Lollapalooza Day 3

It's finally here: Lollapalooza Day 3. The main reason this took so long is that Day 3 is kind of a blur. Remember I talked about a certain kind of brownie that may or may not have altered my perceptions about things? Well, there seemed to be some sort of cumulative effect happening, because on the third day, I was really, to quote my good friend Joe Martine from high school, 'trippin' hard balls.'

We arrive and are walking toward a stage when we get distracted, for the first time, by the kidzapalooza stage. I can't remember what was playing (throughout the weekend, we'd heard a cover of the Ramones' Blitzkrieg Bop and a couple other wildly inappropriate for children numbers played with bubblegum pop sensibility), but we walked over and noticed that very young kids were playing, and playing quite well. They were from the real live School of Rock, which I guess is a school like in Fame except all the students learn how to play rock songs with complicated guitar solos and stuff like that.





The second band we saw on day 3 is Sparta.




Now, I'm a moderate fan of Sparta, but I have to say that every time I hear them, I just hear unrealized great songs by At The Drive-In. I've said before that Sparta took all that was mellow and melodic from ATDI and Mars Volta took everything that was aggressive and abrasive and alone, neither of them is dynamic enough to really hold interest for the listener.

Then I saw a bunch of cute guys.






I was told to watch Hot Chip, but while we were walking toward their stage, we heard these guys playing.





They were called The Benevento-Russo Duo. Despite being two guys with a drum set and a bunch of keyboards, their music was really full-sounding and held my interest. I really enjoyed them.

After their set, guess which totally hot roadie made a reappearance?




Yum.

One more kinda cute guy on our way to see 30 Seconds to Mars.



30 Seconds to Mars, I guess, features the guy from My So-Called Life, the wildly popular, but shortly run teen drama. I can't remember his name. Anyway, it was hard to get close to the stage, but can that guy twirl!!! He was just runnin' around like a crazy member of an 80's hair rock band! Very impressive.




Things start getting fuzzier around now. I don't remember why we didn't go see Matisyahu (maybe we did?), or Of Montreal or She Wants Revenge or if we went to watch Queens of the Stone Age or not. I have no pictures to tell me. I think we did watch Queens, because I remember that we were leaving and specifically not seeing Broken Social Scene, whom I really really enjoy. Ah well, here's the last decent picture I though worth posting from Lollapalooza, 2006.

Raleigh 2006

I don't know why, but I'm skipping Lollapalooza Day 3 and going straight for Raleigh 2006.

Our part-time employee starts school very soon, so I had a little vacation time available with the prospect for more murky at best. I mean, I'm sure I'll have some eventually, but I just don't know how soon it'll be totally easy.

Anyway, I wanted to go somewhere in the states I'd never been before. I'd recently met this couple from Slovenia, friends of Wally, who, on their vacation, came to the states and drove across our country. Route 66 and all that.

My friend George invited me to come out and stay with him. So I did.

Things started out rather nightmarishly. I'd made my travel arrangements online. And the night before I was to leave, I realized that my departure time was for 7:42 pm and not am. I decided to just get to the airport as early as I could and try to get a standby flight.

Well, first I woke up later than I'd wanted.

I get to the airport and fly through security. There's an 11:00 am flight I'm trying for. I'm like fifth on the standby list. I've been lower on the list and made flights, so I'm a little hopeful.

The flight comes and passes. The good news is that I'm on the top of the list for the next flight, which is only 57 minutes later - and the gate is K-9, which means 'dog,' so I have a really good feeling about the next flight.

Alas, the next flight comes and goes. Despite being first in a list of 14, I do not get on this flight, but like 9 other people on the list do. I'm a little incensed, and the next flight's not til around 4 pm. Luckily I brought my camera and plenty of Preacher comics.

Here's the only picture of a cute guy I took, though. It was slim pickins. Certainly no smorgasbord of hotness like Lollapalooza.



Kinda Anderson Cooper-esque. I think he mighta been a pilot. He talked to the pilot he's talking to for a good half hour.

While I was waiting, I saw this guy come up to one of the remote computers and start playing with it. The guy had no official looking nametags or anything like that. He looked to me to be of Indian descent maybe. But he was dressed in khaki pants and a blue checkered shirt. He looked conservative and boring. He didn't look like he was idly seeing if he could get the computer to work, like maybe someone trying to get free web-time to check their email or something. He looked like he had a sense of purpose. And when he was done doing whatever he was doin', he very casually walked away from the machine.

At O'Hare, most of the check-in kiosks are sort of self-contained, but there are a few instances where the gate has a computer just sitting by itself. The whole thing freaked me out a little bit. Especially how casual he was about it. He had a boarding pass in the front breast pocket of his shirt.

I went up to this woman who was working at a nearby gate and said, "This is kinda weird, but are the computers out there supposed to be for public use?"

She was like, "Wha?" She's like "that's not a computer, that's a [I forget]. Here, I'll show you.

It sure looked like a computer to me. It was running on Windows, to be sure.

She was like, "maybe he's who was messin' up my computer. Maybe he's why mine keeps freezing." She goes to the terminal and keeps pressing buttons including the esc and delete keys, but it doesn't seem to do anything. After about 45 seconds of this, she's like, "I finnin' go home." She walks back to her gate, grabs her coat, and walks away.

It was kinda frustrating. I kept thinking about the guy changing manifests or something. I mean, I didn't know what kind of act of terrorism someone could do using those machines, but I bet there's something.

I decided to go walk some more and see if I could find him, which I did. He was not too far away and he seemed to look right at me when he saw me.

He slipped my gaze again and then I lost him. It was bugging me, still, but I felt like I already tried to get someone to help, so I just kept my eyes open to see if I saw him again, but I didn't.

I can't remember if it was the third or fourth flight, but I finally got on a plane. It was exciting.

I didn't arrive in Raleigh until after 7 pm sometime, so it kinda sucked, cuz I was leaving early Thursday morning, so this effectively cut my trip to 2 full days, and my host was scheduled to work Tuesday early and late Wednesday.

We made the most of it, though; I had a great time.

We decided to go get some food and see Little Miss Sunshine. We got pizza from the local pizza place whose owner is totally cute and then went to see the movie at a little single screen indie place called The Rialto.

On the way there, this kid was playing with one of those toy helicopters that you pull a cord and they fly up in the air. He asked excitedly as we walked by if we wanted to see and we both said that we did.



Here's my host, George. He's so sweet and cute.



And here's a picture of a pretty typical Raleigh Residence. Notice lots of flowers.



There're lots of flowers in Raleigh.



There's not a lot of street art, but I did find this:



On the second day, George worked, so I ended up going to a local cafe and reading most the day. It was pretty enjoyable.

After George got home from work, we decided on dinner and a trip to see some local music.

We went to a new restaurant called Milltown, which was pretty good. Kinda slightly more gourmet bar food; nothing too spectacular.

We went to a place called Lantern for dessert, which was delicious and the decor was practically what you might find in New York or any other Urban Metropolitan city. The things I did notice were inconsistencies that really were the foundation of what makes good design good, though. For example, in the bathroom, the sink fixture was plastic. It looked very cheap. The decor for the rest of the bathroom was perfect, but the fixtures ruined it. Also, the mirror was not bevelled and was not framed. It hung with little plastic hangers. Aside from those details, the bathroom was great.

I took a couple pictures with no lens on my camera. Here's one:



Here's one with lens:



Here's me trying to take a picture of both of us. Had to use manual focus, cuz the camera had no idea what to focus on in that lighting:



Even blurry, George's smile looks stunning.

At a venue called Local 506, we saw two bands.

Eyes To Space


(check out that home-made keytar!)

and Get Him Eat Him (or something like that)




On the last full day, Wednesday, we were gonna go to the Farmers' Market in downtown Raleigh. We were a little early, so we walked down this pedestrian-only street to look at shops. There was one called Amazing Glaze, which is one of those places where you paint pre-made pottery and they fire it for you. We decided we needed to paint some pottery to have mementos. It was great fun.




We made each other cute little mugs to a Cars album and then some duet album featuring some reggae guy whom we didn't recognize, but the first two duets were with this guy and 1) Willie Nelson and 2) Bonnie Raitt, so it was kind of cool.

A bit later, we made it to the farmers' market. Here's me holding up an acorn (Raleigh is known as the "city of oaks," and the acorn is kind of a central icon in their iconography):



Here's George buying bread from the bakery for which he used to work - indeed, the baker for which he originally came to Raleigh in the first place (a partnership long-since abandoned).



These characters seemed like the embodiment of "Farmers' Market."



This guy sold cheese:



We saw this totally cute puppy layin' in the back of a hatchback and it totally made me call home to see how Racecar was doin'.



Cool building murals:



Today was oppressively hot. Probably why this sheriff was taking it easy at the gas station.



Oh yeah, and he's fat.

Oh, and then we saw Snakes On A Plane!!!



It was pretty fun. I'd recommend it. Suspenseful and gory. Yayy!!

After the movie, we stopped at Lake Johnston (Johnson?). We took turns posing for pictures and taking pictures of hot guys as they jogged by.




That's George's inconspicuous look. Nice.

When we got home, George made some fantastic sandwiches from stuff he picked up from the Farmers' Market. One was a fig, goat cheese and prosciutto and the other was a delicious BLT. Sooo good.

Later, George took me to the gay bar where he works in a kind of a "take-your-out-of-town-visitor-to-work-day exercise.

Project Runway was playing on the TV with closed captioning, so I didn't complain. I'd never seen a full episode before (I know - there's no need for comment on this really, is there? I'm out of the loop), so it was fun. I always knew I'd like it.

I got to meet some of the local homos, and they were nice and friendly.

Oh, and the peanuts!



George had to work til just after 2 am, and I stayed for the whole thing. I was drunk and exhausted when we left. We woke up late and I was nervous I was going to miss my flight and sit in an airport for another 6 hours, but we made it (RDU's a little less crowded than O'Hare). However, Chicago was having bad storms, so we were grounded a full 2 and a half hours before we could take off. More catastrophe. I guess it coulda been much worse.

Moschell Art Opening

Last night I went to Mars Gallery for the opening of an artist you may've encountered on MySpace, Moschell. I went out with Ryan, but ran into lots of fun folks there: Jason, Wally, Catty, Ryan, the Duke, AlexRoss, Vic, JoJo... I'm sure there were others. It was a good scene.



The Duke was going crazy about my getting a picture of this woman:



I was his hero for getting such a clear shot. I forgot who he called her. Some crazy-looking celebrity.

Here's a shot of my friend Jason and the artist:



And here's a shot of some of the art. The artist basically used little matchboxes as a surface, then coated the matches within with paint or glitter. I thought it was well-presented.



Here's a link to my flickr with all the pictures from this show.

Lollapalooza Day 2

We arrive a bit before noon. Ryan wanted to see Be Your Own Pet, who is this like 16 year old girl who's in a rock/punk band or something like that (I really don't know), but I wanted to see Rainer Maria, which is also a girl-fronted band, but much more established. The Rainer Maria stage is on the way to the byop stage, so we stop there. On the way, I see these two guys coming from the byop stage.



What a way to start the day! The guy with the tats is not really a looker, but he's got a nice body and cool tats. But that other guy! Whoo! Look at that! What a smile.



Then there's this other guy. This pic doesn't really capture him, unfortunately. Didn't get a really good shot. He's got this look about him that made me just know he's an attorney. His friend sitting and reading the paper isn't so shabby, either.



We walk over to byop for a minute and I think she's a little boring plus the audience was more attractive and the audience is in the shade at Rainer Maria, so we go back to watch them.

Who knew Jimmy Fallon was the drummer of Rainer Maria? Not me. (ok, it's not him, but it looks like him.



And the rest of the band.





You can see the rest of my Rainer Maria pics at my flickr here.

We saw these attention hogs inbetween bands. They were cute, though.



OK, so one of the best performances of the weekend was next. The Go! Team has such a high energy show one can't help but be impressed. The members generally are multi-instrumentalists and their music feels really original and yet familiar at the same time. And everybody is so damn cute!!! Cheerleading outfits? Yahoo! Two drummers in most the songs? Awesome! Multi-ethnic? Superb!





And recorders? Who doesn't love a recorder? Takes me back to rockin' out in 8th grade!!!




But by far, my favorite was Sam, the guitarist (/drummer/banjo player/ everything else player). Cute, talented, a total ham and a winning smile, what's not to love?






I even saw him out after the performance under the trees and said "it's Sam!."



He heard me and turned around to look and probably thought I was crazy. All I got was this shot of him walking away. I shoulda been a little more aggressive. Oh well. I love you Sam! Call me!

Then that weird guy who was onstage for every good band came out and danced a little with them. Look at the look on Sam's face. He's so adorable. Those wacky Canadians!



OK, to top it all off, there were a couple cute guys seen during this performance.




OK, so maybe I'm a sucker for a nice tattoo, but he's ok. Ferreals, yo.

But then there was this guy.




This guy may've been the all time winner for the weekend. I'm not sure.

At times it looked a little like the people around whom he was standing were somewhat aware of my picture taking. I will probably never know. It sure looked a little like he was modeling for me.


More Go! Team Photos.


After Go! Team I'm gonna say quite a few hotties were out.









While we waited for Sonic Youth, this charming young man entertained us with his sock puppet.



So, I am sorry to say that Sonic Youth were something of a disappointment. I'll disclose now that I may or may not have eaten a particular kind of brownie which may have altered my perception of things, but I heard from other people that my experience was shared by others. Their performance was just...lackluster.





The real kicker is that Gnarls Barkley was performing at the same time as Sonic Youth, but I didn't think to move to their stage. I mean, Crazy is the feel-good song of the summer! I totally should have watched at least part of their set. Oh well. :(

Later I saw this kid. Isn't he absolutely demonic? Rosemary, you lost your baby!



Next I had to stop by the The Dresden Dolls stage because my friend Olivia was doing sound. There she is!



Hi, Olivia! Good job. I can totally hear everything!

But I couldn't get very close, so I took this picture of the screen, which definitely highlighted that crazy makeup.



OK, so you know when trippy things happen when you're sorta, um, tripping? Well, The Flaming Lips were up next. 'Nuff said:







Balloons. Santas. Spacemen. Alien Girls. Skeletons playing keyboards. A guy in a giant balloon. Crowd surfing. What a waste of a brownie.

I liked this girl.





More Flaming Lips Photos Here.


Then there were the last few cute guys of the evening.




The darker it gets, the less my auto-focus works, unfortunately. This guy I really wanted a good picture of. Note his glistening muscles!





This one was the only one that came out clear, but it's a profile shot. I think we used to work out at the same gym. His friend's pretty cute, too.



These guys actually look like they were looking right at me.



These guys might've had their own brownies.




And finally, the last couple things I saw at the end of the night.




I love Chicago.