(our fourth of july party)

i didn't tell you about my fourth of july.

that morning, i attempted to get all my ducks in order so that i wouldn't feel so horrible about myself on saturday morning after what i knew had the potential to be a blowout evening. those ducks included taking branner to the dog park for his first multi-dog experience ever* and going on a long, long run, with the thought that if i still had any alcohol in my system from the ten days spent drinking in the mountains, this long, long run would get it out.

branner got his *ss whooped at the dog park for about an hour, during which he yelped once as an enormous mutt decided he didn't like pretty boys. it was all good...pretty soon everydog realized he was a bumbling idiot and humored his by play fighting.

the run was excruciating, which pissed me off because i was doing 4 to 6 miles a day IN THE MOUNTAINS for a week...chicago doesn't even have ant hills and i was unimpressed with myself. i hit about 6 miles and started thinking about beer so that was that.

on (at about 3pm) to the party jigglin was hosting on his rooftop in lincoln park**, where i literally walked up four flights of stairs, said hello, and found myself walking back down to go run errands with braden and jigglin. after costco was closed***, we hit up a grocery store where i was instructed to buy 25 oranges.

back to the condo where we dragged 20 oranges (braden and i compromised with jigglin on the final count) and 12 2-liter bottles of pop/soda**** up the aforementioned 4 flights of stairs to the rooftop where i planted myself for the next, oh, 10 hours drinking.

people started arriving around 6:30pm, which gave us some personal time with the four kegs and fully stocked bar and sunshine and appetizers...by about 7pm the main crew was well on our way and stuffed with snacks, but still eagerly awaiting the grillmaster and his disgustingly huge box of prepared meats.

of which i missed out on the ribs and don't wanna talk about it.

my sister came with her friends, hell everyone came except YOU*****, in fact even some randoms from the section 8 housing across fullerton made their way up late night, where they found the original crew from the 3pm set-up still mixing drinks and (embarassingly) dancing their *sses off.

it was all just as classy as it sounds.




*multi-dog experience sounds dirty.
**it pains me that fullerton and ashland is considered lincoln park. pretty soon roosevelt and state will be lincoln park. milwaukee, wisconsin will be considered lincoln park.
***good idea costco. close on the 4th.
****tomato, tamata.
*****and since i am sure i twittered an invite to the world, don't say you weren't invited.

(the easiest kind of cut)

a friend of mine the other day sat across from me outside a neighborhood bar contemplating something i was sure he would blurt out soon enough.

the breeze was calmly warm and our skies were blue and you could see it in the face of people who walked by along the sidewalk wearing their favorite sunglasses and their best posture in the way that the arrival of summer makes people walk taller because they feel sexier.

he always gets this look on his face when he's got a thought he knows is going to crack me up, as if he's reached a conclusion that i'll have no way to argue with about something completely pointless and trivial that he knows, without a doubt, i'll immediately argue with him about.

it's a blank, pondering sort of look with hints of a devilish grin, while he puts the finishing touches on his hilariously constructed argument or statement, and i usually ask him, 'what?' even though i know there's really no need because he'll blurt it out either way.

"you remind me of someone, and i just figured out who it is."

"who?"

"it's my buddy i used to work with, and it's like you are him, twenty years younger."

"okay. i've met him, like, twice, but i can see it in the way that i think he's a pretty laid back guy."

usually these conversation are far more combative, and ridiculous, and, frankly, entertaining. i was called travis so many times in college that i got used to telling people i grew up in sacremento.

i remind people of people.

"no...it's that you guys both have this impulsiveness. it'll take you however long to decide on something you want to do or have, and then you can't really stop or drop it until you've done or gotten that thing."

...hm. that's true, i think.

i respond with, "i think i might shave my head this weekend." this is what i've been sitting in the perfect summer breeze contemplating, having decided that the upside to life as my own barber outweighed the possible downsides to the first attempt*.

"THAT'S EXACTLY SOMETHING HE WOULD SAY. and you would both do it, too."

i sat there feeling the contour of my scalp, unsure as to how accurate our mutual assessment of my pseudo-compulsiveness was in fact, silently concluding that we were probably right and simultaneously wondering if this conclusion was somehow influencing my intent to follow through on the haircut.

as soon as chalise arrived she complemented me on my hair, of all things**, and subsequently denied my request for an impromtu salon job***, the idea pushed to the backburner for reassessment later in the weekend.

during which it was never reassessed.

but now, as we cross into the second half of our first warmish summer week, and my hair crawls around my ears and becomes unmanagable, i return, mentally, to that moment when i did, in fact, think i would be cutting my own hair. i remembered feeling justified by the thought that a man who's 28 years old should have done such a thing at least once.

but i'm undecided, and a bit nervous.

so i ask you for your thoughts.





*walking around looking ugly as sin, for instance.

**the nerve, seriously.

***see how i was already trying to get someone else to do it, thus securing a scapegoat? savvy...i know.

(political fight)

you may or may not have noticed i'm keeping my hat out of the political ring until we get closer to the general election, but i think it's worth a mention that it's sounding like hillary may drop out.

like, tomorrow.

that or maybe bill is just going to call it quits.

i got attacked by a psychotic woman on saturday night while i was walking down sheffield avenue alone.

no, it wasn't hillary clinton.

i do have bruises to validate my claim, though.

but it does beg the question...

what's the craziest thing you've done under the influence?

(invite them all)

as an avid blog reader i've come to care about certain people around the world that i have never met, may never meet, and quite honestly, may not exist. these people are people i respect. people i find intriguing. people i want to drink coffee with, people i want to impress, people i think are crazy, and people i want to make out with. people i'd buy a beer.

if you're thinking it's weird that i'd do any of those things with people i've never met in person, i'll remind you of two things;

a) i once flew to california, picked up a mini-van and drove it to chicago for a guy i first met once i'd arrived in chicago, and

b) the aforementioned people might not exist...so all those expressed feelings are feelings in effect directed at pixels, jpegs, and bitmaps...

so it is weird.

take a moment to congratulate yourself for being right.

that being said, i have things on my mind that are things related to these people (er, pixels), much like you have things on your agenda.

maybe you have to take your parents out to eat, like brady does tomorrow. maybe you have to move, like pb&razz.

maybe you have a wedding to plan for.

i have those things too. lord do i.

but i also contemplate these pixelated rockstars. i think about the fact that i owe The Ex a postcard. i worry about Tink's internal battles.

and i feel like any member of 20somethingbloggers has passed some social screening that makes them someone i'd go out of my way to meet. i would throw a party and invite them all.

i would throw a party and invite all of you.

i would throw a party in the afternoon sun on the strip of division street between ashland and damen and you'd come with your friends and your lovers and your sunglasses.

you could drink hess or stag's leap vino, local microbrews or the liquor you showed up with.

you would dine on chicago-style dawgs and burgers, bar-b-que'd ribs, or veggie bites.

the scotch selection would impress james bond.

we'd play cornhole and chess and beirut.

we'd talk blogger platforms and geek news.

we'd share reading lists and reader feedback.

a band would play until the sun set and it'd be funky mellow stuff to allow for conversation and when the sun went down a rock band would take over to really get the party started. most of us would enjoy the bands and some of us wouldn't, but we'd all probably blog about it.

we'd become quick friends, just like we are now.

i would.
i would throw a party and invite you all.

(slaps)

the band played Slaps at the boundary in wicker park.

SauSau was good...a natural you might call her.

(san diego revisited)

the edward hopper exhibition ends on saturday, and i haven't seen it.

i want to. i'm thinking friday sometime after lunch. join me.

the main concern this weekend, however, is the arrival of my dear friend SauSau from san diego. you may remember the band's trip to san diego.

Sau took us all over san diego, first to pacific beach then to del mar and she's the reason i stayed another day and switched my flight while i was standing on the beach.

my buddies fell in love with her and decided she needed sunglasses so they bought her some, because she wouldn't buy them for herself.

when we're all together we tend to wear our sunglasses.

so she's in town saturday, and we want to take her to a delicious and fun dinner, followed by a deliciously fun after-hours venue.

i want your help.

what are your favorite spots in chicago for entertaining out of towners?

(a steady rain)

i'm entirely unsure as to whether or not i've really explained the level at which my father engages himself with theater.

up until i was about 20, both of my parents were (by choice?) in many ways entirely dedicated to their children's 'careers'...our soccer careers, our academic accomplishments, and our social lives. i'm not really sure i ever really understood that my parents might have their own interests.

as empty nesters, and really ever since two of us were out of the house, my mother and father have embarked on a reinvention of their lives, which has been one of the most endearing things i've ever witnessed.

the most notable puzzle piece to my father's new era has been theater.

his seemingly impromptu weekend trips to chicago to catch a show were met with varying levels of indifference from his children, at first. my dad's weird, so weird stuff like running off to catch shakespeare can slide under the proverbial radar...especially to a son who's running around in california.

and then a manuscript showed up in my college dorm; a play called The Mandatum; authored by WHO?

my father.

it was then that this particular piece of the puzzle that's Dad found it's place and i started to see it as necessary to the whole picture.

i was impressed, first of all, with the script i read.

and i sort of loved that he was artistic under his 'raising kids so i'm strict and demanding' persona.

so to my point; since i've returned to chicago and joined my parents at a handful of plays and theater workshops each year (my father sees upwards of 50 a year), i've been to many good and bad plays in this fair city.

and A Steady Rain is one of the most enjoyable i've seen. it's playing at the Royal George Theater, and was picked up for this commercial run from Chicago Dramatists, a local theater non-profit.

if theater blanks your stare, or just isn't your thing, or is something you'd like to like but might not have the patience for...this is the one you should see.

i highly recommend it to you, dear reader.

i recommend it to the extent that tomorrow night i'm taking 16 of my friends to see it; my fourth time seeing the play.

a quick, 90-minute walk through a traumatic and engaging evening retold by two chicago policemen, A Steady Rain packs this guttural punch that lends me the confidence to recommend it. especially to non-theater people.

with just two actors creating all the tension and drama through their conversation, you completely forget that you're being TOLD the play. it's gives you that feeling you get when you watch a movie and you can't help but say, "man that actor is AMAZING in this".

it rides on the two actors, and they succeed.

it's remarkable, raw, edgy, and fresh.

it's not for grandma.

it's for chicago people.

and i'm totally and completely willing to organize a blogger meetup for it, if there's interest in the comments.

(save by a rebel)

friday and saturday both started with mayhem before i'd gotten out of bed.

thursday night, as i twittered, i stopped into the soft opening of rebel, the newest bar opened by our host with most*, danny latino.

needless to say, the vip treatment was wonderful, the bar was free all night, and we saw lots of familiar faces, including my brother from another mother, murph. murph and i went to school together...like...all of it, every year, until we stopped going to school.

seeing him out is always a blast, and within the confines of such a welcome scene even better. he'd actually invented two drinks earlier in the night, so we sampled what we could on the limited supply behind danny's new bar.

but friday, first thing, i woke up to crisis. fifteen thousand phone call four hour crisis.

which, you know, is someone's way of making me earn st. patty's day.

friday evening i tagged along with cha-rule and her boy to her little sister's birthday party at martini park. i suppose it goes without saying how much i love cha's little sister, based on the fact that i've known her since she was like three feet tall and she's as cool as her big sister.

and then.

saturday, bright and early, crisis!

this time it was a few kegs and no specialized tappers. we order guinness and harp for this particular holiday, each of which needs it's own specialized tapper (apparently), and since someone was making me earn my st. patty's day, jigglin had arrived at the liquor store to be told they didn't have what we needed.

and to come FULL CIRCLE.

guess who bailed us out?

that's right.

danny latino.

as you can see from the picture, the day worked out. my littest sis and i had a blast.

go to rebel if you get a chance. or if you find yourself stranded on clark street near wrigley...he'll take care of you, and he's one of the few people trying to run bars in this city that actually deserves our business.

so...what's up for the rest of march, people?




*the host with the most who hosted our chicago blogger meetup in february.

(iFriends)

as you may remember, i was witty enough to win a blog tagline contest over at ex-everything. i suggested her tagline be "The Ex to Your Why" and her readers picked that as their favorite.

but i'd forgotten there was a prize involved!

i just got home to find a package in my mailbox from Ex, which included this $25 gift card and A STOCKING CAP SHE MADE FOR ME!



fucking awesome, right?

i don't look sick in this picture, do i? well...i'm fighting hard, and the stocking hat is still on my head fighting it with me.

...

so while we're skipping through blogdom, i thought i'd share the chicago blogger meetup pictures i've got, with a disclaimer: we were talking so damn much i only took a few photos.

here's pbrazz, tokissthecook, and nilsa.
nilsa can smell cameras pointed at her...i challenge you to get her looking away.


myself and cheryl.
or me trying to look down cheryl's shirt.


jenn and angela.


apparently their meetup was in the 1920's.

so...what are you gonna take a picture of this weekend?


oh...i forgot to mention that i didn't put up the pics i have with big time fancy in them, cuz she's rather anonymous online.

(drink under a vanished moon)

last night chalise and i did some real catching up, rather than drunk as skunks catching up.

we went to cleo's in the ukranian village, and sat around a big long table with seven other people in a scene right out of a dialogue-centric movie made by woody allen or richard linklater.

the table was filled with local hipster-ish people, all of whom i've had the pleasure of meeting before, and all of whom we've had some really fun fly-by-night experiences with...underground record label launches, backyard barbeques...really good people.

a chunk of the night was just cha and i, catching up on the last two months, and hashing out her distress at the status of her current love life.

if you get a chance to move to the virgin islands for two months, i can confidently say you probably should.

her mornigns were spent snorkeling, and her favorite local establishment served full lobsters for $15 and followed that up with the "best dance party i've EVER seen", as she put it.

this from a girl who's seen a LOT of dance parties.

for about an hour we were hopping up to step outside to the back porch, checking in on the status of last night's total lunar eclipse, which, of course, had to happen on the coldest evening in two weeks.

and the highlight of which was really the fact that regulus and saturn were such a bright frame to the whole thing.*

after a swamped week, and fighting the onset of a slight cold, our get-together was really a late and somewhat brief bite to eat.

but that's exactly what i missed.

the quick meetups for a bite or a cocktail. the immediate access to my sister-in-effect.

now, since we spent a lot of time discussing love and relationships, i'm left with an inquiry to throw at you. it's a timeless question, and one i'd love to know your thoughts on...regardless of your romantic status at the moment.

do you believe in a single soulmate? and no matter if you do or don't...how do (or did) you know that someone is the forever person for you?






*i say that like i knew those two bright star looking things were regulus and saturn, which i didn't until i found that article i linked. i feign intelligence with the best of 'em.

(pama martinis and chocolate yummies)

there's really nothing like unfamiliar faces in familiar places.

last night's chicago blogger meetup at the waterhouse in lakeview was a resounding success.

a killer time.

a reminder that reading the things someone else writes isn't an act of duty. it's not a lonely endeavor. it's an engagement, and the real people behind all that literary crafting are just as interesting and funny and quirky as their words are.

pbrazz.
somi.
to kiss the cook.
big time fancy.
angelaboration.
places never planned.
free and flawed.


oh, and they're all women, apparently.

as somi and pb razz and cheryl said, the get together was really great.

these women are vibrant and funny and beautiful.

they tell stories the way they write, and they tell great stories.

and later into the night, when chalise showed up and i nearly tore her in half with a hug (as it was the first time i'd seen her) all of my new blogging friends understood my excitement.

i'll say more later, but i wanted to make sure that everyone who i was lucky enough to meet last night knew this:

you are all truly wonderful people. i feel very lucky to have met you.




tomorrow i'll have pictures from last night, and, of course...

a pretty big announcement.

(high school and stereotypes)

last night my friends and i hung out at in a suburban high school gym.

it's been a long time since i could say that.

as i said yesterday, a group of us got together to head out to Dancing with the Cougar Stars, a pep-rally-ish event at the school where one of our troop is a math teacher. he was one of the event's contestants, and thus putting on a dance routine with one of the varsity cheerleaders to the tune of "ice, ice, baby".

needless to say we were pretty excited to attend.

when we arrived, the parking lot was jammed, and the beer we'd enjoyed down the street (as a result of finding no traffic on the highways, what?!) immediately began to feel sacrilegious.

miniature humans smothered in school spirit and letterman jackets scurried around in gyrating packs of stereotypical profile, squealing at one another and turning to gaze at the gang of over-sized not-parents coming through the atrium doors.

we felt old.
we felt huge.

the men had five o'clock shadows and the women had less makeup on than their pubescent counter parties, lined up along the hallway walls, mouths hanging open.

the gym was packed. a toiling sea of children (since when did high schoolers look 12 years old?) so...so...active that we stood out in the hallways for a bit to compose ourselves as a group.

what did we just sign up for?!

we heard the crowd roar as introductions began, and we climbed up to the balcony level and found an open plot of bleachers at the far end.

not a single kid didn't notice us lumber across their view as we made our way across.

who are THEY?

the show began, as couples took the floor and performed their rehearsed (and mostly awkward) dance moves. each couple was teacher/student, and immediately it was obvious that each corner of the cheering section was adamantly supporting whomever it was that came from their particular subset of the school's subculture.

ah, high school...the never-ending popularity contest.

some of the performances were genuinely entertaining. since we didn't know anyone but our friend, the novelty of certain participants was lost on us...one of the older teachers appeared to shock the crowd on a level i think might be related to his classroom demeanor.

to me, he was just an old guy dancing...which is funny enough on its own.

then came our buddy, and his little cheerleader partner, and the goodness that is vanilla ice.

immediately we all got that uncomfortable feeling you get when someone is about to embarrass themselves; an empathetic cringe washed over us.

he began hopping around, dressed as a gangster (oh, i didn't mention the outfit? lord.). they kicked and bounced to the beats and flipped their baseball caps to the side in unison. they...

...when did he become a decent dancer?!

i use the term "decent" liberally, but he was almost not embarrassing himself out there!

and with all the build up, and the fact that nine of us drove more than half an hour just to see him dance for sixty seconds...well, not completely embarrassing yourself is QUITE an accomplishment.

we cheered.
screamed, really.

and he looked up at us when he'd finished and gave a gangster nod.

we laughed and yelled our support as the judges voted and awarded the two of them 9's across the panel.

not enough to place, in the end, but enough to save face among your friends.

the show continued, and we laughed and cheered along the way, having what turned out to be a great time.

i looked around at each oasis of style and expression...the lines drawn between groups clearly marked by clothing choices, body types, and uniforms.

athletes, musicians, snotty bitches, and guys who shun bathing.

you name it, and each little microcosm of expression was present and fully owned by its respective group or individual. it was a jungle of paradox: you could taste the desire to fit in and the desire to be different in each little person...both forces competing within the individual and the subgroups.

nothing more important than the world that exists inside that gymnasium.

it took me back...i gotta say. it was heartwarming, and it was laughable, and i think the way i put it, halfway though the show last night, was:

"look at these retards. it's awesome. every kid here looks like a retard, and yet most of them will probably contribute to society at some point. that's literally amazing."

(chili's and stars)

d's guide to avoiding ridicule on a thursday.

rule #1: make every attempt to avoid getting roped in to being a Cougar Star.

rule #2: if abiding by rule #1 doesn't work out, do NOT let your buddies find out about it beforehand.

this is taken from a local high school website - where one of The Screaming Knuckleheads* is a math teacher:

Have you ever wanted to see Mr. K do the tango? How about Mrs. M doing old school hip hop? Come to Dancing with the Cougar Stars on Thursday, February 7, at 7:30 p.m., and you'll see them and more! Tickets go on sale today in the cafeteria during all lunch periods for $5.00. It will be a night that you will not forget!

a night you will not forget INDEED.

rule #3: if all else fails, you may as well just fake injury, because we're carpooling, and we'll be there early to get seats right up front. we'll even make plans to eat at chili's afterwards (for the full on high school suburbia evening extravaganza).

oh, and we'll rally ten people to join us.



i'm just saying.




*again, TSK is what i'll be calling my core group of guy friends on this blog. it used to be 'the band' until we actually named 'the band'. at some point i'll stop explaining this.

in case you wondered, like my sweet mother did at 7am this morning (according to her voicemail)...you didn't win a penny in that hypothetical scenario i set up for you yesterday.

exciting game though. okay...exciting for about the last ten minutes.

but right now i want to chat with you.

yeah...you...the reader.

the first thing you need to know is that i spent parts of yesterday and today organizing the Chicago Blogger Meetup on February 16th. if you're reading this in google reader (or whatever) then you're missing out on the graphic i've got over there on the right, announcing this event.

(it pisses me off that it gets cut off in all the windows browsers i'm using. looks beautiful on my mac, mr. gates.)

you can have a copy of that image for your blog if you email me.

i sent out an evite to 90% of the local bloggers i read, either because i had your email or because i'm geeky enough to track it down in one creative way or another.

(okay...most of you have it on your blogs...but some of you: NOT. EASY.)

i hope you'll join us. credit to pbandrazz and ohhowlovely for getting these juices flowing.

the second thing you need to know is that i'm considering adding titles to my blog posts, and i want your opinion.

my feeling is it may make looking back into the archives a bit easier.

my other feeling is that no one does that anyway.

i would love to hear your thoughts (on titles or any other design aspect of the blog).

last night The Screaming Knuckleheads* had dinner at a restaurant called state, in lincoln park down the block from depaul university.

we've gone there plenty, especially before they were able to acquire their liquor license.

you see, it took this place about a year or longer to get their permission to serve alcohol, and as such they simply opened up as a BYOB. it was what i'd term 'full service BYOB', because they'd pay special attention to your alcoholic tow, holding your beer in ice buckets, wine in champagne stands. we liked it, so we'd go for a quick dinner on weekends to chat and make plans for the evening.

which was the plan last night, as we were all headed in different directions following the dinner hour. two were headed into downtown to meet an old college buddy. kahl and i were headed up north for a birthday party at a dive bar.

dinner was relaxed, with a sweet (and cute) young server and forty flat screen tvs to keep us distracted. wine bottles were half off so we ordered the pinot noir and laughed about the sarah silverman video.

at nine o'clock sharp, about 300 college students showed up like a swarm of ants on roadkill.

and, yes, i do mean roughly 300.

we looked around in disbelief at the environmental shift, as seemingly wasted young adults stumbled around the venue and packed four-person tables with ten students and thirty mixed drinks.

our sweet little server finally explained they were offering free drinks for two hours.

which i'm not sure i was aware that bars did.

but which undoubtedly will draw a crowd in this city.



*my guy friends and i.

we're gonna interrupt this little ex-girlfriend hang to send you over to couch's site and her notes on our get-together monday night.

click the pic.

from: D
to: Chris Couch
date: Jan 20, 2008 11:56 AM
subject: last night's level of awesomeness
mailed-by gmail.com


so last night no one had any plans. in fact, of our six-person crew of best guy friends from childhood (we call ourselves TSK which stands for The Screaming Knuckleheads which is our band name - even though not one of us plays a musical instrument) three of the crew had date-night last night. the other three of us, myself included (obviously), decided to meet up for dinner. after a quick dinner we thought we'd head to a sports bar to watch some basketball and plan out our evening. at the sports bar, which was filled to the brim with dudes, and not women, we made our plan.

this was our plan.

1. drink only White Russians (or Caucasians, as we called them) all night.
2. drink them at the most stereotypically young 'see and be seen' type bars possible.
3. do not deviate from drinking white russians.

we proceeded to catch a cab to lincoln park, to barleycorn, which is literally the beating heart of typical lincoln park trixie/chad-land and proceeded to drink an INSANE amount of white russians.

i don't think i need to point out how awesome last night was.

also, the other two just told me they both puked when they got home.

i went to carol's, which i HOPE you've experienced and if not you must, where i danced until 4am with mostly people i didn't know.

since i've been asked twice now what EXACTLY i was wearing when i graduated from college, i'm going to post photographic evidence of the whole escapade soon. i have hard copy photos, which in this day and age are like microfiche at the library; seriously what's the point. i'm hoping one of my cohorts has some digital love for me.

that being said, you'll notice over on the sidebar that i've added two features; + recent news + and + twittering chicago +.

i'm not sure what's with all the plus signs but go with it...it's an artistic statement of some sort.

in recent news at the moment you'll see that the video i took up in the wisconsin dells over new years is now an editor's pick at college humor, which basically means two things.

one, other people did think that was funny, so maybe it wasn't a 'you had to be there' after all.

and two, i get a FREE T-SHIRT!

that's right, folks, the editors at collegehumor want to buy me a t-shirt from bustedtees.com, to thank me for having such an astute sense of humor and for patronizing their website, and for the life of me i can't PICK OUT A SHIRT.

which is wear you all come in.

i want you to pick out the shirt i'm going to ask them to provide for me, and then i'm going to wear that shirt out on the town in chicago and post fun, warm, 'i love my readers' pictures of myself in the shirt for your viewing pleasure.

so head on over to busted tees.

pick up to two shirts to vote for.

leave your picks in my comments, or email me at dblogged at gmail dot com.

and we'll tally up and get this thing rolling!

note: the picture on this post is in no way an endorsement of that particular t-shirt.