I'm tryin' to sleep here!

So, after waking up early to run 5 miles in the cold and rain and then eating a big brunch... I need a nap. Not so easy when there is a parade going on outside your bedroom. It's the Greek Independence Day Parade (Matt lives in Greektown) and it started at 2:30 this afternoon. And for some strange reason, they put up huge speakers at the street corners (just in case you can't hear everything while standing there???). A bunch of groups of drummers just went by. It is so loud!

The Shamrock Shuffle

This morning (Sunday), I was totally praying for rain because Matt said if it was raining, we could possibly ditch the Shamrock Shuffle. No such luck.

We got over to Grant Park around 9am, race started at 9:30am. Well, for Matt it started close to 9:30am... I was in the back with the slow runners and it took us 30 minutes just to get up to the start line. It was SO cold waiting to start. The temp was about 40 degrees, but a lot colder with the wind chill. The race went better than I thought it was going to. I managed to run the whole thing without walking and the rain held off for the most part. It was misting a little, which actually felt nice around mile 4. When I heard we had one mile to go, I was so happy! I finished just under 57 minutes (yeah, I'm slow). Matt was waiting at the finish line as he had been done for quite a while. He had shorts on and was totally freezing! We skipped out on the after party and our one free beer each... instead we headed back to Matt's to warm up. We went to Le Peep for brunch... so good! : )

I'm hoping to add a couple of pics from the race later that I took from my cell phone...

The pics from my cell phone are stuck in there for some reason! And the official photos aren't ready yet, so I'll just add these that I found on the Shamrock Shuffle website for now... hopefully, I can add my "official" race photo later. : )

Happy B-day to Dan

Saturday, I got a ton of stuff done, including my taxes. Matt worked ALL day at the office. We went up to Seven Ten Lounge around 7pm for Dan's birthday. Erin met us out later and a bunch of people we work with were also there. We played lots of pool.

Matt and Erin were on a team together. Erin managed to somehow get chalk on her face.

She's very serious when she shoots pool...



Dan's friends ran the table most the night (well, at least until Bryan showed up!)... here they are in the "winner's chairs".



Dan was triple-fistin' it here... two beers and a shot of Jameson. I'm sure he wasn't feeling so great Sunday morning! (He decided to skip out of the Shamrock Shuffle.)



It was a bad game to be solids. : (



Matt and I left early to rest up for the big race Sunday morning.

Friday night... Bar Louie, again!

Friday night, I met up with Erin for dinner. We were also supposed to meet up with Fredy (who is now working in my building), but she was MIA. We decided to go to Bar Louie by Matt's house in case Fredy was able to get off work and join us. Plus, I needed to move my car.

Erin and I were sitting at a table chatting and having a couple drinks while we waited for our food to get there and some guy comes up to our table. His big intro was "Hi, I'm your bartender"... Erin and I look at each like "ok", wondering if he really was our bartender (answer = NO). He just stands there for a minute and then says, "I don't mean to interrupt your conversation, but..." and then continues to babble on. Ummm.. yeah you do or else you would have just stayed at your own table. Then out of nowhere, he starts in on this story about how he played football in high school, but was too small and too slow to be first string and so he started playing hockey... blah, blah, blah.

Then, he asks us if we are friends (no, idiot... we are just two random people that happen to be sitting at the same table eating together, so we decided to talk to each other!?!?) Of course, we say we are sisters and then he goes through the whole thing of trying to figure out how we look alike (and don't look alike). He then looks at me and says "whoa, you are really tall!" and says "stand up". I'm thinking to myself... how long must I be nice to this annoying person? I looked around wondering if this fool had any friends that can see that Erin and I are totally not digging this guy at all and that will come save him from being a further embarrassment to himself? Nope. So, he insists I stand up and I do and then he looks at Erin and tells her she is short. What? She is like 5'8"... that is not short. Finally, we stop talking to the guy and he eventually gets the hint to leave... at least for a little while.

He came back later after we had our food and this time says to us "Hi, I'm your waiter" and just stands there. What is wrong with this guy?!?! I'm sure it has something to do with the amount of alcohol he has consumed. This time we were done with it and pretty much ignored him. Rude.

Random stuff on a Friday

Last night, Matt and I went to the All-Star Sports bar in PT for a few drinks to celebrate Neema's last day at Mercer. Then we headed to Bar Louie for dinner. We were sitting at a table at Bar Louie and another couple walked in and sat at the table next to us and hello... let's just say I had flashbacks to the "aroma" in Amsterdam. It's like they had bathed in the stuff or something, it was really strong! They each downed what looked like straight gin in a glass with a lime, ordered a bunch of food, sent half of it back, then ordered a margarita and complained about it not tasting right. Quite a show those two.

Today is Matt's big FSA lunch at Smith & Wollenky's. I think he's taking the afternoon off to recover from the food coma he will be in after that lunch! Strike that... the boy is still at work (big surprise).

Every Friday at work, the group of cubicles Matt and I sit in does the FMBC (Friday Morning Breakfast Club). In addition to breakfast, if you are really nice, you bring in an afternoon snack for everyone as well. This week was Dan's turn... he made cinnamon rolls and bought Krispy Kreme donuts. Very tasty. Next week is my turn... I haven't figured out what I'm bringing yet. Matt is sort of the self-appointed FMBC president... he has a rule that if not enough people like what you bring in, you have to bring in something the following week, too. He should be impeached.

I saw a link on Clint's blog to this essay written by a tall girl. This girl has a few inches on me... but I can relate to the stuff she writes about. One of my (shorter) friends in college used to get a kick out of walking behind me when we'd walk through crowded bars just to hear all the comments people would make after I passed by. One of my favorite random tall comments that a guy at a bar in St. Louis said to me... "Whoa, you must have drank a lot of milk as a child!" I thought that was pretty original.

This Sunday is the Shamrock Shuffle 8K race... not sure if the weather is going to be all that great for it. Of course, the weather won't be my biggest problem (but I will certainly use it as an excuse!). As I predicted, I have totally slacked off on running since I've been back in the States. I had every intention to keep up at it, but no such luck. Sunday should be interesting.

Not much to report

This has been a rather uneventful week unfortunately.

I was looking back and last month at this time, I was in Amsterdam packing up my bags, saying my good-byes to the girls in the RLD and enjoying my last few whiffs of the "aroma" outside the front door of my apartment building... counting down the minutes until I was back in Chicago. Seems like such a long time ago.

Monday night, Matt and I met up with a few people to celebrate Dan Ropp's first day of work at Mercer. We went to Salseria Grill & Cantina in the Sears Tower. Drafts were $2.50, so Matt had three to the price of my one margarita. We ate a TON of greasy chips and I tried a few different varieties of salsa... which I later regretted (stomach on fire!) We made it back to Matt's place just in time to catch 'How I Met Your Mother' and Britney's big "comeback".

Tuesday... seriously boring. But, Matt & I did order food in from TGI Fridays... Yep, that was the highlight of my day.

Wednesday night, my team, DeezNuts, had a volleyball double-header. First match was against some team that could have been beaten by my old 6th grade volleyball team. Ok, that was mean... but it was really painful to watch them. We just wanted to help them. I was actually silently cheering them on when they got the ball back over the net to us. So, after standing around for those three quick games, we had to play our second match of the night... this time the team was good. Of course, we were totally caught off guard and lost the first game. Typical. We got our heads out of our a55es and won the next two games.

Oooh, I almost forgot... the great part about playing v-ball on Wed nights is that we play at Windy City Fieldhouse, which is right next to Target. I decided to run in before our games to pick up a few things... $293 later, I'm outta there wondering what the heck I just bought. Shopping at Target is dangerous.

Today, I just looked out the window and holy crap... snowing again??? When will this crappy weather end??? I had wanted to go out for lunch today, but I'm reconsidering.

Moonvertising

I don't know if anyone has seen the billboards for this, but Rolling Rock was advertising that they were going to project their logo onto the moon with some sort of high-powered laser on March 21st (a full moon) and I think again on the next full moon.

It is a hoax, but getting lots of attention from people... guess their marketing strategy worked!

Easter Weekend wrap-up

Friday night, we drove back to Rochester. The weather was good after we got out of Chicago... just a little rain here and there, but no snow.

Saturday we did a lot of shopping... my brother got a couch and loveseat for his "new place" (aka Erin's old condo), which he's moving into in a few weeks. The girls went to Hobby Lobby... love that store! And of course, we hit up the Springfield mall. I haven't been to an actual mall in forever. We grabbed a quick lunch at O'Charleys.



Saturday night, Erin and I were totally excited to go to dinner at the Olive Garden... love that place! I loaded up on so much salad and breadsticks that I couldn't even eat a third of my entree. Good stuff.

Sunday, the whole fam came over to my parents house for Easter lunch.

We had tons of great food... here's an awesome ice cream sandwich dessert that everyone loved!


Gramma loved it, too... it went well with the Bud Light. : )


We played a little euchre... my brother and I were the big losers. The other teams both killed us with loners.


And then we had to take off back to Chicago. Weird weather on the drive back... one minute it was a big snow shower, the next it was bright and sunny. We drove in and out of the snow showers for over half the trip. So strange.

We made it back just in time for bowling (which actually was running a little behind schedule due to computer problems). I started off bowling pretty bad, but picked it up by the end of the night. We thought this was funny (or sad, however you look at it)... me and the girl from the other team both rolled a 7-10 split at the same time. Neither of us picked it up, of course. : (

Good Friday... bad weather

As expected, Erin's flight was canceled this morning. She was able to make it on another flight that left around noon, but we'll see when that flight actually gets to land. It's almost 3pm now and her flight is supposed to land any minute.

Here's what it looks like in downtown Chicago right now... it's like a white-out. Gross!



UPDATE: Ok, I just heard from Erin and she finally landed at O'Hare. She said they couldn't even see the runway until they hit it and she couldn't see anything out the windows due to all the snow. Luckily we are heading south tonight and away from all this crappy weather!

Dragonfly

Thursday night, Matt and I went to Dragonfly for dinner. There was some strange private party going on upstairs while we were there. It was like a dance club with a DJ. Really loud. They wouldn't let anyone up the stairs without a wristband and they had a mandatory coat-check. One girl tried to by-pass the coat-check rule by saying her coat was part of her outfit, but the bouncer wasn't buying it. The food was good, as usual.

I took a pic on our walk home because the skyline looked pretty cool last night. But, my camera sucks at night pictures. I really need to get a new one.

Happy Spring

It may be sunny outside, but it doesn't quite feel like Spring yet to me. Maybe that's because I just looked up the weather forecast and even though it's going to be nice today... starting tonight and through Friday night, it's supposed to snow like 4-7 inches. Ugh! This may put a little damper on my travel plans for the weekend. Erin has to fly into O'Hare on Friday afternoon and Brett is driving back to Chicago from Iowa then, too. We are supposed to head home to Rochester Friday night for Easter. I'm hoping the roads will be all cleared by then!

Good news for us, though... it's going to be nice and warm back in Rochester this weekend. : )

Big Bowl & V-ball & a good book

Tuesday night, I met up with Hany for dinner at Big Bowl. I love the fresh ginger ale they make... and the food is SO good. I strayed from my usual orange chicken this time and tried the salmon pad thai... another great dish! : )

Wednesday night was the first game of our new volleyball league. After our disappointing loss in the first round of playoffs in the last league (after being the #1 seed and losing to one of the last place teams!), we were all pumped to start this season off right. We played our old nemesis "Fun Pack" again... seriously, we have been in the top of the league with these guys for a couple years now. It's always a good battle when we get together. Last night, we had a few subs and we started out a little rusty after our two week hiatus. But, we won the first two games... and then as history repeats itself, we tanked in the third game. Even though we tell ourselves not to do it, we always feel like we've won after the first two games and end up losing the third. In this league, the third game counts just as much as the first two, so I'm really not sure why we get this way.

Here is the book I just finished reading... Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin. My sister recommended it to me and I loved it. It's a very quick, easy, entertaining read. I'm starting on the next one, Something Blue, now.

A new Irish tradition???

Margaritas... probably not.

Last night, I decided to cook again. Since I have no idea how to make anything traditionally Irish (besides adding green food coloring to beer... which, by the way, I don't think is something they even do in Ireland on St. Patty's Day), I made taco salads and frozen margaritas for Matt and me. Yep, stick with what you know, I guess. I'll be great when it comes time for Cinco de Mayo!

Matt gave it the thumbs up (well, he said he liked it and that he ate too much... I'll take that.) He's probably just super thankful I didn't attempt corned beef & cabbage or something along those lines. So, another culinary accomplishment for me. Of course, it's not like taco salads are difficult, I do realize this : ) ... but, I'm keeping my goals really low on this whole cooking thing!

Looks like I came back just in time!

The Euro to Dollar exchange rate has totally gone nuts recently! It's now up to €1 = $1.57!

The rest of the weekend

Saturday night, we went out for the Neyers' going-away festivities. We started at the Village Tap in the year-round beer garden. The onion rings at that place are really good! They also have a few Belgian beers on tap, so I was happy!



After Village Tap, we headed to the G&L Fire Escape for a drink, where this crazy crooner was singing Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, etc. He was really awesome!



Then the crowd went to Sally's and we headed home. Matt had worked all day Saturday and had to work again on Sunday, so he was pretty worn out. The boy works way too much!

My Sunday night bowling was just plain awful... I barely averaged over 100! Erin and I were the only ones representing our team (DeezNuts) and had planned to just bowl the other two (Brett and Brandon) blind for the night, which meant we would have to make up 20 pins between the two of us. Luckily for us, the team we played had some friends in town who said they wanted to bowl and they joined our team for the night. I have to give a big thank-you to Matt C. and Dominic... they helped us beat their friends two of the three games and win the overall pins! The win can definitely not be attributed to anything Erin or I did, that's for sure! At one point, I actually fell on the lane and landed smack on my knees and slid down the oily part of the lane on all fours... picture Bambi on Ice and you've got it. And I was sober. Ridiculous.

It's green!

Today was the annual "Dyeing of the Chicago River". The crazy thing is that the dye they drop into the river is actually a nasty orange color and it turns into the bright green that you see below. There are two boats that help get the job done... one dumps the dye into the river and the other drives through the water "stirring" it up. I decided to go check it out this morning.

At the beginning, when they are still mixing it up


The boat dropping more dye into the water


You can see how dark the dye looks when it hits the water


These are the guys that were "stirring" up the dye in the water


Here are the guys that were dumping the dye... you can see how orange their white-jumpsuits are now


Afterwards, it's a nice shade of bright green!

Friday was a pretty busy day... lots of fun stuff going on.

St. Baldrick's

First off, if you haven't heard of St. Baldrick's, it's a charity organization that raises money to find a cure for children's cancer. Every year at this time, people take donations and then shave their heads in solidarity with the kids that lose their hair due to cancer. Our company always has a group of people that do this each year... mostly guys, but last year a girl also shaved her head.

Anyway, the big shaving-day was Friday... and this year, they did it at our office in a conference room and our company brought in beer and snacks. Instead of just shaving the heads, everyone gets some crazy design shaved into their head (and we all got to vote on which design each person got). The fun part is when we all go out to a bar afterwards... it's actually a pretty good advertisement for the charity, because people are always asking why these people's hair is shaved like that. The Towers Perrin teams raised over $28,000 in total this year... the group of actuaries raised over $7,500. Here are some pics from the office party:

Colin gets a cent sign


Josh gets a heart with a rat-tail


Mark gets... I have no idea what this would be called


JC gets the "Bert" from Bert & Ernie


Andrew gets another one of those "I have no idea what this is" kind of designs

Nate wasn't originally one of the people getting his head shaved but during the happy hour he said he would shave his head if someone donated $200... and a split second later two principals had forked over the money! The shamrock was definitely my favorite!


Dan (another audience volunteer) got the double mohawk


The whole group


I'm sure the night cleaning crew were wondering what the heck happened in that room... when we left, there were lots of empty beer bottles and piles of hair all over the floor!

After the work happy hour, we grabbed a few drinks at the Cactus with everyone.

Fubar's 30th Birthday Pub Crawl

After the Cactus, Matt and I headed up north to join the pub crawl already in progress. Mike (aka Fubar) turned 30 and was doing a 30 bars for 30 years pub crawl. He had a beer or shot at each bar along the way and had to finish before midnight. They started at like 11am and by the time we got there it was after 7pm and they were on bar number 20-something. He was still holding up ok, but I'm sure he will be hurting on Saturday. We stayed with the pub crawl for the remaining bars. We ended at Finley Dunn's, bar #30, which had some free (much-needed) popcorn.

FINALLY!

So, I've been waiting and waiting for the box of stuff I shipped from the Amsterdam office back to Chicago (two weeks ago!) to arrive. I was really starting to get worried that it was going to be lost in the mail... which would really suck because there are like 8 pairs of shoes in there and a coat... plus, of course, a few work things.

Well, today it finally showed up! It feels just like Christmas! : )



On a sidenote, I noticed how much it cost to ship it over here... €52.00. Holy crap! (that's still cheaper than buying another suitcase and having checked a third bag, though)

Half-Price Thursday

Thursday, Matt and I went to dinner at the Beer Bistro... it's a bar a few blocks from where Matt lives that has all sorts of beers - over 85 according to their website... which includes a good selection of Belgian beers (my favorite!). The place is always crowded and they have pretty decent specials during the week.

The food is really good, too... and Thursdays are half-price appetizer night. Not knowing how much food they actually give you with the "appetizer" portion of stuff... we ended up ordering way too much! We had tons of food. Lucky for us... we'll have some leftovers for Friday night when we get home from the bars starving. : )

Chicken Parm

I'm working on improving my cooking skills... it's a slow process. Usually, I'm the one that just "makes the drinks" when we have dinner... that's more my specialty. : )

Anyway, last night I made dinner on my own. Poor Matt gets to be the guinea pig for these experiments... sorry, man! Luckily, he's not too picky and he has an iron stomach. In the past, I've made some barely edible stuff, but last night, I did much better and managed to make chicken parm without burning it or setting off any fire alarms. I also made brownies, but those were much better with some ice-cream on top (they were fat-free, so I wasn't expecting much anyway). Neither of us got sick and Matt actually said the food was good... mission accomplished! : )

Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

So, last night the Duesterhaus' made it to the Jerry Springer show... notice I said "to" and not "on". Erin had tickets to see a taping of the show, so Brett, Erin and I went. I really had no clue what to expect considering I don't watch the show... I usually quickly switch to another channel if I accidentally land on Jerry Springer when surfing channels. But, hey, the tickets were free and what else you gonna do on a Monday night.



We were told to be at the studio before 7pm, so to kill some time we stopped off at a bar first to have a quick drink. I was thinking alcohol would definitely help me enjoy this show a little bit more, so I had a martini.



After the drinks, we went into the NBC studios (at Illinois and Columbus). You had to check in and go through a metal detector. The girls got their purses searched. Then they take you in shifts into a huge freight elevator up one floor and lead you to the "Waiting Room".



We were told to just hang out in there until we were lead to the studio and to use the vending machines at our own risk. The room was big and boring with chairs all lined up in rows and a couple of TV's that were playing "My Dad's Better Than Your Dad"... that's a cute show, by the way. There was a little concession stand with nachos, hot dogs, chips, candy, etc. We were sitting right by the vending machines which both had signs taped to them that said "Out of Order"... (which, by the way, the woman doing the concession stand later removed the signs as we were leaving the waiting room). Next to us were these three girls who must have just made the 18 year old cut-off age the show requires... one was talking about getting suspended because she didn't have a hall pass. Another one was talking about how she really wanted to get "Jerry beads". Nice. A lot of interesting people in the audience. I think I was definitely one of the oldest people there.



We sat in the Waiting Room for at least 45 minutes. Finally, they came in and started leading people three rows at a time out of the room. We were in the third group to get lead out. We were taken to a hallway with big black drapes behind the studio... some woman was directing where we should sit. I kept thinking "please put us in the back row, please put us in the back row". I should have actually said these words out loud because we ended up smack dab in the middle of the studio about 5 rows back. Crap, now we were definitely going to be on TV. While we sat there waiting for everyone else to be lead in, they were playing the Jerry Springer "Too Hot for TV" video on some TV's hanging from the ceiling. At this point Erin says to me "Oh, I really hate fighting, I hope there isn't a lot of fighting"... ummm... hello... have you ever seen Jerry Springer... all it is is fighting and nudity! : )



After everyone was seated, Todd (I think that's his name) comes out and tells some dirty jokes and then gives us the rules for the audience. We basically have to look at him and follow what he does during the show... we have to stand and cheer every time Jerry enters and leaves the studio. If Todd starts chanting "Jerry!Jerry!Jerry!", we start chanting. If Todd starts chanting "We love white trash!", we start chanting that. We are not allowed to say anything except Oohs and Aahs unless Todd does it first. We cannot call someone a "Whore" unless Todd says it first... his reasoning being that "they might not really be a whore". : ) Ummm... ok, this should be easy. He also tells us that if our cell phones go off during the taping, they confiscate the phone and mail it back to you in two weeks.

Now, Jerry walks out and we all stand and cheer (because that's what Todd is motioning for us to do). Jerry tells some dirty jokes of his own and talks to the audience for a few minutes. We still had no clue what the topic of the show was going to be and I was getting a little nervous about what we were in for the next hour. So, the lights get dimmed again and Jerry leaves. Finally, the show is going to get started!

Jerry's entrance is like this... he walks around the top of the set and slides down a fireman's pole (later used as a stripper pole) in a puff of smoke. We all cheer and chant "Jerry!" again. Then this blond girl with tattoos sits in the one chair that is on the stage. Jerry starts the show reading from the teleprompter and then starts questioning this blond girl who we now know is named Amber. Apparently, the topic of the show is "your boyfriend/girlfriend is cheating on you" or something like that.

Immediately we can tell she is an actress... mainly because she was so terrible at it. She was not good at improv. "Amber" was upset because her convict boyfriend was cheating on her with a dry cleaner and spent too many nights at a strip club visiting the same stripper (who I've forgotten the names of already). We learn that poor Amber is from a small town and everyone there is after her man and she wants "to beat those bitches up". The storyline was seriously lacking in any substance (big surprise)... it was like they were making it up as they went along. Jerry asked Amber what she did for a living and she said she made ovens... huh?!?! Can you not think of something better than that?!?! I would have thought they would be prepped better than that, but guess not.

Jerry brings out the stripper first and the girls fight (of course!). They also play a video of the girls fighting while getting ready for the show from "earlier today". Amber is in her curlers and bathrobe in the video. Then they bring out the dry cleaner who is a bigger girl, which of course sets the crowd off. Ooh, but there's a twist... the dry cleaner actually dated the convict boyfriend for two years before Amber stole him away from her! The girls all fight again. I'm not sure why the dry-cleaner and stripper keep fighting, but whatever. At this point there are not even chairs on the stage. Everyone is just hanging out and all the crew is just standing there as well. A couple of security guards are standing by to break up these "fights", which by the way are cracking me up. It's so fake, it's ridiculous. They must do some serious editing to get the show to look how it does on TV.

It's time to bring out the convict boyfriend... his voice is so weird, it sounds like he is talking through one of those electronic voicebox things. Anyway, he starts pleading with Amber that he will stop all the extra-curricular activities and that he loves her and what-not. This upsets the dry-cleaner who then starts figthing with the convict boyfriend. The fight stops, but Todd decides it's not done so he starts chanting "rip his shirt off", so we all start chanting that. The dry-cleaner rips the boyfriend's shirt off... which takes like 5 minutes for some reason. I think the boyfriend was even partially helping take it off because she was struggling so much at it!

Ok, now, for some reason (maybe to liven up the audience because the show is going so slowly)... they start playing the Jerry Ho-Down song, which Todd had instructed us earlier meant everyone from the audience rushes the stage and starts square dancing and such. I thought he was kidding when he said that, but nope... about three-quarters of the studio audience went up on stage and started dancing. Erin, Brett and I decided to just stay back and watch the scene. Interesting.

We go to "commerical break"... during the breaks they have these weird puppet shows going on with puppets doing sexual stuff... it was like a total circus being at this show. We kept looking at each other going... what the heck is going on???

So, now the show just gets even worse... the next guest is a bald cowboy guitar player with a goatee and lots of eyeliner named "Crow Feather" who is in love with one of his groupies, but she has a boyfriend. He is worse at acting than "Amber". Every time Jerry says Crow Feather's name, Todd makes us all do a Tamahawk chop type thing and make Indian noises... does this seem politically incorrect to anyone else but me?!?! And does anyone else notice that this guy looks nothing like an Indian?!?! They bring out the "groupie" who actually wants nothing to do with Crow Feather... ok, so how is she a "groupie" again??? This storyline sucks worse than the first one! He sings her a song... terrible. Then, her boyfriend comes out and he looks like he could be in a boy-band. He sings some boy-band type song... again, terrible. Crow Feather would not fight with the boy-band boyfriend and the crowd was getting mad. Todd made everyone chant "put down the guitar and fight", but nothing happened.

The show was seriously tanking at this point and Jerry and everyone knew it. I was wondering if they ever just stop in the middle and say, yeah... we screwed this one up... sorry. Nope, they just kept trucking ahead and it was worse than a trainwreck... you didn't even want to keep watching what was going to happen next.

In an effort to save the show, Jerry decides to sing a song to the groupie girlfriend. Something about leaving his lungs in Sydney, liver in somewhere else... I don't know, but keeping his heart for her. It was stupid, but of course, everyone cheered. Then, Todd started chanting "bring in the translator", so we all start chanting. I have no idea what this means, but I chant anyway. So, some crew member with a headset comes over and Jerry sings the song again and the "translator" says the words in monotone Spanish line-by-line. It is funny, for some stupid reason. At this point, the show has totally diverted away from the storyline and Jerry asks the girl for a dance... this gets the crowd going because of his whole stint on Dancing With The Stars, I guess. They do a little ballroom number... and then we finally go to another "commerical break". Out come the crazy puppets again.

Todd comes out to tell us it is "Comment" time... thank God... he says, if you want to ask a question, you have to keep it relatively clean and you can't just say "you suck" or something stupid like that. They bring all the guests back out on stage and they are all sitting in chairs now. Everyone has questions/comments for the convict boyfriend and this is actually the funniest part of the whole show. One girl (who was one of the girls we were sitting by earlier that wanted Jerry beads) has a question for the stripper and Todd determines that it's too risque to air... something about a white stain on the stripper's dress. The translator is summoned back out again for a question series. The "guests" didn't even answer their own questions... if Todd had a good comeback, he would walk over and whisper it to them and they would say it.

Finally... Jerry does his wrap up speech and the show is over. Jerry couldn't get off the stage fast enough. He had told us earlier he may stick around after the show for pictures, but after that show I think he just wanted to get out of there.

They told us that they go back and review the tapes of the shows and decide if they are air-worthy. I'm really doubting the air-worthiness of this show, so I may be spared from being on TV after all. Of course, they also told us that they use people's reactions on their faces if they are good for other shows, so even if you weren't at a particular show, you could end up in the audience once it's aired... so unfortunately, there's still a chance, I guess.

I think I'll stick to Oprah if I'm ever inclined to see a taping of a talk show again. : )