The Ultimate Grudge Match: New York Vs. Chicago, Part 1

I'm at my ancestral home in Chicago this week, so I've been comparing my two beloved cities.


Part One
TALK SHOWS

New York: The Tyra Banks Show
Chicago: The Oprah Winfrey Show
Winner: Chicago

Rude People

New York: If watching screaming matches in a plethora of public places (subways, stores, buses, restaurants, places of worship, you name it) is your idea of a good time, New York is the place for you. I'm pretty chill, but I must admit that I once forecefully ground my backpack into a woman who was annoying me, as my cousin repeatedly sneezed on her.

Chicago: N/A, people are pretty nice. And not fake nice like Utah (where people greet you with a smile and a wave while trying to road rage your car off the freeway). For that reason, I was surprised the other day when a woman stopped her car, opened the window and started yelling at my dad. Of course, I started laughing like crazy (if you know me, you know that my laugh how a similar decibel level to a spaceship lifting off), and she became so angry that she drove away with one hand on the steering wheel and one out the window lovingly displaying her middle finger. I texted my Brooklyn-born friend, "We just got in a verbal altercation with another car. It made me think of you." She responded, "LOL, awwwwww."

Winner: I love fights (see catfight story), so I'm going to have to say New York.

PIZZA

It must be noted that Wikipedia slacked off and used the same picture for both entries:




New York-style pizza originated in New York City in the early 1900s; it is wide, thin and foldable . The traditional toppings were limited to tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese, with any additional toppings placed with the cheese. It is traditionally hand-tossed and light on sauce. The slices are often eaten as a 'street snack' while folded in half, as its size and flexibility sometimes makes it unwieldy to eat flat.

The most notable difference between New York style and other American pizzas is its thin hand-tossed crust, made from a high-gluten bread flour. The flavor of the crust has sometimes been attributed to the minerals present in the New York City tap water used to make the dough.[1] Some out-of-state pizza makers even transport the water cross-country for the sake of authenticity.[2][3]

Chicago-style pizza is a deep-dish pizza style developed in Chicago. Chicago-style pizza has a buttery crust up to three inches tall at the edge, slightly higher than the large amounts of cheese and chunky tomato sauce, acting as a large bowl. The term also refers to "stuffed" pizza, another Chicago style. While in Chicago most pizzerias serve thin-crust pizza, generally in a style characteristic to the city, the term Chicago-style pizza is used to describe this deep-dish style of pizza

Winner: Draw, I like both.

ROUND ONE: A TIE

In Which Miss Jill Hopes That This Car Doesn't Belong to a Surgeon

Car in the parking lot of Northwestern Medical Center:



In case you can't read this from the glare, it says FAIL.

The Q Train Horror

Here is a word to the wise-if you are carrying a book about the Middle East, hot guys will randomly start talking to you. This has happened to me a total of four times. Unfortunately, not so much with books written in Spanish. On Friday I was reading a book on the subway and this is a loose translation of what went down:

Man With Missing Tooth: What is that book about?
Miss Jill: Chile Tries to read
Man With Missing Tooth: Oh, I like when things are based on a true story. Like that horror movie... hmmm.. the one about Long Island.
Miss Jill: The Amityville Horror?
Man With Missing Tooth: Yes!
Miss Jill: That was true?
Man With Missing Tooth: Yes, people see ghosts all the time.
Miss Jill: Do you?
Man With Missing Tooth: Yes, there is one in my house. The obese neighbor died and no one found him for 14 days. He was so heavy that as they dragged his corpse down the stairs, his head hit each step. Now I always see him when I am cooking. My cousin digs up corpses for his job.
Miss Jill: Interesting. Tries to read
Man With Missing Tooth: My brother died in my arms next to the freeway.
Miss Jill: This is my stop. Have a good day.

In Which Miss Jill Benefits From A First Class Catfight

I’m at the airport right now because I’m going to Chicago for Spring Break. My landlady/friend/secretary from school and I encountered various obstacles on the way to the airport, including an arduous showdown with the Korean dry cleaning woman, an Uzbek girl with a fist full of cash and hundreds of bottlenecking Brooklynites. It was a fiasco of international proportions.

When I finally got to the airport, they informed me that it was too late to board with my luggage. I asked if my luggage could take the next plane, but I was denied because the employee said that safety regulations required that it stay with me (??????) The last time that I missed a flight was in Managua when the rental car employees didn’t come to work, so we missed our flight while waiting to return the keys.

I waited sadly in line until I finally found myself facing an employee sporting neon blue eye decals. She shook her head as her acrylics gracefully tapped the computer keyboard. She eyed the tiny bag in my hand and said, “If you can move everything from your suitcase into your carryon bag, we can still get you on this flight.” My carry on was big enough to fit two books and my laptop. I am not a light packer. I stared at her incredulously as she slowly became enraged by my lack of cooperation. “If you don’t do it, you can’t go. “ “It’s impossible,” I replied. She sighed, “Someone else gots to be dealing with you, cuz it be break time.”

“Uhhhhh…”

“Maybe we can get you on at 4:45, but probably not. You can’t afford to go tomorrow, so it will have to be Monday.”

Although she was correct, I’m not sure how she could so confidently gauge my financial situation, especially since, like all of my arch nemesis, she was wearing drug store press on nails (not that I am above this-I recognized them for a reason-but at least I never choose the beach scene ones). She said something undecipherable and the employee next to her interjected, “That ain’t the airline policy.” What proceeded went something like this:
“How you be tellin’ me no airport policy. I have four years experience in the industry.”
“I have five. You don’t know nothing about nothing. You seen how I be treating the customers.”

Stands up and starts gesticulating wildly. “Excuse me? Don’t you be disrespecting me-that’s unprofessional, as far as I’s (not sure how to spell this) concerned.”
With rapidly increasing volume, “Don’t you be disrespecting me and my experience in the industry.”

“I be treating customers right, and it’s my break time. Nobody talks to me like this, believe me, nobody.”

I just wanted to go home and suddenly lost control and started crying from frustration. At this point in my life I only cry two or three times a year, so all of those pent up emotions can get rather loud. It must have been an illuminating scene for the passengers behind me: two out of three of the workers were engaged in a loud screaming match, as a mysterious, yet intriguing, blond woman was sobbing loudly. Another employee ran up and tried to break them up, to no avail. From time to time, one of them would turn to me and punctuate their argument with, “Now, don’t you be cryin’.” I tried futilely to stop, because I was pretty sure that I was about to see a deweaving ©, but I couldn’t.

The remaining worker, John I., paused from booking a last minute flight to Tel Aviv for two women in furs and gestured that I come over. He asked, “Aisle or window?”

“Window,” I wailed. “I’m sorry that I’m hysterical.”

“They shouldn’t be yelling like that. Here is your ticket.” I glanced down. 2D, First Class.

In Which Miss Jill Identifies How Cool You Are in an Act of Regional Intolerance

When I was at BYU my Sarah Palin (ok this was before her political "ascent," but I'm trying to give you an idea) accent would often prompt people to ask me about my state of origin. I always proudly boasted Chicago, even though I'm actually from a suburb. Hey, it's an attitude, not a zip code. The more time I spent at BYU, the more it became obvious that not all answers to the question, "Where are you from?" were created equal and you could gauge the cool factor of your hometown from people's reactions.

Ok, I'm sure that I will be totally off on some of these (I'm not generally the voice of the people), but I'm going to attempt to create a rating scale. Sorry if you are unfamiliar with Utah or BYU, scroll down to other fine reading material. Now I would like to point out that this is not reflective of what I think is cool, just my observations of what impresses upper-middle class religious people of strictly Western European descent.

Uncool
Scale
0- Small towns in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
1- Utah Valley or small towns in Arizona, Colorado, Oregon or Washington.
2- Salt Lake Valley and cities like Boise (ok, this is actually my judgment, because I hate when Utahns hate on Idahoans).
3- Texas- Nothing intrinsically uncool, except for your Texas flag hanging in the window of your D.T. dorm room and randomly breaking out into "Deep In the Heart of Texas" (you know who you are).
4- California- Actually a cool place to be from, but you cancel it out by wearing flip flops and a Hawaiian shirt during the Christmas season.
5- South- Especially if you suddenly develop a strong twang that you never actually had when you lived in the South.
6- New England States- No one can deny the popularity of Gilmore Girls in this demographic.
7- Boston and Chicago- Sounds cool even if you went home from school and watched Saved By The Bell reruns all day just like everyone else. Also, anything that sounds even slightly ghetto or edgy.
8- Native of a foreign country besides Mexico.* Plus ten points if you come in contact with anyone who served a mission in said country or did a study abroad program there.
9- Manhattan, Brooklyn or London-WASP Meccas
10- You are the typical upper-middle class white kid, but were raised in Kenya, Argentina or Dubai or some other exotic locale.
Cool
* With Polynesians it depends on how Groeberg the crowd is.

Another contentious regional issue from the freshman dorms was the quandary of what to call someone's pants being ripped off of them in a random humiliating attack. The argument became so heated that I called everyone in the church directory and asked them for their opinion. The main battle was between pantsed and depantsed, but also nominated were hoedowned and shanked. Opinions on any and all of these topics are welcome. The scaled is in rough draft form at this point.

The Downfalls of Turklish

A few of the windows at our school face people's homes and one of the inhabitants is this weird man who drops f bombs quite regularly. A while ago I was sitting near the school entrance and he came in screaming, "They kicked my dog! They kicked my dog!" I just sat there laughing as the administration psychologically tranquilized him.

Later, I discussed this incident with the school secretary and she said that the man had accused the students of throwing random items onto his lawn. "We could reasonably deny most of it," she told me. "But then he produced a Turkish/English dictionary."

In Which The U Penn Bookstore Gets Revenge on the Turkish Girls

Ok, I must admit that the blog is being sacrificed on the altar of an hour and a half extra sleep. I kind of miss the B Train regulars-300 lb black guy with a tiny bike, that's you, but my life outlook has improved quite a bit.

Today we (the Turkish School) paid a college exploratory visit to the University of Pennsylvania. I had already been to Yale and the University of Connecticut and this tour guide was the least annoying by like a million percent. The Yale tour guide was this nerdy girl who was trying to look cool by telling us that she wrote a Twilight/Harry Potter hybrid. She was so socially retarded that every time she told a "joke," the kids looked at me, because I have not yet mastered my facial expressions in adverse circumstances.

Sorry, I digress. While we were browsing at the bookstore, two ninth graders approached me with large cappuccinos (I think they were cappuccinos, discerning types of coffee is not a skill that most Mormons have honed and I admit that I had to run that word through spell check) from the U Penn bookstore. The girls excitedly begged me to come to a corner of the store that featured a promotional Wheel of Fortune game. Most of the spaces had prizes like 15% off Penn gear or 10% off bookstore items. Not that useful. However, two of them said, "Free Hot Drink," which would mean that the odds of landing on "Free Hot Drink" were not overwhelming. I spun, landed on "Free Hot Drink" and got a large hot chocolate (if I were footing the bill, it would be, without exception, the smallest one).

I was so excited that I told every Turkish girl in sight to go play the wheel. We kept recruiting new players and time after time, they landed on "Free Hot Drink." We cheered, high fived and embraced, as the U Penn Starbucks continued pouring complimentary large drinks for people who would probably never return.

During our last round of victories, the employee sternly admonished, "You guys can't keep coming back here." I countered with righteous indignation, "No one has spun it twice." She answered me with an icy death glare (I don't know why a minimum wage employee would care if Turkish teens were getting dozens of free gourmet coffees).

Our victory was short lived, however, because we soon found ourselves in a two-hour information meeting sponsored by the admissions department. After about 45 minutes, I began receiving an avalanche of texts like this one-
Miss, I have 2 go 2 bathrom sooooooooooooooo bad. wat do I do?

In Which Miss Jill Discusses The Benefits of Having Parents Who Don't Speak English Very Well

Think about how cool it would be if you were the lense through which your parents saw everything. Say your teacher sends home a note, complaining about your classroom behavior. You could pretend to be reading a field trip permission slip form or a notice about the school cafeteria procedures. Obviously, I'm not insinuating that immigrant parents are dumb (after all, I'm an immigrant offspring-Viva Mexico!), just that the language barrier can have a silver lining.

Some examples:

* "Miss, I don't understand. This D, is bad or good?"
and
* On the eve of parent/teacher conferences, the teacher is thrilled to finally rat out "Little Jimmy." Teaching Little Jimmy is a human rights violation. As the blessed day arrives, Little Jimmy's father comes into the room with Little Jimmy. "Uhhhh....," says our heroine, "Little Jimmy needs to go in the hall." Unfortunately, Little Jimmy is the interpreter for the evening.

In Which the Sorting Hat Places Miss Jill In Slytherin

I am awake right now (3:30 a.m.) because I woke up from a horrifying nightmare in which I overheard my parents talking about how my dad was employed by Lord Voldemort. My little sister Ash and I read book 7 in one sitting (our family was kind enough to set up a picnic around us as we read on), but I didn't realize that it still had so much power over me.

The Fall of the Ottoman Empire, Part 2

Some of the twelfth graders at our school suffer from extremely premature senioritis-to the point that I only see some of them on a bimonthly basis. It was such a beautiful day today that I took the class to Dunkin Donuts because I had them for a double period right before lunch. As we were walking there, one of the students, let's call him Matthew*, said, "Oh, 'Jimmy' and 'Johnny' are meeting us there." Jimmy and Johnny were students in the class who hadn't shown up to school yet.

We got to Dunkin Donuts and Jimmy and Johnny confidently strode through the door. Then Jimmy stepped back for a second, in shock, when he realized that the entire class was there. He said, "Whoa, I was not expecting entire class. Matthew call me and I thought he wanted to meet here to eat before school." Before school apparently equals 12:15 p.m.

* Names not reflective of actual culture of students.

Justice, Brooklyn Style

I went to the fruit market in Brooklyn with my landlady/co-worker and was shocked when I only spent $20.00 and brought home five bags of groceries. This is impossible in Manhattan, unless you are buying unwieldy items from the dollar store.

These independent markets can't afford high-tech security, so they have taken matters into their own hands.

These are pictures of people who have been caught shoplifting:


This store had a huge collage, but my RAZR phone skills leave something to be desired, so this won't help you keep on the lookout for potential thieves:


This is unrelated, but I really liked this license plate. "Holla" has a special place in my heart, since I realized that it was a greeting, and not just people spelling "Hola" incorrectly.

Six Degrees of Separation from Miss Jill

1993, Canton Middle School

Random Girl: You look just like Jennifer from Family Ties but way uglier.

Jennifer is the blond daughter:



2010, Brooklyn, New York

8th Grader: Have you seen the singer Cascada? She looks like you, but way hotter! We are all talking about it.



Uhhh... I feel like you could say that any celebrity with your coloring looks like you, but hotter. What celebrities do you get?

In Which Miss Jill Realizes That Sometimes The Thing That You Are Looking For is Right There in Front of You

This morning I was reading one of my favorite books, The House of the Spirits and it describes an eccentric bachelor uncle. Said uncle travels around the world and has a monkey and an organ grinder. It seems like the kooky relative is a stock character that reappears from time to time. While I was walking to church, I started wishing that my family had a consummate single, oddball person who traveled around and told weird stories. It seemed so cool. And then I realized that someone in my family already fit that description:

In Which Miss Jill's Psychosis Is Explained By The Power of Numbers

Since I discovered my secret powers (everything I draw comes to pass), I’ve had to become more open minded about alternative philosophies. For this reason, I was intrigued when my friend told me about a numerology book that she had read that was stunningly accurate.
This is it:



I had a leftover gift card from my birthday, so I decided that it was worth looking into. Some key things that it said about me:

• Boredom is your personal Hell. You are an experience junkie who loves packing everything up, moving and making a whole new set of friends. Editorial note: I was telling my co-worker this one and she said, “Everyone is like this.” Let's be honest-since I graduated from college in 2004 I have lived in Sandy, Utah, San Pedro Sula, Honduras, Mesa, Arizona, Manhattan, New York and Brooklyn, New York. I'm strongly considering moving to Santiago, Chile after another school year here, which I thought was psycho until I read my numerology and realized that it was my destiny.

• With their quick minds, they see and describe life in new ways. Clever, witty and fun loving, they make the ordinary into something extraordinary. I guess you guys can be the judge of this one.

• You may find yourself dependent on others as a result of a financial setback (thanks, Dad).

• You tend to trade security for adventure.

I have to add that an astrology book my co-worker had said that people born the week that I was are unlikely to find life partners before the age of 30. Luckily I only have eleven more months.

My friends had similar eerily accurate results. If you would like me to run your birthday, leave it in the comments section and I will give you a synopsis.

In Which Miss Jill Shares Hard Earned Economic Advice Part 3

One year my sister and I returned to Provo, Utah for school after spending the summer at our parent’s house in Chicago. We were really depressed to be back (if you went to BYU, you can probably identify with this), and somehow talked our dad into getting us a posh hotel room in downtown Salt Lake so that we could get out of there.

As we were eating breakfast in the hotel restaurant, two women who appeared to be sisters sat down at a table nearby. The both appeared to be very affluent and were sporting huge rocks. My sister took one look at them and said, “We need to make a goal today-someday that will be us.” I’m pleased to report that that goal has been halfway fulfilled-apparently I am the late bloomer in the trophy wife department. The nineteen-year-old model (NYOM) called my sister to ask her for some tips on becoming a trophy wife and she advised, “Just be really hot.” I have too big of a time commitment to Turkish kids/Netflix foreign films/pushing refresh on Facebook status updates to bring that to fruition.

However, some of my friends are more ambitious. A showbiz bff of mine answered a Craigslist ad for a matchmaking service that links millionaires with hot young actresses/models. When she arrived, they interviewed her briefly and then showed her a book featuring pictures and profiles of the bachelors. She chose a few and as she was leaving, she ran into the NYOM coming in. Her verdict after a few millionaire dates: “I was only doing it for the free food and I just scored tons of free food from a show I was in, so there really isn’t a point.”

In Which Miss Jill Peeks Onto the Front Lines Of the Global War Against Obesity

A while ago, an acquaintance moved for his work, but no one knew what he was doing. Whenever we asked, he replied something along the lines of, “We are doing a great and marvelous work. Lives are changing all around us. It is the most powerful experience of my life.”

Everyone wondered what wonderful, life changing work he had embarked upon, and he was always very vague with the details. I thought that he was helping orphans or lepers or something. Finally, through an ingenious manipulation of MSN Messenger (and pretending that I was someone else), I got him to admit that he was a salesman for a diet drug company-I can’t remember if it was HerbalLife or Metabolife. One day I hope to engage in such altruistic work.

In Which You Will Be Happy if Yugo With Movers

My blogging schedule is a little off kilter, because I'm used to having an hour and a half to do it every morning on the train.

So I got tired of worrying about moving, so I decided to hire movers so I could just put it all behind me. I didn't realize that I hadn't just hired movers, I had hired lifelong friends. The were all Serbian and here are some interesting tidbits:

Imagine late nineties pop music in the background of this conversation. I liked this, because it is the only popular music that I know (as those were my glory days).

* "Most of the movers are Serbian and only three did not go to college. We make fun of them and say, 'You never make it in this company since you have no education. Hahaha.' To be honest, better to be a mover than an engineer."

* "We remember the communist days well, because they were the best times of our lives. Everyone have food, everyone have easy job. Then they ruined it! (Mr. Gorbachev, put back this wall?)"

* "In America, all Yugoslavians are friends. No one worry about Serb, or Bosnian or Muslim. To be honest, you can't even tell the difference. Young people never support war anyway."

* "Why are you moving, if you don't paying rent? That very dumb. You should stay and send landlord bill for your food."

* "Girl who date older men for their money, this is prostitution, no?" Ok, maybe I told them a little about my life.