Chicago: Become Familiar with its Distinctive Neighborhoods

it looks like Jad Fair somehow has like 10 myspace pages all under the same name

Jad Unfair

It's freezing in here and my outfit is a mess--bunch of nice pieces of clothes that look dumb together.

Fuck.

I feel like an asshole.

maybe you need a scarf?

C@n@st@ mentioned on Pitchfork: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/47428-jeff-tweedy-cool-kids-rock-for-obama

I moved on Saturday, it was awful but it's done, and my new house is crazy and also freezing. My space hea(r)ter arrives from Amazon today. The crazy part I'm just going to have to go with -- at least all the bands that played on Sat were enjoyable.

Laurel update complete.

weekend update:
fri - saw no country for old men at the davis, thought it was weird structurally but enjoyable. some parallels with the jesse james movie, though i liked the latter more
sat - hung out at home most of the day reading the charles schulz bio and working on mixing the ff album. watched most of a bulls game for some reason. went to king khan & bbq show at the note, got in a really really bad mood because of density of assholes and general tiredness
sun - woke up in a bad mood still, had band practice which put me in a better mood, went to ben's house for enchiladas, drank a really strong margarita and got buzzed, went to target and bought god of war II, went home dreading doing my sunday work half-drunk only to find i had no work to do, played gowII and read more schulz bio.

pretty good weekend overall except for saturday night which was ironically the one "activity" i had planned

God. A scarf might get me sent home. I wouldn't want to look at me all day.

I have on

- pinstriped brown pants
- lovely checkered blue shirt
- tan argyle zip-up sweater
- brown shoes (they really clash with the pants bad--they're warm brown and I now see that pants are decidedly cool)

This sounds very fussy and like I know something about fashion, but I am just describing possible reasons for the self-loathing I'm experiencing when I look down at my sartorial vomit-splash.

Fri- had head/chest cold. Hacked and sniffed.
Sat- Did H&O work in daytime, worked my ass off at Catch ($$)
Sun- Worked my ass of at Catch (not so much $$) and had mini burgers at Crew.

I've written our old pal Dave to thank him for the Pitchfork mention. :)

DAVE-O! DAVEY BOY!

is how you should have started the note

fri - went to a sports bar
sat - rehearsed all day, left car at rehearsal studio b/c of ice storm, ate and drank and ate and drank. a dude at the bar gave me basketball tickets and one of his anti-depressants, for some reason.
sun - recorded all day (got 4 songs out of it), ate mexican food, hung out w/a girl

jesse, i think if you zip up the sweater, you'll be fine! the shirt sounds like it might be a bit busy, so that might make it less annoying to you.

or you could have the dog rub up against your pants, and you could pretend to have a fit because it's against your religion, and that you have to go change clothes because of it?

Hahahah oh man

Weekend:

Went to Red Rooster for dinner on Friday. Delicious and surprisingly reasonable, although we kind of splurged and got appetizers, dessert, and wine, which turned it into the second most expensive dinner we've had. Also really cozy and romantic.

Had lunch on Saturday at First Slice Cafe with Kr's friend Melissa. Grumbled about the weather. Went grocery shopping. Casted about for things to do at night: I really wanted to go out and drink, since we came home right after dinner on Friday night, but neither of us were thrilled about leaving the neighborhood. Ended up walking five blocks in the freezing rain to my friend Mark's place, where we had a couple beers and got stoned before he and his girlfriend left for a show at the Hideout. Went to bed early.

Sunday was all about cooking and cleaning. We made two (two!) lasagnas (spinach w/bechamel and mushroom and soymeat w/marinara) and served the first with an arugula salad and a bottle of pinot noir for dinner with my mom.

Somewhere in there we watched a few episodes of Six Feet Under, too.

Not a bad weekend, but I kind of missed getting drunk and smoking cigarettes. I know that probably makes me lame.

I'm pretty sure that makes you normal.

Friday: bands and beers w/ out of town friends at Beat Kitchen. The dude from Roadside Monument's new band was not very inspiring, the opener that sounded exactly like Explosions in the Sky was only slightly more so.
Saturday: drove to fucking Joliet to get a treadmill w/ mattttttt. The snow started just as we arrived in town. The treadmill was slightly too large to fit in my car, so we tied the hatch closed and drove back ~30 mph the whole way on slippery roads. Everyone else went slow which was fortunate given my open-door status. After that I ate pizza and fell asleep, then played video games and screwed around until I went back to bed.
Sunday: Lots of kicking it, watching soccer, doing laundry, etc. Wore pj's and didn't leave the house all day. A winner is me!

A side benefit of the trip on Saturday was driving through everyone's favorite local site of national scandal, Bolingbrook.

I bet you drove right by the truck stop where Drew Peterson allegedly met some truckers to help him dispose of the body. There's a Bob Evans right there, or at least there used to be.

friday- got a little loose at my local after work, when i walked home my upstairs neighbor and a friend were heading out so i went to some bar up north i think? damen and foster maybe? i don't know. i stayed out too late, got home real early and didn't sleep much.
saturday- went to my friend's house and drank beer and ate pizza with mark & khan before going over to the note. place was oversold by about 100 people, couldn't move, got massive amounts of drinks spilled on me, took way too many elbows to the kidneys. bold ones sounded good with zac on bass. johnny and the limelights were depressing. busy signals did not play any of the songs from any of their singles. incidentally, busy signals full length is reviewed in the latest issue of spin (which also has an article in the back that name checks c0c0c0ma). i think they gave it 3 1/2 stars.
sunday- watched football, slept, watched football, went to grocery store, slept, watched football, ate, etc etc.

i've been sick the last couple days, my head is so congested that when i woke up this morning i couldn't open my left eye all the way! it looked like someone punched me. no one has (yet).

so i went to some bar up north i think? damen and foster maybe?

This was probably either Leadway or K's Dugout. Was there an easel in the corner and amateur art on the wall and the top 40 being played on satellite radio, or was there an Internet jukebox being commandeered by Vietnam vets?

Morning all. Barely. I wanted ILX to be up yesterday when I had time for it.

while king khan & bbq were playing, we were standing at the side of the stage, by the stairs. dude from busy s1gnals squeezed his way in front of me and then proceeded to pull like three of his friends in front of me too. then this big dude came pushing through, but i wouldn't move because i was tired of people shoving me. he said "get out of the fucking way!" i was pissed off and so i said "where the fuck are you going?" he gave me a dirty look but just kept moving up to the stage. i think maybe he was security or worked for the note but he had no item of clothing or badge or anything identifying him as such, and didn't say anything like "security coming through." probably dumb behavior on my part as dude was like twice my size but i was in a really bad mood, as noted.

This was probably either Leadway or K's Dugout. Was there an easel in the corner and amateur art on the wall and the top 40 being played on satellite radio, or was there an Internet jukebox being commandeered by Vietnam vets?

i could not tell you. i'd go with the easel place with top 40 music. there were a lot of girls there.

My thoughts re: said show:
* first band I really liked the music, could take or leave the vocals (probably leave) as they were were a bit obvious and affected
* second band had some good slow songs, but mostly were embarrassing to watch - then guy behind me dropped all this pizza on the floor that I had to dodge
Then I did this wonderful thing that hasn't happened at a show in a long time where I got extremely claustrophobic and overheated and felt like I couldn't breath and like I would faint soon. So I rushed over towards the door and sat at the bar there. It was freezing cold but I didn't care because all I wanted was space and fresh air.
* KK &BBQ were so entertaining. Great vox. AMAZING guitar playing SKILLZ. Nice costumes. I was really annoyed by all the shoving but was still glad I went.

What is up with KK/BBQ shows being INSANE? At Cakeshop here the sight lines are terrible to begin with, so if you weren't within about 12 feet of the stage you couldn't see anything...and I was up there but having trouble breathing and could not actually move my arms and hands, it was so tight. I gave up. Show was...well, not ruined by any means, but frankly I liked the opening bands better.

Props to n/a for holding his ground though. I hate when people shove their way to the front after arriving late. When I went to see *cough*thekillers*cough* at the Congress a couple years ago, I got burned by a cigarette for refusing to move when this girl and her 18 friends tried to push past us.

Oh, forgot the third band. They played while I was breathing at the bar, so I didn't see them in action. I liked them well enough, especially one song which I can't remember now, but mostly every song sounded the same. I'm sure I would have appreciated them alot more had I not been off in a corner.

I've mentioned this before but I really hate on the shorties at shows that think that because they are half as tall as I am they can shove past me. I got here first, bitches! Of course, rock n roll doesn't usually shine on punctuality.

Sarah just changed my whole life for the better. COLORED LABELS ON GMAIL ARE AMAZING.

Oh yeah, no problem, I'll just listen to the set while staring at the middle of your back. With laser beams.

Get there earlier and get a good spot closer to the stage.

Which is what I do and then a zillion girls shove in front of me and call over to their friends to join them.

Really I don't like anybody that feels they deserve to be closer than people who got there before them, for any reason. Also, if you can't make it through a 45 minute set without four trips to the bar for more beer, just stay by it instead of making us all suffer as you attempt to shove your way through the crowd with four full beer cups.

I'm just bitching -- at the last few shows I've gotten shouldered aside by much taller boys who then planted themselves right in front. Asking them to move for you sometimes backfires when you don't realize that there's going to be a mosh pit starting in approx 7 seconds and you've just moved to the front of it.

Also it's not my fault they banned smoking indoors.

What does the smoking have to do with it?

This show was so crazy smoky.

Maybe instead of getting in front of the earlier/non-smoking/slow-drinking people, then, I should just ask them to all move closer together? Because as the club fills up the large gaps they've left between each other aren't really the appropriate spacing anymore.

Oh, Sarah, because with the ban here, I usu go outside to smoke between sets. :)

Also, if those dudes shouldered you aside to get in front, they were doing exactly what I hate!

http://www.scienceaid.co.uk/biology/plants/images/osmosis.jpg

Exactly.

down with tall people!

My best anecdote from being the tall guy in front is from when a ton of my college friends and I came to Chicago to see Fugazi at the Congress. We were the first people in line, like 5 hours before the doors opened, and we got let in in time to see the opener finishing their sound check. We were up against the stage almost all the way across. Photographers and asshole fans tried to push in front and gave me all manner of shit for being "too tall" but they didn't wait outside on the street for hours, so fuck them. Plus I was (and still am) bigger than them, and so could be intimidating. I think I was wearing a tshirt with the sleeves cut off that day, too!

Also at that show matttttt and my friends Brad and Rachel got their picture taken down in front by the stage and were on the front page of the Trib lifestyle section.

xpost: I can't hear you down there!

As a 5'6"er, I say tall people have every right to be as far up front as they want--as long as they're in a squatting position.

Yeah, like we'd cede our advantage and open ourselves up to your lilliputian kickings!

i get so annoyed by all this stuff at shows as well, it makes me feel old that for a lot of shows i think i'd prefer assigned seating.

dan, was that the show they did with shellac? i was there as well, although standing more towards the back. picked up cute boy that was waaaay too young for me,though.

Yes! And the Ex. That was the shit. $6 for that show, what a deal. One of the best shows of my life.

Bell's returns in six bars: Clark Street Ale House, Lemmings, Silver Cloud, Northside Bar & Grill, The Handlebar, and Twisted Spoke.

Four of those six are within a half-mile radius of The Crotch. :(