Holidays Downtown with Grandma B

Macy’s holiday windows Makai was getting annoyed by the filter. LOL

Chicago’s Bronze Cow We walked around the block so we could see Chicago’s Christmas tree and passed by the bronze cow statue.

Twas the Night Before at Chicago Theatre Makai and I saw this show with Liz and Konrad in 2019, but years had passed and Makai didn’t even remember. I remembered, but I also enjoyed it enough that I liked seeing it again.

JoJo’s Shake Bar! The show was in the morning, so afterwards we went to JoJo’s for lunch. In the winter they still have shakes, but also have a bunch of crazy hot chocolate drinks!

John Legend & Corinne Bailey Ray at the Chicago Theatre

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Chicago Theatre Marquee, The Loop, Chicago

Last Friday we went to see Corinne Bailey Rae and John Legend at the Chicago Theatre. Before going we weren’t sure where to go eat that was nearby, so we went to South Water Kitchen. It was alright. Overpriced, we thought. The show was really great, though. Even better than I’d expected, and I was really excited and expecting a lot!

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Corinne Bailey Rae, Chicago Theatre, The Loop, Chicago

Here are some thoughts I took note of when we got home:

  • In between visits to the Chicago Theatre, I always forget how beautiful it is. Gorgeous.
  • I was using the bathroom before the show and all the girls were all a twitter. I heard them saying that they hadn’t slept the night before and that they couldn’t even believe they were there. That’s how charged up and excited the crowd was.
  • Our seats were fabulous. On the Mezzanine level, in the front, section K seats 1&2.
  • Corinne Bailey Rae is adorable. Cute hair, cute little dress, cute shoes.
  • When Corinne went on everyone was still walking around and filing into the theater on the ground floor. it was really distracting and made it harder to concentrate on her performance. I mean, I guess she was the opening act, but still.. I really wanted to hear her and let her have my full attention and it was hard to do that.
  • At the end of her set everyone was cheering like crazy and she seemed very gracious and very humble.
  • When Corinne sang, the audience was excited, but not like “stand on your feet and go crazy” excited. John Legend, on the other hand, worked the crowd like crazy. We were only seated for his first song before everyone was up on their feet dancing, singing, and screaming. I was kind of surprised, since when we listen to his music at home it’s kind of mellow. It definitely made things more exciting, though.

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John Legend, Chicago Theatre, The Loop, Chicago

  • The 3 women behind us were hysterical. Not like “funny” hysterical, but more like in hysterics. It made me scream 50% more.
  • When John came out he was dressed really nice. A vest, a dress shirt, black pants, and some Chuck Taylors. Early on he took his vest off and I said “Whoooo!!! Take off mooore!!!” Dallas said “Simmer Down!”
  • At the end of the song “Slow Dance” John was dancing all around and said something about how there were plenty of beautiful single women in Chicago and there he was up on stage dancing alone. You could tell he was hinting that he was going to take a girl up on stage to dance with him. Well, the women started running down the aisles towards the stage! One was picked to go up on stage and all the ladies were screaming. Especially when she took John’s shirt off and he was stripped down to his white tank top. At another point he went down into the audience.. I didn’t think he was going to make it out.
  • For some songs John sat at the piano and played. For some songs he danced around the stage.
  • John’s backup singers made me giggle. They had all the old-school synchronized dancing moves.
  • One of my favorite songs is “Number One.” I love the melody and tune and it’s just a really fun song, even though the lyrics are horrible and about cheating and lying. The opening lyrics are “You can’t say that I don’t love you just because I cheat on you.” So I think you catch the drift. On the album version of the song Kanye raps for a time and we were thinking he might show up at the show because he’s from Chicago, but he didn’t, but it didn’t matter really. The song was still fun and the show was still great.
  • The last song of John’s set was “Coming Home.” He said that they’ve gotten a bunch of letters from the people fighting the war and their families who have said the song has really meant a lot to them. The performance of the song was really chill. John at the piano and in the background they showed great big photographs of soldiers and families. In the moment it was really moving. Maybe it was the wine, but I cried through the whole song.
  • During the encore John talked about his travels to Ghana and the poverty there. Before singing the song “Show Me” he talked about the “Show Me Foundation” that he’s set up to help the people of Ghana. He talked about how for just like $10 or $20 you could buy a whole family beds or something really crazy like that.
  • Finally, this is in regard to both Corinne and John, their voices were just as beautiful and clear and soulful as on any recording I’ve heard. You know, sometimes people have great voices on the records and then you hear them live and it’s not good. Not the case here.

The photos and videos here are not great, obviously, and they’re more for my personal memories, I guess, than any display of photographic or videography skill. At least the videos below still sound good:

John Legend & Corinne Bailey Rae

2007_02_corinnebaileyrae.jpgBefore her 2007 Grammy performance with John Legend and John Mayer, I’d heard of Corinne Bailey Rae and heard just little bits of her music, but I didn’t really pay attention. After that performance (watch it here), I got her album and have been listening to it a ton. I love it. Just try to tell me that this is not a catchy-ass song.

Rewind a couple years. I was sitting in my home office when I lived in East Ukrainian Village and I had the TV on the VH1 Countdown for some background noise. A song came on and it immediately caught my attention. The lyrics and melody and style were so simple and honest and maybe it just struck me at that point I was at in my life at the time, but I really was fighting tears right there. The artist was John Legend. The song? Ordinary People (watch John Legend’s 2006 Grammy performance of Ordinary People here). I remember I bought the song on the iTunes music store right away and then I had Dallas get me the album. It took a while, but we both started listening to it and loving it. John Legend quickly became a 2007_02_johnlegend.jpgfavorite of ours. We sing his songs around the house, to each other, under our breath when we’re not paying attention, on the train on our iPods. When his second album came out we got it right away. We’ve also seen his live performance at Royal Albert Hall in London at least twice on TV (you can view clips of it here).

Fast forward back to present day. Last week I got a Jam Productions email that John Legend and Corinne Bailey Rae were going to be performing together at the Chicago Theater on April 13. !!! Last week Saturday Dallas and I were sort of hungover but not so much so that I couldn’t get up, get my laptop and my credit card and get back in bed to order tickets when they went on sale. So excited! And, I was wondering if, since John Legend and Kanye West are buddies and have worked together a lot and because Kanye sings on John Legend’s song Number One …. we were wondering if, since Kanye is from Chicago… maybe he’d make an appearance? That would be awesome. He showed up for that show in London (see it here) and the crowd went crazy. That would be the icing on the already sweet sweet cake.

David Sedaris @ the Chicago Theatre

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David Sedaris, Chicago Theatre, The Loop, Chicago

David Sedaris
David Sedaris, Chicago Theatre, The Loop, Chicago

Back in the beginning of June we got tickets for David Sedaris and the show was finally last night at the Chicago Theatre. When he came out I didn’t recognize him by sight, even though I’ve seen photographs of him, but his voice was so familiar from an mp3 of “David Sedaris Live at Carnegie Hall” that I have. It was kind of strange.

David told two stories, one about relationships and one about his brother. He also read some entries from his diary, did some promos and then had a question and answer session. Every tour he promotes a book and a “thing”. The book that he wanted everyone to read is called The Columnist and was written by Jeffrey Frank. There were actually two things he was promoting. The first: The country of Germany. The second, monkeys from Helping Hands, “a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for quadriplegic individuals by training capuchin monkeys to assist them with daily activities.”

Of course the entire show was hysterical. If you’re a fan of his writing, or even if you aren’t, I think you’d have a great time.

Shopping for Riley’s Baptism

Chicago Theater Marquee Changing
Chicago Theater, The Loop, Chicago

I passed by the Chicago Theater on Thursday night as I was shopping for a gift for Riley for her baptism tomorrow. The workers there were changing the letters on the marquee and it was kind of fun to watch them stand in piles of letters reading what should be spelled out on the sign.

Today was freeeeezing outside. I still wore my denim jacket but also wore gloves and was still cold. I shopped for hours for an outfit to wear tomorrow. I don’t know why I’ve been stressing out about it so much. I guess because I don’t have a ton of clothes for the fall right now. I have summer clothes and winter clothes but not a lot for in between and not a lot that I would feel comfortable standing up in front of an audience in, since I am one of Riley’s sponsors. I ended paying way too much for a skirt that I really love and have vowed to wear it every week to justify its price. I hope everyone likes black and white tweed because you’re going to be seeing a lot of it!

If you want to read more on Nancy & Josh’s adventures getting Riley in Guatemala click on any of the links in this sentence.