casual ultimate » 2006 » July

well is was champagne wishes and C.U. dreams this weekend as usual. friday we celebrated pfil’s new abode which was christened ‘meng-town’, although we at c.u. are still partial to ‘rockwell’ or ‘the rock’. im sure the syntax will evolve as new casual memories are made there.

saturday it was beach time what with the opressive heat. yours truly rolled up to evanston with ms. utlimate to hang out with her super stylish grandma and go swimming. i cant even begin to describe the swank apartment…eames chairs, custom danish furniture, amazing art, and stunning flatware. on top of eating lunch and tossing on the beach we got relationship advice from an octagenarian. the bottom line: join you local national affairs club, go to grad school, or both. ms. ultimate could have told you this would be the advice, but we got a nice trip to the virtual countryside out of it.

as humiliating as it was, it psyched us up for another night out. we decided half our problem is that we never leave wicker park where the crowd tends to be young, affected hipsters who dont buy girls drinks and even if they did, the way to a girl’s heart is not through a can of pbr. we can buy our own. and sometimes a lady wants to get dressed up to go out on a saturday night.

so we ventured outside our normal stomping grounds. we started at home at parlor on north ave with my friend rob who bailed becuase we were too dressed up. then we met another architect, c(b)r in lincoln park, way out of range. then he bailed cause he thought he was hurting our chances. then we picked up matt and went to cobra lounge. we love cobra. we will be back there very often. then it was on to fulton lounge for cans of champagne. matt tipped over a glass and ms. ultimate sustained a minor flesh wound before we headed to flash taco for late night mexican.

then at 3am miss casual got an update from mike d. who was stranded in minneapolis outside of his hotel room becuase of his friend and a stripper. we at c.u. sincerely hope he got to sleep inside and not in the corridor.

team M lost their first game on wednesday. it sucked. we just fell apart. i cant even discuss it becuase it makes me sad and whiny. alls i know is we are not going to lose another one. this little uplifting image came from my friend rob at work who also gave me the best piece of advice ive gotten lately. i told him i have the taste of an 18 year old boy, what with my fondness for will ferrell movies, rap music, and playing sports. he told me to drop acid and hang out in the american girl store for an afternoon to straighten things out. werd.

after our devastating loss, we rolled up to piece in the minivan and i was telling akira that he was either really lucky he moved out or really unlucky he moved out becuase my roommates had a blowjob class in the house last week. miss casual doesnt participate in such un-ladylike activities so dont post a bunch of comments asking about the curriculum for the class, what happened, who was there….cause i dont know. i didnt stick around to find out. all i know is there were no men involved, gay or straight. im not sure if thats good or bad. im getting the ick just typing this. moving on…

at piece the war for bedrooms started in the joe squared, cho, akira, king household. i do believe joe ferrari and cho are running a marathon in two weeks for one of the rooms and from what i gather both of them will be sleeping in the living room until its decided. there was talk of an amazing race and segway jousting, both of which make us at c.u. excited for photo ops, but i think its the marathon thats on so well keep you posted.

lastly, this photo was taken by our c.u. correspondant pfil ‘daddy warbucks’ broering who is closing on his place this morning and would like to invite everyone to black beetle for a happy hour repeat and then popsicles on his deck and a look at this view, albeit with less clouds. congrats to the property owner. post a comment giving the c.u. readers a time for happy hour, a breakdown of the closing, etc etc…

i have to tell you, i was having a rough morning dealing with the mouthbreather of an architect i am working for right now and things were not looking good in the c.u. universe.

until lunch when i went to burrito-town and my favorite girl at the chipotle on ontario turned my day around. some days they dont give you enough salsa and they yell at you for your order when youre still 18 ft. from the counter, and let’s face it, if i wanted to get yelled at in public i’d get a boyfriend, not a burrito.

but today she hooked a sister up with tons of the spicy spicy salsa (’i spit hot fiyah’…thats for chuck), the sun came out, and the afternoon is looking up. so the lesson for today is revel in the little things that kick major ass in your day and it can change your whole outlook. now if i could find a ride to summer league so i dont have to take the king drive express the whole day would be dollars.

So, immediately after instructing C.U. to “dress slutty” to go clubbing in a couple weeks, mike d tries to cushion his instruction by insisting that industry night at a club is mostly for gay men, which begs the question - why would C.U. be attending, and in short skirts at that? according to our host, the hot girls are there because of all the gay guys, and the straight guys are there because of all the hot girls. apparently The Club is a delicate underwater ecosystem, wherein ladies are the clownfish, gay guys are the anemone and other guys are the sharks. we’ll keep this in mind and travel with harpoons.

on a related note, after ms. ultimate’s suggestion that everyone call in drunk to work tomorrow, miss casual asked why you can’t just call in single now and again: you’re out on a schoolnight, talking to the boys and you don’t have plans to head home in time for sufficient beauty rest - why not? how do you move down the path towards maternity leave without a little single leave now and then? it’s amazing that we’re still fighting this kind of injustice in the 21st century.

and now…. something that would be funny if it weren’t true. tbrizzle’s new neighbors let themselves into his ride, proving that toyota’s theft deterrent system is anything but. *WTF* sometimes the world blows, and even the casual ultimate lifestyle doesn’t make you feel better. we’re sorry tones. if you find these guys we’ll kick their asses. seriously. with nunchucks.

when this is where your night ends you know it was good. we drank pfil under the table…or at least he got sleepy and tried to take a nap under the coffee table on paulina sometime around 230am. or maybe this is him getting ready to play golf on saturday. or maybe he just wanted to ensure his appearance on the blog. whatever is going on here, this is the end of our casual friday happy hour so lets work back to where it all started shall we?

the vip after hours party landed pfil, adam, and the c.u. staff on paulina with a bottle of veuve and a frozen pizza. big pimpin. before that we went to high dive on chicago with carlo ‘the sprinkles on our cupcake’ ruth and met up with pfil’s brother who looks just like pfil in profile. we also were hanging out with tara, a friend of adam’s who looks so much like me our friends kept getting us mixed up all night.

before that we had a crazy turnout at black beetle. our new friend bill came out as did charlie, our friend from the first c.u. happy hour. but that was really just the beginning. there was a joke on paul when ms. ultimate ordered us all shots and got one full of water for lauren. pregnant ladies taking shots…represent.

then there was pfil and vijay throwing us the c.u. which we deeply appreciated and totally not acting gay at all. mike d. requested a song on the jukebox that never seemed to come on and left for date night without telling me what it was. (ahem…i expect a comment from you here with the verdict on redlight and the name of the song.)

thor showed up looking like the power lawyer that he is, dressed to kill. and since ms. ultimate was held up getting casual, the night began with mike d. (who seems to think happy hour starts at 4pm) and i holdin it down and getting a live demo of pfil’s crazy throw to dp from wednesday at summer league. holler.

so thanks to everyone who came out. hopefully you had as much fun as pfil obviously did. we’ll see you all soon and it will involve pfil’s new roof deck, a kiddie pool, a giant tv, and lime popsicles.

Faithful readers, your comments to miss casual’s post suggest you want to see more references to B-movies on the blog. Here at CU we aim to please.

Leaving the fields on Wednesday night, Baker and Oli pulled up next to eachother at a stoplight. They exchanged casual glances (rather like the ones pictured to the right), and Baker started inching forward… When the light turned green he peeled out of there like miss casual cutting to the endzone, with Oli following close behind. Oli accelerated and swung around on the right, then cut Baker off [picture a tall angry white guy hitting the steering wheel] and they both landed at the next stoplight, engines revving. At this point Baker mentioned how ironic it would be if there was a cop behind them, given the fact that he had a $120 city sticker ticket in the back seat, issued that same day in the Millennium Park garage (isn’t this entrapment? rick?). They played cat and mouse down the street, and had just turned onto the highway on ramp when Baker spotted the fuzz in hot pursuit, cherry lights going, siren on - even the loudspeaker: “move to the right! move to the right!” They passed Baker and we thought for sure Oli was toast, but it turns out they had bigger donuts to eat and sped by both of the speedracers.

phew! Baker was free to go on vacation next week, along with approx. half of the summer league team, and Oli lived to resume his career taping interviews with porn stars. that’s right. it’s all for the college fund.

here’s adam gettin his hustle on in the kitchen last night before we went out for a late dinner involving an obscene amount of sushi at sushi wabi. having him in from out of town forced me to miss team M kicking some major ass at summer league last night but i got to wear my new sneakers with a matching tube top to dinner so i guess it was worth it. adam wore his orange patent leather air force ones so we looked like some sort of deranged japanese couple. he thinks the blog has too much frisbee. i think thats probably not going to change until it snows.

today kind of sucks what with the rain and gray and such. but tomorrow is going to be beautiful. ahh chicago… the sunshine state… so get ready for happy hour. make sure you bring your beer drinking shoes. black beetle. 630. it could get casual.

Our best blog friend ever is making good on his promise to spread casual ultimate’s fame. We shall bring our C.U. style to the masses!

weve been having close games lately at summer league. last night we barely made it out of there undefeated. it was so hot we figured the only way to stay cool was to get tallboys of pbr and bring them to the field. thats us looking ghetto with our bags..thank goodness rick knew a place in the hood on the way to the field. you know the beer your drinking is quality when two tallboys cost less than the bougie bottle of water i bought.

the post title comes from someone at piece calling us haters (you know who you are)…in a nice way. i mean we took it to mean we have discriminating taste and know what we like. and you know what we like? you guys. and ultimate. and happy hour. so come out friday to the black beetle and let us share the love… not the hate.

oh and just in case you didnt think we at C.U. were totally headed to famous town, we are going to be featured in metroblogging chicago (chicago.metblogs.com) so check it out.

we were visions in terry cloth saturday night at a costume party in logan square. yours truly was sporting a black strapless terry cloth mini dress and ms ultimate wore one in white. with the necessary accessorizing we pulled off being ‘good and evil go to the beach’ or something similar. unfortunately the best costumes were on the people we came with (us of course, and treem as a soccer fanatic, aaron in a shark costume and martha in full on medusa gear with snakes and glitter and everything). so after making the scene there we retired to rainbo room on our way to paulina. its not every night you end up in some hipster bar wearing a glorified bathrobe but at C.U. thats how we roll.

we spent friday night post happy hour ruling damen with pfil, and saturday watching a movie, tossing at the park in our skirts, and eating tater tots with carlo and sally. the highlight of friday night was maryjane, who strolled into lemming’s wearing this batman skirt. it’s made from an old batman sheet, the kind you boys probably had when you were young’uns. not only was she rocking the skirt, but she casually mentioned, “i know it’s funny that my name is maryjane, because that was spiderman’s girlfriend’s name, but i’m still a batman fan.” way to know your superero trivia, MJ! i’m glad we ran into her, because miss ultimate been waiting to post this photo of The Bat Cave - the town bar in Gotham, WI - ever since the 4th. finally!

great weekend for refreshing the spirit and recharging our will to cause trouble with the C.U. antics this week. so give us your best shot and well try to make it all go down by friday’s happy hour at black beetle on chicago and rockwell. theres already an after party in the works for friday so stay tuned.

if you guys dont suggest anything we can only come up with more themed clothing outtings (which we’ll probably do anyway) so post some comments or well cut you off from our terry cloth mayhem.

Two orders of business:

(1) happy hour tomorrow (friday), pontiac, 6:30/7pmish
(2) the first-ever casual ultimate Antics Competition, whereby the readers of this very blog nominate (a) a person and (b) a situation/event for the chosen person to undertake and have documented on your very own casualultimate.blogspot.com. How does this work? Each person nominates, via comments to this post, a person they would like to see undertake some crazy shit and some crazy shit to be undertaken.

Example: (a) Carlo (b) shoplifting women’s hosiery
Example: (a) Baker (b) holding up a liquor store with his imaginary machine gun
Example: (a) Roadhouse (b) headbutting someone in the chest in practice on Sunday

But the crazy thing is, our loyal readership could vote for Carlo as (a), but headbutting as (b). And then A and B would have to come together under the watchful eye of ms. ultimate and miss casual and/or the situation would need to be independently documented and presented to the misses at happy hour NEXT friday. It’s ludicrous, I know, but there will be a prize so calm down. On second thought, get excited because this is going to be fun. Bring on the hi tops this weekend is going to be good times.

we need to go easy on ms. ultimate. she has a demanding job and cant blog at work. i, on the other hand, treat architecture like a temporary layover on the way to being the wife of a corporate lawyer and having one of those cute ‘aw she doesnt have to work but does it for the furniture discount at DWR’ jobs.

speaking of looking cute and being useless… i realize i have been playing too much frisbee and not spending enough time trying to look cool. this weekend is going to be all about getting a pedicure, drinking cocktails (as opposed to beer) and wearing shoes that cost more than my car payment.

the post title comes from ms. ultimate who says she misses hanging out with the casual crowd without playing frisbee first. so it looks like tonight might be a ‘blow off beach and make trouble’ night. we arent sure what direction this will take yet so if you, our lovely readers, are in a similar boat email us (casualultimate@gmail.com) or post a comment with a suggestion. there will be another official meeting of the C.R.A.F.T. club, our casual ultimate happy hour, a week from tomorrow somewhere in the WP (pronounced ‘dub p’) but tonight maybe include post work frivolity as well so hit us up if youre interested.

Akira wanted me to post more, but I think he just wanted to see more Akira on the blog. So here it is; this boy was very excited about Sandblast, despite his debilitating rib injury. You would think he was on a Hawaiian island with those shorts, but really it was just Montrose beach. I wonder if they have that much glass hidden in the sand in Hawaii.

Team anything-but-M pulled out a win tonight, but it was close. Both lady ultimate and miss casual would have been unhappy to lose to that particular team - lady ultimate did get to hear some fun gossip related to miss manly crazy/hot pink socks, though. We had to cap the game because of the eerily dense fog, which left a few extra minutes for post-game Piece. Miss Cas. finally heard the scoop on mr. “your blog is strangely erotic” - i hope it was worth the wait. as, i hope, was this picture of bikini man. nice visor.

my self esteem is in the gutter after i couldnt find anybody to waste time at estelles with me last night. although ms. ultimate did offer to make me a martini as long as i came to her house wearing pajamas so she wouldnt be underdressed. mike d. sent a cryptic text saying that sparks made him do bad things and he was still recovering. we at C.U. are dying of curiosity so hopefully he’ll make it to piece after summer league tonight.

after work i went to some young architect happy hour thing. no wonder i dont go to those. they are filled with nerds. except rob of course. here he is coming correct with two beers.

and if my cool points are suffering at least i am not offering to do obscene things to earn them like dan baker and evan in this photo from our monday night win at summer league. here are some more photos from sandblast etc.

sorry for the late post but it took me all day yesterday to recover from sandblast…and i didnt even play. and by ‘recover’ i mean ‘eat an absurdly large brunch with the towns and sarah and jason t. and hit the movies with bk’. it was so great to have chuck and sarah in town this weekend. here’s a picture of chuck about to go to work on saturday.

and work they did. briefcase played a sick nasty tournament this weekend with our own ms. ultimate having one of her best tournaments ever (this is a third party opinion from numerous sources). unfortunately she wasnt around for sandburst saturday night becuase she was watching a mariachi band at her parents house. sandburst was awesome. we ate at el cid (heres a pic at right with chuck in his work you dog shirt and sarah throwing us some blue steel) and then chilled at the BR’s with beer and mini kit kat bars. no wonder i love those guys… the talk turned to soccer, moisturizer, and how miss casual needs to marry a mob boss. i already have the pointy toed italian leather heels and big gold hoops so if anybody knows a soprano, hook me up.

akira and cho didnt make it because they were bringing the pain to the official sandblast party. through a C.U. correspondant we got reports of them stumbling home late and not being able to open their front door with either of their keys. (we are working on getting a photo of the offending lock to inspect it’s obviously defective nature.) then cho proceeded to shoot said correspondant using his finger as an imaginary gun. gangsta.

so unfortunately be’ach got upset in the quarters on sunday, possibly because of their a-game tactics at cherry red the night before and briefcase had to watch / play against the speedo team. ick. however we did get the C.U. MHP (most hilarious player) out of that game. Jarrett shaved his number into his back hair and so goes down in history… (does anyone have a pic of this?)

bjorn, who was off filming a doublemint gum ad on saturday night, brought his a-game on sunday where he and becky and their madison team bested briefcase in the finals. it was sad to see briefcase lose but it was nice to have some casual peeps on the winning team. so big ups to bjorn and becky and the volkmans whose divine dinner sunday night made losing a little easier to take.

last night beach was so casual that at one point on the sideline nate knew the score but didn’t know what we were playing to. it was awesome. ms. ultimate was off on date-night (ahem, if we cant gossip about ourselves who’s left?) so i had to hold it down for the blog.

the post title came from cho who said he doesnt want to say anything in front of me anymore for fear of it ending up on the blog but also thinks dan baker is getting too much press from the c.u. i say cho is just jealous and all he has to do is show up to beach drunk more often to regain his c.u. stardom because when he shows up…it’s momentous.

oh and he has to show up to sandburst on saturday night too. all of you do. and if you read the blog but arent on our mailing list yet, email us at casualultimate@gmail.com so you can get invited to all future meetings of the C.R.A.F.T. club.

This morning I threw a shoe at a wisecracking coworker, and it disappeared. I think he took it; won’t give it back. So now I only have one shoe. It’s only 8:30. Damn.

its like homecoming this week. becky rolled into town and it made our win last night against billy’s team at summer league that much better to roll up to piece after and drink von awesome with becky. unfortunately this is not the car we rolled up in. look at the rims on that impala! theyre up to my hip. granted im short but still…i expected this in the ATL but not the peoples republic of wicker park.

beach tonight should be good. its great weather, becky’s gonna bring her dirty south stylo out to north ave, and i think ive recovered finally from my car key fiasco. oh and nothing quite so dramatic as a stabbing last night but if you guys aren’t going to do stupid dangerous things for us to post about im going to have to start making them up. holla at a playa.

heres some more pics from last night…baker with his game face on, our pizza, our waitress who tried to remain aloof while sporting a white napkin like headband. miss casual has a tip for ya darlin…its hard to pull off pouty teen angst when you look like frickin karate kid.

ben wallace is coming to chicago and you can bet miss casual will have the first bulls jersey with his name on it that she can lay her hands on.

this is also a pretty decent depiction of my mood last night when i realized that i had locked my keys in the car…while it was in the middle of the street in front of sally’s house…with the engine running. good times.

thankfully the rest of the weekend was awesome. my mother (mrs. town) made an italian feast that i am still daydreaming about. plus i went to the zoo with rick, tony and carlo and rode the merry-go-round… and they did too. i am hoping theyll send me the photos but somehow i think they wont want them to get out. they were nervous enough standing in line.

the zoo brought up the discussion of what would be the ideal job for someone you are seeing. tony’s new lady is a zookeeper, hence our field trip. i came up with pastry chef as an optimal occupation and rick told me i need to track down a chicago fire player.

and in case you havent heard (but im sure you have) party at t&c’s on saturday night. get your most casual outfit together and head on over. and people…come on. do something stupid / dangerous so we can post about it.