Saia's new room

I mentioned before that one of the things I spent a decent amount of time on during my 2 week summer break was finally finishing Saia's toddler room.  A lot of the rooms in our house were already stylistically complete not long after moving in.  The exceptions were the bathroom (which we redid early), Saia's room and the office.  The office is still a hopeless use of space but Saia's room quickly became one of the most pleasant rooms of the house.  I picked a boy blue to replace a winnie the pooh green that I originally tried early on.  And decided to do something fun by making train and track cut outs to spray paint a silhouette thing on the wall.  The blue goes great with the wood borders, carpet, and orangish antique furniture.

Yes there is a big hole in that wall.  We've tried to put a couple things there but Sai tears them down.  I think I want to get a thomas poster in a frame and baby proof it to the wall.  :)

My first art club project.  Made of scrap wallpaper, string, stick...

goofy picture Mom printed out for fun at her school a while ago.  I took that picture on my phone, yet she made it into a poster.  I got those wall lamps ages ago, and they didn't get well used until I finally finished this room.

Lollapalooza

First of all, a better summary of the magnitude of Lollapalooza than mine:
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-08-07/news/chi-lollapalooza-wrapup-20110807_1_lollapalooza-grant-park-party-crashers


I found out back in June that there had been a Kid Cudi concert in Indy and was annoyed about it enough that I looked up his next tour dates.  He had a new, random show scheduled in Chicago, and alas, the next day I bought Jeff and I $230 tickets for Lollapalooza 2011.  I knew most of the headliners, pretty much none of the indies, but was sold for Cee Lo and Kid Cudi.

Only pic I took before I broke the LCD screen on my camera (dropped it). 
The rest were taken candidly...and most of the times I tried to take pictures they
didn't take or were out of focus.  Bad timing :(

Other performers I had at least a pinch of interest in:
Foo Fighters
Coldplay
Muse
My Morning Jacket
A Perfect Circle
Damian "Jr Gong" Marley and Nas
Bright Eyes
Arctic Monkeys
Deftones
Cage the Elephant
OK Go
.....Eminem..........

Muse...with fireworks

Coldplay + Chicago skyline

I asked off the 6th and 7th of August as soon as possible (in early July), and Jeff and I drove up to Chi city to meet Christine and Sara as soon as I got out of Kosair on the 5th.  Unfortunately, I didn't have the guts to make it obvious to my resident that I wanted to leave that day, so we didn't head up to Chicago until 3PM EST.  We ended up missing OK Go, Bright Eyes, and Perfect Circle. :(  When we got to Grant park, Muse and Coldplay had just started.  How unfair is it that they schedule these bands at the same time?  It was so wrong.  But I didn't particularly love either of them so we watched Muse from like 500 ft away for half an hour than Coldplay from about 300 ft away for another half an hour before we left the festival to drive to Sara's place an hour away in West Chicago. On the way out, Jeff and I walked by a stage that we thought might be Girl Talk.  The music was electronic and got our attention because the song had cougar snarls incorporated into it.  It turned out to be Ratatat, who I now have starred on Spotify.  Ratatat actually has collaborated with Kid Cudi a couple times (Pursuit of Happiness, Alive).  We were going to go to an after party that night but unfortunately for everyone else, I didn't remember til 11PM EST that I had a writing assignment I needed to submit by midnight (it was already mostly done).  I had to drag everyone to the car to get a laptop then to the closest Starbucks. lol.  My friends are kind.  No real complaints this day, it was gonna be a good weekend.

After eating chicken tikka wraps!!!

  Saturday we got to the festival at 1:30 to catch one of Xtine's bands of interest: Phantogram.  They were alright.  After that, we walked towards some food but stopped by Skylar Grey.  I thought we could check her our bc she has a nice chorus in that Eminem doctor song...and also a good collaboration with Lupe Fiasco.  She sucked pretty bad live though and I can definitely see how she decided to work with Eminem...vomit.  After eating we ended up going to get a decent spot for the Deftones show.  We'd all seen Deftones before, way back in `05 or something in Dayton, and that was a horribly disappointing show.  The lead singer was totally trashed and didn't try to hide it.  He apparently has matured a bit since then, and the show was awesome.  Can't saw I remember the songs like I knew them 5+ years ago, but it was definitely a high point, especially for Jeff.

Deftones is old.  Just like us lol

After Deftones, I had everyone run to one of the big stages to get a spot for Cee Lo.  There was alerady a ton of people in that crowd, and it didn't take long for me to realize that the people there were holding their spot for Eminem, who wasn't even going on for 2.5 hours.  We probably didn't even get within 300 ft of that stage.  And that crowd stunk...literally I don't know if it was the mud or what.  This was the most disappointing show of my life.  Cee Lo only has his new album (the Lady Killer), but I would've been totally Satisfied (one of his songs) if he would have just went through the album track by track.  Instead, he made the show into a huge awkward mess by trying to get the crowd into his act...total fail.  He kept doing rock ballad covers, and random covers I'd never heard. He probably did half covers, 1/4 Gnarls Barkley stuff, and 1/4 his own stuff.  And only singles!  Then he got off the stage with his "F*** you" song, telling all of the Eminem fans waving Detroit BS in his face that he would "get out of their hair." He ended his act like 20 minutes early.  I've never hated Eminem more.  And talking about Eminem is one of the only contexts I ever use the descriptor "hate."  F***ing hate hate hate hate hate hate Eminem.  OMG I can't get over it.

After Cee Lo we heard Atmosphere from the distance for a lil bit while I fumed over my hate of Eminem, then headed to another band that Christine likes, Lykke Li.  We got some amazing Chicago pizza after that then headed to the "Perry's" stage to catch another electronic instrumental band that Christine wanted to see, "Pretty Lights."  This show was wild.  Perry's stage was dedicated to electronica and this place was very rave-worthy.  I'm sure a good % of people there were very literally raving.  A 40,000 sq ft tent dedicated to strobe lights, glow sticks, speakers, and especially the next day...mud.  And Pretty Lights is apparently the perfect band for that.  It was impossible not to dance to this music (unless your Jeff, lol).  Xtine mentioned that she typically listens to it while studying, since there are no words to distract you, but its still upbeat.  I'm listening to Pretty Lights on Spotify right now.

Once we decided we were sweaty enough...(ew).....Xtine was cool with getting out of the audience to check out Eminem for a minute before the crowds started heading out for the night.  The Eminem audience was absolutely insane.  Had to be 100,000+ people in that audience.  We watched from probably half a mile away on a hill over the crowd.  Yes we could hear fine.  We could see Eminem's face on the giant projectors (He's Ugly).  We got there just in time for the Doctor song, the Rihanna song (absolutely hate it), and I think one other single...  We went because now I can say I saw it.  I felt bad for every hate-filled person in that audience (including myself lol).  And for every idiot woman in that audience who is too ignorant to see how disgustingly offensive and repressing Eminem is to stop tolerating his BS.

took the train in and out of chicago on saturday.  Cool!

The next day we slept in ridiculously late and didn't get to the festival until about 7.  We would've gotten there sooner, but after making pit stops on the drive in, fixing a loose hose in Xtine's car, losing my phone for 15 minutes, and getting caught in a huge rain storm, we ended up missing Damian Marley, Nas, and Arctic Monkeys :(.  Not to mention Xtine, me, and even Jeff wanted to run by Urban Outfitters just because we could. lol.  I got a couple adorable skirts off the sale rack and Jeff got like 4 new goofy t shirts to add to his collection...  Once we got to the festival, we just waited around in the fields of mud around Perry's stage, where Kid Cudi was going to play.  Foo Fighters played at the same time, but Kid Cudi took priority strongly.

Cudi gives this vibe that suggests he doesn't think he's a big deal.

We really tried to get a decent spot for Cudi, esp being 2 hrs early, but I still couldn't see him during the show.  We were probably 75 ft away.  Apparently everyone in the tent was a serious, serious fan.  Everyone knew the words to everything.  I was impressed bc I had made a point to try to memorize more of the actual verses the day up to the show, and his raps are freaking hard!  Cudi acted impressed with the audience.  He let the audience sing almost every chorus by the end.  He stuck to his newer stuff, and skipped a lot of the Kid Named Cudi songs (in a good way).  He went over his time slot 5 minutes and Lollapalooza workers had to take away their equipment to get them to stop playing...it was a sad ending, they did not let him play near long enough!  I don't feel like I got enough out of it.  I want to see him again.

Talk about a classy music festival.  It was crowded as I've probably ever seen a crowd- 270K according to the article I found above.  That was especially made obvious by overlooking the Eminem audience (really wild view). Not that I think the people in the Eminem audience were tipping the scales in the classy direction... But for being such a large group of people (and all the drugs circulating), I didn't see any fights, any arrests, any drunk belligerent people, or even boobs.  And it was organized sooo well.  There was no such thing as lines at food and restrooms, there were "volunteer" workers all over the place, and no, you couldn't hear a distant band playing from the concert you were watching.  The food wasn't carnival and even had local chicago stuff and veggie options.   Apparently there were lobster tacos.

Toyota tent.  the advertising tents had free stuff, but we never got
our hands on anything.  They had the only lines we saw...

Although we figured out our own tricks to overcome some security measures, the entry points were highly regulated, and I bet very effective compared to most music festivals.  There were no fences that could be jumped, no holes in the barriers, and our wristbands had electronic scanners in them.  According to that article above however, mass rushes of 100+ people at the gates were frequent.  Tickets were sold out weeks before, and prices were running for $300 a day by scalpers and online.

Yeah, as long as there are a couple good groups I'd like to see next year, I'm there...People they could sell me if tickets went on sale now(prioritized):

The Pixies
White Stripes
Arcade Fire
Regina Spektor
Mos Def
MF Doom
The Roots
Vampire Weekend
Phoenix
The Mars Volta
R.E.M.
Sigur Ros
John Legend
Sufjan Stevens
Ben Folds
The Strokes
Death Cab for Cutie
Gorillaz
The Killers
Interpol
Incubus
Gym Class Heroes

I don't know man, this year might be hard to beat.  I've officially seen most of my favorite artists...

Angela's Ashes

I started this book during last Christmas break and finally finished it in mid July. I kind of had to force myself through the beginning, but that's typical for me with most books I think.  I wish I could get through books in better time, but I typically don't feel like I have the free time to enjoy books properly....so I get through them as I can.  Next up is A Brave New World.

For the last many years, I have really loved every book I read and added them to my books list on fb (giving away about how much I read here).  I really enjoyed Angela's Ashes, but I don't feel the necessity of adding it.  Once I got into the book, I didn't want to put it down, but I felt like it was out of a need to get to a happier next page.

Angela's Ashes, which has a movie too that I haven't seen, is a memoir about a boy born in the 30s in Brooklyn to Irish immigrants who decide to move back to Ireland when he is a toddler because of their poverty.  Sure enough, Ireland was not in the least doing better than America in the 1930s.  The story is about the family's bare-to-bone poverty, encounters with illness and death, and hopelessness of being supported by an alcoholic father who cannot keep a job and eventually abandons the family.  I may have laughed a few times, cried once, but probably looked like this most of the time reading:

I picked the book because my Mom had it when I was younger and it was still a best seller (published 1998) and I think the cover and title always made me curious.  When I started it, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it fit a theme I've found to really enjoy- industrial revolution-->pre-WWII era and focusing on every day life.  I probably like those themes because I'm in to the romanticism hipster trend, I love history/old things in general, and because of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Anne Frank, others...

Things that I liked:
Frank McCourt apparently has a fantastic memory of the thought content of his younger years.  He constantly wrote from the point-of-view of his age at the time of the story.
His descriptions of his family members were so loving and authentic, especially his parents.  He would take special care to depict them in the way he saw them as a child, not skewed by adult realizations of their common humanity.  Even his father, who ended up leaving the family when he was 12, was never depicted as a bad man.  Just a man of constant disappointment, who the family would not give up on no matter how hopeless he was.
His childhood perceptions on the adult values and morality he grew up within.  He grew up a truely devout Catholic- which he discusses extensively.  However, he points out in a non-skeptical fashion the hypocrisy and biases of his church and the values pressed so stiffly to him and his peers.  In the end, rather oddly, he suddenly seems to turn against all of it the night he arrives in America... 

The ending may be my only criticism...it was abrupt and surprising, and suddenly showed a new vulgarity after what had been largely innocent recollection of everything from sex and adultery to the deaths of his classmates.  But in a way it was appropriate.  As it was his introduction to America- it could be considered his tone to an entrance into what is the essence of America...his introduction to his perception of freedom.  He went from what sounded like late 18th century life to the 1940s in America...

If you have more time than me and are into history, memoirs, stories of courage...totally recommend.