about relationships, because of some things that karolina.gabriele is going through right now, but eventually she said she had to go and I immediately realized that I had only gotten five hours of sleep the previous night and should follow her lead, so I walked to the Clark bus, took it home, and went to sleep.

Today is Purim, so I'm fasting for Ta'anit Esther, because even though I completed a tractate of the Talmud and thus am eligible for a siyyum, I did it mostly by listening to podcasts and catching Daf Yomi memes, so I don't really feel like I'm actually eligible. Tonight is the Mishkam Purim party, which was the first major Mishkan even I went to after Kol Nidre, and I'm excited! I just need to concentrate on my work long enough to get there.

What an amazing weekend!