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I don’t want to sound “braggy,” but I had an absolutely awesome weekend just this past Saturday and Sunday. I hope yours was equally awesome, and I figured I would share some of the details.

A couple of friends of mine wanted to go to Chicago to see their Chinese New Year celebration. One of the guys is from Taiwan, and even though it’s not technically China, he seems to be involved in a large portion of that culture anyway.

Since we were going to make the trek to the big city, we decided to make a whole weekend out of it. And since the New Year parade wasn’t until Sunday afternoon, there was plenty of time for us to fill.

We left town on Saturday morning and drove up to Aurora, which is about an hour west of downtown Chicago. There is a gianormous outlet mall there, so we capitalized on the opportunity to get expensive products (mostly clothing) at largely discounted prices. It was quite interesting, though – some stores would have everything marked down with an additional 60-70% off the lowest price on the tag. But then there were name-brand places, like Sony, Nike, and Adidas to name a few, that only had a small selection of clearance items, with everything else marked at a normal (expensive) price. Anyway, I found enough bargains to keep me satisfied and enjoyed all of the people-watching that I was able to do. And when I say there was plenty of people-watching, I mean that there were TONS of interesting things to see and joke about. People are REALLY weird…

We were supposed to only be at the mall for a couple of hours, but that didn’t happen. We got there just before Noon and didn’t end up leaving until about 5pm. From the mall, we raced into downtown to check in to our hotel, but really got stuck in some nasty traffic. We started to get concerned – checking in to a hotel after 6pm is considered “late,” and some hotels will go ahead and give your room to someone else if you don’t make special effort to have them hold onto it for you. PLUS, we had somewhere to be at 8 and need to clean up and eat dinner beforehand.

Needless to say, we eventually made it to the hotel, the Westin Chicago River North (Amazing!), got checked in extremely quickly (Thank you, online reservations!), did a quick costume change, and headed into the Theater district, to the Bank of America Theater, to be exact. We scored discounted tickets to see “Jersey Boys,” an Off-Broadway production that tells the story of the band The Four Seasons.

I could probably post an ENTIRE blog (not just a post, but a whole blog) about this show. It was simply amazing. I want to point out some of the highlights, though, and I will preface my comments by saying that I was extremely disappointed and the way-too-frequent use of the “F-bomb”.

The BOA Theater is a classic-style theater in an old, old building. It’s extremely gilt, with ornate reliefs and woodwork all throughout the theater. The room itself is about 1.5 times taller than it is wide or deep, so it felt like we were sitting on top of the people in front of us. While this helps to ensure that there aren’t any heads blocking your view, it means that the top row(s) of the top balcony are WAY up there. As this is where our cheap seats were located, I was concerned that I might get a nose-bleed. Even though we were in the way-back, I thought that my view/seat was absolutely stellar.

The set design was impeccable. It was very versatile in the ways that they were able to use the same main set to create every scene. With only minor furniture-type items being move on and off set, they were able to create a street corner, a stage, a television studio, a recording studio, a bar/nightclub, an apartment,… and without much verbal explanation it was easily possible to know what the setting was. The ways that they used lights and shadows was dumbfounding. One in particular was a type of background they used a few times – there were two versions, but it was basically the silhouette of a cityscape with an ever-changing sunset illuminating it from behind. But it didn’t look tacky – it REALLY looked like a progressing sunset. Amazing.

I can’t say that I expected anything short of awesome in the acting department, but they definitely didn’t disappoint. These people are professional stage performers, so I anticipated that they would be one-cue and in-character throughout the show, and they were. While I am not familiar with the current line-up of Broadway performers, it seemed like the casting was perfect. The parts were very well done.

The music was extraordinary. There was a live pit, but they weren’t always in a “pit” – they were part of the show at various times, so they were as much of the cast as any others. And when I say the music was amazing, I am 100% including the vocals. I caught the lead off-pitch once. Once. In the whole show. It was a 2.5 hour-long show. Amazing. The Four Seasons was similar to a boy-band in the sense that they performed with four-part harmonies in a large majority of their songs. On stage, these were incredible. You may be familiar with some of their songs – “Big Girls Don’t Cry”, “Walk Like a Man”, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”, and the list goes on and on. If you can recall any of these, you may note that the lead singer had a very high-pitched, very distinct voice. Well, the lead on stage was just as distinct and absolutely awesome. His range was out of this world, and it didn’t come across as hokey or “faked” in any way. The other singers were just as amazing, though, and I don’t want to down-play their performances in any way… but the lead really did make the show.

One of my friends grew up with this music, and at intermission he was telling me about how he can remember hearing some of the songs played on the radio as “new” while he sat and talked with his sisters at home when he was in high school. Yes, that dates him rather accurately, but that made the show even better in his eyes. I was SO incredibly glad that I had the chance to see the show – I hesitated when it was first proposed as part of our trip, mainly because I had never heard of it, but I can’t imagine passing it up now that I know how awesome it is. I still cringe when I think about the foul language, but yeah… Wow. Amazing.

Now, the rest of the trip was just as fun, but it really wasn’t as exciting as the first part. We did a LOT of window shopping through various parts of the city, we went to an Asian food market (oh – my – gosh – there is some WEIRD food out there…), we sat and talked for hours over meals, etc. Oh yeah, and there was also the Chinese New Year parade – the whole reason for the trip!

One of the aforementioned meals went a bit long, and then we had to wait for the train, and then we had to walk to the parade route… and so we actually only saw the last minute or two of the parade. We were all a bit disappointed, but by the time we actually got there we knew that we weren’t going to see much. So, since we were in Chinatown, we went ahead and perused that part of the city. This meant more people watching for me, and I did go ahead and snap a few pictures as well. Peoria doesn’t exactly have a lot of Asian-inspired architecture, so I was fascinated by some of the buildings. I’m sure there are more ornate and intricate buildings in Asia itself, but I still enjoyed looking at it.

I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned this before (and it will surely become its own post if it’s not here already…), but I really, really enjoy good conversation. This trip was jam-packed full of good conversation, so there wasn’t really a chance for me to get bored or for me to want to come home. I had an amazing time throughout the weekend, and I’m so glad that I have friends that I don’t get tired of talking to. Thanks a million, guys!