YACHT: "THE POWERS OF R. KELLY"

THE POWERS OF R. KELLY

← Archived From: Friday, June 9, 2006 @ 11:26 AM →

Khaela and I were flown out to Chicago for the University of Chicago's "Summer Breeze" concert; an outdoor mini-festival in the UofC campus park, or "quads" if you are a school person. There were inflatable castles and jousting stations for all of the kids to bounce around in/on and something like 300 kids milling around and eating BBQ'd corn. Here's a photo of us playing thanks to a nice kid named Mason.

We arrived in Chicago the evening before the show and played on the University's radio station, then went over to stay in a room in an apartment graciously donated to us by a cool dude named Brian. Brian and his roommates had a collection of DVDs that we rummaged through and found Night of the Hunter, a favorite of mine after Ritchey turned me on to it a couple years ago. It's so, so, so good and scary and I think it started the trend of writing 4-letter words on your knuckles. If you haven't seen it, put it in your Netflix queue, download it, rent it, slime it to your MovieBrain™, or whatever, just see it.

Our friends and employee/owner guys of Secretly Canadian drove up from Bloomington, Indiana and hung out with us, deeply. We didn't have a car or anything so Chris and Nicole; right here and right now... I want to THANK YOU and PRAISE YOU for driving us around and being such cool dudes to hang out with! THANKS! We went to the Museum of Science and Industry and then headed to the show. After the show at the University we played a second show at an art space/venue called South Union Arts, on the south side of Chicago. Here's a little video of that show (there's no sound, but it does a pretty good job of showing how it was a totally fun party zone with kids dancing like crazy!). Kids drove from Detroit, kids drove from Grand Rapids, and kids drove from HELL. Fun was had by all. We couldn't have asked for a better day. Thanks a ton to Bojan for getting us that second show last minute!

I never would have thought the evening would have gone in this direction... we said goodbye to Chris and Nicole and got dropped off at the Hilton downtown where Khaela's brother Dominic just happened to be staying for a business trip. We decided to take a walk downtown after dropping off our stuff in Dominic's room. I got really stoked on this sign I saw in the hotel lobby, but I didn't really think about what it was or what it meant. On our way back down to the lobby from the room we stopped on the third floor where Two Fingers Entertainment were hosting "A Touch of Spring: The All White Affair;" which was a hip-hop party. We got so excited! We were the only white people on the entire floor and we looked like total bums. Our clothes were ripped and dirty and every single other person was dressed to the nines in crazy all-white outfits. It was amazing. We checked out the entry and after discovering it would cost us $20 to get in on top of our bad hobo vibes, we decided not to go. As we started the walk back to the elevator one of the dudes that worked for Two Fingers ran after us and assured us that we should come to the party and that we were more than welcome to attend. This pumped us up. We decided to go for a short walk outside, try to figure out white outfits back in Dominic's room, and go to A TOUCH OF SPRING: THE ALL WHITE AFFAIR.

As soon as we got outside of the hotel a couple of haggard dudes rolled by pushing a woman and three kids in a Camaro down the street. They had apparently run out of gas and one of the two dudes was a stranger just helping them out. Dominic and I ran over to them and helped them push the car 10 blocks to the BP station down the street. As soon as we started helping the dude that was with the woman and kids STOPPED pushing and started leisurely walking behind us. We got to the BP and the lady tried to turn the wheel and jump the median. Of course this didn't work and the car made what Dominic described as "the Titanic sound" and got beached on the median. Dominic and I gave up and let the other dudes take care of her from there on. We had a new mission.

We went back up to the hotel room and Khaela made a shirt out of a towel and Dominic and I threw together white outfits out of all the clothes we had with us. I think we did alright. At this point the line to get in to the party had become sort of crazy. We waited about 15 minutes, paid our $20 and started dancing. It seemed like girls kept daring each other to dance with Dominic and at one point a woman very traditionally freaked me. It was awesome. They played Lean Wit It, Rock Wit It and everyone in the place was doing the snap dance. A couple girls leaned over to me and Khaela and instructed us how to do it. Dude, I totally already knew how! I SWEAR! After about an hour of dancing the DJ started saying "KELLS IS IN THE BUILDING" and I thought it was just a joke... until I looked over and saw this very classy man in an all-white suit, white headband, and salmon t-shirt. I went to a party at the Hilton in Chicago and R Kelly showed up.

Truly,
Jona