Best Birthday Ever

So my birthday honestly got off to not the best of starts.  I went out to eat with my friends at one of my favorite bars and it was horrible. I really expect so much more from Tap House Grill.  I really have never been disappointed by them up until that point.  Everything I’ve had there thus far has ranged from really good to just okay.  This time they were out of most of the beers that I wanted to try.  Additionally, I think they served us the most horrible wings on the face of the planet.  I mean honestly for that I would have come out better going to a TGI Fridays.

Super Awesome Birthday Cake

That little blip aside I did have a totally awesome birthday cake, so I can’t really complain about things too much.  It was a San Francisco 49ers cake.  I loved it.  It had the logo on top and the names of players along the side.  I started to drive to Detroit, and along the way a small rock hit the windshield of my car giving me a little crack.  I’m all but ignoring said cracks, and eventually I will have to get the entire windshield replaced, but I just let my insurance cover the glass repair people filling in the cracks to prevent them from spreading.

Sicilian Pizza at Buddy's

When I got to Detroit we stopped for Pizza at Buddy’s.  I saw it as being listed as one of the thirty best slices of pizza in the nation so I had to give it a shot.  I was getting a little nervous about the choice as I got close to the place in what didn’t exactly seem like the best of neighborhoods.  Still the big signs that were advertising the various awards the place has gotten drew me in.

There were a few things that surprised me about the place.   One was that they had pretty good quality local craft beers on sale for only $4.50 each.  The place was very straightforward well priced and not too fancy.  Another surprise is that Buddy’s decided that Vegan people shouldn’t be allowed to starve and they offered a vegan pizza.  I decided to go for the New Yorker.  It seemed simple enough and you have to be able to nail the basics.  Though my favorite pizza topping hands down is mushrooms, I don’t really get mushrooms on pizzas from every pizzeria because it usually ends up in a bit of disappointment.

This pizza was pure bliss.  The crust was nice and crisp.  The sauce had a nice kick to it without being too herbaceous or spicy.  I was instantly a fan.  Detroit style square pizza deserves it’s own notoriety alongside the ranks of Chicago and New York style.  The great thing about the pizza was that it was that the cheese goes all the way to the edge and gets a little crispy at the edges.

The New Yorker at Buddy's Pizza

From there we went to the concert.  We probably should have stopped at the hotel first to check in but It was kind of close to 8 and the show started at 7 and I didn’t want to chance missing any of Robert’s set.  The shelter, where it was held was a small venue.  It had a decent bar.  The prices at the bar weren’t exactly as cheap as I expected them to be either.  Long Islands for $7 is nearing Chicago prices.

We got there well in time to see both opening acts.  The first one had a pretty decent sound but the most memorable thing about the band was the extremely long dreds on the lead singer.  Still they sounded alright.  The next group up was Ghost Beach.  They somehow make things work without having a bass player at all in their band.  I think it is more or less because of the strength of their synth.   The one thing about that particular performance was that the music was so loud that you couldn’t really make out the vocals that well.  That aside they did a pretty good performance.

This was my third time seeing Robert Delong.  It has been one of my weird obsessions musically.  I remembered I first heard the song Global Concepts on the radio when I was driving from Atlanta to Miami after the NFC Championship game(The one that my niners ended up winning in order to unfortunately loose in the Super Bowl on some BS calls against Baltimore but I digress).  Once I heard that song I wanted to hear more.  The track was for free on Amazon MP3, but I decided to go for the whole album with all the remixes.  I must have played that song like 30 times on the drive home.

In between sets, I went to get my face painted.  I don’t think I ever got my face painted as a kid and as soon as she started I was like man this feels weird.  I had the impulse to like scratch my face a bunch of times, but I totally didn’t want to mess up what she was doing.  Later on she said that it was one of the best she’s ever done, It was pretty cool and she was probably right.  Oh, to fill in some necessary information, Robert’s girlfriend does the face paint at the shows.  She is super creative and came up with the iconic X logo.

Later on when I finally decided to look up this character on YouTube, after a bit of random boredom, I was completely blown away.  It was one thing for me to hear this song and think it was pretty amazing.  It was another to watch him create the entire song on his own.  He is quite literally a one man band.  Since seeing that video, I’ve done everything to spread the good news about Robert Delong short of going door to door like a Jehovah’s Witness.

There was something about this performance, that was just amazing to me.  Maybe it was because it was my birthday.  Maybe because I was just a few feet away from the stage from where he was preforming, but it just turned out to be my favorite of his performances, and one of my favorite all time live performances.  It’s crazy to even watch because when you play as many instruments as he does in a show, there’s got to be a lot going through his head. 

In his set, you see him go from Keyboards, to a mic to drum pads, Wii Motes, Xbox Controllers, Joysticks, Drums and more.  What really caught me off guard was when he went to the Acoustic guitar on “A Few Years”.  It is one of his deepest tracks on the album and that addition kind of gave me chills.  It’s incredible to watch him make music the way he does.  I wanted to pee pretty bad during the performance but I toughed it out.  I couldn’t miss even a moment.

Robert Delong is amazing.

After the show I went to track down my friend who had my CD in his pocket that I wanted to get signed.  He went outside to smoke and they wouldn’t let us back in, because you can’t go back inside after the show is over.  I was that version of mad where I was too overcome to be able to say anything at all.  The only thing I could manage to say to this bouncer with a handlebar mustache was “But dude it’s my birthday.”  Probably honestly sounded like a bunch of bullshit at the time, but I just wanted to get my CD signed.

Drama ensued when he walked away from the door to make it look as if he was leaving from the night and he flipped his shit when we tried to go back in.  It wasn’t as if he was standing like two feet away from us when he walked away from the door he could have easily said “I’m going to get something out of my car, don’t try to sneak in I will maybe see if I can let you in to get your CD signed after the crowd thinned out.”  After some shouting back and forth there was some rational talking and he let me in to get the CD signed.

I was so excited that I completely jumped a line of people.   In that moment I wasn’t really thinking about what all of those other people were doing there.  In that moment my excitement matched my rudeness.  I was so happy that I had the chance to get my CD signed (which has amazing artwork btdubs).

Later, we were all still standing outside all stalkerish because my friends wanted the chance to say what’s up to Robert.  Then we all just kicked it and had a drink with him.  It’s kind of cool to see that he was so down to earth.  It is crazy how humble and down to earth he is, that in a couple of hours I went from completely star struck to being like oh that’s just Robbie.  Dude was so cool he even bought us shots.

After a few hours of drinking we went climbing around through a random abandoned building what looked like it was some old theater.  Took some pretty cool pictures but It is kind of a shame that such a place is about to be demolished.  I could see how it could be pretty nice if it was remodeled.
Anyhow Here's a ton of pictures from that escapade:

We finally got to the hotel at about 3am.  They had already marked me down as a no show and were doing the nightly report, so we had about a half hour wait in order to be able to check in.  This was my second stay at the Doubletree Downtown Detroit, so I knew what to expect.  The rooms are huge and value wise, it is one of the  best deals you’d be able to score on a Doubletree.

Vineyard at Cherry Creek Winery

On the way home, I was tried of driving and we made a little stop at a little winery, simply because I got a little tired of driving.  We stopped at the Cherry Creek Winery, and tasted quite a few wines and walked around the vineyard for a  little bit.  Their wines were pretty good but the one that I found the most intersting was the Maria Sangria that had a little bit of chipotle pepper.

Anyway as a bonus I’ve decided to do a little recipe writing in here.  

Change Wings

I wanted to redeem my birthday from those shitty wings I had to start off my birthday with and make some awesome ones.  I was inspired by the night tat made a good wing to bring thigns back full circle from my totally awesome birthday experience partying with Robert Delong. I know insane that I got to party with one of my favorite artists for my birthday   Robbie ordered the wings at the bar and favorite liquor being Jameson,  I decided to bring things full circle here with named for one of my favorite tracks on the album here are Change wings. For more on my birthday go here.

Change Wings

For the wings:

Up to 5 lb chicken wings (For vegan varation use Gardien Wings)

¼ Cup flour

¼ Cup fine Corn Meal

Salt and Pepper to taste

Oil For Frying

1 Tablespoon dried Thyme

For the Sauce

½ Cup Jameson Irish Whiskey

1 Cup Butter (For a vegan variation use Earth Balance Butter Sub)

1 Cup Hot Sauce (I use Frank’s For This)

3 Cloves Chopped Garlic

2 Tablespoons Siraccha (Ease back if you don’t like wings pretty spicy)

To Cook the wings:

Season the wings as desired with salt and pepper.

Mix the flour and cornmeal together and dredge the wings in the mixture

Let the wings rest on a wire rack for about 5 minutes before adding to the oil

Preheat Oil to 350°F.

Fry until fully cooked and golden brown and cooked throughout.

Let wings rest on wire rack to get rid of excess oil  for a minute before saucing.

To Make the Sauce:

In a medium sauce pan, add the Whiskey, garlic.

Cook over medium heat until liquid is reduced in half.

Add Butter and stir until melted

Add hot sauce and stir until incorporated

Mix in the sirracha and toss wings in sauce

For frying I use the T-Fal fryer that has a integrated filter system.  It is a little large, yet convenient.  

Lollapalooza: Sunday Recap

Sunday got off to a late start as I needed the sleep after the aftershow.  There were some ironies to the day.  Despite wearing the pair of cargo shorts that had the most pockets of any day I was there I did still end up loosing my camera (more on that later).  Anyhow, we woke up in time to get there early but opted for sleeping in for a few more hours.  The first thing we wanted to see that day was Wild Nothing.  I kind of didn’t know what to expect, as I wasn’t truly a fan of Wild Nothing but they still played a good set.  Hey I’m down for listening to new music at anytime especially with a drink in hand.

Wild Nothing

That being said, we were able to make our way down towards the front of the stage to listen to some of these very mellow indie rock tunes.  I love the way a light electronic melody is integrated on to tracks like “A Dancing Shell”.  All in all the set was pretty fun but not very memorable at all to be honest.   Still they are a band that is now on my radar to listen to a bit more.

The next band that I wanted to see was The Mowgli’s.  Unfortunately, they were at the stage I hated the most, The BMI Stage.  This stage suffers from three problems.  First, the next closest main stage (Bud Light Stage… As if I needed another reason to hate Bud Light) was the loudest stage at the park, and you get terrible bleed over to the BMI stage.  Then, you also have to deal with the fact that it is poorly planned.   It faces Lake Michigan, and with no backdrop to the stage, you really just end up watching a bunch of shadowy figures preform more than anything.   Last, it is in a really small area.  I guess like me there were many fans of the song “San Francisco”, because the stage was completely overrun with people, as if they were zombies on a farm at the end of season two of Walking Dead.  The stage was pretty loud though, and we could still hear them preforming through the bushes on a bench next to the fountain.  Luckily Alex Clare’s set on the Bud Light stage was done ten minutes into the Mowgli’s set, because you could still hear Alex Clare clearly over the Mogwli’s.

Tegan and Sara

Then everything started to blur together as we got to the rushed part of the day.  We saw a bit of Tegan and Sara which is where I lost my camera.   I must have just been careless and completely droped it when trying to put it back into my pocket.    As we headed for lunch and I was about to take a picture of the grilled cheese I had from Brunkrow Cheese.    When I say grilled cheese, I know what you might be thinking, but this particular grilled cheese does not involve any bread at all.  It is actually a piece of cheese thrown directly on to a grill.  You get nice grill marks and a wonderful taste of crisp cheese.  I really liked the original version, because the salty cheese goes good with the sweet maple syrup.  I was not a big fan of the bacon version, as I felt like the bacon just made things a bit too salty.  It is one of those rare instances where bacon actually made something worse.

We trekked back across the park to see Alt-J.  They were one of the bands that I was most looking forward too and they also had a huge crowd.  It was almost as though they could have played a larger stage as well.  I have been a big fan of the band since I heard their single “Breezeblooks”.  They have a very interesting sound that is pretty mellow.  Their song “Fitzpleasure” is also featured in a Microsoft commercial.  After hearing most of their set and another one of my favorites “Tesselate”, we were on a mission across the park again to see DIIV.

DIIV

DIIV was playing on the smaller The Groove stage right before 2 Chainz.  They drew a pretty small crowd that got a lot bigger a lot of 2 Chainz fans when the set started to end.  Their music is pretty hypnotic.  My favorite song from them is the song How Long Have You Known which has a pretty trippy video.   You’ve got to appreciate any band that preforms while wearing alien masks.   I missed a bit of the performance because I had drunk so much by that point that I had to pee several times.  I also used the opportunity to grab a bit of food as well.

We then caught a little bit of Vampire Weekend.  I am a moderate fan of Vampire Weekend.  I loved the first two albums but the third one just fell a little short for me.  Still they are a great band, but they can’t really compete with Major Lazer.  Still I wanted to stay and see a bit of their set before running across Grant Park yet again.  We only caught a couple of their hit’s like “Holiday”, and fortunately they were at the Bud Light Stage so you could hear them most of the way across the park.  As we started to walk away they started to play the song “A-Punk” that I had to run back to hear before finally committing to leaving for real.  I really wish that they weren’t playing as the same time.

That being said nothing trumps LAZERPALOOZA.   It was a swift walk across Grant Park in order to make it over just in time to Major Lazer run the track “Original Don”.  It is a track that I can’t listen to without getting hype.    As soon as I heard it I was pushing my way through the crowd towards the front of the stage dancing.  You’ve got to really appreciate what Diplo does as a DJ  for Major Lazer, popularizing the obscure Dancehall genre and taking it main stream.  “Pon De Floor” was actually used as the beat for Beyonce’s “Run The World (Girls)”.

Knife Party

I had to cap things off with a bang, as this was decidedly a dance music night.  Knife Party was preforming and how could I turn that down.  I’m not big on Pheonix and The Cure so it was an easy choice for me.  Their most popular track “Internet Friends” boasts the iconic line “You blocked me on Facebook, and now you’re going to die.”  Those Dubstep heavy tracks was all that I wanted to finish off the weekend with a bang.

I was a little mad about loosing my camera but I overall had a good weekend.   I went to the lost and found and heard nothing from them.  Eventually I had given up hope.  That was until I found a post for my camera being found on Craigslist.  I knew that checking it was a longshot but I eventually got it in my head to check it again.

I had to drive up to Logan Square to meet the person who had my camera, so I had a quick dinner at Longman and Eagle while I waited on them to show.  Longman and Eagle is tucked away in a corner of Logan Square.  It is a nice little whiskey bar that serves phenominal drinks.  Not to mention the fact that when I was looking over the menu, I really wanted to order absolutely everything.

Bone Marrow

So many things jumped out at me on the menu but I decided to go for the marrow bones.  The idea of combining bone marrow which is one of my favorite appetizers to get especially  since it is rarely on menus stuck out at me so much that I had to try it.  It didn’t disappoint but it wasn’t exactly a perfect dish.  The presentation for all is beauty, made the dish so much more difficult to eat.  The  roasted bones were standing up like little towers with the bacon shallot jam on top.  The waiter told me that most people don’t get down into the bones and get the marrow and end up eating the bacon shallot jam and proclaiming it to be the best marrow ever.  This is kind of understandable with the whole setup they give you which leads you down the road and makes the actual marrow hard to get to.

For everything the dish gains in beauty it loses in practicality.  This dish would have been perfect had those bones been cut lengthwise, and the bacon shallot jam spread evenly throughout.  All that aside, I’m really stretching to find fault in the dish because it tasted amazing.  You have a lot of fat in the bacon shallot jam and some sweetness.  Then to cut through the sweetness you get a little bright burst from the lemon zest.  You might think the sea salt would make things too salty in addition to the jam but if you use a light hand with both the salt and bacon jam, you can achieve perfection.

New York Strip

I decided to try the margarita since it was the drink of the day and it definitely was a winner for me.  It had all you wanted in a drink.  The drink was about as good as a margarita as you could have.   For my second drink I would have the Longman and Eagle Manhattan.  The Manhattan is a drink I often use to measure the quality of cocktail that a place can produce.   This particular one was right on the money.

For dinner I had the New York Strip.  The only fault I can find with this dish was that I had to rush through eating it in order to meet and get my camera.  When it first arrived, It almost seems as though there wasn’t enough steak, but it was well more than enough.  The steak was a perfect medium rare.  I loved the crispy potatoes on top of the braised ox tail.  The sauce was very hearty and a little acidic.