THE JO-TEL … illegal blog downfield

I was in Chicago over the weekend. I met up with some of PETE's friends, including one of the dudes that runs that Rivalfish website, which I discovered is exactly 700% more visited than the jo-tel. We went to this free Stoli marketing party. Amazingly the benefits of the bountiful free booze was almost counteracted by the pervasive marketing and general phoniness of the event. I started trying to shake things up by doing some rather pedestrian antics like jumping on a bed full of gay dudes, yelling at yuppies, and flirting with a herd of cougars.

Then I came upon the blow up photo of a ruggedly attractive Robert Redford that was sitting on a stand in the lobby. No real reason for it to be there except that I guess Stoli was trying to pilfer some of Redford's coolness for their promotional event. In any case, I was getting rather drunk so I grabbed the photo and started walking around. J*skot was there with me, he left to get a drink while I proceeded to walk around with the Redford in front of me saying, "Hey, give me a drink, I'm Robert Redford" or "Hey, let's go back to my place, I'm Robert Redford." Before J*skot could return, if was corralled by four large security guards, one of whom had me by the arm much tighter than justified for walking around with a stupid blown up photo of Robert Redford. I now sort of understand police brutality. They confined me until the tall lanky manager arrived. The following conversation ensued:

MANAGER: Why are stealing stuff? SHARK: I wasn't stealing stuff.
MANAGER: What's this? (points to Redford)
SHARK: I wasn't stealing that. I didn't take it out of the building, I was just playing around with it, adding to the off-the-cuff nature of the event.
MANAGER: Really.
SHARK: I would have returned it. I'm not nearly drunk enough to try to walk out the door with it.
MANAGER: If I came to your house, would it be okay if I stole something.
SHARK: Steel what? Robert Redford?
MANAGER: Okay he's out. (pointing to the gaggle of security guards)

-Shark