You saw the blue guys too, right?

blueman watching you
Originally uploaded by stelb.

Saturday night I took the train downtown with Lexie and her sixteen-year old cousin, Lauren to have dinner at the Rainforest Cafe. I had never heard of it, but the girls assured me it was a fun night out and really nice meals.

For the benefit of my Adelaide readers, the Rainforest Cafe is what the Magic Cave would be if Santa came from the Amazon. The cafe had a huge indoor waterfall, big aquariums full of tropical fish, and giant fibreglass rainforest creatures complete with the appropriate background soundtracks. All the waiters were dressed in khaki like safari leaders, and indeed when our table was announced, it went something like this: "Lexie's Safari of 3, your adventure begins now" or something equally fun. And the restaurant really tailors to kids, if you haven't already guessed. But big kids like us also fit in fine. And Lauren even told the waiter it was her 18th birthday, just so we could have the waiters sing to our table. But the piece de resistance was the dessert they brought with them when they sang: The Volcano. Ooooooh it was so bad it was good. Imagine four (or was it five?) caramel filled brownies, with caramel drizzled down the sides, vanilla icecream scooped liberally on the plate, and hot fudge sauce across the top. And a sparkler creating the razzle dazzle to great effect. I clapped along with the singing waiters and tucked into the delicious dessert even though it was all built on Lauren's lie. We told her she'd go straight to hell for it, so she might as well share her dessert. So she did. Sucker.

After that we jumped a bus back to my neighbourhood because we had tickets to see "Blue Man Group", a super talented trio of street performers from New York who have turned pro. In fact, their act has been so successful that they have gone to Europe and trained a bunch of Germans how to be just like them. The language barrier is no problem, because the actors don't speak anyway. Oh, and they're painted bright blue. Did I forget to mention that? They looked to me like aliens - staring at the audience quizzically from inside their blue rubber face masks. Oh they were such talented drummers as well; just awesome to watch. I don't normally like shows with audience participation, but the girl and guy selected from the audience to participate were really good. They got into the act and were really good sports, laughing at themselves but taking the show seriously enough to be entertaining. We had great seats too, which I think always helps. If you ever get a chance to see "Blue Man Group", you must go - they are so good. I will of course be including a visit to the show on future "Tours of Chicago" that I conduct for my expat friends. Prepare yourselves folks, you will not be disappointed.

And to end this blog post on a rather typical note, I made a fool of myself today on the phone. Just then, in fact. An Australian lady living in Wisconsin just called through and I took the call. She said "oh hi Gab, mate, how are you?," and then she hastened to add "oh sorry about that, it just slipped out". To which I replied, "don't worry - you can 'mate' me". Hmm. I knew what I meant. Thankfully she was gracious enough to ignore it. While I quietly died.