The Singing Cab Driver

Wow. Talk about a quality day. Jake and are on day 2 of our Chicago trip. We started off our day by sleeping in (yay! that's a rarity) and then going to a very nice Sunday brunch at one of Chicago's best restaurants: NoMI. We had an awesome view of downtown and the lake. The bread pudding was to die for. If you're ever in Chicago you must dine at NoMI; the service and food were superb. After brunch we ran by the American Girl Place to pick up gift for my niece, Sydney. I can't wait to mail it to her; she'll be totally surprised.

After we dropped off Sydney's gift at our condo, we grabbed a cab and visited the galleries at the Art Institute of Chicago... incredible. I throughly enjoyed myself. We started off at the photography gallery of course. We saw two awesome photog exhibits: the first one called Girls on the Verge, a collection of portraits of young girls going through their adolescent years and all the things they experience. The second was a collection of black and whites called The Other Side of Light that featured objects and the shadows they cast. You can do some really interesting and creative things with shadows if you plan well. I was so inspired. We then grabbed an audio tour guide/headset which was GREAT as it drowned out all the noisy people an kids. We viewed some modern and contemporary art, lots of my favorite artists including Mondrian, Dali, and Picasso. However, my new FAVORITE artist is a man by the name of Jasper Johns. Talk about cool art work. Each painting is so thought out, yet extremely abstract, tho every brush stroke is planned. All his painting are done in series and drafts and they all involve VERY simple concepts (which I love!). He uses a lot of numbers, letters, U.S. states, and American flags. You must check out some of his work. I would kill to have a piece of his art in my home.

The icing on today was our cab ride home. We got THE craziest cab driver. I told him how friendly he was and complimented him on his glasses, to which his response was, "Well, did you know I'm also a singing cab driver?" That introduced the FUNNIEST song I have ever heard. Apparently this guy is very famous. He's been featured on the Today Show (my favorite) and CNN. He offered a variety of song subjects: love, sex, social significance, or dream. At the top of his lungs he sang a song on heterosexuality. Hilarious. I cried. It takes a lot to make René cry. Full on mascara down the face. What a day... He totally made it. I asked him to let me video tape him so I could show my friends and to be P.C. I chose a "social significance" song (hoping it would be funny, yet not too inappropriate). You gotta watch the video and check out his MySpace page.

Anywho, thats it for now. We're off to the gym and then we're going to cook some chicken and asparagus for dinner. Yum!