philadelphia surprise
hi.

i've been away for a while, no?

sorry, but i've been sick a couple of times and busy a couple of times. before you know it, a few weeks have gone by. oops.

anyhoo, jumping right back in, here are pictures from last month when vince and i went down to philadelphia to surprise our friend elliot.

his girlfriend aimee planned the entire thing out to a tee. she is a genius.

here's the big moment when we knocked on elliot's front door.

ha ha ha!

it took him a few moments to realize what was going on, but once he did, he was all smiles. awww...


we went out into his neighborhood and bought cigars to celebrate the fun that we were going to have that weekend.

then we walked around and stopped in a few bars.


this is right outside of elliot and aimee's apartment. their blue door is awesome.


we played video games (Resident Evil mostly) until 5:30am. it was totally badass.


the next day, we wandered about philly some more.

here's an old used book store.


here's a bitchin' burned out car.

one of the best stops was my beloved Dairy Queen:


vince with a cigar (from the night before) and a peanut buster parfait.


big elliot ordered some dumb thing called a "Moo-latte" and was rewarded with a fierce brain freeze.

i was let down because the lady working there wouldn't make me a root beer freeze. instead, i had to go with a chocolate shake. a bit lame, i know...

after that, we hopped in a cab to go see if the Rocky statue was still up in front of the museum.

on the way, we came across these big, great sculptures:



then we came across the Rodin Museum.

inside, vince and elliot tried to figure out why the coat hangers had these long handles on them.

once that was settled, it was Rocky time!

sadly, the statue wasn't there.

only this remained:

rats.



later that evening, we went downtown to Chinatown for some dinner whereupon vince and elliot decided to order the most nasty food items ever.

if i remember correctly (i tried to block this episode out because i'm a total wuss), the winner was the turtle and winter worm soup.

jesus.

luckily this horrible memory of me trying to eat my food while my friends ate worms was washed away by the dessert that aimee had waiting for us back home.

Creme Brulée!

now sit back and watch as vincent guides you through the proper way of browning the sugary top:

delicious!

next up for the evening was going to seeing the Magic Numbers play down the street.

vince and elliot went into the show as skeptics, but left understanding how awesome this band is.

just ask them.

we celebrated their conversion by going out to some bar.

aimee promptly showed off her balancing a beer on the top of her head prowess:

impressive, no?


here's vince taking full advantage of the fact that you can still smoke in phiadelphia's bars.

the night progressed quickly...




after a bit, aimee's friend showed up.

can you see what's happening here?

maybe these photos will help...



anyways, the next morning we went out for crepes.

i can't remember the name of the place, but the food was really tremendous.


it was so good, in fact, that i was inspired to try my first bloody mary since 1996.

pretty good.

my dessert crepe:

nutella with bananas and hazelnut ice cream.

whoa mama.



it was then time to leave, sadly...


back onto the ol' Greyhound bus.

aimee, your plan worked out perfectly.

start working on your next one?