Black Hand Productions

Friday night after the Blackhawks Convention I took Dan’s advice and went to Big Joe’s for my first ‘Turtle Race’.  If you’ve never been to Big Joe’s for turtle racing I highly recommend it.

Basically for every beer you buy you get 3 tickets, at 9pm (or when the turtles are ready) they begin the first of 6 raffles for turtle jockeys.  If you’re ticket is pulled you get assigned one of the six turtles.  Once all six turtles have jockeys ‘Igor’ puts all the turtles under a platter at the center of the ‘track’, the crowd counts down and then the platter is removed and the turtles go for it.  The first turtle to outside of the track wins and the last turtle or the ’slowest fucking turtle in the world’ wins as well.  The first turtle’s jockey gets a tshirt, the slowest a free drink.

I never got to race because some one stole my winning ticket but Lauren had a winning turtle and did get a free tshirt.  I’m pretty sure Dan just made a ton of money on side bets.

*Side Note:  More Turtle Racing photographs here.

Yesterday we headed over to Rock Around the Block on Lincoln Avenue for the evening where we got to see the Play Doctors and 16 Candles.  For those who don’t know Play Doctors is a girl band with Wolf from American Gladiator’s on drums.  Pretty amazing to see.

16 Candles’ eighties montage led to nothing but dancing.  Lots of dancing.

*Side Note:

A ton more photographs are on Flickr.

The beer was accessible, the food was plentiful and the music was fascinating.

A good time was had by all.

Saturday night Julie and I met Nick at Southport Lanes for some shady bowling.  If you’ve never been, I recommend.  The lanes are manually operated by ‘pin monkey’s’ which you can tip to gain favor.  Basically rolling a ball down the gutter with a dollar bill rolled up inside can get you a strike no matter how many pins you hit.  This only complicated the fact that we have no idea how to keep score.

 

Yesterday Julie and I hosted our Fifth of July BBQ.  I spent the better part of the day smoking 8 racks of ribs which went off pretty well considering it was only my second attempt (I think they could have gone a little longer).

We had a pretty good turnout, Dan offered up a keg of beer which is never a bad idea, Jen brought cupcakes that were inhaled and there was only one casualty (a plastic chair).  Thanks to everyone who brought food.

A good time was had by all.

*Side Notes:  

1. The rest of the photographs are on Flickr.
2. I marinated the Ribs for 24 hours with a rub that I had shipped from Dinosaur BBQ in NYC and I roughly followed these directions regarding the grill.

 

This past weekend Julie and I headed to the East Coast to see Pearl Jam in Hartford and the Mets - Yankee’s game at Shea Stadium.  Of course the temperature the entire weekend hovered around double-asshole so most of the time we were covered in sweat.

We managed to hit four airports (Midway, Bradley, LaGuardia, & O’Hare) with only one 2 hour delay, see Pearl Jam and then the Mets play the Yankee’s and then have wings at Blondie’s and lasagna at Dee’s.  In other words it was a very successful weekend.  Thanks to those who let us sleep on their pullout couches without you we’d been at the Belnord.

The Pearl Jam show in Hartford was especially hot and steamy.  Ted Leo and the Pharmacists were the opener and were really good.  Our seats were under the pavilion but towards the back.  I wasn’t really that impressed with the show but I chalk that up to three things:

1. Pearl Jam had just completed back to back shows at Madison Square Garden.
2. I’m comparing this show to their Lollapalooza set last year.
3. It was Double-Asshole.

It wasn’t that it was a bad show, it just wasn’t nearly as good as the last three times I’ve seen them.

It was equally hot at Shea Stadium for the final Subway Series but there was a 45 minute torrential down pour that cooled the air.  I must say I was highly impressed by the ground crew.  The field was completely dry within 15 minutes of them rolling up the tarp.  Now I do find it rather amusing that the entire team took 15 minutes to ‘warm up’ before coming out to play again but that’s another story.

 

 
The Mets ended up loosing 3-2 but we got to see David Wright homer to left field and the ground crew really kicked ass.

 

* Side Note:

And of course there were Horse Cops.  I know what you’re thinking, who’s going to clean this shit up?

Well, the rain of course.