10 Discoveries in 10 Days, Part II.

Hard Times Cafe

Home of good, bad-for-you pub grub.  This place is an Arlington Original, which pretty much means it's been around for 10+ years.  Rather, it was here before all of the condo buildings and other high-rises in the area.  They are known for their chili (I just love that they call themselves an "American Chili Parlor"), and they have Hot Dog Sliders.  Genious!  They have tons of TVs upstairs, which means we'll probably come back during football season.  PS - I just looked at their website, and they even post nutritional info for their chili: 3/4 cup of their Texas Chili has 46g of fat and 560 calories!  My stomach hurts.

Wooly Mammoth Theater
We got last-minute, cheap $25 tickets to Second City's "Barack Stars: The Wrath of Rahm" here, and I don't know what I enjoyed more: the small theater experience or the show itself.  The show was like watching an hour and a half live performance of SNL....they made fun of everyone.  It feels good to laugh for 90 minutes straight.

TweetDeck
Anne Martin wins again.  She taught me that you can use Twitter as a news source if you follow the right people (current favorites: @huffingtonpost, @nprnews, @StephenAtHome, @DavidGregory).  If you install TweetDeck, you will see pop-ups on your screen whenever a new post is added, and you can just glance to see if it's something you'd want to read.  Often, these people post links to pertinent or interesting articles.  It's an easy way to stay informed.  Here is a good article posted in the NYT a while back about why Twitter could become the next great news.   David Carr says it best: "By carefully curating the people you follow, Twitter becomes an always-on data stream from really bright people in their respective fields, whose tweets are often full of links to incredibly vital, timely information."

9:30 Club
San Francisco & Seattle have great venues for live music, and 9:30 club definitely deserves to be ranked among those greats.  It reminded me of the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco.  We saw an incredibly loud (and not really my taste) performance by Cage the Elephant (check out my video below....the lead singer literally looked like he was being electrocuted during the entire show).  Good thing I coincidentally found earplugs in my pocket before the show.

[Apologies for the darkness, but please note Rick's caption for the video.  To summarize, the lead singer flails around moshing on top of the crowd, then jumps back on stage and continues his singing/thrashing routine]

I need a job.

 

[Image courtesy of JustBeSplendid]

[here is Part I]