Goin' to Chicago

You keep your New York joys
I'm going to Illinois
just as fast as I can

Not much to say this evening (or rather too much) but thought I'd let ya'll know that I'm off early in the mornin' tomorrow to my little Chi-town. Going to spend the week visiting friends (The Expert and his wife, MLE, Sameezy, etc.) and family (my sister Arbusta and her husband Cpt. Smith). The other main events include checking out a Be The Groove performance Monday morning and of course - the impetus for the trip - the Boomshaka spring show Thursday night. Am very excited. After the stress of the dissertation, in conjunction with other exceedingly stressful life events, I am quite looking forward to a vacation. Will be sure to update from the road (figuratively) if anything noteworthy goes down.

It's the best in the mid-west
it's a real darn city full of good folks who come from home
and when I get back, I'll never roam far
from my little Chi-town
well goodbye farewell
I'ma see you later


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Now playing: Kurt Elling - Goin' To Chicago
via FoxyTunes

But now I'm found

Dear reader,
Did you miss me?
I did.
That is all,
Dr. C

So I realize this has been the slowest patch of blogging since I first began The Musings. Thanks for sticking around. I plan to be fairly bored at work for the rest of... well... until I graduate - so I should have plenty o' time for blogging. For now, I'll just try to catch everyone up.

Two weeks ago TinRoof and I flew to Chicago for the annual Boomshaka show. Most of you are familiar with Boom. But for those of you that land on this blog looking for information about the fate of Judy from Family Matters, Boomshaka is a student performance group at Northwestern University. A simple explanation is they're a rhythm and dance ensemble. I was in the group for 4 years during my undergrad days. To put it succinctly, I love me some Boomshaka. Annnyhow - the show was fantastic (as usual) and while in town I had the chance to perform with Be The Groove - a professional/alumni spin off of Boomshaka (videos coming soon). It felt pretty good to get back in the groove again. It had been too long.

We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out with The Expert (not you, Nodnarb) and his wife Emba (I can't believe how long I just sat here trying to think of a good nickname for her... and clearly I failed). Hung out in Evanston and Chicago. Saw a White Sox game on Sunday. They got slaughtered by the Royals. Yes, you read right. Ate delicious food. Went to the Lincoln Park Zoo, Navy Pier, etc. All good things.

Tuesday we took the train down to StL. TinRoof could only stay a day and a half as she had to return to CVille for graduation; though thankfully not before we had a fun evening with the family. FYI: Homemade wine makes dinner time fun. I stuck around through the weekend for Arbusta (my baby sister)'s wedding. It was a very beautiful day. And everything went off without a hitch (er... with one hitch). Well, aside from their exit music starting to play way too soon. That may be the funniest communion I've ever witnessed.

And now I'm back. Back to the grind of research - with the important exception that there are no longer classes or TA-ing to distract me. And it'll be like this for about a year. I'm still hoping to defend in early February of '08. After that, who knows. Maybe I'll be able to find a sugar momma to buy me one of those fancy places in Lincoln Park.

This weekend we're off to Seneca Rocks to do some camping with Rojas and his crew.

Oh and by the way, the packaging for Orbit gum really sucks. What's the deal with that? It's like I'm trying to pull out Excalibur or something. All I want is a stick of gum.

Up Off Ya Feet

The long wait has ended. For your viewing pleasure, the world premier of the new Boomshaka concept piece: Up Off Ya Feet.

And for those of you who would like to see more of what I got to do that eventful week in Houston, here's a video I spent way too much time editing this past week.

Video Bonanza (episode 1)

I promised it, and here it is... My first ever YouTube Video Bonanza!

I'd like to begin with a presentation of Casablanca as performed by the 30-Second Bunnies Theatre. For those of you who have not heard of this troupe, well, it's pretty self explanatory really. Movies performed in 30 seconds... by bunnies.



Now I'd like to move on to a beautiful cover of Hey Ya as performed by a big folk singer who has a beard of which I am envious. It's amazing how his interpretation gives new meaning and depth to the lyrics. Anyway, I still think the phrase "Shake it like a Polaroid picture" is sheer genius.



Mixing it up a little, here is a video from the days of yore. Well, my days of yore anyway. This is a clip of Boomshaka playing basketball at a playground in Florida over Spring break 2004. Also, yours truly is the cameraman and narrator.



Finally, most of you know of my love for barbershop music. If you've known me long enough, I've likely forced you to listen to mp3s of quartets I once sang with. So here now is a performance by my favorite quartet and arguably one of the greatest quartets ever: The Gas House Gang. I promise you won't be disappointed.