December, 2007

Chicago / Cult / food — 1 Comment
22
Dec 07

A trip to Hot Doug’s

Today was a good day. Jackie and I made a road trip to Hot Doug’s, which is worthy of a dedicated blog post. Forget catching up on each other’s drama – we’ve got encased meats to consume!

For the uninitiated, Hot Doug’s isn’t a hot dog place, it’s where meat products wish they can go when they are slaughtered. For serious, the food is flat out awesome. Located at the corner of California and Roscoe, it’s sort of a hike for those living close to the lake, but it’s well worth it. You’re guaranteed a 20+ minute wait in order to get into Hot Doug’s, but it doesn’t matter. Without the anticipation, it’d make the food less awesome (which is pretty hard to do). This place is a vegan’s worst nightmare.

As soon as you walk in, you’re overwhelmed by the menu. Not only do you have your standard hot dogs, Polish and Italian sausages and thuringers, but you can get exotic sausages. Today’s artery clogger was the chipotle buffalo sausage with brown ale mustard. And on Friday and Saturday, Doug brings out the duck fat to cook fries in, and let me tell you – they are fucking phenomenal. I decided to also top it off with a standard hot dog (which can be cooked one of 4 ways) that was grilled and fried.

After eating, you simply slip into a meat coma and want to take a nap. So what’s it like eating at Hot Doug’s? It’s like being raised on soft serve ice cream all your life and then being taken to Cold Stone for ice cream. It’s a punch in the taste buds but it’s totally worth it.

Doug Sohn is awesome. In fact, I’ve heard rumors that Elvis Costello patented his look after Doug. He’s part sage, part chef and flirt. In fact, when I ordered, he was hitting on Jackie because he could and you’re like, awesome – Doug is hitting on my friend.

In fact, Hot Doug’s is so awesome that when we went, I MMS’d a picture of Hot Doug’s to Tim and he replied “you rat bastard” because I know that as soon as he saw the picture, he was like “Fuck you Hawkins, I need duck fat fries!!!”

All hail Doug, king of encased meats.

Uncategorized — 1 Comment
19
Dec 07

Some random stuff

I keep thinking that I need a dog. City rules dictate that I have a small dog, and dress it in funny outfits. But this outfit is way beyond what a good boy like me should get. In fact if I have a dog and if I flip out and get my dog an outfit like that to make her look like my little Member of the Tribe, I’d expect one of my readers to shoot me. For serious.

A few of you have emailed me an eBay auction about someone driving people nuts with postcards. The auction is close to $200. Seriously, I should figure out how to capitalize on my prolific postcard mailings. 2007 had me send roughly 500 postcards (something like $650 and a few dozen hand cramps) out from 7 countries. I like sending them out, but I should work out some sort of deal – you send me something funny from your neck of the woods and I’ll write you a postcard and actually put some effort into what’s behind it. :)

I think I found out what I should get myself for Hanukkahmas, but I’d want to do it with a friend and make it some sort of stupid activity that I am sure will make alumni newsletters if I get a career out of it.

I’ve got some upcoming dental surgery in about 3 weeks. I got a letter in the mail today reminding me to premedicate before the procedure. Do they mean antibiotics or scotch and Vicodin, because I can see this going either way…

Uncategorized — 1 Comment
17
Dec 07

The Travel Funk

Every 6 months or so, I hit the travel wall. I wake up and feel like I dread going to the airport. I want to stay home and hide in the fort of my bed or lounge in the comfort that is the infamous “ether couch”. I want to remember what it’s like to have a normal routine of work, bike, relax and read without having to worry about prepping to go somewhere. It’s my own little pity party.

I hate to sound like I’m bitching, because there’s no real grounds to do so. People would kill to see what I see or do what I do (and those who I keep offering to bring with never take me up on the offer). In a way, I live life without restraints like I feel that I’ve got this cloak that protects me from reality and I can postpone becoming a real adult for a little longer. I remember a while ago that a friend told me that I’d hit the point where I’d feel like I’d develop a case of Yuppie Nesting Instinct, where a trip to Linens and Things or The Container Store would be the highpoint of my week. Don’t get me wrong – they have cool things there, but I’d hate to start down that slippery slope and get to the point where I feel like “yup, I have a house – this is my life now.” I don’t want to be a slave to the things I own but at the same time, there’s an appeal of being a “boring married person.”

But for now, I’ll suck up the discomfort, enjoy sleeping in my own bed and get used to being a tourist in Chicago until the call comes and I’m back on a plane.

ps: you guys know I was joking about going to places on the poll, right? I’d be scared to go to Branson.

India / panorama — No Comments
15
Dec 07

Panoramas

I got bored and made 2 >35MB panoramic photos that you might think suck pretty badly. One was overlooking a valley at Amber Fort in Jaipur, India and the other one was overlooking the Yamuna River from the north end of the Taj Mahal in Agra, India.

As always, the biggified versions of the photos are available from Fotki.

India / photos — No Comments
14
Dec 07

Photos and stuff

I whipped out a generic Flash gallery in Lightroom for my top 100 photos from India that I thought were cool but I can’t caption them individually. I’ll figure something out that makes it more user friendly. Eeeeh, whatever.

I wish I had more exciting things to share. This is the first Friday in like 7 weeks I’ve been in my own bed other than sleeping on a plane or in a hotel, so I plan on sleeping in tomorrow and attempting a cold weather ride before it snows (or if it snows, stay inside and do nothing). I crossed the 1.5 million mile barrier (lifetime) on AA, which is pretty impressive since I’ve done it over slightly more than 5 years. I get to have some dental surgery early next year, which is fine. You know it’s bad when you’re more excited about finishing paying for your braces than you are getting them off. I’ve been having dreams and been thinking about an old friend and hoping that the new year can bring us to talking again. But things could be a lot worse.

I am one boring content man tonight.

Blog / Hawkins' Useless Crap / India / The Hawkins 7 / photos — No Comments
11
Dec 07

The Hawkins 7: 7 answers for questions you probably don’t have about my India photos

Hawkins, where the hell are your India photos?
Gosh, they’re coming. Out of my two cameras, there were 1573 shots taken. Tim took some of them when we were shooting across the board at Taj Mahal and Ranthambhore. The whole process of converting the files from RAW to JPG takes a while. Then there’s uploading them. Then there’s labeling the ones that I remember or can easily reference, which involves digging out my books, blah blah blah. And like you care – they’re easily broken down into the main highlights.

Hawkins, why did you take 4-5 photos of the same freakin’ thing?I blame the awesome buffer on my 40D.

Hawkins, I don’t care if you haven’t finished them, I want to see them!!!111
Well, here they are. It’s all of them, minus the duplicates and the horrible ones.

Hawkins, there are too many photos! They lack telling a coherent story!
First comes upload, then comes making a nice little collection. I’ll get to that
this week.

Hawkins, there are a few really good shots in there! They’re postcard-worthy!
Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I’d like to think that my photography involves 2% skill, 18% gear and 80% location.

Hawkins, didn’t you promise us awesome Google Earth mashups?
I screwed that one up. My bad. I have what amounts to the tracks for the last few days, but that’s it.

Hawkins, can’t you Photoshop yourself to look less hideous?
Hush you.

India / photos — 2 Comments
6
Dec 07

Photo status

Well, don’t expect to see my photos from India until sometime next week. I took 1600 of them, and all of that requires sorting, tossing, turning and cleaning up. What I’ll do is:

1) Upload them all to Fotki, then delete the ones that suck (it’s quicker that way).
2) Caption the ones on Fotki.
3) Make my “best of” photos, and then export them into a collection from Lightroom and then upload them.

WTF — 1 Comment
6
Dec 07

Something You Don’t See Everyday

Who says Pennsylvania is a dull and boring place?

WTF / travel — 2 Comments
4
Dec 07

Where should I go in 2008?

Since I’d like to think that all 3 of my readers care about what I do, I figured – why not let you decide on where I should go next year? I figured that it couldn’t hurt to see what comes of it. Top few places and best suggestions will be taken under consideration.

India / jaipur — 1 Comment
3
Dec 07

The Pink City

First of all, Jaipur was immediately a lot nicer than Delhi and Agra, simply because I was able to breathe. Delhi wasn’t as bad as I was thinking, but still enough for me to wheeze and not happy. Agra was just flat awful with pollution. I still won’t forget the smell as I left my hotel room – it smelled like the hotel was on fire. Jaipur was nice in that regards.

In the morning we left to go to the Amber Fort. It was an overcast day but still, I was looking forward to the Fort and the mandatory elephant ride up hill. I felt sort of bad because it wasn’t fair for an elephant to drag me up when it was a good 15 minute uphill hike. And after a week of overeating and being stationary, I wanted to walk. Of course, no one told me that tipping the elephant driver was mandatory, so I was left being stupid and awkward when he asked for 50 rupees. Baksheesh is everywhere in India, and I should have expected it. 20 rupees here, 50 rupees there – smiles cost you in India. But the thing is that no one tells you what’s a fair price to tip, so you’re left in this socially awkward position.

But I digress.

The Amber Fort was pretty impressive, and for being around for 400 years, it was still in remarkable condition and engineered well from both a residence and military perspective. You can’t help but wonder what it would be like to living in a place like this back in the early 1600s and have every wish attended to.

After lunch, we did a quick pit stop at the Jal Mahal – the Water Palace – mainly just to take photos. It was pretty slick to have a palace surrounded by water, but supposedly some investor wanted to turn it into a restaurant. But the prime stop for the day wasn’t the City Palace, but was the Jantar Mantar, a collection of astronomical instruments from the 1700s. It was pretty impressive to see a sundial accurate to 20 seconds, and then learn about how Maharaja Jai Singh II was unhappy with that measurement and built a larger sundial. Tim was geeking out hardcore here, and I had to wonder if he was more excited about coming here than the Taj Mahal.

The City Palace was just ok. I think by this point I had reached museum/fort burnout, and the fact that despite how awesome the Maharaja was, I just couldn’t hold interest. I was distracted by the monkeys fighting outside and stayed outside while Tim and Holly got to watch artisans write words on a grain of rice.

Then it was time to head back to the hotel and prepare for a day of shopping, errands and the long and boring drive back to Delhi for the exfil.

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