Bus-ted in Croatia

Okay, so I know I haven't posted for over a week, but I seriously have a legitimate excuse this time. Last week, about this time, I started getting some weird system slowdown and lockups. Then on Thursday, after running some diagnostics, my laptop absolutely refused to boot up at all and instead gave me a really pretty blue screen that said "Unmountable boot sector." The next day I took it to Best Buy (because it was still under the service plan, sucka) and my suspicions were confirmed: the hard drive had committed hari-kari.

Got it replaced at no charge and was presented with a completely fresh system. I've spent the last few days trying to get it back up to snuff. Fortunately, this happened to Josh in the spring, which freaked me out enough to make me buy an external hard drive, so I didn't lose anything TOO vital. (All episodes of Firefly are safe, thank God.) But it's a hassle getting everything back the way I like it, especially with a network that's still super-sketchy.

So I didn't post because my computer was broke! There! Does that satisfy you?! Freaking jackals.

I'll tell a fun story to make up for it. It even involves a movie moment. How's that?

Tonight I took a trip downtown to the Chicago Cultural Center, because I need some freaking culture in my life, that's for sure. I saw on the front page of the Chicago Reader that there was going to be an academic panel discussion on "The Simpsons: Cultural Criticism and America's Favorite TV Family." Sounded kind of fun and I couldn't think of any better way to honor the day of The Meez's birth, so I tromped down there.

What the Chicago Cultural Center failed to take into account is that a listing on the front page of the Reader might increase your audience to something quite a bit larger than a normal academic lecture might bring in. By the time I got there (admittedly a little late), the room was overflowing. People were sitting on the floor, for goodness sakes. I realized there was no way I was going to experience any significant part of this lecture.

Altogether now...

"D'oh!"

But fear not, loyal readers. This story has a happy ending. Allow me to briefly describe the architecture of the Chicago Cultural Center. It's um...really really pretty and cool. Arches and domes everywhere, big stone staircases, just general awesomeness.

So I'm on the first floor, bummed about screwing up the cool lecture, when all of a sudden I hear something heavenly floating down from above. This is the movie moment, when I slightly cock my head and think "Where's that music coming from? It's...it's beautiful!"

I walk up three flights of stairs and come upon the atrium pictured in the second image I linked to up there. There, doing their sound-check for a concert later that evening, is...get this...an all-male acapella group from Croatia. Their name is Klapa Sinj, and they are amazing. About twelve of them there, I think. The basses rattled your skull and the counter-tenors lifted your soul into the dome of the atrium, which, by the way, had amazing acoustics. Basically, Mrs. Bear would have peed her pants if she had been there. So I grabbed some quick dinner and came back in time for a fantastic concert.

Chicago Cultural Center...if you're a place where a guy can completely fail to go to the free event he intended and still find a free event that is possibly even cooler, than you're all right with me.


P.S. I know, that movie moment would have been much better if I had met my soulmate at the concert or maybe just gotten really good at chess all of a sudden, but I take what I can get.

P.P.S. I only reference chess because I recently watched Searching for Bobby Fischer. That's a great movie that, for no good reason, has a ridiculous all-star cast. Joe Mantegna and Joan Allen are the parents, Ben Kingsley and Laurence Fishburne are the chess mentors, William H. Macy is a chess dad that shows up a couple times, Laura Linney is a teacher who has ONE SCENE, and Tony Shalhoub is a random guy at the chess club who says maybe three lines. Explain that.