Thanks for Contributing to My Cool, Sally

Cheech and Chong have reunited and are going on tour. I was introduced to their albums by my babysitter, Sally, and it occurred to me that I never thanked her.

I never had an older sibling to introduce me to important cultural milestones. I had to discover them on my own. For young Rider, there was no Zooey Deschanel leaning in close to tell me, "Someday, you'll be cool," and then handing me a suitcase full of rock albums to calibrate my compass.

Had he known, my old man would've been pissed to discover his 12-year-old was buying comedy albums celebrating drug use. He would've been even angrier to find freckle-faced Sally had been my comedy pusher.

I kept all that on the down low. I learned my lesson after he caught me walking in the door with Boston and began inspecting the track titles. ("'Hitch a Ride'...'Smokin''? You're not gonna do any of these things, are you?")*

Sally did her job well. I soon moved on to Richard Pryor and George Carlin and National Lampoon. (I occasionally slipped...spending money on Weird Al in a moment of weakness, for example.)

So here's my official thanks, Sally McLean. You may have dressed like a hippie, but you had two things that made up for it: you smelled better than a hippie and you had great taste in comedy.

* "Gaw, Dad, no! Jeez!"

Canadian Kids, Cabs and a Clooney Clone

I highly recommend checking out The Kids in the Hall's tour "Live As We'll Ever Be."

My Significant Other and I journeyed to the Windy City to meet up with best pal and (occasional) blogger Dean Xene on Thursday. We agreed the aging Kids didn't disappoint.


Their sketches included why the other four needed to rape Kevin, hateful babies, gut spigots, Buddy Cole on Jesus, last-call-defying time machines, Jehovah's Witnesses actually being let into a house, a three-quarters-completed song, a drunken superhero, phone sex with a fowl, a retrospective on how we danced in grades 8 through 12, and why each of the Kids deserved to have their heads crushed. (To Dave Foley: "Two words: poker show.")

They haven't lost their edge. It made me wish for a new TV series. Again.

After the show, Dean brought us to a favorite watering hole on State Street. Along the way, we were approached by a gentleman requesting cash. He fixated on my buddy, walking with him for an uncomfortable 50 feet and trying flattery to loosen his purse strings. "Say, man, anyone ever tell you you look like George Clooney?"

Which is preposterous. Anyone who has ever met Dean will tell you he's the spitting image of Zach Braff. Here's photographic evidence taken outside the bar.


We hoisted a few, caught up on old times, and went our separate ways. Good ol' Braffy.

In the cab ride back to our car, I noticed some hidden-taxicab-service-fee chicanery. As we rolled to a stop, the fare meter mysteriously jumped from $4.65 to $5.85. I was about to call the dude on it, but I remembered something Xene mentioned earlier. These gas prices are hitting hard.

Although, this being Chicago, I'm betting that extra fee wouldn't go away even if gas dropped to $1 a barrel tomorrow.