The Terrible Catsafterme

The Winter blahs had taken their toll on me so much that I decided that despite the rather weak line-up of celebrities at the Hollywood Celebrities and Memorabilia Show in Rosemont, Illinois on the weekend of Saturday, March 13, 2010, it would be worth it just to get away for a road trip. My sister Denise had mentioned that she might like to go along sometime on one of these excursions, and agreed that this one might be fun. Aaron agreed to babysit the kids – for the first time overnight alone. He did swell.

Denise drove down to my place Friday, March 12, and stayed overnight at my place. As per usual she had difficulty sleeping in the guest bed despite the constantly blowing fan. I stayed up a bit too late as well, so the 5am alarm hour came pretty early. Still, we were on the road at about 6:30am and Denise was as fit as a fiddle after her ‘hat caffee.’ We stopped at McDonalds for breakfast along the journey. Along the way, I realized that my shirt was green.

On the road, paying tolls

We arrived not long before noon at the Rosemont Hotel, nice digs but under construction. In fact the hotel banner was literally a banner. It was a long walk from the parking garage to the lobby and our check-in time wasn’t until 3pm, so we decided to leave the luggage in the car and just go straight to the Collectors Show.

Despite the lower eschelon of celebs (at least relative to the last two shows I attended in March and October last year), the price of entry had risen to $20. There were several celebs present that I didn’t really have any interest in getting autographs from – among them James Hampton, Ken Kercheval, Carol Lynley, and Barry Corbin (whom we seemed to see everywhere around the hotel). Then there were two – Richard Chamberlain and Louise Robey – whom I might have purchased but were charging extra to have photos take with them, so they lost out on getting any of my money at all. And finally, Traci Lords was making an appearance, but I had already met her, got an autograph, and photo with her in Burbank in 1997.

Denise waits patiently for Linda Blair; Willie Aames signs away

Traci Lords was charging to get a photo with her. So we figured out a way around that in this quality shot

All in all, Denise and I spent about two and a half hours at the show, first meeting and greeting the various celebrities (the trail of them begins here), then browsing the dealer room for a bit and loading up on free candy from  one dealer. One high point of the afternoon was getting to finally meet Dave Chasteen. He had begun reading my Catsafterme website nearly three years ago. He has often left comments and we have exchanged emails since then – mostly do to our very similar tastes in movies, history, music, and love of our 70’s childhood memories. He noted that after reading about our lives for so long, it was almost surreal to finally meet Denise and me.

With the ever-elusive Dave Chasteen

In order to catch the shuttle to the train station, we once again opted out of taking our luggage to the room and instead just grabbed our umbrellas and bananas from the car and grabbed a ride. After we clumsily purchased our train tickets (the process had changed since my last time on the L), we took the half-hour ride to the State/Lake stop.

Denise at the train station

Train rider

From there we walked the short distance to the Midtown Kitchen & Bar. There we met up with Aaron’s sisters Jennifer and Melissa for a very late lunch and some fine camaraderie. I had a woodchuck cider and an appetizer of cheeseburger sliders, not to mention digging into the gals’ hummus dishes.  We hung out there until almost 6:00 and then we parted ways.

Denise, Jenny, Melissa, and me at Midtown. Three of us were wearing green.

Denise and I then began our trek through the cold, rainy, and naturally windy city of Chicago. Being so close to the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day Parade, sections of the river were dyed green. It was also starting to get rather dark, so it was difficult to see much.

Denise and the green river

Rainy night, Chicago

We then walked over to Millennium Park to see what we could see in the dark and rain. Surprisingly, there were a good number of tourists hanging around, even with the crummy weather. We hung out under ‘The Bean’ for a bit. I had gotten a better look at Millennium park in the daylight during my 2007 visit.

With the ghost balls at Millenium Park

Under The Bean downtown…

I had really only two goals during the trip outside of the celebrity show: to eat some sushi and to eat some deep dish pizza at Giordano’s. On this night, we fulfilled the latter. Although we had eaten not long before, we decided to go ahead and get the pizza out of the way. We had hoped to just purchase a slice each, but the only sold the whole pizza so we got the shrimp and cheese pizza and a pitcher of green beer. The pizza was filling and delcious, the beer hit the spot, and the company was good – particularly the drunk party girls to my left and the geeky businessmen to our right.

With the pizza, the beer, and the geeky businessmen

Since we had started so early, walked so far, ate so much,had gained an extra hour by traveling west,  and – let’s face it – we’re getting old, we decided not to stay out too late partying, but instead head on back to the room for some shuteye. We left the pizza joint just after 8, walked back to the train station, rode back to the Rosemont exit, took a taxi to the hotel, finally unloaded the car, and hit the sack by 10pm.  According to Denise, I snored heavily – as I tend to do when completely exhausted.

The next day was mostly a bust – but still fun considering I was hanging out with my sister. We got up at a decent hour – even though we had lost the hour that we had gained to daylight savings time. We got ready and made our way back to the train station, this time just walking instead of shuttling. We grabbed a quick breakfast of Wake-up wraps and a hat caffee for Denise at Dunkin Donuts in the station, and took the train to the Jackson stop.

From there we walked a few blocks to the Sears Tower, which I had been surprised to learn the day before, was now known as the Willis Tower. After the obligatory “watchoo talkin’ bout” jokes, and posing for pictures outside of it, we went in fully prepared to view the city from the Skydeck. However the staff informed us that there was zero visibility due to clouds, but the fee to go to the top was not reduced. So instead I bought a magnet in the gift shop.

This is NOT called the Sears Tower anymore

Denise and the tallest building alive

The next order of business was to try and find the sushi bar that Jennifer and Melissa had recommended, Sushi Wabi on Randolph Street. It was nearly a half-hour hike to get there, only to find that they were closed on Sundays. This was a complete letdown. So we moped our way back to the nearest train station at Grand and headed back to the hotel. Once there, I urinated in the stall next to Richard Kiel. Man, he is tall.

Chicago…along our walk

We left the hotel at about 12:45 and headed home. Although I was in desperate search for sushi, I never found any on the way home either. In fact, I once jumped off an exit and had to pay a toll to get back on – and by that time we had run out of change. Denise paid it online. We stopped at Steak ‘n’ Shake along the way, where I was introduced to the delights of the Avocado Burger and the Grape Kool-Aid milkshake. Not as good as sushi, but pretty damn good.

We got back to my place that evening a bit after 7pm. Denise headed home and I headed to the couch. It had been exhausting, but it had been fun.

Follow the trail of Chicago celebrities here…

Return to March 2010 here…

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 18th, 2010 at 6:27 am and is filed under 2010's - Early, Celebrity Encounters, Vacations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.