That Hunts, though. 

After checking out of our last minute hotel, we stopped to have breakfast at Savory Family Restaurant before leaving Sturgis, Indiana. Chooch and I had massive egg&cheese croissants which neither of us could finish And yes, I chose to eat at this place just because it was called Savory. I love that word.

In the parking lot afterward, there was that brief moment of uncertainty if Henry was going to unlock the doors for us.

One of these days…

The only thing I remember about our Saturday morning drive was that I had a major hypochondriac breakdown and started screaming about how it feels like my whole body is full of cancer and then Henry was all, “THEN GO TO A FUCKING DOCTOR!” and I was all, “NO I WILL NOT!”

And so on and so forth.

This is what it’s like dating a girl who grew up with the Merck Manual on her bedside table.

Um, anyway. The whole reason we were en route to Chicago was so I could see Taeyang perform at the Aragon Theater, but since that wasn’t until Sunday night, we had the whole day Saturday to do as we pleased with no time restraints! Of course my logical decision was to drive past Chicago and visit the Bahá’í House of Worship because you know how much this atheist dick loves religious exploration.

I had only recently heard of this place: it’s one of only eight temples in the world dedicated to the Bahá’í faith, and allegedly the oldest one at that. From what I can tell, it’s a place to worship, open to all religions. Just some totally beautiful temple in Illinois, you guys. I immediately wanted to check it out because I am obsessed with looking at religious stuff—that’s when I turn into the ultimate tourist. It was always my favorite part of the European tours my family went on when I was a kid, too. (I wept in Assisi. I also had a really bad ear ache, but still. I straight-sobbed in front of a fucking monk.)

When I suggested this to Chooch, he was like, “That sounds dumb,” but then I showed him a picture and he was like, “YES, SIGN ME UP.” So Henry was officially out-numbered. But he didn’t put up much of a fight, maybe because he thought it could be a peaceful place to take a nap.

It took quite some time to get to Wilmette, thanks to the traffic outside of Chicago, but when we turned a corner and saw the temple looming ahead, we all agreed it was worth it already.

Unlike the Palace of Gold, there were a good bit of people there, people of all races and ages. I was worried for a second that perhaps Chooch was going to act a fool, but it was like the holy Bahá’í ghosts took over his body and he became restrained, filtered, and even a tad bit reverent.

I mean, how can you visit a place like this and not have your breath taken away, even just from an architectural aspect? Ugh, it was a sight to behold. I have absolutely nothing disparaging or shitty to say about anything or anyone we saw while there. So just enjoy these pictures of this magical spot in Wilmette, Illinois, because it was really something, you guys. God, is this what it feels like to be religious?!

The surrounding gardens made me feel like Alice in Wonderland. It was manicured to perfection.

There was no photography allowed inside the temple, so I made sure to turn my phone and shove it into my purse immediately because I am so afraid of getting yelled at by anyone in even the slightest authoritative role. And there were definitely temple people skulking around with their hands clasped behind their backs, ready to narc on someone for Snapchatting the temple’s guts or taking a church pew selfie. Chooch and I sat together in and gave ourselves neck-kinks from all the staring we did at the ceiling. Henry chose a seat at a safe distance away from us, probably because he didn’t want to be associated with us if one of us were to, say, spontaneously exorcise.

The grounds really inspired Chooch to get photographical, soccer mom-style with his tablet. He was pissed at one point because I supposedly “copied” one of his pictures.

LOL I totally did too.

Fucking Henry photobombed nearly every single one of the pictures, I hate him.

We out here, bitches.

These boats were right across the street from the temple. The whole area was so fucking quaint!

Back on the grounds, we checked out the information center, which had all kinds of…information. Also, a book store which I had hoped I could buy a magnet or a temple-shaped bottle opener, I don’t know.

“It’s probably just books,” Henry said, always the souvenir deterrent.

“No, I bet they at least have postcards and collectors spoons, BRB,” I said, barging into the bookstore.

It was just books. :(

And then we set off for Chicago (again) so we could check into our hotel. TO BE CONTINUED, OMG.

Let me tell you something about our road trips: they are woefully on-the-fly and stressful to the max. This wasn’t some last minute trip by any means, yet it still seemed like I was the only one packed and ready to go.

Because I was.

I took the day off work and everything, thinking we would leave as soon as Chooch was done with school, probably we would even swing by and throw him in the car on the way to Chicago rather than wait for him to walk the whole three blocks home.

But here’s what happened: Henry came home from work around 1pm and took a billion hour nap (even though I never let him sleep according to some people who apparently camp out in our bedroom closet and count his zzzzzz’s), and then Chooch came home from school and we just sat here wondering if we were ever going to leave or if we should just take an Uber to the airport and wing it.

Wing it, oh haha.

Henry eventually woke up and we left the house sometime around 4:30 (sigh) and then got swept up in some intense Labor Day traffic and it took us TWO HOURS just to get out of the dumb state. I was so fucking pissed.

But I was listening to Korean radio and that kept me from flipping my lid. And Chooch was reading some lame book for school so he was all nice and quiet too.

But then came the part of the trip that we all loathe: Food Foraging.

It shouldn’t be this hard! There are so many idiotic apps to help keep couples from splitting up/murdering each other over hunger wars. But every time Henry is like, “Find somewhere for us to eat” and I give him a dozen options, he’s always like, “WE’RE ON A TOLL ROAD! I CAN’T JUST TURN OFF ANYWHERE! THERE IS NO EXIT FOR ME TO TAKE!” and I’m like, “HELLO WHEN YOU TELL ME TO LOOK FOR A RESTAURANT, THAT IS LITERALLY JUST ONE THING TO CONSIDER: LOOKING FOR A PLACE THAT SERVES FOOD.” Now I’m supposed to read his mind (and a map!?) and find the most convenient grub shack for him to drive to? This is a lot of pressure. So then we had a huge fight about how demanding he is and how I need to learn to read a map and Chooch was like, “Oh, get over yourselves” and then we were going to just eat at a travel plaza but I threw a silent hissy fit inside and Henry was like, “LET’S ALL JUST STARVE! FUCKING STARVE!”

Luckily, I found some joint in some Trump-lovin’ town in Ohio, where a potato festival was going on and everyone was dressed for a rodeo, but Henry was all, “WE ARE NOT EATING HERE” because just a quick drive-by determined that it was some shady dive bar with an obligatory cigarette-smoking farmhand-looking son of a bitch slinking in the doorway. But just around the block was option #2: Jake’s.

Everyone inside knew each other of course, but I didn’t give a fuck because of all things for this rural shit-town in Ohio to have, there was a veggie burger on the menu. And not just any pre-packaged Boca Burger bullshit, but a HOMEMADE VEGGIE BURGER. Chooch and I both ordered that and the waitress was shocked because I guess it’s weird for someone to order something and then the next person to say, “Same”? Whatevs.

“You having the same thing too?” she asked Henry, tone slightly elevated.

But then Henry bucked the trend by ordering a plate of meat.

Anyway, the veggie burger was SO GOOD AND HOMEMADE-Y, but Chooch and I deducted points when we saw it was served on a fucking sandwich thin, like who does that? Henry’s burger was all snug inside a cushiony dough cloud and we were like, “WOW, THAT’S NICE. FUCKING VEGETARIAN PREJUDISTS!”

I might be inclined to stop back at Jake’s sometime to try their HOMEMADE PEANUT BUTTER PIE on for size.

After dinner I took some cliché pictures of the sunset because there was nothing else to do aside from talking to Henry and that’s just ew. I also played with filters on Snow, because I’m 15.

I wish my eyeballs were really that big, but I am already told occasionally that I look like a cartoon so why gild the lily, I guess.

Here is where shit gets really exciting: the sky was getting darker and darker and Henry STILL DID NOT HAVE A PLACE FOR US TO STAY. The plan was to drive to Indiana and get a hotel and then continue on to Chicago the next morning, but I guess Henry didn’t think to follow through with that plan by booking a hotel, so that’s cool, because you know—LABOR DAY WEEKEND. Finally, it was nearly midnight when Henry booked a “hotel” called the American Inn or something generic like that, right along the border of Indiana and Michigan. I don’t think I ever knew the name of the town but now Henry is saying, “Oh you know….um…uh, and the biker thing is always there…”

Sturgis.

Nope, I don’t know that, Henry.

Anyway, we get to the dumpy American Inn and Henry is told that they have NO VACANCY and that they “told booking.com as such” so they don’t know why we were able to book a room there. Henry came back out and called Booking.com, who looked up the information and laughed because they had NO RECORD of this asshole innkeeper ever calling them or logging into the account to mark it as sold out. So that’s great. But the lady on the phone was so nice and said that she was going to try and get permission from her manager to comp us a stay at another hotel in the area. She wanted to put us up at some nearly-$200/a night Best Western but Henry was hesitant to take her up on that because she wanted him to p at up front and then email them the receipt, at which point we’d be credited. Henry was like, “Fuck that” and found a Super 8 down the street with one room left, and it was only like $79, and bitch please, we don’t want to be spending a ton of money at a place that’s literally a pit-stop. Even I, Erin Rachelle Kelly, am capable of sucking it up for one night. However, the Super 8 ended up being very clean and pleasant! I was very impressed. We had two “doubles” though, which were more like twins, and that was not great, but whatever.

It’s a good thing that Henry didn’t take that booking bitch up on her Best Western offer because he woke up the next to an email from her saying that she was able to “comp the difference” if he emailed the receipt, so we still would have had to pay about $150!

I was so irritated about that. And at Henry for not planning ahead.

But here is where he would say something patronizing, such as, “YOU’RE WELCOME TO HANDLE IT ALL NEXT TIME!” And ew, I only handle the Roadside America portion of our road trips, thanks.

And this concludes a very boring post about our Friday Night Forever Drive.

Keep reading for the not-anticipated conclusion to the cliffhanger from the previous post! So exciting!

….we were halfway back to Leslieville. Henry suggested that we keep walking and just jump on a streetcar when we got tired, but I was having so much fun! The sun was setting, lights were coming on, and the streets were bustling. I loved it—it reminded me of being in Europe as a kid! I asked Henry if just walking the whole way back to Leslieville was do-able, and he muttered, “I mean, I guess.”

I took that as CHALLENGE ACCEPTED so we continued our leisurely stroll through Chinatown where we stopped to get tea at Ichi Tea House, and checked out some street art.

I excitedly hypothesized, “What if G-Dragon was getting ice cream from that ice cream truck right now!?” and Henry just scrunched up his weathered skull-mask in a “don’t be stupid” expression which is basically just his everyday face these days.

Shit started to get fancier by the block and we realized we were in the fashion district, so G-Dragon could have definitely been nearby! I made Henry to see if there was a Gentle Monster in Toronto because maybe he would be there, but there was not  Gentle Monster in Toronto.

Sigh.

Henry and I might have held hands a little. You’ll never know.

We rolled up on this by accident and I was so happy! It was really the only touristy thing we did. (I had a small desire to go in the CN Tower but I also was worried about how much time it would take. So maybe next time when we have Chooch with us!)

There was some dance competition happening on a stage in this plaza but it wasn’t Kpop dancing so what did I care. Just a bunch of dumb little girls in their stupid leotards.

I had to pee really bad when we were downtown still so we popped into a Tim Horton’s, where I accidentally let the door close behind me on some really old homeless guy. A cop was coming out of Tim Horton’s as I was going in and hurriedly held the door open for him and it was like, a really big To Do.

Dumb Probably Pro-Trump American Broad Lets Door Slam on Homeless Man.

Seriously though the cop acted like a fucking hero and I’m surprised he didn’t arrest me to really drive it home, you know? I even said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there!” but the old man didn’t even acknowledge me so maybe he didn’t even realize that his face was nearly smashed by the door that I so recklessly failed to hold.

MAYBE I’M BLOWING IT OUT OF PROPORTION.

Henry owned this block. 

After I peed and Henry bought a bag of Timbits, we continue our trek until suddenly, almost without notice, we went from the flashy fashion district to DARK, EMPTY STREETS and SHAMBLING UNSAVORIES.

“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” I whispered through clenched teeth, clutching Henry’s hand.

“Good one, Erin. Yeah, let’s walk back. This is great,” Henry sighed.

We walked past an ominous park where we could detect the shapes of people having some kind of suspicious interaction.

“Yeah, that doesn’t look bad at all,” Henry said, keeping his focus straight ahead, pretending like he saw nothing.

We walked past some winos hanging on the front stoop of an apartment; one of them screamed to me, “SHE JUST DID HER LAUNDRY!” and I just wanted to cry.

Also, my feet were really starting to feel the effects of the EIGHTEEN MILES we had walked that day.

But soon we were at the bridge to Leslieville, the homestretch! And because this was Canada, the beautiful land that birthed Degrassi and Drake, nothing happened to us. Even their hoodlums & hooligans are nice! 

When we turned on the street of our airbnb, there were several girls sitting on the road in just their bras and pants, so that was interesting. The house behind them was on the market for $998,000, but I guess even rich neighborhoods get trash on the streets every once in awhile.

By the end of the night, my Fitbit said I had walked 42,0000 steps — a new record for me! (That I know of, anyway.)

What a memorable day. Even with all the walking we did, I had a hard time falling asleep because it was G-Dragon Eve!

After a morning & afternoon of ambling about Koreatown<3, we rested at our Airbnb for approximately 20 minutes (lol sorry Henry) before I declared it was coffeetime. Henry consulted a map, because that’s what big strong men do, and determined that we could just walk to the cafe I chose (Hailed Coffee, read more a few posts back if you’re so inclined) and then walk a few blocks to a subway station to set off for Hogtown Vegan, where we unanimously decided to eat dinner.

Neither of us were particularly hungry yet after stuffing ourselves at Korea House, but we figured with all the walking we were about to do, we’d arrive at Hogtown Vegan right before my hunger turned me into a claw-bearing, hissing hothead.

Our walk to the subway took us through Greektown! It was really tempting to hang out there and get some falafel. Toronto, you have too many options!

By now, I was feeling fine with the subway. If we had relied on our own car or Uber, we never would have had the chance to experience Toronto this way. I’m glad Henry listened to me when I suggested it.

(Lol jk – this was all his plan and my initial reaction was YOU WANNA WHAT?! WHY?? because you know me and that public transportation battle.)

This time when we exited the subway at the Christie stop, we went right on Bloor instead of left, where my beloved Koreatown <3 is. (Don’t worry, babe—we’ll be back.) 

I was just wondering out loud if there was also a Little India when we crossed over to another block and the beautiful stench of curry filled our nostrils. I don’t know it was an official India section of town, but there were definitely a lot of Indian restaurants! So again, I was tempted to trade in Hogtown Vegan for some paneer and samosas.

Ugh, choices!

It was around this time that I made Henry look up incoming flights from NYC, because I wanted to go to the airport and stalk greet G-Dragon.

“That’s what kids do!” Henry cried, but he still looked up the flights like a good boy. He claimed that all the flights had already landed and that there were no more NYC flights listed for the day, but he could have told me anything and I would have had no choice but to believe him since I couldn’t verify on my own phone, thanks Canada-less data plan.

Hogtown Vegan was roughly 7? 8? blocks from the subway station. Who knows. Hopefully no one comes here looking for accuracy. We’re all about the FAKE NEWS ’round here.

“We’re” — you know, me and my staff.

I just learned that Hogtown is a nickname for Toronto. I couldn’t figure out why else a vegan restaurant would be named Hogtown because typically, if I saw a restaurant with that name, my mind would go straight to bacon and I would think it was some mega-meat hut.

True to Toronto’s form, the staff in this joint was so great! I really liked our waitress — she was so fucking cute and when I started my order with my signature meek inquiry of, “Can I have….”, she answered, “Of course you can!”

I don’t know why I order food that way. Instead of being all assertive and STATING what I want, I always pose it as a shaky question. Maybe because I’m so used to the waiter coming back and saying, “OH I’M SORRY BUT WE’RE ALL OUT OF THAT” or “WE DON’T ACTUALLY OFFER THAT ANYMORE YOU HAVE AN OUTDATED MENU I GUESS TOO BAD SO SAD” so now I feel the need to question if I can have what I want.

Ugh, my life.

Henry got something. He liked it.

I ordered the Unchicken and Waffles, which came with a  dollop of sweet potato mash (it was terrific, better than Thanksgiving) and collard greens which I just can’t like, sorry Mother Earth for rejecting one of your babies. Anyway, my entrée is what Hogtown Vegan is known for and I’m not surprised — that was the best fake chicken I’ve ever had in my 21 year meat ban. Typically, when I eat things like this, I have to go into it with the mindset that I’m not eating something that is meant to replace the thing that I no longer eat, so that I can fully appreciate the thing for its own unique flavor.

DOES THAT MAKE SENSE OR NAH?

But this unchicken was fucking bomb. It tasted real! The texture was SICK! I have never had fake chicken with such realistic mouth-feel!

The food here was hearty as fuck. I couldn’t clean my plate so Henry had to help me (and he was happy to, believe me). When you eat at a place like this, it will quickly dispel the myth that all vegans are malnourished waifs.

Trust.

Meanwhile, there was family of three at the table next to us. Their little boy was probably about 3 and he made me miss Chooch SO MUCH that I actually started crying for a minute or two. Henry rolled his eyes and reminded me that if Chooch was there, we would probably be bickering because that’s our schtick.

We bicker. Quarrel. Nit-pick. Compete.

We’re ridiculous.

But being there with Henry made me realize that as much as I love being together as a family, sometimes it’s necessary for Henry and I to get away for a bit and be a couple. I think he was less stressed because he only had one person’s happiness to maintain all weekend, instead of contending with me and Chooch crying about being hungry and wanting him to buy us things and CARRY US HENRY, WE’RE TIRED. So in other words, this was almost like a real vacation for Henry!

There were moments of tension—because we’re a couple and we’re traveling, nerves are gonna be struck eventually—but this particular evening was WUNDERBAR.

We finished up dinner and continued to stroll around Bloor Street, stopping at a super new-age-y pet shop called EarthEchoes, the proprietor of which was strutting about the shop in bare feet and some really scary guy with face tattoos was feeding the reptiles.

“Jesus Christ, that guy looks like he just got out of prison for murder,” Henry said.

This place was nuts. There were snakes and chameleons and tropical birds EVERYWHERE. I totally fell in love with Bradly, the store’s pet Savannah Monitor.

“Are they mean?” I asked Henry while Bradly was flicking his tongue at me from between the cage bars.

“Um, yeah,” Henry said before I shoved my whole arm in the cage to caress Bradly.

Henry pulled me out of the store before I took off my shoes, got a face tattoo, and started luring in homeless people for Bradly to feed on.

I talked about how awesome that store was for like, three whole blocks until we dipped into a junk store.

Then Henry distracted me before I found a new wheelchair for the collection by suggesting that we get a beer, which is something that I can do now.

“Get a beer.”

Except that I have to ask questions like, “Do you have wheat beer? OK but if I like <x> and <y> then will I like <z>?” and then I order the opposite of what the bartender suggests and Henry is like, “You won’t like that” but then I like it….

…for the first two sips, until the after taste kicks in.

And that’s exactly what happened at Disgraceland!

I got something that I can’t remember. It was on tap and Henry said I wouldn’t like it but the bartender let me taste it and I was like, “Wow this isn’t bad” and it actually wasn’t bad except that at the end of the day, I just really don’t LIKE beer. I have just found a few that I can TOLERATE. I’m learning that this is a big difference. But at least I’m trying, unlike Henry and coffee!

I love a good basement bathroom!

The bartender was really great. He was very helpful, and also super apologetic that he didn’t really have much in the vein of wheat beers to offer me, so he started listing off suggestions in the area of bars that are well-known for their crazy beer collection and how this broad at this bar used to be the bartender at some other bar, and blah blah blah. I didn’t have the heart to tell him we were dumb Americans on vacation and had no idea what he was going on about.

I just appreciated that he was attentive but not overbearing. And I really enjoyed the ambiance of the bar. The music was grungy, the art on the wall featured spider people and I wanted to buy one but the one I wanted, one that reminded me of Robert Smith and Lydia Lunch, was already sold. :( Henry was happy though because they were all $200.

Disgraceland has a vegan comfort food menu! I wished we hadn’t just eaten dinner, but now at least I have somewhere else to add to the food list if and when we visit Toronto again.

Oh I just checked their menu and I believe I drank the Amsterdam 3-Speed and by that I mean that I nursed it forever and then made Henry drink the last third.

“I was just going to ask if you guys wanted another round, but considering she just gave you the rest of her beer….” the bartender laughed.

I felt like I had to justify the fact that this was actually good for me, that I basically considered it a win, because he was nice and I felt like I was offending him, like he hatched all the beer himself in his bedroom beer-incubator.

Also on Bloor, we went into Through Being Cool, which I had heard about via some Toronto vlogger, because why Google when you can just have pretentious local YouTubers tell you about all the cool shit to do in town. Through Being Cool is a vegan bakery but they also sell vegan goods from other local companies too. I’m not sure if they’re named after the Devo song or the Saves the Day album, but their name is definitely what drew me in.

I’m easily hooked.

I had no idea that this place was even on our route, so it was a happy accident.

Neither of us had any room in our bellies, but we wanted to get some donuts to take back to the room with us, save them for breakfast,  chuck them at orphans, use them to play ring toss with a nude Mounty on Viagra, it’s really none of your business.

However! While we were looking at the packaged food in the cooler (things like vegan chicken salad and homemade vegan cheese), a couple came in and ordered a bunch of donuts. Then another guy came in and got to the counter right before us and he ordered a dozen donuts which made Henry agitated because “Who orders a dozen donuts at 7:30pm?!”

But then he fucking took the DONUT I WANTED. Some raspberry thing and it was THE ONLY ONE OF ITS KIND.

JUST LIKE G-DRAGON.

IT WAS THE G-DRAGON OF DONUTS AND THAT MOTHERCANUCKER TOOK IT.

So I did my “JUST FORGET IT” song and dance and we left.

It could have ruined my night. In Pittsburgh, my night would have been shot to hell. I probably would have flipped a garbage can. But Toronto Erin was minding her temper, although she did bring it up at 37 sporadic moments during the night, but just in a casual, “Remember when that guy took my donut? I hope he chokes” kind of way.

And then we began our trek back to Leslieville, which was supposed to be via subway but it was a really beautiful night and we were enjoying the sights, and the next thing we knew…

Lol cliffhanger.

Usually when Henry and I road trip for a concert, it’s a whirlwind of checking into some crap hotel, struggling to find somewhere to eat, going to the show, waking up early & coming home. Never anytime time to explore, sightsee, or immerse ourselves in a new place.

Originally we were going to leave Saturday morning and get to Toronto in the evening, but Chris talked us into leaving a day earlier so that we could have time to explore and see the city. I am so glad we did this. Thank you for the push, Chris!

We woke up early on Saturday because I was REARIN’ to go. Henry had made the unilateral decision to use public transportation and at first I was on board with this, but then when it came time to step on the streetcar on Queen St, I FUCKING PANICKED.

“I don’t think I can do it!” I cried around the fist I was biting.

It doesn’t matter whose fist.

Stop asking about the fist.

Henry was all GODDAMMIT but then remembered that this was my Special Weekend so he swallowed some Prozac and read another chapter from the Tucking Thee Penis Betwixt Thee Legs manual. He declared that it was fine, this was all just fine, not a problem, he understands how anxious public transportation makes me. We walked another block and caught a different street car.

Of course, it was one of the old dingy ones and not the pretty ones we kept seeing rumbling gently down the street. Ugh.

A VIEW FROM THE WINDOW.

We were only on the street car for a few blocks when Henry chirped, “OK, let’s go” and lead me off the street car right into a subway station, ughhhhh!! Henry didn’t disclose that there was a second leg of this pub-transporting odyssey.

We barely had to wait at all for a train to come. I was still pretty leery of this whole procedure (hi, my name is Erin R. Kelly and I’m scared of the mundane) but I blindly followed Henry through the whooshing doors and proceeded to stand alone and scowl at him from across the train because what’s life if it’s not dramatic.

But you know what? It turns out that Toronto’s subway system is pretty fucking amazing, fast, convenient, and it helped us get to Koreatown, so I can’t hate it. I just can’t.

Altogether, it took us about 17 minutes to get to Koreatown from Leslieville using the street car and subway (this doesn’t include the walk from the airbnb to where we caught the street car, but you get the point. This blog post is boring because Henry is feeding me dry information). I would highly recommend it! It ended up being kind of fun and made me feel like I was on vacation and not just killing time by driving around in a strange city before a show which is what typically happens.

We took the subway to Christie Street. When we emerged from the subway station and rounded the corner, I was nearly felled by all the glorious hangul everywhere!

I kept making Henry stop so I could read signs. It was an excelsior learning experience! I know it seems trivial, but this was so exciting to me. I dream every night and every day of going to South Korea, and this was like a tiny little consolation.

However, it was only 9:30am and nothing was open yet. So we just strolled around and drooled over all of the menus posted outside of the restaurants. There were so many to choose from! So different from Pittsburgh.

Henry and I had a small spat because we were both hungry and I didn’t really think this part of the day through. So it was all, “YOU’RE THE ONE WHO HAD TO COME HERE SO GODDAMN EARLY!” and “WELL I DIDN’T SEE YOU SENDING AN ITINERARY TO THE PRINTING PRESS MOTHERFUCKER!” but then we walked to get ice cream and took the street car back to Koreatown for lunch, and everything was amazing after that because Ice Cream Saves.

But first—Kpop shopping!

There was an adorable card shop called Just You – Sarah & Tom that Henry was trying to keep me from seeing. He was rummaging in his cargo shorts for a BB gun to shoot my eyes out when my hands found the door handle and I was whisked away to Kpop Heaven.

A chorus of “Hello! Annyeong!” greeted us before the door had a close behind us. The most adorable Korean women were running the shop, demonstrating some of the knickknacks for us, fawning over my tattoos, talking to us about Kpop—-it was heavenly! Even Henry’s frown was no match for the joy brewing up in that bitch—it got its hooks into the corners of his mouth and tugged them right the fuck up.

ADMIT IT HENRY, YOU LOVED IT.

Especially when “TT” by Twice came on the store stereo and an impromptu dance party broke out.

I wanted to buy every Kpop album they had available but Henry was like DO YOU NOT WANT G-DRAGON MERCH THEN so I settled on two sticker packets for me and Chooch to share: BIGBANG and Twice.

Our favorites. <3

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After such an amazing experience, we were ready to eat. We chose Korea House, and it was motherfucking magic. I love the ambiance!

Being able to read the menu and know what most everything is was so rewarding. Learning Korean is a struggle for me, but I haven’t give up. And when I’m able to use it in situations like this, it just motivates me even more.

I ordered the bibim naengmyeon. Henry has made me versions of it at home and the first time I tried it, I was like, “OH FUCK NO.” Even though I knew it was a cold noodle dish, it was still very alarming and jolting the first time it was placed in front of me. But then something just clicked and it became one of my favorite things that Henry makes me.

When I ordered, I said the actual name of the dish. I didn’t point and I didn’t rely on the number. And the ajummah knew what I ordered! She didn’t make me feel dumb like the time I was at a Mexican restaurant and tried to order rojo sauce on my enchilada and the waitress kept asking “What?” in escalating volumes until I finally just whispered, “Red sauce” with my head hung in defeat.

While we were waiting for our food, the younger guy working there turned on the TV. I figured he was going to put on the news or some sport thing, but instead, he turned on a Jay Park YouTube playlist!

“This is just like being at home,” I giddily squealed to Henry, who was just like, “OH BOY.”

But he loved it. Korean food and kpop videos are life, you guys. Such life.

GOD YES.

The only problem is that I am in a constant war with noodles. It doesn’t matter what the cuisine is. Have you seen me eat spaghetti? By the end, I look like I just went down on a can of slutty tomato sauce. Fork, spoon, chopsticks, my motherfucking phalanges — I AM A MESS WITH NOODLES.

When Henry makes me noodles at home, he cuts them for me (because I’m 5), and in the YouTube videos I watch of people eating food in S.Korea (my life is so full), I often see them using kitchen shears, which is a relief to know that the noodle experts need some help sometimes too.

But the waiter didn’t bring me any noodle scissors. I tried to use my chopsticks to cut them, but then I gave up for a while and just focused on eating the banchan—American restaurants really need to get on the ball with offering complimentary sides for the table. Holy shit, it was a veritable rainbow of pickled delights.

By the time I started working on the noodles, two Korean guys were seated next to us and my noodle-eating stage fright set in. Right before they walked in, I had felt a surge of bravery and started to shovel a huge mound of noodles into my waiting maw via chopsticks, and then immediately realized I hadn’t thought this through. I was frozen, a mile of noodle-drapes hanging out of my mouth, cheeks blown out like a chipmunk, sweat springing up along my hairline—I was seconds away from choking. I kept trying to inhale and suck back the strands of cold strangulation to no avail.

I was only making it worse.

Noodles were flipping and flapping around, splashing my eyeballs and Henry with gochujang,

“Oh my god, what are you doing!?” he hissed. I was in tears, noodles hanging in shame from my mouth like their mom had just caught them watching deep throat porn. I couldn’t breathe because every slight inhale was causing more noodle to slide down my gullet. I just wanted to enjoy my lunch without danger of asphyxiation.”Do you want me to ask for shears?” Henry asked.

I shook my head violently, and in a moment of panic, I reached up with my hands and began tugging the noodles out of my mouth with my fingers, LIKE A BARBARIAN.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Henry said, and walked over to the counter to ask the waiter to put me out of my misery.

He returned with shears, cut my fucking noodles like a good dad, and then life went on.

Meanwhile, one of the guys at the table next to us also ordered a noodle dish, and he was given shears with his meal without asking!

Speaking of asking, I heard him ask for more bap and I knew that he was asking for a side of rice!

I LOVE KNOWING THINGS.

After lunch, I celebrated not choking to death by buying some G-Dragon pins across the street at Mr. Pen. We also went to a large market but their candy aisle was kind of a letdown, surprisingly. Sorry, co-workers. I mean, I still bought candy, but not as much as I intended.

After a sufficient Korea immersion, we took the subway back to Leslieville because I promised Henry we could “rest” for awhile, but all that really meant was that I wanted to change clothes, send Chooch some messages since I had wifi at the airbnb, and get coffee before heading back out for dinner.

I’m not one of those people who take vacations to relax, clearly. MORE LATER!  TORONTO IS SPLOOGING CONTENT ALL UP ON THIS HO.

One of the things that was recommended to us by Chronica before our Toronto trip was an ice cream joint called Sweet Jesus. They could have stopped right there and I would have been sold on the name alone. My Grandma Kelly was always saying “Sweet Jesus!” when I was a kid, so this place appealed to me on a personal level already!

But then they mentioned that Sweet Jesus has a butter tart soft serve, and I had to for sure check this out.

They had a small walk-up window shop right down the street from where we were staying in Leslieville, but if you don’t know this about me yet, I am hugely particular and wanted to go to the main location that I saw in all of the YouTube videos I had been watching on Toronto ice cream places, and this is why we got rid of cable because we’re basically YouTube (and DramaFever) exclusive now.

So basically we got rid of regular TV in favor of vloggers.

Hmm.

Anyway, Henry thought this was absurd because we walked past the Leslieville Sweet Jesus at least 78979 times that weekend, but he knows better than to try to silence my chaotic world in order for me to listen to reason.

On Saturday, we woke up early to go to Koreatown and by doing so, nothing was open yet. God, I’m so smart! So Henry started looking up other options, and he noted that the Sweet Jesus I wanted to go to opened at 11, so I decided that we could always just pregame our Korean lunch with a little softserve. I mean, that’s what vacation is for, right?

(Pfft fuck that noise, I’d do this on a regular day at home too because I’m an adult and no one controls my life BUT ME. And also the government, I guess.)

Henry started looking up streetcar info, but I suggested that we just walk because he said it was only 48 minutes away by foot and fuck, I walk so much more than that in a day, so why not? WHY NOT EARN THAT MOTHERFUCKING SINFUL SOFTSERVE.

Plus, this allowed us to walk through Little Italy (where I had my water/hobo piss splashing accident; see the coffee post) and Chinatown, which was really fun and made me feel like we were really making the most of our time there.

So when you ask me if I thought Sweet Jesus was worth a 48-minute walk, I will say yes, and that’s why.

As for the actual ice cream though, I thought it was fine!

They sadly didn’t have the butter tart toppings though, so maybe it’s a seasonal thing. This threw me for a loop and I was having ordering panic.

I wound up getting the red velvet option because I always snatch up that red velvet shizz.

The 90s yo-girl in me appreciated that the sizes came in Biggie and Smallz. We both got a Smallz, even though they came in plain white cups and not the pretty blue ones with the cool design. Of course I dwelled on this! But I was inspecting the orders of the people in front of us and there was no way I was going to be able to down a Biggie.

Not without some warm-up.

#ColdFellatio

Henry ordered the lemon / coconut cream pie variety.

Henry was “not impressed” by the experience at all, but I think it’s mostly because I made him walk for 48 minutes and the finish line didn’t include an orgasm. He was annoyed that all the good stuff was just a coating and once it was gone, all that was left was ice cream, but I pointed out that this is true of soft serve pretty much….everywhere. I mean, the sprinkles only go so far, Hank!

As for me, I appreciated that the soft serve was more of the rich custard variety. I thought it was fine all on its own, and the toppings were just gilding the lily, really. LOL, j/k — dump on those extra fucking calories, I’m on vacation!

I think it’s good that we went so early in the day because some of the YouTube videos I have seen have mentioned that this place gets packed.

There were only three people ahead of us at 11:30am though! Soft serve brunch, how you doin’?

I liked mine though. I’m not sure this would be an old standby for me if I lived in Toronto, but the novelty of it was just good enough for tourist purposes. It was definitely Instagram-friendly, and isn’t that what everything is based on these days? And I for sure inhaled it, and you probably would too, maybe even AS IF IT’S YOUR LAST, OH SHIT KPOP SEGUE IN THE HOUSE:

Up next: KOREATOWN!!!!

One of the biggest differences between Henry and me, perhaps even greater than the age difference, is my crippling dependence on coffee and his extreme dislike of that beautiful brown broth-babe in the buxom mugs and….and…SORRY WHO TURNED ON THE COFFEE PORN?

I mean, just look at his grimace up there!

While we were in Toronto, I wanted to try and hit up as many cafes as possible without going into cardiac arrest. I had a half-assed list that I had prepared from various vlogs I had peeped and also my nemesis Yelp, but some of them were off-the-cuff.

Of course there was the obligatory Tim Horton’s stop on Friday, right before we got into Toronto, when I was having major coffee-craves and starting to picture visualettes of me cracking open Henry’s jugular and gulping on that to tide me over.

Friday evening, we were walking around Leslieville when I realized it was time for my third serving (I’d usually be on my fourth by now but I had beer with dinner instead because Henry wants to have couples beer bellies and pressures me to drink).

This is all fascinating stuff, isn’t it? Like a super personal inspection of my pathetic life? Can you tell that I’m just stalling because I’m not ready to write about the G-Dragon concert?

Ugh, the agony that is my life. It’s not easy being a sixteen-year-old zipped up inside the flesh-bag of an adult working professional.

OK, so Friday evening we stopped at Tango Palace, which I already mentioned on Friday’s liveblog but my OCD nature demands that I mention it again because everything needs to be organized or I’ll lay awake at night with a fluttering heart rate.

Which will probably be more from caffeine intake than actual prescribed OCD symptoms.

So, back to Tango Palace. I just had a plain cup of coffee because I hadn’t had a PLAIN CUP OF COFFEE ALL DAY and it’s not all about frozen mochas and halfcaf skinny soy lattes or whatever it is that the cool kids order so confidently while I’m in the bathroom reciting my order out loud in front of a mirror even though I’m going to end up stuttering it anyway when it’s show time because PRESSURE.

Yeah, so…it felt great to just walk up to the counter and say, “JUST COFFEE.”

Henry got nothing and then proceeded to sit at the table and pout.

I mean, it was just a plain cup of coffee so there’s not much to report on but the ambiance of that joint was supreme. I also noted that in addition to the barista being friendly, everyone in the place seemed like regular people, and by regular I mean that no one was dangling bangles of pretension and coffee snobbery from handlebar moustaches. It was a nice, cozy vibe and I’m glad I got my coffee in a mug instead of to-go. Sometimes it’s nice to just take a break and talk your boyfriend’s face off about an upcoming concert that you’re super stoked for, you know? As opposed to talking off the side of his face while you’re walking around being obvious tourists.

I don’t have a picture of it, but in the back of the cafe, there were two mannequins laying on top of a ceiling-thing. I was happy they were there.

Saturday morning, I tried to use the Keurig in our airbnb and wound up practically flooding the kitchen. Henry came out of the bathroom and actually thought it was from his shower, but nope — just me struggling with a Keurig when all I know how to use these days is a French press. Needless to say, I didn’t drink much of my busted coffee, so the first thing I did when we got to Koreatown that morning was stop at a small cafe called Hodo Kwaja, where I ordered a beautiful, refreshing 얼음 커피.

God, that’s iced coffee, OK.

When the friendly ahjumma handed it to me, she said, “You try first and tell me if it’s OK,” and then she gestured to the row of sugar packets and creamers.

I tried it and said, “It’s perfect” BECAUSE IT WAS.

I felt like singing a Bruno Mars jam to it.

Maybe I was just punchdrunk from being in Koreatown, but it was a wonderful way to the start the morning. Plus, Henry got a bag of walnut cakes with pat (red bean) filling and they were just delightful. Love you, Korea.

About an hour later, we were in the midst of a longer-than-it-was-worth walk to Sweet Jesus. We walked through Little Italy on the way and passed Voodoo Child, which was on my list! However, this happened right after I stepped on a loose pavement tile thing, which resulted in the cold, dirty water which had been collecting underneath it to splash onto my leg, and my mind immediately went to: IS THIS WATER OR IS THIS HOBO PEE and in my mind I felt I looked like I had just been sneezed on by Morla, but if you ask Henry, he’ll tell you I looked like less like a filthy Atreyu and more like I had one tiny dirt fleck on my shin.

Needless to say, we didn’t go to Voodoo Child after that because I was too busy limping under the weight of the filth I was now carrying on my leg.

A bunch of other things happened, but that will be another post.

In the late afternoon, we pub-transported it back to our airbnb, changed clothes, didn’t rest like I promised Henry we would, and then hoofed it to Hailed Coffee, which was about a 15 minute walk from our pad in Leslieville.

This place was on my list because “hailed” is Arabic for cardamon, which is added to this joint’s signature coffees. My heart bleeds for cardamom, so we had to go. Plus, they sell an array of dates! Henry and I love dates! The kinds you eat, not go on.

God forbid.

I ordered the Hailed Cappucino and urged Henry to scoop up some dates, but he was being a big coffee-hating bitch baby and opted to stare sadly out the window instead.

[I just had to take a time out because Catherine was telling Lori about the time Jeannie let me cut her hair one night on late shift and Glenn was all, “Why would anyone let you near them with scissors” and then Lori said one time she had a Vietnamese lady dry cut her hair, and she pantomimed the motion of the blade sailing across a fistful of hair and I had SHIVERS. Like, the good kind. Because I am obsessed with the sound of dry hair being shorn. Oh when that sharp blade crunches down….BRING SOME HOME TO ERIN. And now Glenn and Todd are horrified.]

But um…back to the coffee! I think Hailed was my favorite of all the coffee I had in Toronto. There is just something special about cardamom and also, why don’t I order cappuccinos more often!? 90’s coffee culture is BACK.

I just wish we had gotten some dates to go with this bangin’ mug.

Much later in the evening, we were about to begin our walk back to the airbnb from somewhere stupidly far away. Henry had been complaining about having a headache all day and then suddenly realized he hadn’t had any iced tea. Because it’s OK for him to be addicted to tea but my coffee craze is a burden, OK cool. We were in Chinatown for the second time that day (we get around, guys), and decided to stop into Icha for some iced tea. I got classic milk tea because I’m more Asian than Henry. He got…something else, I don’t know. I quit paying attention to him once my bubble tea was placed in my mitts. I vaguely recall the tea blend being brewed in front of him in some weird mad scientist-looking orb thing.

They’re apparently known for their craft teas. I would highly recommend this joint if you’re looking for something non-coffee at some point, and the people working that night were so friendly and helpful! There is nothing worse than walking into a new place and making a rash decision because you’re so nervous about what you’re looking at.

OK, there are like a million things worse than that but it never feels like it when  you’re frozen in that moment!

He said he liked his tea, in case you were wondering. Hold on, I’m going to text him and find out what it was.

*crickets*

“I just got an iced oolong.” That’s his final answer.

The next morning, a/k/a Sunday, a/k/a my birthday, a/k/a G-DRAGON DAY, we left the airbnb first thing in the morning and walked the short distance to Boxcar Social.

The aesthetics of this place spoke to me in ways that lovers are just not capable.  However, I was nervous at first because the barista seemed like maybe he was going to be snobby, but he was fantastic and super helpful when Henry was perusing the tea menu (he finally found a way to enjoy cafes with me, or at least make it more tolerable for himself). I hate when you go to a coffee place and feel confident enough to ask, “Say, what’s good up in here?” and they just dump a bucket of shrugs on you.

A little guidance please!

I got a soy latte and it was divine.

Henry settled on whatever this fluffy pink thing is and I derived great pleasure from watching his thick, rough man-hands lift that delicate glass by the stem toward his bristling, tea-thirsty moustache, leaving behind a soft brushing of foam on the bristle-tips.

Who hit play on that coffee porn again?

I kept hoping one of these owls would transform into David Bowie. :(

I loved it here. They even do coffee flights! Just not when we were there. :(

This was the only cafe we stopped at on Sunday because the rest of the day mostly consisted of standing in one line after another inside the Air Canada Center. However, I did have an iced coffee that Henry fetched for me at some basic bakery down the street from our airbnb while I stayed back to have my obligatory “everything sucks on my birthday and no one loves me” tantrum even though the day was absolutely fine and I had no reason to feel this way but all y’all bipolars out there can feel me, I’m sure. Henry also came back with a butter tart which I made a point of not sharing with him because it was MY BIRTHDAY NOT HIS. And then suddenly I felt fine! Hey blood sugar, I see you.

I think my main take-away is that people in Canada just truly are nice. I never felt out-of-place anywhere we went, like I wasn’t vegan enough to eat at Hogtown Vegan, hipster enough to sit at the bar at Disgraceland, or trendy enough to order anything more than basic coffee at a pretty cafe. I don’t know where Pittsburgh gets off being so exclusionary, but that’s definitely how I feel in my own city — like I don’t fit in anywhere, and that deters me from going to a lot of places.  I didn’t get that feeling once in Toronto. Toronto, please adopt me.

So now you know where I got my coffee fixes at while we were in Toronto. I can’t wait to go back because we never made it to Strange Love and that was #1 on my dumb stupid no-good list.

Our next trip is a quick stop in Chicago over Labor Day weekend, so if any non-bot is reading this and feels like telling me where to go (AND DON’T SAY TO HELL), I welcome any recommendation!

It’s amazing how much I have to say about two and a half days in Toronto. We saw some shit, eh. We ate some food, we rode some pub-tranz, we pounded some pavement. I was initially going to just start with Saturday and recount the day’s events, but there’s just too much for one measly blog post. 

So let’s break it down. We’ll start off light, with a collection of street art we saw during our time on Maple Leaf turf. The street art was top notch. And since Chooch wasn’t there, Henry had to be my mural stand-in. He was not very happy about it BUT GUESS WHOSE BIRTHDAY WEEKEND IT WAS THATS RIGHT NOT HENRY’S. 

This was somewhere on Bloor, and I was half-tanked on a beer that I forced down at a dive bar called Disgraceland which I liked a whole lot. (The bar, not the beer.)

This picture has a weird glow to it because it was across from some amazing home decor place that had the coolest illuminated facade. While I was making Henry pose for this, he said some girl was walking by the window of the store behind me, laughing at his discomfort. #InstagramHusband

Hey-o, this was somewhere in Dovercourt. I’m so good at knowing where everything is! Jk, my photos are geotagged. Thanks, Apple. 

This was a taco joint in Koreatown. I know right?!? Apparently it’s not just Korean things in Koreatown. :(

(I’ll write more about Koreatown later. I had my best/most awkward meal there.)

I wonder what the landlord would say if I let someone spray up the side of our dumb duplex….

I already posted these last two on my live blog but TOO BAD FOR YOUR EYEBALLS BC HERE THEY ARE AGAIN.

This is one of my favorite parts about being in a new city: finding art all around us. 

That the one thing I will say about Newark too–we didn’t get to spend much time in the city because KCON took up most of our time, but their street art was on point. 

I’m glad that we were on foot for so much of our time in Toronto because it made it easier to appreciate all the little nuances and personality of each section of town. 

I asked Henry if he has anything to say about the murals I forced him to stand in front of; he said no. 

I woke up bright and early on day two of KCON and demanded that Henry go down to the lobby and score us breakfast muffins since Chooch and I are pathetic children with little-to-no life skills and depend on our burly manservant to keep us alive.

In other words, I didn’t have my makeup on yet.

When we went downstairs to wait for our Lyft, the lobby was bustling with tour groups preparing for a day in NYC, and I felt a twinge of jealousy.

Originally, we were going to skip the convention on the second day and go to NYC instead since we were so close that we could actually see it from Newark and it was TANTALIZING. But then I ended up scoring that fan engagement for Up10tion on the day we registered, and that was scheduled for 11am on Saturday. We considered going after that, but I started to panic about all the unknowns: the traffic; getting engulfed by the dark underbelly of the city, never to resurface; being seduced by the bright lights and losing all track of time; getting stabbed in Central Park — YOU KNOW, ALL THE NORMAL NYC THINGS.

Plus, none of us have ever been to NYC (I’ve only been to JFK and LaGuardia airports, which don’t count) and would a few hours on a Saturday afternoon truly be enough to satiate the naive tourists in us? So we decided that we would come back another time, when we have nothing else to do, and can devote a whole weekend to shuffling around in fanny packs and sun visors.

Alas, our Lyft driver rolled up around 9:45 and Henry started tersely whispering, “Sit in the front. Erin, sit in the front. Please sit in the front.” And then as I slid into the backseat next to Chooch, “Fuck you.”

I guess he felt uncomfortable sitting in the passenger seat next to the young girl driver? Lol.

Chooch and I both preferred Friday’s Lyft driver over this one. Friday’s was super talkative, but Saturday’s was very stiff and quiet. She had vinyl stickers all over her car, begging for a five-star rating. Girl, Jessica Simpson was playing on your radio when we got in the car. No 5 stars for you.

This reminds me: the Lyft driver from KCON day one had on some Top 40 radio station from NYC and the DJs were talking about Charlie Puth, how in his latest song “Attention,” there is a part where his voice cracks a little, and how most pop singers would have been like, “I need to re-record this part” but Charlie was like, “No, keep it. This is real and my emotions caused this” or whatever. I’ve heard that song several times prior to this but never noticed the part they were talking about until they played it and isolated the exact word where his voice kind of turns into a whisper and it gave me actual chills. Now I have much more appreciation for Charlie Puth and have listened to that song a million times since that day because it moves me to tears.

I will always think of riding in the backseat of Lyft Driver Carolina’s car, past the Newark airport and into the industrial section of Newark, every time I hear this song.

The second day of the convention was mostly the same, but with different panels and fan engagements. We hit up all the booths again, filling up on more free samples, and this time we managed to get Henry in on the Drama Fever action. We chose the Goblin background this time but it was dumb with three of us because the whole point is that you’re supposed to wear a red scarf and then stand facing to the right with your arm outstretched so it looks like you’re pointing at the Goblin’s sword BUT WHATEVER IT’S FINE.

Every single person in line in front of us won at the wheel spinning thing so we had a feeling that we were about to kill the streak. Plus, the people remembered my Instagram name and I think they were like, “OH SHIT, CAN’T HAVE A DOUBLE WINNER!” so we lost, UGH. I was hoping to win a Twice fan engagement but WHATEVER IT’S FINE I’LL LIVE.

:(

We should have posted the picture on Chooch’s Instagram instead. I’m so stupid.

Aeound 10:30, I made my way to the area where the fan engagement lines were. Since I was just in the basic no hi-touch audience for this one, I felt much less stress. That is, until the boy in front of me dipped under the yellow queue tape because there was literally no one line so I followed suit AND WHO IS THE ONE WHO GOT YELLED AT? ME! THE SHEEP!

Ugh, that’s the second time I got scolded at one of these damn things! I will try harder to stand up straight and be a perfect Pollyanna rule abider next time! God I felt like such a dick! But then I also had rage because hello THAT GUY DID IT FIRST, yell at him, too. :(

But the next security person I encountered totally made up for it — she was such a character and really made the most of her job of checking our fan engagement tickets and clicking her little people-counter thing by interacting with us, dancing, and just being a damn fool. The girl several people in front of me apparently had a hi-touch card and the security lady was all, “OOOH SHIT GIRL, you in the WRONG LINE! You better get your butt over there so you can touch your cute little Korean boys!” and then she made sure the other security people let the girl into the correct line. It was so nice of her!

I loved that lady. Why couldn’t they all be as nice as her? :(

This time, I was smart and left my purse with Henry so that I didn’t get all held up in that fucking bag-check fuckarow again, although it seemed like they had sorted out the system by Saturday and the lines were moving pretty smoothly.

Similarly to KNK, I didn’t know much about Up10tion but these fan engagements really make it impossible to not fall in love with the groups, regardless of how well you know them. Kevin Woo was the MC for this one and they jokingly asked him to be their 10th member, since one of the guys left, taking them down to a nine-member group and making their name awkward. (Kevin Woo used to be in the kpop group U-Kiss, in case you didn’t know, but now he’s the host of an English kpop show in Seoul called After School Club. Now you know.)

Up10tion said that they were going to debut their new song “Runner” at the show that night, and then one of them sang a quick verse and I knew I was going to like it. Then some older woman in front of me farted, which was already horrible, but another woman was fanning herself with one of the cardboard fans that 7397498274 booths were handing out, and in the process she was essentially volleying the other lady’s fart right into my face at break-neck speeds. It was like fart-concentrate, not having the chance to disperse on its way to my nostrils. I was straight up gagging, you guys. Straight up gagging.

Even with the farts and scoldings for fake line-jumping, the Up10tion fan engagement was worth it. It was similar to KNK’s, in that there was a brief and language-barrier’d Q&A session, and then they also played charades (the audience’s category choice was overwhelmingly “animals” which was not my pick — I was in the minority who wanted them to act out kpop songs, but whatever). Super fucking fun though, especially watching their awkward display of aegyo.

(I’m obsessed with aegyo. I wish Henry more of it.)

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Meanwhile, Henry and Chooch were across the street in the other part of the convention that had all of the food and kpop vendors, but more importantly: the large, air-conditioned Amazon Mobile Masters tent. Chooch pretty much camped out in there and it was soooo boring to me. However, while I was in my fan engagement, Chooch got involved in some contest inside. There was an area with a bunch of Amazon Fires set up, and every so many hours there was a new game challenge going on. From 10-12, it was Crossy Roads. Chooch loves that game, and the top 3 high scores won prizes. First places got an Amazon Fire, and Chooch was determined to win. By the time I made my way over there, he had the current high score with 30 minutes left.

He was stalking that area like a cat looking for a mouse. All the Amazon volunteers thought it was hilarious and kept teasing him. “That guy’s coming close to beating your score, you want me to kick him?” one of them jokingly said to Chooch who looked like he was about to chew through his lip.

He was making me nervous with his pacing, so Henry and I went outside to look at all of the things he wouldn’t let me buy because I’m not a 16-year-old with a locker to decorate, UGH. However, I did buy a Twice pin at one of the booths, because they were raffling off a Twice Candybong (that’s what Twice’s light sticks are called,  I TEACH YOU SO MUCH!) and in order to enter, all you had to do was purchase one Twice-related item from their booth. I had my eye on the Twice zombie pin anyway, so I gladly bought it. The girl at the booth told me that I just had to put down my contact info on a clipboard after some other girl was finished with it, so I was standing there patiently when some fucking pushy dickhead guy came barreling through the crowd and said, “I WANT TO ENTER TOO” and started PULLING THE CLIPBOARD from the girl while she was still writing, I couldn’t even believe his audacity, maybe because I wasn’t raised to have total disregard for those around me, and it always blows my mind when I witness this kind of ME ME ME I WANT IT NOW behavior. It was the only disheartening moment of all of KCON, fan-wise, which I guess is a good thing. Most people were super chill and not pushy assholes at all.

“You have to buy something from this booth in order to enter,” I said, but he completely ignored me and went right on scribbling his shitty info down.

“He’s going to be the one who wins, too,” I cried to Henry afterward, who asked if I said something to the girl at the booth, but NO I DIDN’T because I’m tired of always being the fucking tattle-tale in life. I didn’t want some pointless confrontation to sully my experience at KCON so I chose to move on with my Twice pin shining brightly on my shorts next to G-Dragon. <3

(Spoiler: I didn’t win the Candybong.)

Back inside the Amazon tent, things were heating up. Chooch made frenemies with some guy who didn’t care about the challenge until he found out what the prizes were, and then he came close to beating Chooch’s score while Chooch was nervously hulking around, wringing his hands and dabbing his brow.

One of the Amazon guys came over and asked, “He yours?” and then started cracking up when I said sighed. Chooch won over all the Amazon people in there and I feel like they were would have been just as sad as Chooch if he lost.

Butttttt, he doesn’t lose. Because he’s freaking Good Luck Chooch. So then we had to stick around while the brat was presented with his Fire and got his picture taken in the Winner’s Chair.

Maybe I should have entered that Candybong raffle in Chooch’s name. :(

“I’m glad I came in first and not second because that prize was an Echo, and I already won one of those yesterday,” Chooch said with a wave of his hand, like the Echo was quite literally yesterday’s news. I can’t believe this kid and his luck.

I drowned my bitterness in a piping hot cup of ttkeokbokki after that and all was right in the world again.

Then after lunch, we were walking past the convention stage and the I Love K-Food people were there, tossing some of their products out into the crowd. OF COURSE Chooch’s grubby hand shot up and snatched the very last thing of ramen that was chucked.

Ugh.

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This video is actually from the first day, I think, but I can’t stress enough how much fun I had watching people dance. The dancing is really what drew me into kpop in the first place, because the exercise routines I do adapt a lot of moves from the music videos and incorporate it into the aerobics. I have very little rhythm and fail miserably anytime I try to learn legit choreography, but this method works for me. I wish I could do the official dances though! I’ll keep trying and hoping that it clicks.

After milling about for another hour or so, we decided to leave so that Chooch and I wouldn’t be totally drained at the concert later, like we had been the night before. That’s a lot of time under the sun. We wanted to get ice cream, anyway, and I can’t believe that there were no stands at KCON serving patbingsoo, or any type of bingsoo for that matter! What a disservice to the KCON patrons!

This was the line for one of the fan engagements as we were leaving.

We took a Lyft back to the hotel and grabbed our car. I found a place on my least favorite app, Yelp, called Nasto’s. It was supposed to be a classic establishment in Newark but I was more interested in going because of the name.

It turned out to be a good choice because they had a thing I’ve never heard of called tartufo – I had the peanut butter version and it was AMAZING. Like a large ice cream version of a buckeye.

Are buckeyes regional? I don’t know, but my Grandma Kelly used to make them all the time when I was a kid and they were the best buckeyes I’ve ever had. Literally just a small nug of PB coated with glorious chocolate. The best. So this was like an inflated one of those, with a delicious mound of vanilla ice cream underneath that cap of chocolate, with ribbons of sweet-ass peanut butter swirling through it like candied veins. Ugh, it was so good that Chooch immediately ordered one too after just seeing mine.

Henry got a scoop of cannoli and something else that he can’t remember because he’s lame. I feel like we were not getting along around this time for some reason and it probably had nothing to do with the fact that I needed a nap.

Copying me.

I consulted Roadside America for some adventure ideas but almost everything was in NYC. I did find some type of cemetery that had like, tunnels in it or something, that wasn’t too far away. Henry was so angry because we ended up having to go over some toll bridge, and then I started flipping out because I looked to the right and the Statue of Liberty was RIGHT THERE, like very close, and I am seriously terrified of the Statue of Liberty, to the point where I’m pretty certain I will never be able to tour it like a true American and that’s something that I will have to carry with me on my own, OK, so don’t try to reason with me!

But then NYC was right there too, a stone’s throw away, and Chooch was freaking out because he wanted to go so badly and I did too (mostly because there are 58 different ice cream places over there on my list) but there was just no way we could swing it. And then the cemetery we were looking for turned out to be super small with no parking and some type of festival/farmers market was happening so we were like FUCK THIS and went back to the hotel to get some rest before the concert, and by “get some rest,” I mean that Chooch and I went to the fitness room and proceeded to sweat our asses off like maniacs training for the Giddy Olympics while Henry went to Subway to get us dinner.

Only one more part left to go of the KCON saga. OMG, can you manage to trudge through to the end?!

As usual, we got on the road a good hour after we originally planned. And then we realized we forgot things when we got to the end of the street and had to do the obligatory road trip back-track. 

The drive to Newark from Pittsburgh was plain, uneventful. Chooch slept for a lot of it and I dozed off and on a lot too because I think my mania is finally catching up with me and I am so goddamn tired. 

I had one weird Sheetz restroom encounter with an older woman, an ahjumma if you will, who was standing in line in front of me and she said, “You know, I travel A LOT for work and rarely see lines in the Sheetz restrooms” which is weird because I was thinking the same thing! Only, I didn’t feel it was necessary to initiate small talk over it. 

Then she let a woman with her small (BAREFOOT) son go ahead of her and turned to me and said, “Maybe I shouldn’t have done that–as I get older, the more I leak!” And then she started throwing her body around, like her laughter was a poltergeist pummeling her in the gut, and hit her head off the hand dryer. 

IT WAS SO WEIRD. 

And then I realized I didn’t even really have to pee but I had already stood in line for 5 minutes and was locked in. 

We ate lunch in Danville, PA at a Friendly’s we ate at once with the Handa’s after an event at Knoebel’s Amusement Park. I didn’t want to eat lunch at all because it was encroaching on our ETA – I needed to get to the Prudential Center before 5pm so we could pre-register for KCON. I watched a lot of YouTubers bitch about past KCONs and the discord that went along with the registering process and if there is one thing I don’t need right now it’s MORE STRESS. 

But we needed to eat, so we stopped at Friendly’s and I got all Token Nutritionist at our table because the menu had the calorie count of every single item and I was like WHAT AM I GOING TO EAT?!?! Turns out the grilled cheese and tomato sauce was actually the best option which worked out perfectly considering I’m a vegetarian and calorie-count aside, my options were slim, people. 

I also spent a lot of time bitching about how I didn’t like the looks of those Friendly’s guys on the wall (see above photo) and went as far as labeling them as SHARKS which is weird because there was some seasonal drink on the menu that had gummy sharks in it. Fuck you and your unnecessary calories, Friendly’s. 

Meanwhile, Chooch and I played some trivia on the game thingie that every table comes with. Henry was all, “THAT COSTS MONEY” and we were all, “NO IT DOESNT, TIGHTWAD.” 

And then when we got our bill, Henry was like, “LOOK AT THIS LAST ITEM” and it was a whole whopping $1.99 for those priceless 5 minutes that chooch and I were harmoniously working together to win at trivia. 

Get over it, Henry! 

We made it to Newark around 4:15 and got our wristbands and scratch offs to see if we were able to get any fan engagements. (The higher-tiered tickets came with a guarantee for one high-touch experience with one of the idol groups, and one guarentee to be in the audience for a fan engagement with one of the groups. The rest of us peions just got a “chance” for a fan engagement.)

Henry was like, “WHY DONT I GET TO SCRATCH ONE?!” as Chooch and I furiously scratched away at the four tickets we scored. They all said “sorry” — except for one of mine!! 

Up10tion is one of the only groups there this weekend that I know pretty much nothing about BUT I WILL TAKE IT. Their fan engagement is Saturday at 11 and I’m excited to witness the awkwardness of it all!

Chooch and I immediately put our wristbands on even though they’re not needed until tomorrow but Henry was too cool for that. Of course Chooch put his on too tight and has been complaining about it ever since. 

Early registrants!

We got to see a bunch of the booths being set up and I got this giant surge of giddiness. I am going to do ALL THE KOREAN THINGS this weekend. 

On the way to the hotel, Chooch’s neighbor friend Markie called him to see if he could come out and play. Chooch kept telling him he was in NJ and it just wasn’t clicking. When Chooch needs to be firm with him, he calls him Mark. 

“Mark, listen to me. We’re not playing today. We’re not playing tomorrow. Or Saturday either. BECAUSE IM IN NJ! I keep telling you that!” He was so mad and frustrated!

The he hung up and said “he’ll be knocking on our door in an hour.”

Chooch also talked to two of his other friends after that – he’s like a teenage girl in the 90s. Just sits in the backseat with his leg crossed, talking on the phone and looking out the window. 

My favorite was when he was explaining to one of them why he was in NJ: “I don’t know, some convention for my mom” he mumbled. 

We checked into our hotel around 5:30 and Chooch and I went swimming while Henry supervised and by that I mean he sat on a lawn chair and looked at his phone/nodded off. 

Henry splurged and got us a hotel that didn’t have cigarette burns in the shower curtains and questionable stains on the sheets. Chooch and I were acting out our own episode of Rags to Riches and Henry was like, “That’s enough.”

Then we went to Killer Vegan for dinner! I had the Gunslinger – a homemade veggie burger with BBQ seitan on top. It was good but not $11.50 worth of good. And my side of Brussels sprouts was just OK. 

Chooch had a pizza burger with vegan mozzarella and Henry had vegan gumbo. 

Now you know what we ate for dinner because that’s the kind of blogger I am. ALL MINUTIA ALL THE TIME. 

MY BURGER ALSO HAD ONIONS!

(On the real tho: Chooch got fries and they were the mystical kinds that I have gone through life talking about but rarely eating. They were The Good Kinds. The kinds that are perfectly crisp without being dry or hard, and they just melt into a beautiful pile of greasy potato ash on your tongue. God help me.)

All in all, it was an adequate dinner and it felt good to eat healthy, but I was hoping for actual entrees and a better ambiance. 

Came home and pissed around in the fitness center for some amount of time and then Chooch and I “explored” the hotel (some Wyndham business hotel) because they was always my favorite thing to do as a kid and it’s even better when you have a partner. We ran up and down so many stairwells and did the whole “look at the ceiling and whistle” every time we passed some asshole in a suit. My favorite part was when we turned a corner on the third floor and saw some tall man slowly vacuuming the floor with his back toward us. 

“What if he’s dead?” Chooch tersely whispered. 

“OMG I hope he is!” I whispered back. 

He wasn’t. :(

Then we walked around outside in the dark and eventually came back to our fourth floor room, banged on the door, and got yelled at by Henry because “people are trying to sleep.”

Lol ok. 

I was going to liveblog on the way to Clevelend last weekend because it’s something I really enjoy doing (I have a sickness) but then I just straight up didn’t feel like it. You know how it is- sometimes a girl just wants to listen to BIGBANG and stare longingly out the window, imagining that the generic Ohio scenery is actually some magical region in South Korea.

Sigh.

So yeah, no liveblogging. Who really cares how many tiffs with Henry and Chooch I can squeeze into 2.5 hours, anyway.

Some sicko does, probably. But just that one guy.

(Maybe it’s that guy Paul who snapped out a few years back and kept commenting on my blog just to remind me that I’m a cunt and that Henry won’t marry me because I’m fat and ugly. That guy was great. Yo, where you at, Paul?)

We left home around 11am I think. I was in a poor mood at first for no reason other than Bi-Polar, but I eventually eased into the day and quit threatening to fillet Henry’s ballsack with one single fingernail, so that was good.

For him, at least.

One particular moment of anger that I remember vividly was when I casually mentioned that some bakery account started following me on Instagram.

“Huh. They were on Food Network’s Cake Wars,” I said mostly to myself because I think this was when I was purposely trying to make Henry feel left out.

“What do they make?” Henry asked, trying to get involved.

“Well gee Henry, considering they were on CAKE WARS, I’m going to go out on a limb and say they make CAKES and not, I don’t know, salami fucking sandwiches.”

“Wow,” Henry murmured as I scowled out the window.

Sometime around noon, we stopped at a service place in Somewhere, Ohio.  Chooch won a yellow bouncy ball playing some idiotic arcade game. Which doesn’t seem like anything you’d scrawl out in a postcard to home, BUT…

Before we left the service plaza, I started crying about wanting an iced something or other, so we walked over to the Panera counter. I was just starting to order an iced chai latte when I saw in my periphery that fucking yellow ball squirt out of my Chooch’s hand, nick the corner of a counter, ricochet and soar mere millimeters past the Panera employee’s face, land in the bagels, bounce back out and graze the cookies on display, before finally hitting the floor and gradually slowing its roll.

The Panera guy had no idea any of this was occurring behind him, and I have no idea how he didn’t see the NEON FUCKING ORB as it nearly whaled him in the face, but I had to stand there, right in front of him, while my eyes were darting back and forth like I was watching Snookie and JWOW attempt to play ping-pong after a night of shots and smashin’ on the Jersey Shore.

And when he answered my question about almond milk, I couldn’t hold my laughter in any longer and it started to leak out of my mouth, at which point he smiled nervously and I know he was wondering if he was the butt of some mean-spirited joke, because Chooch was actually crying from the pain of holding back his laughter, and Henry said the other guy in line with us was openly laughing too.

Ahhhh, it was so stupid, yet hilarious.

How did the ball manage to not hit him even once? I mean, I know: because of Math Stuff. Shut up.

The Panera guy walked away to get started on my drink, leaving Chooch and me to stare helplessly at the yellow ball on the floor, separated by a counter. Eventually, some other Panera person walked over and I asked him if he could return the ball to us.

“I’m sorry,” he said, placing it into my hand.

“For what? It’s his fault!” and then Chooch and I lost it because this was such a stupid YOU HAD TO BE THERE scenario but it was endlessly funny to us. And now some Panera rando was apologizing to us for no reason! We must have rehashed it for the next two hours.

That would have been worth the postage of a postcard.

Right after, we pulled over in North Lima, which was totally poppin’, and ate lunch at C’s Waffles, your basic family restaurant in a tiny strip mall. But the service was great, the food was good, and no one turned and stared at us when we walked in like Large Marge had sent us.  I hate when that happens!

There was a family with four kids sitting near us and after observing them for a minute. The kids weren’t even being bad, but all of these scenarios of them rising up one day and taking complete control of the house started whirring through my mind and I felt panicked. I said to Henry, “I don’t think I could ever have that many kids. I’d feel too outnumbered, you know?”

Without looking up from his plate of breakfast fare, Henry sighed, “I have you and Chooch; I’m always outnumbered.”

Hahaha. It’s true.

One of the things I was really looking forward to doing in Cleveland because my life is so rich was checking out their Asian markets. Henry wanted to actually peruse their produce and whatever else might assist him in his kitchening, but I had only one purpose: to restock the Law Firm Candy Pumpkin. People have been getting snippy with me lately because I didn’t get a chance to candy-shop last weekend, so all the was left were the Mexican assortment that everyone has reacted very adversely to.

The other day, I said out loud, “What nationality of candy should I try to find next?”

Glenn said Iraqi, which sent me a googling spree, and at first I was like, “WOW IRAQI CANDY IS TIGHT!” but then things turned dark when I found an Urban Dictionary entry for “Iraqi Candy Shop.” Needless to say, I didn’t google to see if Cleveland had an Iraqi candy shop, and settled on more Asian snacks.

The place we went to was a LEGIT Asian supermarket, way bigger than the ones we have here in Pittsburgh, and Henry cringed when he saw the size of the candy aisle.

SO MUCH CANDY! I wanted to buy even more but Henry was like, “STOP BLOWING YOUR PAYCHECK ON CANDY FOR WORK IT MAKES ZERO SENSE.” This is how I buy friends, OK Henry?

Or lose friends, if you ask the ones who have bitten into some questionable sewer garbage in pretty wrappers.

But you guys, guess what happened next? We were in the random aisle with European candy and various beverages, when I started performing an intense HEAVY BREATHING.

“What?” Henry asked in a scared way when I made Crazy Eyes and shouldered past him.

GUESS WHAT I FOUND?!

OK I’ll just tell you: I finally found the Nongfu Spring BIGBANG teas that I have been searching for! Chooch and I went wild trying to find each member (“Did you get Taeyang? WHERE’S DAESUNG?!” while all the other shoppers were giving us the “OK, Koreaboos” side-eye. Henry was pretty embarrassed. But whatever, I got one of each member, plus two different G-Dragons and T.O.P.s and now I’m kicking myself for not buying more, at least an extra G-Dragon for Octavia. I’m the worst friend!

I’m sure we’ll be back in Cleveland soon though.

Meanwhile, I want to start a campaign to get the beverage company where Henry works to start distributing these. I mean, obviously 99% of the appeal for me is that BIGBANG endorses it, but the tea is actually so fucking good too! My friend Ronda asked me what GD tea tastes like and honestly, like sitting on a swing-set next to your crush on a cool summer night, and also peach oolong.

OH GOD, MY HEART.

I brought one of the G-Dragon bottles to work and everyone is like, “….cool.” Whatever Amber, you know if there was a Dance Moms Nongfu Spring series, you’d collect them all!

After all of that hysteria, we took Chooch to one of the beaches on the outskirts of Cleveland and totally convinced him that Lake Erie was actually the Atlantic Ocean.

“But we’re in Ohio…” Chooch argued.

“Yeah, and the Atlantic Ocean….cuts through,” I answered like he was being so foolish for not believing me.

“Look there it is! It’s the ocean!” I cried, pointing out the window. After doing that four times, Chooch finally snapped, “OK! I know! It’s the ocean! You don’t have to keep telling me.”

Haha—suckeerrrrrrrrrr.

Then I made The Gifted One pose for a selfie with his Geographically Devious Parents. All of this happened after Chooch stalked a couple and their two collies before finally getting a chance to blurt out CAN I PET YOUR DOGS, a/k/a his catchphrase.

There was some broad who kept screaming HAYDEN at her small daughter whose name was, I guess, Hayden. Ugh, Chooch and I were not fans. And they were everywhere we went! Constantly in our way! Mom screaming at Hayden the whole fucking time!

We had enough of that fake ocean scene and moved on to my favorite store in Cleveland – Flower Child. <3

Chooch was like, “Oh, the store with all the old Playboys? OK, I’m in.”

This is one of those stores where I get to use my catchphrase a lot, which is: OMG PLEASE DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING.

And then every time I say it, I’m reminded of the time my grandma had a shit fit when we were in some glassware store in Italy and kept yelling at me to not touch anything when I WASN’T TOUCHING ANYTHING and then guess who knocked over a rack of breakable glass things? OH MY GRANDMA THAT’S WHO.

I’m waiting for history to repeat itself, is all I’m saying. Hopefully I’m in a dollar store when it happens. :/

There were a million things I wanted to buy….but G-Dragon tickets.

Worth it.

After inhaling the musty fumes of the 1960s, we met up with our friend Jason for dinner at Taco Tontos. I love Melt but sometimes it’s nice to mix it up a bit, I know you understand. So no gratuitous foodporn shots of mammoth grilled cheeses oozing with 87 ingredients this time around.

But this tempeh burrito was stuffed with creamy sweet potatoes and I gorged on the entire thing while divulging to Jason my past life as a yo-girl when I tried to join a girl gang, and my unabashed love for Toto.

(“Really? All you wanted on Record Store Day was the Africa picture disc?” Jason said, considering leaving our friendship to disintegrate right there in the pile of Chooch’s taco refuse.)

We also talked about Kpop, much to Henry’s chagrin.

“No, I want to know about light sticks,” Jason waved off Henry, giving me the OK to continue. What he did not want to know was how much our G-Dragon tickets cost, though.

I failed to get a picture of Jason because I was off my photo-stalking game, but here is a picture of Henry looking happy to have a friend.

This picture is a lie. That was mild sauce on Chooch’s chip because he’s not tuffenuff for the hot stuff.

Chooch and Jason argued over which dogs are better: Shelties or Corgis, and then we walked down the street to Wax Bodega, a record store owners by one of Jason’s Alternative Press friends. There was a pet boxer hanging out inside and Chooch spent the entire time trying to convince him he’s a Corgi.

Chooch is going through some things, maybe.

After saying goodbye to Jason, we walked around the neighborhood in order to kill time before the show. Mahall’s is right down the street from where we ate, so Henry didn’t want to leave and his parking spot, because those are the things that matter most to Henry, and probably other people in his demographic, as well.

Further down the street, Chooch and some guy dressed as a gorilla silently became best friends. Chooch and people in animal suits, man. The gorilla was trying to lure passers-by over to the BBQ shack, which was actually pretty adorable and made me feel like I was vacation. They sold soft-serve, so we made the gorilla’s day and popped on over for a cone.

(I mean, after we walked another block and Chooch imprinted on two stray cats in a parking lot.)

I was still really full from my burrito, so I asked if I could get the kids cone even though I’m clearly not 12 or under. The guy at the window acted like he was making a HUGH CONCESSION for me by saying, “Well….it is Mother’s Day….so, OK!”

(It wasn’t Mother’s Day, though!)

Henry said he was clearly going to let me have the kids cone anyway, but just wanted me to think he was a hero for bending the rules.

One could also argue that I deserved the kids cone because I have the accessories of a 12-year-old.

I thought that sign said “I go ape over the Gays” at first, like when someone’s Great Uncle Rupert tries to emphasize the fact that he’s not homophobic but chooses a very poor way to convey his sentiment. It made my ice cream cone taste awkward, with sprinkles straight from 1950.

Guys, this was the cleanest public restroom in a park that I’ve ever utilized. I couldn’t believe it. Also, the accessories of a 12-year-old.

And that’s all of the things, in GREAT DETAIL, that we did before going to Mahall’s to see Emarosa. Thanks for reading. Quiz to follow.

We were in Cleveland yesterday with Blake and Haley for a succulent show at the botanical gardens, which I will tell you ALL ABOUT in a separate post. I know you can’t wait. I was excited for that, but even more excited to meet up with our pal Jason afterward at Melt. It’s been a minute since we’ve seen him, and even longer since the last time we went to Melt – I think almost two years! For someone who’s favorite food is and always will be the mighty grilled cheese, this place is Mecca. Even better — they cater to us anti-meat’ers by having veg substitutions for nearly every item on the menu.

Except for the Korean BBQ grilled cheese – nooooooooooooooo!

This was Chooch, Blake, and Haley’s first time at Melt and I always love being there for the popping of a Melt cherry. I knew Chooch would be underwhelmed because he hates everything, so he opted for the Melt veggie burger, while the rest of us were in decision-making agony.

All Chooch cared about was getting the eating portion of dinner over with so he could go play one of the arcade games.  And then Blake saw a sign for some barcade down the street called 16 Bit and then that was all HE could think about, but Chooch and Haley would have gotten carded so then Blake was all JUST FORGET IT and that sounded really familiar but I couldn’t…

…quite….

…put my finger on it.

Blake and Haley decided that they would each get a different grilled cheese and then trade halves, and I was SO SAD because I wanted to do that as well, but I’m the difficult vegetarian with no one to share with.

But then Henry sighed and said, “Which ones do you want?”

And I said, “What does it matter, you won’t get the vegetarian version,” in that totally un-spoiled tone of mine.

“I’ll eat fake meat, it doesn’t bother me,” Henry said.

Oh, oppa!

So I got the faux chicken and waffles and he got Mom’s Meatloaf or something even though I told him to order the Smoky Russian but he went rogue and made his own decision, what the fuck?

But I was too happy for the rare opportunity to deep throat some melted cheese to make too big of an issue out of it.

Plus I didn’t want to be a bitch in front of Jason, hahahaha.

Ha.

(Speaking of ha, today I learned how to read and write Ha Ha’s name in Hangul!)

(Ha Ha is my favorite person on Running Man.)

COME TO MAMA.

We all pigged out on kung pow Brussels sprouts too.

Holy shit. Game changer.

(Henry just brought served me a cup of coffee and when I exclaimed, “Thanks, oppa!” he frowned and said “We’re not friends.” LOL ok.)

My favorite thing about hanging out with Jason is that I get an opportunity to actually talk about music with someone who knows the bands I’m talking about. I mean, he’s the editor-in-chief of Alternative Press so he kind of has no choice.

“I have to tell you, Jason, I’m kind of out of the loop,” I prefaced my confession with trepidation. “I got sucked into the Kpop black hole.”

Jason started laughing without mirth, and looked at Henry, who was making covert Hostage Eyes at him. YOU KNOW THAT LOOK. Like when someone is with their kidnapper at a toll booth, making silent cries of HELP ME HELP with just their eyes.

So I started blabbing about BIGBANG and when I got to the “I can’t believe I wasted eight years on Jonny Craig when G-Dragon was over there this whole time” part, Jason pulled out his phone and said, “OK, you got me curious now.”

And he started Googling G-Dragon!

After reading a bit and seeing G-Dragon’s net worth, he said, “So maybe I should just start Kpop Press…” He might have been being sarcastic, but I was too busy listening to the new Got7 song in my head to fully notice.

“I’m in deep,” I sighed, and everyone laughed but Henry looked like he was going to cry.

There were many high points to our Saturday in Cleveland, but this was the apex for me. Grilled cheese and grilled great people – that’s a pretty perfect combo. And wow, Henry the Carnivore must really love me to take a hard pass on animal flesh just so that I could share a sandwich with him. 

Even though he didn’t order the Smoky Risisian like I suggested. 

#neverhappy

(I look at that picture and all I can see is the stains on Chooch’s pants. HE ALWAYS HAS STAINS.)

Since the shitty “hotel” we’ve stayed at for all three Riot Fests switched brands, they no longer offered breakfast. Not like we were missing much because it was below basic breakfast fare, we were still disappointed because it was convenient and free. Going to Riot Fest is not cheap, you guys, and I’d rather spend my money on merch than food, ugh. All of this is to say we went down the street to some joint called Victoria’s, where I had crepes that were OK and Henry had meats.

Then Meghan Trainor came on (the worst M.T. song of all time, All About That Bass) and I believe this was the first time where I had found myself in a position where there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t change the station! I couldn’t leave because I was still eating. I HAD TO SIT THERE AND ENDURE IT.

Oh, the horror! The pain! But I reminded my ears that soon they would be in Douglas Park, surrounded on all sides by the most beautiful blend of pop punk, punk rock, emo revival, hip hop — it was all going to be there. Some of my most favorite genres, and most favorite bands.

It was going to be OK, ears. It was going to be OK.

After breakfast, we went back to the “hotel” and ordered the first Uber of the weekend, an older man named Woody, who, in spite of having his GPS up on his dash, asked Henry unlimited questions regarding the route. Henry was happy to answer because he is a PROFESSIONAL DRIVER and I can guarantee that Woody’s lack of directional savvy gave Henry his own woody.

Luckily, through numerous detours and train crossings, we made it to Douglas Park with a good 45 minutes to spare before the gates opened. This year, it was set up a bit differently with only one entrance, but I was happy to see that it wasn’t yet a cluster fuck.

Only bad part about standing in line was this uber-annoying Minnesota broad who talked extra-loudly to her friend about how EVERYONE KNOWS HER and HOW MANY TATTOOS SHE HAS and HOW SHE IS SO FUCKING COOL HOW ARE WE NOT MELTING BENEATH HER RADIATING BRILLIANCE. Henry knew right away that she was annoying me so we communicated through eye-expressions alone, and then when she mentioned in her grating Midwest lilt that she COULDN’T WAIT TO SEE BALANCE AND COMPOSURE the next day, Henry started to crack up because I had literally said that same thing about 37403720580 times that morning.

Ughhhhhhh.

Gates opened late as usual and we ran, I mean I ran and Henry slowly lumbered behind me, to the Riot Fest merch tent to snag a set of the limited edition Riot Fest Garbage Pail Kids and then Papa Drunk skipped off to get his 21+ wristband and guess who couldn’t get her own because she left her whole entire wallet in Pittsburgh? My preparedness is a non-factor in my game of life. Do not ever choose me for your zombie apocalypse team.

Ugh. First beer at like 11:30. Get it, Hank.

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We had some time to kill before noon so we stomped around the food vendors looking for Dark Matter because I desperately needed coffee. Couldn’t find it right away, so I settled for a water and while Henry was paying for it, some guy at the next food booth asked, “Hey! Why’s my name on your shirt?” I looked around and when I realized he was talking to me, I had to glance down to refresh my memory with what shirt I was even wearing that day, and it was my beautiful Howard Jones shirt!

So I walked closer and engaged in a rare conversation, because I hate talking to people but Riot Fest is an exception because it makes me remember who I used to be, how alive I once was, and it reminds me that hey, I’m surrounded by a ton of my people right now, so it’s not really stranger danger, right? Anyway, the guy’s name ended up being Howard Johnson (like the hotel, I guess), not Jones, but he had never heard of Howard Jones before so I encourage him to check that shit out.

Henry was like, “OK REMEMBER WHOSE PROPERTY YOU ARE LET’S GO.” He is like, so possessive of me. It’s almost sickening.

(Lol, sike. He was like TAKE HER, SHE’S YOURS.)

(This just brought up a horrible memory of when I was briefly dating this guy Erik in 1998 and we were hanging out at my apartment with some guy named Kevin who I recently met at a Sunoco — hey, I made friends everywhere I went back then when I still had self-esteem — and Kevin, who was totally blitzed off a 40 of Miller’s High Life, asked Erik if he could steal me and Erik said, ugh do you know what he said? He said BE MY GUEST. I have that heart-breaking moment on 8mm, even.)

(Well, fuck you Erik Grove, because now I’m with Henry and here we are at Riot Fest and some cute guy name Howard is talking to me so suck it.)

First band up was Tigers Jaw at noon on the Riot Fest (main) stage.

These guys are on Run For Cover Records, one of my fave labels, but this was the first time I ever saw them live. If you know me, you know that I’m horribly fickle with female singers, but I love the boy-girl sharing of vocal duties going on in this band. It’s fun, feel-good indie rock, you guys and there is no reason why Henry should have said, “Nope, they did nothing for me” other than the fact that he wasn’t paying attention because OMG WHAT ARE HIS 57 FACEBOOK FRIENDS DOING, GOTTA CHECK!

During their set, an older gentleman strolled by and said, “GREAT ALBUM!” while pointing to my Howard Jones “Human Lib” shirt. I agree, guy!

Ahhh, Citizen was next on the Rise stage. I can’t say enough wonderful superlatives about this band. They get me right in the feels, as all the kids and ironic bloggers say these days.

It started to rain during their set and I hated almost everyone around me, but I didn’t let that sully my third live dose of Citizen for 2016. Also, Mat basically dresses like Henry, proving he just doesn’t give a fuck.

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Here’s Henry, secretly enjoying Citizen and his style-twin, Mat.

Right after this was Touche Amore on the Rock Stage and I was ready to burst — they’re part of this trifecta for me which also includes La Dispute and The Saddest Landscape, but I’ve never seen Touche Amore before; it was a long time coming.

Some of the finest post-hardcore I’ve ever heard comes courtesy of this beautiful man. I play their records so loud in the house and Henry and Chooch are always like, full-body eye rolls and grimaces, but GUESS WHAT? Guess who finally jumped aboard the Touche Amore-wagon? Mr. Henry J. Robbins.

“They weren’t that bad,” he mumbled, and then, “I didn’t hate it,” which in regular people’s terms translates to, “Say, I think I actually enjoyed that.”

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After Touche Amore, I had penciled in a small window for getting food. I can’t remember what Henry got, but I enjoyed a wonderful BBQ jackfruit with slaw on top of a slice of Texas toast. It was delicious, except that the slaw was more just a wad of pickled vegetables, which found me for the second time in less than a week explaining to no one in particular that the only pickled things I like are pickles.

Oh, I think Henry had vegetable paella and I accused him of being a vegetarian but he defensively said he wasn’t turning his back on meat, he just simply “didn’t feel like eating meat right then.”

HMM THAT SEEMS WEIRD.

Anyway, thanks to Henry having to also get food, I missed Dillinger Escape Plan so thanks Henry, like you couldn’t have waited until later to eat.

After missing DEP, we wandered over to the outskirts of Douglas Park, where the two smallest stages live. Jule Vera was going to be playing soon on the Storyheart Stage, so we figured we’d just hang out in the grass and take selfies, right Henry? Because that’s totally a thing that Henry does. My hair looked shittier than usual that weekend because remember our shitty “hotel”? Well, they don’t supply their rooms with hair dryers and Henry even tried for a hail mary by inquiring at the front desk if they had any available and the answer was NO THEY DID NOT, YOUR RATTY-HAIRED GIRLFRIEND IS FUCKED, BOIIIII.

So frizzy, air-dried hair it is, then!

We had to suffer through the tail-end of the Far East’s set and I absolutely hated them, like if a person could vomit out of their ears, this would have triggered my aural gag reflex, for sure. Let me just describe it as Reggae No Doubt. I was like GOOD RIDDANCE when they finally ended.

Then it was Tancred, which I kept confusing for Tantric — like, totalllly different band. Fun Fact for anyone who cares: the singer is also the guitarist from Now, Now and the singer from Now, Now is dating Lynn Gunn’s (PVRIS) ex-girlfriend Alexa San Roman, OMG there more you know. Anyway, Tancred is a good example of why I’m picky with girl-fronted bands — they usually tend to have that 90s sound to them and I know this is putting my head on the chopping block, but I really didn’t like a lot of rock or alternative from the 90s, until later on in the decade. SORRY BUT I’M JUST BEING HONEST. In my defense, I was heavily into hiphop, gangsta rap, and R&B back then though.

Also, around this time, Henry started complaining about a “foot cramp” but I was like, “Hmm, that doesn’t sound like the name of any band that I like so I’m officially exiting this conversation, bye now.”

OK, then it was finally time for Jule Vera and I missed Chooch so desperately. (He’s annoying me so much today though, a week later, so I already forget what that felt like.) Chooch has loved Jule Vera since we saw them last winter at the Never Shout Never and blushed the whole time he was posing for a picture with Ansley, their singer:

Not even gonna front here, I got totally misty-eyed during their set because it made me miss Chooch so much. We were sending him pictures of Ansley on Facebook during soundtrack and he was getting so mad at us but then he said “SEND ME VIDEOS.” Originally he wanted us to record their whole set, but contrary to popular belief, I actually don’t like being That Person holding their phone up at concerts. I tend to grab a few Instavids (like 30 seconds in length at a time) just for my own posterity and to have something to post on the blog as a memory of the night.

SO FUCKING SUE ME.

But for Chooch, I broke that rule and recorded 30-60 seconds of every song the performed, but I didn’t feel too asshole-y doing so because I was right against the barrier so I didn’t have to hold my phone up high, which means no one behind me was bothered, and if they were, it was probably because of Henry.

Henry’s mere existence is very bothersome to some.

Is it wrong to say that I think a band is adorable? I also think they’re really talented, but there is something really charming about watching such a young band play their hearts out on stage. I didn’t think I was going to care much for them when I saw them last winter, but I fell for them alongside Chooch. He’s got good taste.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BKw7e-FDcve/?taken-by=ohhonestlyconcerts

Some old dude, like even older than Henry, yelled, “Hey what high school do you go to?!?” to Ansley and OK, I get where he’s coming from, but damn dude, that sounded totally creepy, go away. Save that for when you’re role-playing with your old ass wife.

Their finale had to have made new fans out of the unbiased people lounging under nearby trees. Even one of the security guys came over to get a better look and then to me and Henry said, “This shit is crazy!”

https://www.instagram.com/p/BKw7e-FDcve/?taken-by=ohhonestlyconcerts

Set Your Goals was up next on the Rise Stage and I was so excited to see them again! They recently reunited and I didn’t even realize how much I missed them. This is the band that Henry always pauses and then asks, “Is this the big guy and little guy?” Ugh, yes Henry. Sure. SYG has the dual-vocals thing going on, and I credit them into getting me into pop-punk, after swearing it off for years. They were my gateway, if you will. I always liked emo and post-hardcore but really never cared much for pop-punk, until I heard one of their songs that Vinnie Cuarana was on, and then Hayley Williams rapping (literally!!) on one of their songs in 2009 really helped the medicine go down.

I made Alisha go see them with me that summer at Mr. Small’s and it was just such an awesome show and I kind of wanted to get punched in the face but it didn’t happen.

Henry was not into it.

This guy stood right by us while sucking on his CHRONIC CANDY lollipop and I wanted him so badly to turn to Henry and offer him a lick, which prompted Henry to later go on a tangent about how Chronic Candy “isn’t actually a drug, Erin!” and like yeah OK but it’s still part of DRUG CULTURE and we all know Henry has the D.A.R.E. insignia tattooed on his left ass cheek.

Oh you didn’t know? WELL NOW YOU DO.

He also has “just say no” on his inner lip.

Anyway, go listen to Set Your Goals.

We tried to catch some of the Citizen acoustic set in the StubHub Tent, which was packed, so we were standing near the entrance when some dumbass rolled up with her friends and proceeded to shriek, totally unrelated to the music, like she had been proposed to and this really set me off so I flipped out and stormed away (I was also suffering through some major coffee-withdrawals, thanks for not having my back this year, Dark Matter!), and had a mini-meltdown, but then Henry calmed me down after some guy stared at me with a scared smile because I think he thought I was yelling at him. Not you, bro. Not you.

Once Henry verbally massaged my frontal lobe, we were able to catch a little bit of Somos on the Storyheart stage. The best way I can explain this band is that they would be perfectly at home on a soundtrack for any 1980s John Hughes movie. This is a good thing! But Henry doesn’t get it, which is why I had to see them alone at Bled Fest last May.

This was the harried, frenzied block of time on Friday where there were three bands playing all around the same time and I wanted to see them all, so after two Somos songs, we had to do a brisk walk to the Rise stage where Glassjaw was playing and can you believe I have never seen Glassjaw in my whole entire life?? Henry thinks this is incorrect, but that’s because we saw Daryl Palumbo’s other band, Head Automatica at the Cure’s Curiosa festival in 2004. So I got to have major chills hearing Daryl’s screams cutting through the early evening Chicago air. No one sounds quite like Daryl Palumbo!

(LOL, a commercial for Motel 6 just played while I’m writing this and our Motel 6 did NOT look like the one on TV at all. Nice try, Tom Bodett.)

FUN FACT: I sold a custom serial killer card to G.G. Allin’s brother last year and it was pretty much the highlight of my card-making career thus far.

Oh man, young emo Erin was READY to see Jimmy Eat World again. I kept trying to remember when the last time was that I saw them, and Henry swore that it wasn’t him because Jimmy Eat World is evidently a band that he would remember seeing. I stressed about this for the whole weekend because I was sure that I saw them at one of the Edgefests in Buffalo but I couldn’t find them listed on any lineups, so then I searched for their all their 2001 tour dates and said, “Well, I just don’t know then because this says they only did Warped Tour in 2001….oh wait I was at that Warped Tour, never mind LOL forever.”

Mystery solved! I saw them at Warped Tour with my pal Wonka.

When I first got into emo, it was through Instant Messenger (good ol’ AIM) and I was chatting with some random, and I remember asking him what his screen name meant. I don’t remember the name anymore, but it had something to do with the band Christie Front Drive, and that’s how I fell down the emo rabbit hole and, 20 years later, still haven’t clawed my way back out. Once he suggested that I listen to the Emo Diaries compilations, I knew it was for me.

(Full disclosure, I was still heavy into nu-metal back then too, hahahah, but emo clearly won the war over my heart.)

The crowd wasn’t too bad. My strategy was to stand behind a lady in a wheelchair because no one wanted to stand right in front of her, which meant the view was pretty clear for me. I’m really picky about how far up I’ll travel into the crowds — I base it on how much I love the band and how big/small the stage is. I do not like being close to the main stage because people scare me and I hate feeling trapped.

Anyway, they played my favorite song, Lucky Denver Mint (mixtape staple!)  Enjoy my finger cameo! I’m good at this!

https://www.instagram.com/p/BKx6RWojgYQ/?taken-by=ohhonestlyconcerts

It was time for Second Riot Fest Feeding after Jimmy Eat World and I went with a vegan sloppy joe. I think Henry got salt and vinegar fries. Who cares. I kept stealing swigs of his beer and he was getting so angry because “if you had really wanted to drink, you wouldn’t have your left your fucking license at home!!” He kept saying, “I hope you get busted!” because I didn’t have a wristband on, but come on, I think it’s pretty clear that I’m over 21. Maybe it’s debatable in a dark club, but when the sun is shining down on me, the grays are all a’shimmer and the bags under my eyes are looking ready and willing to hold your car keys and Altoids.

So gimme your fucking beer, Henry.

That sloppy joe was wonderful. Riot Fest has the best food! This is what I wish Warped Tour would do — but I guess because it’s at an actual venue and not a park, outside food vendors aren’t allowed in so we have to stick with the standard $10 soft pretzels and nachos or whatever that First Niagara whips up. This is why I just stuff my bag with granola bars!

On the way back to the Storyheart Stage in preparation for BASEMENT!!!, we watched a few minutes of All Time Low at the Rise Stage. I never really got into them that much, so after a song or two, we began to walk away, but then they started the next song and I screamed, “I KNEW IT!!” and ran back to the stage because Vic from Pierce the Veil came out to sing “A Love Like War” with them. Henry was like, “Wha—-what’s happening!?” and had to follow me back. He’s so dumb sometimes. But then he saw Vic and understood.

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For real though, after that song ended, we had to run to the Storyheart Stage because I wanted to be up front for Basement and now, as I type this, I feel like I’m going to start crying because this was the first time that weekend, other than crying about missing Chooch or just being my typical whiny self, that I dropped real tears.

This is the same band that threw a wrench in Henry’s “driving to Disneyworld” plans last April — he wanted to leave on a Saturday morning but then I quietly, while slowly back away, reminded him that I had a ticket to see Basement that night, so we had to wait until 11:30pm that night to embark on our Orlando road trip, lolololololol all the way to the market.

I am obsessed with Al specifically, the guitarist, because he was the man behind the camera in all of the Tuesdays with Tay videos that Henry and I love (well, that I love), and I’m just a huge groupie for Run For Cover Records. Huge. I make Chooch wear their shirt to school in an effort to get those basic Brookline brats interested in good music.

(Hasn’t happened yet, although Chooch played some Emarosa for his friend Dimajio and said that he liked it, so fingers crossed. Chooch is a lot like me in many ways but he hasn’t yet honed the SHOVE YOUR INTERESTS DOWN YOUR FRIENDS’ THROATS skill yet I guess. I’ll work on that with him some more, don’t worry.)

When we were waiting for Jule Vera to play earlier, Henry elbowed me and pointed to the fenced-off area behind the stage, at a white van that had just rolled up. “Isn’t that Basement?” he asked casually. AND IT WAS. Henry is so great at recognizing bands that he hates!

Some of my friends were disappointed in me because I chose Basement over some other band, but bitch please, I’m not going to skip a band that I genuinely love in favor of a band that I don’t like but feel like I’m supposed to watch just to say that I saw them. That’s not me! I like what I like. And Basement pumped me full of life. I love how James has Robert Smith-esque dance moves and I love their energy and their fans aren’t assholes and they’re just adorable Brits who make emotional, heart-felt, energetic rock.

I’m used to disappointing people with my music preferences though. It’s my thang. Bang bang.

Plus, they have a song called Bad Apple and I have a rotten apple tattoo, so I’m kind of obligated to be a fan. <3

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I’m going to listen to them all weekend now because they’re such an autumn band for me. And I finally got Henry to admit that he likes them so it was a big moment in our relationship. This band is just so good, and they are HILARIOUS on social media (their Snapchat stories are entertaining) and I have to say, when a band plays super emotional music but then act like complete clowns on the Internet, I love them even more.

Just do yourself a favor and listen to their latest album. It’s the first release since they came out of hiatus. I mean, I’m no Lou Pappan, but I think “you gonna like it.” (SHOUT OUT TO MY PITTSBURGH READERS LOL.)

Henry: There’s Notre Dame.

Me: ….that big dirt pile?

Henry: Well….no. On the other side of that.

***

I woke up Monday morning with a dire need to get the hell home. We had driven straight to South Bend, Indiana after saying goodbye to Riot Fest on Sunday, and I was so happy to be staying in a decent hotel after four nights in the worst Motel 6 — hey, we do what we need to do to be able to go to Riot Fest, and it may be just be one step up from sleeping in a car, but at least there was hot (almost pressure-less) water…? I tried not to complain too much because #SOBLESSED to be there, blah blah blah. Trying on a pair of grateful-pants. They don’t fit very well.

You know that I missed Chooch a lot when I didn’t consult my Roadside America app ONCE on the way home to Pittsburgh on Monday.  The struggle was real, man, and I barely even wanted to stop for breakfast. But we missed breakfast at the hotel because prissy Henry was too busy lollygagging, blowing out his hair, pomading his beard — I don’t know what Henry does. I never watch him get ready because it’s boring.

Anyway, since Henry fucked up, I found a placed called JEANNIE’S HOUSE which was somewhere that required us to drive around like 8 “traffic circles.”

Traffic circles are cunts. And second of all, they’re roundabouts.

Jeannie’s ended up being… the bomb dot com? All that and a bag of chip? Why were these things ever acceptable to say? Jeannie’s was great. We got to hang with the locals at the counter! And our waitress loved me because I have an awesome phone case; she even made another waitress come over and said, “Show her your phone case!”

I have better accessories than most high school girls.

MAYBE EVEN MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRLS.

Honestly, that part of me has never changed. I’m literally still the same 10th grader who brought an argyle knapsack to study hall everyday, stuffed with travel games and Floam. People called it the Barney bag, which seemed accurate at the time but now I’m like, Mary Poppins bag would have been better.

But yeah, that’s still me: wearing giant plastic rings and carrying holographic eyeball purses.

Henry just rolled his eyes and proceeded to zone out during this whole exchange.

Anyway, the breakfast fare was standard, but what drew me there was the promise of homemade jams.

I made sure to get a grilled biscuit with my swiss omelet and then proceeded to ask, with urgency, “DO YOU HAVE THE HOMEMADE JAMS?” Our waitress was like “….Yes?” And  then she told me the flavors. I picked peach, which is what Henry tried to also choose until I sternly said, “You have to get a different one so we can share!” and then I coughed, “Idiot” under my breath.

Breakfast was delightful and those jams really did make a big difference.

And then it was back in the car, where Henry was confused by how roads work in Indiana.

Henry: So I can only go left or right? Not straight?

Me: Who cares.

Henry: Well…I care. I don’t want to get a ticket…?

Didn’t Henry LIVE IN INDIANA? I guess he was too busy driving other people’s cars into ditches.

I should have peed before we left Jeannie’s but then we wouldn’t have seen some large, shirtless man yelling at someone sitting in their car in a McDonald’s parking lot after utilizing a surprisingly nice and updated bathroom in a gas station in Smalltown, Indiana where we then got a ton of beverages (including a gross iced coffee), a bag of chip and a (gross) Snickerdoodle for under $5! I think that’s cheap, right?

We also saw not one but THREE cars pulled off to the side of the road where people were picking grapes growing along a median. Wow.

Indiana, you’re flavorful.

That iced coffee was so disgusting though, no surprise. It was this terribly thick concoction and whether it actually had coffee in it is debatable. Also, I was having a hard time getting it to come out of the spout so Henry went and got a gas station employee to assist me before I pushed the whole thing out of a window, and the lady  took the top of which is how I know that the “coffee” lives inside a foiled pouch thing, like ew, and the lady was all, “Sometimes if I squeeze it, it’ll get it started again” and it was just so wrong.

So, so wrong.

Anyway, Henry thinks that she didn’t charge me for it, which was why it seemed so cheap.

“You know like at a bar, when they give you the shot for free if it’s the end of the bottle?” Henry said, and is that what happened the day he drove “Joe’s” car into the ditch!? Too many free “bottom of the bottle” shots?!

Whatever. It didn’t help that shitty iced coffee taste any better.

By the time we reached the first travel plaza in Ohio, I was on the prowl for an iced coffee do-over. Unforch, it was a Starbucks, which I usually tend to avoid, but anything was better than that gas station swill!

I ordered my SMALL NOT TALL coffee and then loudly to Henry I said, “I make a point of ordering either a SM, MED or LG whenever I come here. Fuck a venti.”

“Wow, you’re a real rebel,” Henry mumbled, and then when I asked him if he was getting anything, he scoffed, “No!” Because Henry is hugely against coffee (see also: Henry is a terrorist) and claims that even the cookies at Starbucks tastes like coffee. AND HE HATES THEIR ICED TEA!

Who’s the rebel now?

While at the travel plaza, Henry decided he wanted to get some Hershey’s ice cream and he’s a grown-up so he can have ice cream in the middle of the day if he wants. But there were these two old broads who were lollygagging, changing their orders, musing over which flavor would best complement their daily prunes. Henry quickly grew impatient and, ice cream dreams shattered, moved over to the next kiosk to get some iced tea instead.

But by the time he had finished paying and was handed his empty plastic cup, some man came over for a refill, stepping right in front of Henry and proceeded to pour the slowest cup of iced tea this side of shitty Indiana gas station iced coffee dispenser.

And the whole time, the old broads, now placated with their cups of Hershey chill, hovered behind Henry. They were closer to him than I was and we all know that Chooch and I walk so close to Henry that if he stops abruptly, there’s a people pile-up. Oh shit, Henry hates that about us but I bet if we ever suddenly gave him personal space, he would miss the sound of our adorable shuffling feet.

So now, he’s got this dude tea-blocking him and these broads taunting him with the ice cream he was too impatient to stand in line for, not to mention me standing there laughing at him, and he just looked so defeated and slumped over.

It was amazing.

He was so angry.

Once he finally filled up his cup with Burger King’s iced tea, the old broads walked away. Just like that. We exited the travel plaza the opposite direction as them so Henry could have time to cool off.

“And I thought that guy getting iced tea was the husband of one of those broads!” Henry chirped. “But no, they were just standing there for no reason!” Untrue, Henry – they were standing there to further ruin your experience at the shitty Ohio travel plaza.

In between rehashing every waking moment of Riot Fest, I got Henry to open up a bit about the SERVICE. “Did they ever scream in your face?” I asked him. My only real insight into the SERVICE world is Full Metal Jacket and M.A.S.H.

“I mean, they screamed at us, but not like what you see in  the movies,” he causally answered, temporarily forgetting that he put a ban on answering SERVICE questions.

He said he wasn’t scared when they would scream at him because “eventually they have to stop.” Why did this make me crack up so bad!? How is Henry constantly so even-keeled and level-headed?! Not being screamed at while in the SERVICE fazed him.

I call shenanigans on this, though. I feel like he probably made a lot of tearful calls home to his mommy.

“What was your first day like? Did you cry a lot? Were you worried about not making friends?” I asked, on the edge of my seat but not really because we were in  the car and if I get too close to the edge, my knees are squished against the glove compartment and that’s annoying.

Also, I recently realized that it’s called a glove compartment because its original use was probably to literally put gloves in it!? It was just one of those things where I kept saying the words over and over in my head until it fragmented and I said, real slow, “Glove……compartment. A compartment….for gloves!”

You just gotta let me figure these things out on my own sometimes. Like the time I realized that the logo for the old department store Hornes was actually…A HORN.

Anyway, where were we. Oh! I was asking Henry about his first day at the SERVICE.

“I don’t know…the plane landed at like, 1 in the morning. Then we woke up and got our hair cut.”

Oh for god’s sake, I was squealing with laughter at this point.

“You got your hair cut!” I wheezed.

“Well, yeah,” Henry said, flashing me a concerned look, the kinds that doctors give their patients after they ask if they’ve gone off their meds. “Shaved, actually.”

By this time, I was laughing so hard that nothing at all was coming out but strangulated gasps and Henry was officially done answering questions.

And then we were home, reunited with Chooch and two cats who I’m not certain remembered us. Ob-la-di, motherfuckers.

Someday, I’ll make it a point of visiting Chicago for no other reason but to be a tourist. But so far, anytime I’ve been there, it’s either been a layover at O’Hare, driving through on the way to somewhere else, or to attend Riot Fest. Riot Fest starts at noon all three days and by the time we get up, eat breakfast, and take a Lyft to Douglas Park (which is on the outskirts of Chicago), there just isn’t any time to like, go stare at our reflections in the Bean or whatever.

This year though, Riot Fest announced that they had scored a lot for festival goers, and Henry said it “seemed like it was in an OK area.” But Henry was like, “I REFUSE TO KEEP PAYING ALL THIS MONEY TO UBER OR LYFT!” so for the second day, we left the “hotel” ridiculously early (like before 9:30) and prayed that we would get a spot.

We were the second car there.

But the upside to this was that we had a ton of free time to explore for once. Maybe it wasn’t the actual city, but it was still a neighborhood of Chicago and I was excited to gawk and ogle the locals. I’m really good at looking like a tourist.

Even here in Pittsburgh.

I have that wide-eyed, lost, looking-for-the-Alamo’s-basement look going on strong.

Henry had us walking for quite some time through a Mexican neighborhood, and I was dying because I love Mexican things but none of the shops were open yet. We passed several men loading up vans with POPSICLE CARTS and I wanted one in the worst way because the flavors were exotic, like guava and tres leches. But they weren’t selling them yet. :(

At first we were just blindly looking for a place to eat breakfast, but then Henry consulted my enemy Yelp and found a place but he was being all weird about it and just kept saying things like “It’s a place with food” and “Just shut your fat face and walk.”

All I knew was that we were walking to “Little Village,” whatever the fuck that is. We just kept walking and walking…

(I seriously just looked at a map of Chicago because I really have no idea where we are in relation to anything every time we go there. Hurray, now I know where Douglas Park is!)

And then we came upon this place, which made me scream, “LET’S GO THERE! UNISEX!”

“The barber shop?” Henry asked in a confused voice.

“How do you know it’s a barber shop?” I cried, my visions of a purple velvet swingers den abruptly dashed.

“Well…because it has pictures of scissors and razors on it…?” Henry answered in that tone he adopts when he thinks my questions are stupid. Sorry, but all of my coddling teachers throughout the years taught me that there are no stupid questions so there. Let’s go get Purped at Unisex.

But then I found a mural and forgot about Purpura Unisex in my delightful and aggressive staging of another Henry photo op.

It’s like reverse instagram husband, you guys.

A MEXICAN PLANT STORE. Ughhhhhh, I wanted to go in so badly but what’s the point—we weren’t going back to the car afterward and I don’t think A Beautiful Mess has posted a DIY for a succulent wig or cacti fannypack yet so how would I carry plants around with me all day?

 Besides, as soon as Henry saw all the religious shit in the window, he quickly steered me across the street.

Luckily, we had arrived at the place with food! And it was legit. None of that Americanized Mexican food bullshit. The waitress had to keep stopping herself from speaking to us in Spanish, that’s how real it was. I love real Mexican culture.

That Jesus aesthetic makes my heart do flip flops.

“I don’t know if it’s because we’ve been around so many Mexicans lately, but I had intense dreams about Christina last night,” I casually told Henry in between sips of the best Mexican coffee in the world.

“Well, she’s not really Mexican, so….” Henry mumbled.

I had rancheros and it was so wonderful. Henry had some type of breakfast staple. I didn’t ask. It probably consisted of eggs and some type of meat.

It was such a fantastic start to Riot Fest:Day 2. And by the time we got back to Douglas Park, the gates were open so we walked right in without having to wait in a dumb line, and we still had 30 minutes to spare before any bands started.

I think Saturday might have been my favorite day.

However! I just realized that I lied when I told Twitter that Henry and I made it all the way to Sunday night before finally fighting, because we fought after we got back to the car Saturday night when I had the audacity to suggest that we go get ice cream. Usually, we get a ride back to the “hotel” (you guys, this place was a dump), and by that time, it’s so late that we don’t feel like doing anything else. But now we had our car and I wanted to go out and get some fancy Chicago ice cream!

Henry’s initial response was to snap at me because he probably wanted to go back to the room and air out his jock, who knows what that weirdo does. So then I snapped back and said something like, “I WAS HAVING SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY AND NOW I’M GOING TO CRY. YOU’RE MAKING ME CRYYYYYY” and he yelled, “FIND A FUCKING ICE CREAM PLACE, ASSHOLE!” and I was all, “JUST FORGET IT!” and waited until he was already on some highway thing before saying, “Ooh, let’s go to this Black Dog place for gelato!” and of course Henry had to turn around in some unsavory area and go almost all the way back to Douglas Park.

“It would have been awesome if you told me to go here while we were still in the PARKING LOT,” he muttered.

“I would have if you hadn’t MADE ME CRY!” I yelled.

And then he had to drive around the equivalent of our Shadyside* for approximately 20 minutes until he finally found a place to park.

*(A trendy/fancy neighborhood of Pittsburgh that Henry hates because he’s a Blue Collared.)

We passed this art gallery on the way to Black Dog and I asked, “What is this?” to which Henry mumbled, “Stupid.”

You’re right Henry, that was a stupid question because I clearly knew it was an art gallery so STFU.

Anyway, this goddamn place was so worth it. I had a scoop of cassata and brown butter praline and right now, I’m closing my eyes and begging my taste buds to excrete a memory of its flavor.

OK I didn’t actually close my eyes.  I have a hard enough time typing correctly with my eyes OPEN, for fuck’s sake.

Henry had something with goat cheese…and salted cashew caramel? I can’t remember. It wasn’t as good as mine.

“This was totally worth it, right Henry?” I cooed, in the throes of that temporary, short-lived ice cream euphoria.

“It was OK,” he mumbled, trying to get the feeling back in his weener after eating dainty gelato with a pink spoon.

Overall, it was a nice change of pace from the go-go-go environment of Riot Fest, which I can’t wait to recap here for no one but I feel so exhausted every time I try to collect my thoughts. Because I have a lot of those things*.

*(Thoughts, I mean. I have lots of other things too. Like…issues. Neuroses. Pounds.)