Results tagged “love”

                     

We love Autumn. Sweet apple cider, do we love it. The beautiful colors, the newly crisp air, the seasonal food and drinks, and the knowledge that holidays with our families are just around the corner. Before winter's harsh cold and snow storms trap us in our houses for days on end, we thought we'd list some of the reasons we love autumn and include some amazing reader photos submitted to our Flickr pool. Check out our reasons after the jump and be sure to add your favorite fall things in the comments.

          

This Friday saw the latest edition of the always interesting monthly Critical Mass bike ride, but this one was a bit more special because there was love in the air.

We thought we were going to make it through the week without anything cringe-inducing but unfortunately Drew Peterson had other plans. In an interview with WBBM's Steve Miller, Peterson described the extended family with fiance Christina Raines as "harmonious bliss." Peterson hasn't filed for divorce from dead missing wife Stacy yet so he hasn't set a wedding date for future ex-wife #5. When asked if Raines was confident Peterson was innocent of any wrongdoing in the death of ex-wife Kathleen Savio and the disappearance of current wife Stacy, Drew said no.

Humanity could learn a lot from this video...

     

Things got a little cranky around here yesterday (as well as in the Chicagoist Office) so we decided to share a little love on this beautiful autumn Saturday.

Artist Jaclyn Pryor is taking her factory-of-love show on the road with Pink On Tour, a project that delivers love letters. "pink: a (love) courier service is both a real life courier service & a site specific art installation," according to Pryor's website. Anyone whose heart is bursting can stop by the temporary studio at St. Paul's Cultural Center (2215 W. North Avenue) between 11am and 10pm, today through August 15, and write a love letter. Pink couriers will help you bottle it and then will deliver it by bike to your beloved. Awww. [Apartment Therapy]

Balthazar de Ley has been putting out consistently great music since starting up Menthol during his college days in downstate Illinois. His songwriting took root in the slab-like guitar college-rock that typified the Champaign-Urbana sound in the early '90s, but later in the decade we discovered his incredibly deft hand when it came to constructing a pop tune. Menthol's final album remains one of our favorite releases of all time, so when we heard de Ley had decided to soldier on with a different band, under the moniker La Scala, we were rather excited to hear the results.

We're pretty tough on love and Valentine's Day around the office, but we're not completely embittered. If you're got a secret crush, today might just be the appropriate day to let them know how you feel in an unconventional way. Here's some inspiration.

Valentine's Day is nothing but a pre-fab holiday designed to get consumers to spend money on crap for each other ... especially if you're single. Instead of battling the hordes for a good table at a restaurant this evening, why not just order out from Art of Pizza, rent a movie and enjoy a few hours of twisted romance with one of these:

At the risk of feeding the hype machine, we still have to offer a congratulations to Mr. Kanye West for pulling in some Grammy gold last night. While we still don't buy the Grammys as an accurate barometer of the music industry and what's actually, you know, good in music these days, it's still the industry's main award show so there's something to be said for coming away with multiple trophies. While the night's big winner was Amy Winehouse, Kanye still managed to pull in four awards, as well as one of the night's most memorable acceptance speeches (surprise!) when he gave producers the verbal smack-down for trying to run him off in the middle of a tribute to his mother.

If your Valentine has a sweet tooth and you're looking for something special to make for him or her on the big day, this chocolate-dipped shortbread may be just the thing. These cookies only have six ingredients, all of which we had in our kitchen already. Score! Love it when that happens.

Love him or hate him, you can't deny Kanye West has a certain flare. Proving himself to a more prolific blogger than Steve Johnson (and more entertaining, too), Kanye has dropped a few details about an upcoming tour. He'll be touring with fellow Chicago MC Lupe Fiasco, supporting his recently released (and excellent record The Cool), along with Rihanna, and Neptunes side project N.E.R.D. Whatever you think of Mr. West, that lineup is nothing to sneeze at. We also dig that Star Wars/Max Headroom promo poster you can see over to the right.

Love for the Hopleaf is easy to generate, despite it being one of those Yogi Berra joints - so crowded, no one goes there. This is especially true in this post-smoking ban era, now that people can actually (gasp) eat in the front section without getting choked out by massive clouds of carcinogens. It's been years since we started going to Hopleaf for Kwak and mussels, but only recently discovered the massive amounts of awesome that constitutes an order of CB&J.

How can we combine to things we love, bacon and cats in clothes? Oh, with a bacon cat headband? Oh, ok.

From the BBC website:

Love fades. Existence kills our dreams. It’s all shite in the end anyway.

[]

Author Jeffrey Eugenides is no stranger to lovers of both great fiction and fine cinema. His novel Virgin Suicides was adapted into the 1999 film by Sofia Coppela, and his follow-up novel Middlesex was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. His work has also been featured in the likes of the New Yorker and the Yale Review, and he has received numerous other awards and recognition for his talents as an American writer … not too shabby, huh? Eugenides’ newest effort– My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro – is hot off the presses, and could be viewed as his personal love letter to the art. This anthology of 26 love stories is an amour-themed roundup of many tried and true literary masters, including James Joyce and William Faulkner.

Chicago has always been friendly to glacial ice-pop a la The Aluminum Group and The Sea And Cake. What can we say? We must have Bacharach encoded in our communal DNA.

The Sun-Times giveth, and the Sun-Times taketh away. How great: a list of 10 inspiring women of 2007! Wait a second...Jennifer Love Hewitt and the beauty queen who thinks we don't have maps? Come on. And what exactly do Paige Wiser and Lisa Donovan mean when they say that Laila Ali "redefined our idea of a female athlete"? [S-T]

New Hampshire resident Ken Burns, who gained so much notoriety for using original prints and photographs in film documentaries that Apple named an effect in its iPhoto and iMovie software after him, announced yesterday that he is endorsing Barack Obama for president. Burns stated that "recent events" and the negative tone of the Democratic campaign have compelled him to come forward. "I'm really just disappointed in the tone this campaign has taken on their part," Burns said, referring to Clinton.

We're leading off today's awesome round-up by reminding everyone that, as Roosevelt "Rosey" Grier says, it's alright to cry. People seem very stressed out today — Holiday stuff? Lack of daylight? Weird diet? — but don't keep it bottled up. Let it out, and recover with some things that should cheer you up and quick:

Chicagoist has been known to wax philosophic when it comes to websites that make dining out and ordering in easier. We've written about two of our favorites, MenuPages and GrubHub, here and here, respectively. There's a new kid in town, and her name is FoodieBytes. We can already feel MenuPages and GrubHub shaking in their internet boots.

If you're like us, you're already getting pumped up for the Oscars! Not. Jeez, let's get past New Year's first, O.K.? Oops. Too late. The Chicago Film Critics Association has already jumped the gun and handed out their awards. To the surprise of no one the big winner was No Country for Old Men, the new Coen brothers movie that both impressed and disturbed us when we saw it last month. It won four awards in all (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor for Javier Bardem). We're very pleased that Bardem won; there wouldn't be much of a movie without his chilling character study, and he damned well better win the Oscar.

Today Steve Johnson decided to gripe about Google's request for Gmail stories about users' experiences with the service. We actually have to admit we were with Johnson for most of his piece, since the idea of people having Gmail stories worth sharing seemed pretty dubious. What, are you going to go over how you chatted with you future mate through Gtalk? Or how you couldn't remember where that really rad party was happening so you used Gmail's search function to suss out the original email invite amongst the 15,456 other messages in your archived folder?

You know we love animal stories. But we're a tiny bit freaked out by glow-in-the-dark cats? Mah genetic manipulation! Let me show it to you! [video]

Many of the parents we’ve talked to told us that they will go “China-free” this Christmas, refusing to purchase toys constructed in China. This, in large part, is due to the massive number of Chinese-made recalled toys this year (like those beads that turn into GHB when ingested). Toxic toys and poor oversight is a company issue and not necessarily a country-specific one, but patronizing local small businesses, regardless of impetus, should be applauded. For the next couple of weeks, we’ll be posting about some of our favorite places to buy kid gifts this season.