Edward II

I went to see Edward II last night at the upstairs theatre of the Chicago Shakespeare theatre. The aforementioned link is to a review from the reader, which is a bit ambivalent, but I liked it very much. I would highly recommend this play to anyone. What was really cool was that half the tickets available were "promenade" tickets, where the audience sits amid the action of the play. The other half of the tickets were for what the director called "zoo seats," above the stage. It was very interesting to have the actors be sometimes inches from your face, yelling, crying, laughing sodomizing. Yes, I said sodomizing. That happened at the very end, and it was with a hot poker and it made a woman and her daughter walk out. The acting was excellent, the set design so moody and dark and the costuming made me want to change my whole wardrobe. Kind of a Polo Ralph Lauren meets Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

Tonight: Hercules and Love Affair at the Metro.

2 romantic things you can do for someone you love

There are two really cute things that are pretty unique that you can do for someone you love right now. One of them, unfortunately for my out-of-town readers, is Chicago-specific, but the other anyone can do from anywhere they have an internet connection.

So, the first, which is Chicago-specific, is called Pink: A (love) Courier Service). Here's a link to a review on Oh! How Lovely. Anyway, this was really convenient for me, since it's located on North Avenue pretty much smack dab between home and work, at the St. Paul Cultural Center, 2215 W. North Avenue. Basically, you walk into what used to be a church basement and there are all these people dressed in factory-style get-ups of white with pink trim. There's this neon pink dotted line on the floor and it's a little meandering and they ask you to follow it exactly and there's this little curly-queue in the middle of a straight walk to the first "station" where someone greets you and tells you about the project and give you your stationary and a form to fill out, which includes a sort of release asking if it's ok if they print your letter. They then direct you to a station of old-fashioned typewriters and books of poetry collections that you can use for inspiration. You then write a love letter using this little typewriter. I must say, I was swept away by the whole experience and therefore laid it a little thick in my poetic license, but it was ultimately received "with the perfection with which it was intended (a direct quote from the letter, btw)," so I was pleased. Anyway, after you finish the letter, someone comes and takes it from you and tells you, "now this is very important. When I take your letter and put it on this clothesline, I need you to yell very loud 'love on the line.'" So she does, and I do, and all the little workers in their pink and white coats yell back, "LOVE ON THE LINE!!" It was all very cute.

After your letter is finished, they put it in a little glass bottle and then a shoe-box with other bottles in the same zip code and volunteer bike messengers hand-deliver them to their intended destinations. And all of this is for free.

As I finished typing this, I realized that I'm almost too late. Pink closes tomorrow. Maybe they'll extend it? Either way, you should rush out and check it out. It's Friday night tomorrow night. What better things do you have to do than express your feelings to someone?

The second thing is just as awesome.

A while back, I was friended on myspace by this band, Wrapping Paper. I kind of liked the name, so I decided I would at least listen to their music. A few weeks later, I finally did. I listened to their first song, Hold Up The Neon Sign, which I actually liked a lot, despite a not-so-great sound quality. It sort of reminded me of early The Arcade Fire. Anyway, it still wasn't exactl enough to let me friend them, and I put it off another week.

The following week, I checked them out again and I still liked the first song and the other songs were not as much to my liking, but I noticed that they were also a little simpler in composition, and I saw potential. But then I noticed a posting in their blog. Something about "Your own wrapping paper song!" So I clicked on it and they said that if you purchase their e.p. (for a mere $6.00), they'll write you a song about anything you want.

They also created a myspace page for songs written for people who bought the e.p. When I went to the page, he had a song called William the Wiener Dog, but it's gone now. It was really cute and had this part about all the things William the Wiener Dog likes and it made up my mind right there that I was going to do this. That song is gone now, but you should hurry and go listen to Kurt Vonnegut vs. Jane Austen, which is my current favorite song on their but I think it'll be gone soon. There's also a sloth song, which most of you know, is my second favorite animal. So that's pretty awesome.

Anyway, I bought the ep and sent a message right after and I thought for sure that he'd be all backlogged with requests and it would take weeks before I got my song. I sent him the message at about 9:30 am on Saturday. He sent me one message back a couple hours later saying he'd either have it that day or the next day, and he had the song to me the same day about 12 hours later! And it was awesome!

I gave him some specific details about my boyfriend and I thought he'd get creative, but he kind of used my words verbatim for a lot of it. I think if you're less specific, like in the sloth song and the Vonnegut/Austen song, he'll wikipedia the subject and sing some random things. Either way, they're cute songs and it's a super unique gift for someone special to have a song written about them.

So, go do those things now.

Hot Men of Lollapalooza 2008

It's that time again. Here are some of my favorite hot men of Lollapalooza this year. Hope you enjoy.




This was my last man photo of the weekend.



I kinda just liked this guy's shirt.



Definitely one of the hotter Lolla staff photographers. The others, notably, were certainly not slouches, though.



Sweet tattoos and smile.



Dancin' Bears.









Cute guy with amazing tattoos.



One of my favorites of the weekend.



This guy totally caught me, but I totally caught him doing the same thing on this big muscley dude minutes later, so I didn't feel bad.



Hot duo.



My most-photographed photographer of the weekend. I just liked his style.



The super-hot bass player of Brazilian Girls.






Hot security dudes.



Band crush of the weekend: Ryan from Octopus Project.



These guys are totally cute. I know I see them around town sometimes, too.



I don't know who this guy was, but he was somebody. He kept popping up in the photo pits, but he didn't have a camera. Either way, it was nice bumping into him. ;)



Yum.



Kidzapalooza sound guy with a great smile.



This was my buddy's favorite for the weekend. A photographer for UR Chicago.




If one looks closely, one will notice that this guy is in my "hot guys of pitchfork 2008" too.

So, this was just my favorites. You can see all 144 images from this on my flickr.

Jolie, Again.

I was at the car wash, of all places, and reading an interview with Angelina Jolie in Vanity Fair (which I love) and I all but broke down and cried because she was talking about the passing of her mother and having to explain it to Maddox. It was very moving. Why does everyone give her such a bum rap?

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Dental Damn

Just got back from the dentist. Boo! How did 1 cavity turn to 3? At least I got a vicoprofren script out of it.

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My Inheritance

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I'm published

Here's the recap of Lollapalooza I wrote for Paste Magazine online. The words are mine, and despite losing 5 pounds and taking over 2000 photos, the only photo of those I took was of Perry Farrell and Slash at the very end.

no further evidence required that I'm a fracking nerd

First, this morning I dreamed about meeting this guy who was talking about his dungeons and dragons character who was fighting these enemies and how challenging it was to kill them, until he realized they were undead and then he used a particular spell and they were much easier to kill. "Imagine doing 6d4 damage every time, with a real low-level spell," and so on.

Then, this morning on the way to work, an npr film reporter is talking about the new Batman movie and how there are two kinds of people in the world, whether they know it or not: Marvel people or DC people. Not only was I in agreement, but I even nodded my ahead and said, "oh yeah, he's right," aloud to myself in the car.
At the end of the report, a woman mentioned that the reporter writes under the Wildstorm imprint (which is a subsidiary of DC) and I literally got chills.

See? Proof. All you need.

Jolie Dream

I woke up this morning at three o'clock from a dream and it took me forever to fall back asleep. It wasn't exactly a nightmare, but for some reason, it shook me awake the same way a nightmare does.

I dreamt that I met Angelena Jolie at a party. In the dream, I'd met her once before, too. And she'd borrowed a pen from me. Anyway, we're at this party and when I start talking to her, I'm kind of all starstruck and saying dumb stuff and I bring up the fact that we'd met before and how she borrowed my pen and I'm all like, "I leant Angelena Jolie my pen," and for some reason, she thinks this is a little creep but also endearing.

So we're talking more and she tells me that Brad has left her and now she's raising the kids on her own and I was really really saddened by this news and I keep thinking how big of a dick he is for doing this, but then I sort of talk about how she's a pretty independent woman and was she not really upset about having to raise the kids alone, but really she's upset about the failure of the relationship and all this stuff.

We had some real sweet moments and it was so weird and I later woke up and couldn't fall back asleep and I kept thinking of all the things I didn't ask her, especially about her tattoos because it is probably something we'd have in common and then I just kept thinking it's not like I'm gonna get a chance to actually talk to her, so what difference does it make what I did or didn't say?

2 strange dreams

On Friday:
I was some sort of super-human. Kind of like a Superman or Supreme. I don't really remember much from this dream. I remember swimming or flying really low next to a character kind of like aquaman. And there was a boat. I'm assuming I had some "adventures" before getting to the crux of the dream, which was as follows.

For some reason, I feel compelled to eat a whole bunch of tomatoes. Like, crates and crates of them. A roomful. After I finish that, I'm in a room full of mechanical parts and scrap metal. I compulsively grab these pieces and sort of place them near my body and they somehow start fusing to me. Before I know it, I notice that I'm starting to take the shape of a small space shuttle. Somehow I work out in my head that the concentration of chemicals in tomatoes when processed by my body can create a small nuclear detonation, but because I ate so much, it will be a HUGE detonation. I also somehow realize that all that I'm doing is leading toward a kamikaze mission into the sun. Just as I realize this, I "take off." I scream loudly at the realization that I'm about to die.

The End

This morning:
I am a chef and owner of a restaurant as well as the mayor of a big city. My restaurant is three stories and the most successful and critically acclaimed in the city. There are a number of other restaurants in this dream too.

There is this sort of intrigue going on throughout the whole dream. I'm trying to find out something and it's as much a spy dream as it is a culinary one.

I remember on the third floor of my restaurant, the floor is a sort of patchwork of steel with gaps between that one could possibly fall through and all the waiters are so used to walking over the flooring and I'm trying to and really scared and they're all behind me kind of impatient, but also they're my employees so they have to be patient and helpful.

Another weird aspect of this dream is that all the restaurants, instead of serving desserts, they have at the back of the restaurant, "candy bars." Meaning, they have these bars where they serve a specialized type of candy (chocolate, caramel, chocolate mint, etc.). This actually strikes me as a great idea in reality. First of all, they were charging exorbitant prices. Like, $22 fora 2"X2" square of chocolate. You can get them served on a plate or in a fancy wrapper to take home and enjoy later. If a real restaurant were to do this, it would increase the chance of someone getting dessert from someone who's too full to eat it right there. In my dream, these candy bars are super in vogue and people would come to the restaurants just for the chocolates. It kind of reminded me of that chocolatier on Division called Coco Rouge.

The only other part I remember was when I was in one of the restaurants and the owner, a woman, gave me a plate of chocolates and I was thinking that she was either trying to impress me or she was trying to distract me. I really wish I could remember more of this dream because it was kind of epic.