Lollapalooza 2010 - Saturday

Harlem

Back to the alcove. This is my favorite stage at Lolla. Small, cozy, tree-lined. A good place to have your eardrums punctured by Fack Buttons. Seriously, why not fick? Or fuck? Artists are weird.

Anyway, today we start the day with Harlem, an endearingly sloppy little three-piece that plays songs with simple riffs and rhythms that feel like the 1950s chopped up by a buzz saw and then run through a meat grinder. We spot a girl holding a life-size inflatable alien (if life-size aliens are approximately the same size as humans). We spot a guy in a full Scooby-Doo costume (Have fun dying in today’s heat!). And we spot a shirtless bro (redundant) who is so squat, so bulbously muscular, so back-bepimpled, that my eyes throw up all over my face.

Harlem is good though.

The XX

The XX are riding such a wave of buzz that the entrances/exits to the north side have become choke points. My wife, on one of her patented portapotty runs, witnesses a man fall and crack his head on the asphalt, and the paramedics can’t make it through the crowd. But hey, don’t feel bad, because The XX are playing! I think. I can’t really hear them.

Have you ever had someone mumble something quietly to you and you’re like, “What?” and they repeat themselves but they don’t raise their voice AT ALL so you nod and pretend like you heard the second time but in fact you have no idea what they said? That’s kind of like seeing the XX live. It’s like the antithesis of Fack Buttons. I would love to see a double bill of Fack Buttons and the XX, where Fack Buttons plays first, followed by the XX, and everyone would be like, wait, are they playing? Is music being played? I see pasty people strumming guitars. And their lips are moving. OMG. I’m deaf. I’m DEAF!

On our way after the set, I get a high five from a dude for my Enfield Tennis Academy shirt. I can always count on a music fest to find someone equally as jazzed about Infinite Jest. My hipster card gets another punch in it. Only three more and I get a free ice cream cone.

Grizzly Bear

Another quiet band, but they fare better than the XX. Of course, I can’t really hear them because we decide it’s better to sit on the outskirts then risk more exposure to this odd smattering of indie-bros. Seriously, shouldn’t they be locked in a portapotty masturbating into a Black Keys t-shirt? Anyway, it’s hard to feel invested in an act when you can’t really see or hear them and you’re hyperaware of the sweat trickling into your ass-crack. I feel my Lolla afternoon squishing through my fingers and there’s nothing I can do about it. What am I going to do, walk to the south end and watch AFI? I’d rather eat my own eye puke.

Metric

We sit tight for Metric, literally. We are sitting. And these are some tight quarters, okay? Over there, three inches away? That’s an ass in my face. And the close proximity to more shirtless bros is getting to be a little much. I am yet again subject to the sights of sweat, bacne, armpit hair, nipples, beer guts, etc, etc, etbloooork. Gah. Sorry. For most of Metric’s set, I remain below sea level, where their thumping, energetic sound is muffled into innocuous beats. Have you noticed I haven’t talked much about music today? That’s because this three hours is lost in the sea of heat, sweat, dirt, flesh, and my wife’s tiny, tiny bladder. Good thing there’s…

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes

We show up a half hour early and can’t get anywhere near the stage. But it’s this lovely tree-lined alcove once again, and there’s lots of room to spread out and still see some of the stage.

ESATMZ fill the stage with ten or so happy-hippy types, all of whom are having a grand old time. They play extended singalong clapalong tunes with an energy and verve rivaling Polyphonic Spree and I’m From Barcelona. This is a true festival band. A true festival experience.

And then the bros start climbing trees. Over there, a dirty-foot bro scales a tree. Over there, a guy I suspect of being a bro but can’t confirm because he’s wearing a shirt, gets wedged in the V of a tree for a good two minutes. And climbing that tree over there is a sombrero-wearing bro. These bros come in many different meaty flavors. Beef sweatinoff. Beef smellington. Beef beefybeef. I begin to forget about the wonderful music and focus on which bro will be first to plummet to the ground. It never happens, although one bro watches as his nasty flip-flop gets heaved into the crowd. It’ll have to do.

ESATMZ finish with rousing versions of Home and Om Nashi Me. A gaggle of bros launches into a full-scale chant, leaping around like gazelles and hugging and grabbing each other’s chests. What is going on here? And is it truly a gaggle of bros? A colony of bros? A herd of bros? A confusion of bros? That's it. A confusion of bros.

Cut Copy

We enter the grounds expecting another north side clusterfack, but the grounds are more open than I’ve seen them in a while. This opens up my ability to dance in place like an idiot. I regret leaving my glowsticks in the car. The lead singer triggers my gaydar, but then, my desire for glowsticks triggers my gaydar. My gaydar is jammed.

Behind us, I locate an artifact from the weekend. An abandoned flip-flop, mired in a mudpit. It looks like a fossil. Like carbon testing could place it in the 14^th century. I imagine somewhere, a bro, stumbling around in a single flip-flop, crying forlornly as he gives out random high fives.

Phoenix/Empire of the Sun

I make a game attempt to enjoy both of these bands, but it’s been a long day, and in neither case is the sound very substantial. It’s time to retire to the Hilton bar for multiple Half Acre beers and a cheese plate.

See you tomorrow for my Sunday Lolla review, where I take quality over quantity.

Lollapalooza 2010 - Friday

The Grounds

The first thing I notice when I walk in through the north entrance is that there is a north entrance. The line takes all of 30 seconds to navigate. Nicely done, Lolla.

The second thing I notice is that Lolla has expanded. Now encompassing a good portion of the land west of Columbus, it dawns on me that I will no longer be forced behind the clustered, bobbing swathes of humanity that flow like frozen molasses past Buckingham Fountain each year. All of Columbus lies open before me, lane after lane after lane, and I envision myself speeding down the road to whatever destination my greedy little heart desires.

Also, there’s a shitload of portapotties.

Ana Sia

I know little to nothing about dubstep other than it apparently hews to a constrained time signature. But the big, meaty beats that tiny, wiry, jogging-in-place Ana Sia drops don’t feel very constrained. This feels like the right way to start Lolla. So does a beer. The beer turns warm in 6.2 seconds flat.

The Big Pink

The field smells vaguely of manure, which turns out to be an apt description for the Big Pink’s sound mix. I like this band. I do. But the bass drum is turned up so high that I can’t hear anything else. Good songs like Velvet and Dominoes feel uninspired, muddy, vaguely manure-like. When they end their set a full fifteen minutes early, I am both annoyed at the short set-list, and relieved that it’s over.

Devo

There is nothing quite like a silver half-mask to accentuate one’s chin fat. But chin fat means nothing when you can bring the energy like these guys. I lose myself in the raucous pace, the frequent costume changes, the large video wall featuring a sashaying, bikinied ass that sprouts cartoon eyes that cry.

And then, from the corner of my eye, I see my wife make a run for it.

“Dude!” she is saying. “Dude,” as she chases after a shirtless, beefy guy who has somehow managed to loop our tote bag around his foot. He trudges along, an oblivious, fleshy juggernaut, as my wife makes faint slaps on his back-steak. I chase after thinking, “I may have to defend her.” He finally stops, turns, gives the fisheye, and disentangles his foot from the bag. Little do I know this will not be our last encounter with the special Lollapalooza Borg known as The Bro.

Devo are great though. Go Devo.

F*ck Buttons

Can you guess what the * is for? That's right. An "a." Who knows why they call themselves Fack Buttons. But whatever. They're unbearably loud. I fight to remain in the small alcove but I fear their volume may uproot nearby trees and cause my bladder to burst. So I take a quick detour to catch a couple of agile tunes by Dirty Projectors, snag something called a Dirty Dawg from Chowtown, then return to catch the remainder of the beautiful, scathing, wall of sound that is Fack Buttons. Only this time I sit all the way across Columbus Drive. It’s really facking loud.

Lady Gaga

After a brief sojourn home to nestle Mazlin into bed, I sprint back to try and “see” Lady Gaga. I wog like mad down Columbus drive, weaving in and out of random bros, twinks and teenage girls. It is Frogger 2010 and I am winning. I get to the South side and realize that to enter the teeming throng of Gaga watchers is to risk having the breath crushed from my chest. Verily. I stand on the far, far outskirts and am able to glean the following:

I am free to be who I want to be / Even if that means I want to dress like a curtain and eat unidentified viscera

Lady Gaga didn’t used to be so brave / She is brave now / This is due in some part to me / I have made her brave / And now she will be brave for me / By playing a giant obsidian pyramid keytar

Lady Gaga is a star / She made it, Dad.

One last observation: Little do I know that the best XX I will see this weekend is the white tape crosshatching Gaga’s nipples.

Coming up tomorrow: Saturday of Lollapalooza: Return of the bro.

From the "Seemed like a good idea at the time" file

I saw this logo/tag on the side of a SW van this morning. Considering BP’s recent peccadOILlo, I’m surprised this wasn't sandblasted off the company fleet posthaste.

Out of the goodness of my heart, I am offering some alternative taglines they might consider should they choose to rebrand.

• Kill the otters
• Pump latex into the ocean
• Shove a ballgag in Mother Nature’s mouth
• Paint some fish gills closed
• Categorically eradicate all known flora and fauna
• Scumble the environment

Pitchfork 2010 - Sunday (Mazlin Edition)

Hey there. My dad asked me to review Sunday’s Pitchfork. I see he already used a Blues Clues joke in his Saturday review. That’s totally my purview, but whatevs.

The Early Bands

I know my Dad wants to see Girls and Beach House and Local Natives, but I need a nap, and Pitchfork still hasn’t updated their lame-o No Re-entry policy, so we’re screwed for a second year in a row. Maybe Pitchfork will wake up and fix this policy, say, by the time I can VOTE!

Surfer Blood

I’m excited to hear the distorted wonders of Surfer Blood, but by the time we roll through the crowds of skeletal mutants wearing really tight pants (What’s up with that? I freaking hate tight clothes), I realize I won’t be getting anywhere near the stage. The entry way is choked off by more of these rail-thin, desiccated, pasty-skinned youths. Is this a music festival or a Twilight convention? Hey-o!

Adding to my frustration is the sound bleed from some band that calls itself Lightning Bolt. Apparently, they like to scream and bang on objects and make a general racket. As a near two-year-old I can honestly say their stuff doesn’t even come close to matching the intensity of one of my tantrums.

All that said, we are able to plant ourselves in the furthest corner of the festival where at least I can hear Surfer Blood blast through “Swim,” a truly awesome song. I like it because it reminds me of the lake. And my little backyard pool. And my bathtub. Clearly, I am a key demo for Surfer Blood.

My Deep Thought

We stroll past several girls wearing the exact same heart-shaped sunglasses as me. I ponder the question: Am I trying to come across as more mature than I really am? Or do these girls just prefer to act like toddlers?

St. Vincent

I don’t know much about her, but St. Vincent makes a pretty good soundtrack for eating raisins and flicking water into Dad’s eye.

Major Lazer

This group is cray-cray. The one dude has some kind of a blonde Mohawk and keeps screaming that Major Lazer is in the house, which confuses me because we are outside. There are Chinese lion/dragon dancers, which must be pretty hot. I mean, it’s a scorcher of a day. I don’t even want to wear my headphones, let alone some heavy, traditional Chinese theatre outfit. Also, on stage there is simulated sex, but I don’t know what that is, and never will, at least until I am 19 and out of the house.

The Balloon

While I am dancing with my Dad, a balloon bops him in the leg. I say “balloon!” So Dad reaches down to grab it for me, but then he gets this funny look on his face and just lets it fly off. This saddens me. I cry out for the balloon repeatedly. I don’t understand why Dad would just let that balloon get away. It’s not like it was an inflated condom or anything, right?

The Late Bands

Sure, yeah, Dad wants to stay all the way to Pavement, but it’s getting close to my bedtime. And I’m sorry, but Malkmus is way overrated.

Pitchfork 2010 - Saturday

In preparation for Saturday's festival, I go to the beach and get a nice back sunburn.

Titus Andronicus

Great energy. Sloppy freewheeling rock. I learn more about the Civil War in an hour set than I did in high school. Apparently they said “f*ck” a lot back in the 1800s. Fourscore and seven f*ckin’ years ago, our f*ckfathers brought forth on this f*ckin’ incontinent a YOWL SCREAM GUITAR FEEDBACK trumpet tooooodle YOWL YOWL f*ck f*ck emancipation f*cklamation!

The lead singer shouts out libraries at the end of the set, which makes me happy because I married into the American Library Association. Let's hear it for libraries!

The Guy in the Turquoise Pleather Hightops

I wish I took a picture of this guy, but his awesomeness might have shattered the lens of my camera. His muskels are big, he has a large shoulder tattoo of Michael Jordan (I think) going in for a dunk from the perspective of the ceiling, several other seemingly unrelated tattoos, and those shoes, oh those shoes. These are the kind of shoes that deserve their own talk show.

The Sun

The sun buys a ticket and brings her friends Humidity, Red Face, and Sweaty Ball Syndrome.

How I Offset My Age With an Obscure T-shirt

Some girl recognizes my Enfield Tennis Academy shirt from Infinite Jest. (Second year in a row! Pitchfork is clearly the right demo for literary in-jokes). She asks me “Did you do that on purpose?” “Yes,” I say. “It’s from Wuthering Heights.”

Raekwon

Sound problems apparently delay 'Kwon’s set, but I wouldn’t know as I am devouring a vegan burger and pretzel with beer cheese. The pretzel tastes better than rap. The vegan burger tastes better than crap.

The Merch Booth

If you ever need a stuffed mustache, attend next year’s Pitchfork.

John Spencer Blues Explosion

The only reason I endure this set is to get a good spot for Wolf Parade. From what I can tell it consists of the frontman, John Something, I forget his last name, yelling over and over “Blues Explosion!!” I entertain myself by imagining him saying “Blues Clues Explosion!!” and then leading the whole park of hipsters in a spirited game of patty cake.

Wolf Parade

When I last saw Wolf Parade it was New Years Eve ’06 or so at the Viaduct Theater where they played every song in doubletime and I spent the better part of the set standing in line to pee while douchebags yelled at each other to “piss faster.” Awesome time, really.

Thankfully, they bust out of the gates with Cloud Shadow On the Mountain, transition to The Grey Estates and roll into Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts, essentially rolling backwards through their discography with an energy and confidence I’m not quite expecting.

The sun beats down on my neck, scorches everything in its path, which means these guys are playing right into the sun. And my only regret for the whole damn, beautiful set is that they don’t take advantage of this and rip out You Are a Runner and I Am My Father’s Son, screaming out “Won’t make it through the high noon sun…”

Which we don’t. Halfway through the set we retreat to shadier pastures. As soon as we set up camp, Wolf Parade launches into I’ll Believe in Anything, easily one of my favorite songs EVER. If you haven’t heard it, buy it from iTunes. If you don’t like it, let me know and I will refund your 99 cents via a personalized haiku that is worth at least twice that.

Panda Bear

Hey everybody. Panda Bear is next! His album Person Pitch was #2 on my top albums list from ’07. This is going to be so great. No seriously, I know you don’t like Animal Collective, but wait. This is like Brian Wilson caught in reverb loopy land. Just wait until he plays Comfy in Nautica. Dude. Woo! Panda Bear! Here he comes. Okay get ready!

Okay, okay, no problem, this first part he’s just warming up. He’s building to something, okay? Yeah, I know it’s just a drone moving to another drone. Yeah, sure he’s screaming occasionally, that’s fine. No problem, he’s got a master plan. Just wait.

Just… wait.

No there will be some drum loops soon. I’m pretty sure.

Why are you looking at me like that? Look at the video screen. See there’s some trippy stuff going on. That dude is repeatedly punching a fish, that’s pretty cool, right? And that couple doing it on the roller coaster is from that one exploitation flick. Neat. No, the music will start soon. It will.

It will. I will it to. I will Panda Bear to not make me look like such an ass for talking him up. Here I am willing. I’m willing. Oh forget it.

I’m going to get some beer.

LCD Soundsystem

James Murphy washes the bad taste of Panda Bear off my brain immediately with Us V Them. I am pleased with his disco ball. I am pleased that he is quite possibly older than me. I am pleased with All My Friends. I am pleased to leave early to beat the mad crush of people all trying to board the same damn bus at the same time.

I’ll catch the whole set on your next tour, LCD! Wait, what? You’re breaking up? I… but… Aw fuck it, I’m catching the bus.

The Bus

Lainie and I have a spirited debate over whether or not jean jams and jorts are synonymous. I propose that all jean jams are jorts, but not all jorts are jean jams. She proclaims that jean jams are not jorts. They are too specific, too close to the knee. We wind up having a terrible fight and I haven’t spoken to her since.

Lainie, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry we fought about jorts.

Stay tuned for Sunday’s Pitchfork review by special guest columnist, Mazlin!

Pitchfork 2010 - Friday

I think this may be the first Friday of Pitchfork that I’ve ever attended. Leaving the wife and child at home because one of them doesn’t like Modest Mouse and one of them is already asleep. Can you guess which is which?

The Beer Line

I stand in line and purchase my beer tickets. Then I stand in a longer line to purchase beer. The line moves at a glacial pace. After about ten minutes I realize my phone is dying so I choose to stare at all the dirty feet in the vicinity. Man, there are a lot of dirty-footed people here.

Then I see the wristband on the guy in front of me. Turns out I need a wristband, but I can’t get one in this line. I need to get one from the previous beer ticket line. So I secure an uneasy agreement from the folks in front of me that they will pretend to know me when I come back to recut my way into line. We will high five, chortle about some old in-joke, reminisce over that one time that we ate a pound of raw cookie dough on a dare.

The nice Russian lady at the beer ticket line tells me that the wristbands have “disappeared.” Oh good. Nearly 15 minutes of waiting time, missing Broken Social Scene, and I am close to losing my spot in the beer line. I run to another beer ticket tent, weaving in and out of a gaggle of anorexic youths, find a wristband, run back, and barely wend my way back into line.

Two beers achieved. Half hour spent. A fair trade. It’s boiling hot and I need this.

Modest Mouse

They disappointed me back at Lolla 07, so I’m not sure what to expect, but they instantly win me over with a brilliant opening trifecta: Tiny Cities Made of Ashes, Here it Comes, and The Devil’s Workday. I am putty in Isaac Brock’s yowling, full-throated hands, if hands could yowl and have throats.

Brock has clearly been freebasing whiskey all day as he makes some of the most bizarre and wonderfully entertaining banter, from “Take half a breath. Half. Wither. Wilt. And buy some name brand water,” to “I thought if I bit this glow stick it would make my mouth glow but it was already broken and now my spit glows and my mouth tastes all chemically. These things glew, glow, gloweth,” to “Thanks to all the bands that graced the stage before us, no that sounds presumptuous, slur, slur, slur…”

Anyhow, MM sounds great. By the time they rip through a massive version of Dramamine and then Parting of the Sensory, all is right with the world.

My joke I made up that I'm pretty sure many other people have made up before me but I'm going to pretend is original

As I walk around looking at all the young, cool, young, skinny, young kids, I think "I need a hipster replacement."

Good, right? Never heard it before have you? Right. Awesome. Stay tuned for the report coming out of Saturday.

Read 'em and weep

As far as fiction goes I tend to fall on either end of the spectrum: utter butter pop novels or insanely ungainly tomes. Neither side tends to trigger my blues. I'm either turning the pages too fast or too busy looking up the word enfilade to get sucker punched by some subtextual dark cloud. But the following works linger somewhere in the middle, accessible enough to pull you in, dark enough to push you back.

5. The Information by Martin Amis – A superbly funny and smart story about a bleak and unhappy protagonist who loses at life. The night after I finished this, I leapt out of my bed, convinced that a gigantic black spider had dropped from the ceiling onto my stomach.

4. The Raw Shark Texts by Stephen Hall – Crammed with wordplay, including a shark built out of letters that floats through the pages, this book is like Memento starring Will Shortz. Just thinking about it makes me dizzy. What a wonderful construct. But somehow, some way, it pushed me into a deep little hole of alienation.

3. And Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris – An entertaining read. A familiar setting. A moving experience. But the final sentence, which has nothing to do with plot and everything to do with how one has internalized the book, hit me in the gut with a sledgehammer.

2. The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno – A very quick read, thank God, as the entire time I felt like killing myself.

1. Oblivion by David Foster Wallace – An absolutely brilliant collection, stuffed with so much sadness above and below the text that I felt genuinely depressed for about a month after putting it down. To this day, I still refuse to read the final story, The Suffering Channel, about a man who shits out works of art, as I’m worried it will complete some horrible circuit in my brain.

Top 10 songs of '09

Better late than someone else's opinion.

10. Good Ol’ Fashion Nightmare – Matt and Kim

9. Velvet – The Big Pink

8. Crystallised – The XX

7. You Are the Blood – Sufjan Stevens

6. Lisztomania – Phoenix

5. It Gets Your Body Movin' – Suckers

4. Home – Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes

3. Sleepyhead – Passion Pit

2. Summertime Clothes – Animal Collective

1. Snookered - Dan Deacon

You kids get back on my lawn

It's been months upon months since my last post. An auspicious one. On a bacon-flavored substance.

Anyway, I know you've been huddled in a corner unable to leave your house without my valuable opinion to guide your view on life.

So I'm trying it again. But in a more sporadic fashion. Can't keep a blistering blog pace at the same time I'm writing spec screenplays that are sure to sell for ones of dollars.

So you'll take what I give you. And then you'll ask for more. And you might just get it. Might.

Welcome back me.

The ultimate bacon flavored spread

The portmanteau has infected food marketing for so long, it has become the food itself.

Soon there will be nothing left on our nation's shelves but Grapple juice and Mozzaroni.

Portmanteauing the line

Yep. Apparently all food marketers are now REQUIRED to use the portmanteau in their copy. It's built into the creative brief under "executional mandatories."

Incidentally, Mad Props to Mad Men for showing us that the portmanteau was crap creative even back in the '60s. "Bacardilicious." "Bacardilightful."Don Draper would've shit a brick if they gave him that crap.

Haiku reviews - random movies #1

Hey, I watched some movies. 

The Happening

All you need to know

Is that this movie should have

Been called Crappening

 

Mr. Brooks

Demi Moore, soooooo bad.

Costner fine, I guess, for him

Dane Cook, what the fuck?

 

TimeCrimes

Spanish time travel

Works just like American

Confused by the end

GET IT?

I wrote this headline and then billed the client 72.5 hours.

Even at Lolla...

Snacklish managed to infiltrate my 3-day music paradise. Boo Snickers. Boo.

Life lessons from Lolla

Considering I spent nearly three entire days without my beautiful baby girl, I thought it would be nice to collect some life lessons while at Lollapalooza. I’ll share these with her down the road, when I’m fairly certain she’ll understand what I mean by “douchebag.”

-----

First of all, you’re going to have to deal with some rain. You’re going to get some mud on you. You’re going to sweat and ache and have to go to the bathroom. You will walk many miles. You’re going to need a shower. 

At times, you will be surrounded by douchebags. This is especially true if Kings of Leon has been spotted in your vicinity. Don’t worry, just shower again.

You should dance. Really, you should. It is an expression of how you process music and how music processes you.

Hand sanitizer is your friend. 

Take lots of pictures along the way. 

Sometimes you just need to lie on the ground and look up at the trees. Just make sure you don’t get stepped on. 

Drink plenty of water. 

A good sense of humor is more important than a good sense of direction. 

You will have a lot of choices to make. Some will turn out to be mistakes. Some will turn out perfect. Don’t waste time regretting the former. Enjoy the hell out of the latter. 

Two words: comfortable shoes. 

At times you will be alone. At times you will be surrounded by people you care about. At times you will be both. 

Fun and comfort don’t have to be mutually exclusive, but sometimes you'll want to sacrifice one for the other. 

Try to catch Dan Deacon if he hasn't keeled over from an infarction or been committed, but please bring earplugs. 

People move at all different paces. Don’t let the slow ones get in your way. 

Fun is fun and done is done. Also, sometimes done is fun. 

Lollapalooza Sunday, or I'm getting too old for this shit

Dan Deacon and his mad marching band: Click the pic to feel the love. 

Friendly Fires – We start Sunday off like we did Saturday: Dance Party. Only this morning we trade the petite firecracker DJ A-Cup flouncing around in her skivvies for this outstanding Brit-pop band’s insatiable hooks. They rip through pretty much every track off their debut album, the lead singer popping to the music like he’s getting defibbed. At one point he says “I hate this wind. I hate you, wind. Fuck off.” This is sort of confusing as it’s already getting muggy as hell. Ah well, I guess the English like tea and hate wind. Who knew? Regardless, I move my butt as hard as I can without the requisite amount of inhibition-deflating alcohol in my system.

Bat for Lashes – We march all the way across the park to see Bat for Lashes, the weekend's winner for Artist Most Unfairly Maligned By My Companions. Where I see a burgeoning Kate Bush, they see a retread Tori Amos. Where I see an exciting new Björk, they see a boring old Björk. Their unhappiness is catching. Oh, and it doesn’t help that three days of heat and feet have turned the field into an olfactory nightmare. It smells like someone shat into a box of movie popcorn. I try gamely to enjoy BFL’s quieter moments, but the stench is making me antsy. Damn it people, it’s time for lunch.

Lunch – I eat a jalapeño cheddar sausage, while listening to The Airborne Toxic Event. I wonder which one makes me want to shit more. Side note: Shouldn’t a band purportedly inspired by Don Delillo come up with better lyrics than “Standing on a bus stop, feeling your head pop?” Hey, that’s just my valuable opinion.

Dan Deacon - The most memorable set of the weekend. We sit right in front of the sound booth. Before the show starts, I hear the sound guy say “He wants to mic everything separately. We can’t do that.” I shudder to myself. Deacon does not want to hear the word “can’t.” He is an insane perfectionist. However, he amiably shrugs off his issues, and dives headfirst into his set, which features approximately 30 people on stage at different times. Tubas, trumpets, keys, vibes, drums, glockenspiel, more drums, etc, etc, etc. We give up our spot against the sound booth and get drawn into the maelstrom of the pit. Shit goes crazy. The heat index hits 105. I feel myself baking off the heat from other people’s flesh. I watch younger, skinnier people surf the crowd on all sides. I allow Mr. Deacon to take me on a guided imagery tour in his ramp-up to Snookered. I picture my baby’s face. I absolve myself of sin. This is what it is like to see the man perform. Near the end, I pull away from the crowd to watch a mass game of Simon Says, Deacon slowly building a song like a metaphysical sandwich, crescendo after crescendo, topping after topping, the crowd heaving hundreds of plastic water bottles into the air as each wave of music crashes over us like a tidal wave of aural condiments. The experience is communal, awe-encompassing and all-inspiring, utterly, phenomenally, ear-bleedingly wonderful. And when it’s over, I sort of want to go home.

Passion Pit – We make a game attempt at being enthusiastic for this superhuman sugarpop group. The crowd is like cat piss, seeping into every nook and cranny. I lie on the ground and try not to focus on the parade of dirty feet that whiz by my face. Man, there’s a lot of dirty feet at Lollapalooza. They should call it Footapalooza. Anyway, we leave halfway through. I feel like a traitor to music. It’s not you, Passion Pit. It’s me. Well, and Dan Deacon.

The end - After a languid march to Buckingham Fountain, my wife and I decide to cut our losses. Chances are, we won’t see another act as monumental as DD, and we’re butt-tired. Even though I would love to see Snoop, Deerhunter, Lou, Band of Horses, Janes, The Killers, I just can’t muster the get-up-and-go. Tradition holds and I drag my tired carcass home before the fest is officially over. I feel lame, so I head over to Lollapalooza.com to see if there are any rumors about next year’s headliners. Only 360 or so more days!

Next: All I ever needed to know I learned at Lolla.

Lollapalooza Saturday, or Hey! The weekend isn't ruined!

Moneypenny – Well rested and full of pancake, we stop off at Perry’s stage to catch a little Moneypenny. DJ Mother Hubbard and DJ A-Cup melt my face immediately. And then DJ A-Cup, who is scorching hot in 1980s, Ratt-inspired hair and black t-shirt/undies ensemble, prances to the front of the stage with four girls in silver face paint, black shrouds and silver gym shoes. The ladies proceed to jeté around the tiny stage while DJ A-Cup has several orgasms into the microphone. I am in love.

Federico Aubele – We leave the heat of the Moneypenny set to roast in the heat of the sun. Thankfully, much of the slop from yesterday has turned back into a ground-like substance. Federico, who looks like a cross between Andy Samberg and Bob Dylan, plucks at his guitarra in a completely inoffensive fashion. My wife refers to it as “dinner music.” It kind of is, but it’s still a nice companion for a Bud Light.

Animal Collective DJ set – What Animal Collective DJ set? Oh, you mean they are having a DJ set? While I'm standing here? I don’t think so. Really? But I just see two guys talking to each other and twiddling the occasional knob while a few strains of music quietly leak out of a speaker somewhere in the vicinity. Are you sure they're playing?

Arctic Monkeys – I expect snot rock. I expect bouncy, jangly attitude from pub brawlers. I expect to bop up and down. I get Rush. I get confused. I get up and go to the portapotty.

Santigold – The evening starts to pick up here, and it doesn’t let up, thankfully. Santigold sounds outstanding. Every song that she plays, I’m like, “Oh yeah, I love this song.” Except for Unstoppable. That song should be stopped. A portly white man in dire need of a shampoo gyrates wildly close to my blanket. I watch him since I can’t see the stage. He is a serviceable dancer. Santigold plays a cover of Killing an Arab, which absolutely kills. I find myself wishing The Cure would play Lolla.

TV on the Radio – My favorite act of the fest. These guys suck the everlovin’ marrow out of every single song and spit it all over the audience. Love Dog turns into an epic opener once the sound gets tweaked. Young Liars into a surprising yowler. Wolf Like Me into an unsurprising headbanger. Dancing Choose into 4 cans of Red Bull. Staring at the Sun is a beautiful close to a beautiful set. Can’t wait to see them in a proper venue.

Diplo – With the fail at Animal Collective’s DJ set, it is a difficult decision to not run over to the southside to catch their “regular” set. From everything I hear, they put on a disappointing show, and I am not left with Fleet Foxes levels of regret. Instead I catch Diplo, a blonde beanstalk in a black suit serving up big meaty beats in a spicy red sauce. I am amazed at how skillfully he works the crowd, playing us more than he does the music itself. And even though the every-2-minute climax is predictable, it never fails to get my hands in the air. The fest’s biggest surprise for me.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs –Karen O is a force to be reckoned with. She comes out in full peacock regalia, and owns the night the second she hits the stage. No one in the crowd is thinking about the Beastie Boys until the guitarist throws a Whatcha Want riff at the end of Phenomena. One thing I can say for Karen O, she definitely treats the microphone like a penis. Another thing I can say, wait, I'm distracted, she has that microphone in her mouth.

Planxa de la Mercat – We hit the hotel bar for a quick drink and cheese nibble and then head over to this trendy little Barcelona-market-inspired hot spot. Morsel after morsel of edible food at a fraction of the cost of other restaurants (the fraction has a higher numerator than denominator, FYI).

Next up, we wrap up the Lolla report with a truncated Sunday and a few observations on life in general.

Lollapalooza Friday, or The Best Laid Plans

First off, a huge thank you to Gramma and Papa for taking Mazlin for the weekend. We might have brought her with us one day, but she expressed interest in seeing Asher Roth, so I had to send her to reeducation camp.

The morning – The sun goes into hibernation. A fine mist fills the air. The taxi driver chooses to take LSD. Not the drug, the jammed up thoroughfare. By the time we check into headquarters (ie, the Hilton), we’ve missed the baroque stylings of Other Lives and the electronic jolts of Hey Champ. No problem, right? I’ll at least get to see The Knux and get Lolla started with a little raptastic goodness, right?

The lines – Lolla gets it right, right away. An expanded main entrance, plus a new side entrance make lines non-existent. Security issues apparently close down the side entrance after one day, but that doesn’t seem to create any more of a problem. A bright, shining Polaris compared to the sucking black hole of the ’08 lines for Radiohead.

Zap Mama – Lolla gets it wrong, wrong away. I forgo The Knux to create a more seamless meetup with companions at Zap Mama. Bad Idea Jeans. I observe the band and the sound crew fiddle with faulty equipment for 25 minutes. This does not bode well. I was supposed to start rocking an hour and a freaking half ago. Might as well go get a beer.

The beer – Lolla halves their landfill load by eliminating plastic cups and serving beer in the can. For some odd reason this seems to make the beer get warm sooner, despite the fact that it feels like it’s 52 degrees out. Warm Bud Light in the cold rain of a gray August day while a band you don't even want to see can’t even conjure sound from their gear. Who could ask for more?

Builders and the Butchers – Ah. Now we’re talking. A small-time band with a big-time sound. These guys tell rocking dusty Old-West epics with electronic banjos and mandolins and ukuleles and such. The two drummers wail on toms not one foot apart from each other. They sing two songs about the rain and the rain starts to fall harder.

The rain – The rain sucks, by the way.

Crystal Castles –This weather makes me feel like I need to rock, not sway, so I see Crystal Castles instead of Fleet Foxes. And Crystal Castles DO rock. A rising, rollicking set that sounds like you tossed a Nintendo Entertainment System and a drum machine into a blender and hit frappe. But when I leave the set early to trek over to the other side of the park*, I realize my grave mistake. Fleet Foxes sound positively otherworldly. I get two songs of crystal clear harmonies to crystallize my regret over seeing crystal castles.

*The walk across the park – When I’m alone, unfettered by my wife’s faulty flip-flops, I dart around dullards like Frogger. I love Frogger. My sister once tried to break my arm because I reset the game after she got to the twelfth level on one life. I deserved it.

The mud – The rain has kind of sort of almost maybe stopped for a bit, possibly. But great googly moogly, the mud it has left in its wake is horrid. The southside looks positively Sahara-like compared to the north, where huge swaths of grass have been torn up and transformed into heaping hills of muck. The proceedings start to look and feel like Lord of the Flies, and, as I am seemingly the oldest person at Lollapalooza, I feel I am in grave danger.

The Decemberists – A few years ago, I started to tire of The Decemberists. Everything seemed too lilting, too literate. And then they unleashed the power of prog. And made an epic story-album called The Hazards of Love. At Lolla, they play the album through, start to finish. And it is good. And when they fire into The Rake’s Song, with three players wailing on toms and snares, it is great. A guy next to me remarks to his friend, “This song would only work if it had more drummers. Like four or five.” I have no idea if he’s being ironic.

Of Montreal – After another pinball-like journey across the grounds, I hear some Of Montreal. I wish I could see their antics on stage, but they are swamped, literally, with a huge crowd ankle-deep in mud. I want no part of this. I retire to the outskirts with a group of friends to wait for Depeche Mode.

The portapotty – While I wait, I go to the portapotty. No line. No tower of Crapylon. Pitchfork, take note.

Depeche Mode – My nostalgic and geeky love for this band helps me weather the many songs off their new album. I’m here for the old stuff. Dave Gahan sounds great, and the band rips through a lot of extended versions of songs, which lends a more organic feel to what could easily come across as a cold set. Enjoy the Silence gets the best treatment here, with Stripped coming a close second. For a brief period, I am back in high school, opening my newest CD from DM, praying there are lyrics included so I can sing along. For a brief period, I am seated at the old piano, playing Pimpf over and over and over. And then, Personal Jesus starts. That’s our cue to beat the crowds back to the Hilton bar.

The Hilton bar – Our traditional post-Lolla hangout. We get there in time for a window seat. We eat extremely overpriced and underrepresented food as various and sundry Lolla fans march past. A young man presses his bare bottom up against the glass. Appetizing. Time for sleep and hopefully better weather tomorrow. Although I fear the mud will ruin the rest of the weekend.

Coming up next: Saturday, or Hey! The Weekend Isn't Ruined!

And so it has come to this

I used to really love the playfulness of a portmanteau.

Smog

Galumph

Spork

Good innocent, clean fun. But then society had to go and put the man in portmanteau, and things got a bit precious.

Murse

Metrosexual

Bromance

And then Snickers came and gang raped the portmanteau in its eye socket. Ahem. Sorry for the visual there. But, I mean, look at these.  

Patrick Chewing

Nougatocity

Master P-Nut

Chewmute

Seriously?

"Hey dude, why you eating a snickers on the bus?" "Cuz, man. This is my chewmute."

Fuuuuuuck.

And now it has come to this. Beans. Yes, beans, ladies and gentleman, have taken on the yoke of portmanteauification. Here are some more suggestions for their campaign.

Crappetizing

Scramptious

Shityourpantilizing

Do you have any good suggestions? Share them in comments! 

Factose intolerant part deux

So, I’m flipping through another cooking magazine, and lo and behold, there’s another ad teaching me about the relative non-dangers of high fructose corn syrup.

Thank you, Corn Refiners Association, thank you.

Let’s take a look at the facts clinging to the side of that pudding cup, shall we?

Fact: Your dry cleaner doesn’t know shit about shit.

Fact: Kevin totally caught a typo in that last fact, sew eye fixed it.

Fact: High fructose corn syrup is simply a kind of corn sugar.

Fact: Corn sugar is harvested from the teat of a virgin unicorn.

Fact: Virgin unicorns are more common than you might think.

Fact: Did your dry cleaner even go to school?

Fact: High fructose corn syrup has no artificial ingredients.

Fact: AI: Artificial Ingredients was a movie starring Haley Joel Osmont.

Fact: Haley Joel Osmont is a virgin unicorn.

Fact: All sugars should be enjoyed in moderation.

Fact: That does not include the sugars contained in this blog.

Fact: Or in cocaine. Go nuts with that stuff.

Fact: “You’re in for a sweet surprise” was not the tagline of Ginger Dead Man.

Fact: Ginger Dead Man did not star Haley Joel Osmont. 

Fact: That would have been sweet if it did.

Fact: By sweet, I mean, a totally natural, low-cal sweet.

Fact: Your dry cleaner’s a dick.