Lollapalooza 2008

Since Lollapalooza starts midday tomorrow (Half Day At Work!) and goes into the night I won't have time to update until maybe Monday. But if I do, it will be right here on this post.

For those of you going to the show, look for me at these band's sets which I will not miss for the world.

Friday
2:15-3:15 - The Go Team
4:15-5:15 - Gogol Bordello
5:15-6:15 - Mates of State
7:15-8:00 - Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks (Sorry CSS)
8:00-10:00 - Radiohead

Saturday
1:30-2:30 - Mason Jennings
3:30-4:30 - DeVotchKa
4:30-5:30 - Explosions In the Sky
6:30-7:30 - Broken Social Scene
8:30-10:00 - Wilco (Sorry reunited Rage Against the Machine)
11:00-??? - Broken Social Scene - Afterparty at The Metro

Sunday
3:00pm - Roll out of bed
5:15-6:15 - Flogging Molly
6:30-7:30 - Girl Talk (Sorry Gnarls Barkley)
8:15-10:00 - Nine Inch Nails unless I really want to see Kanye West

Otherwise I'll be bouncing around from set-to-set trying to catch as much as possible.

Update (12:22 am Saturday): I knew the moment of the night was probably going to come during the Radiohead set and it did. The band was playing at the southmost stage with the backdrop of the South Loop and the Field Museum behind them. There was a glow from Soldier's Field where, I know now, the Bears were holding a fan family night and I commented on it between songs.

At the end of the family night, there was a fireworks display. Radiohead kicked into "Fake Plastic Trees" from The Bends and I watched as the colors exploded in the sky and how they reflected off the building. It wasn't intentional and you'd have to be several degrees beyond stoned to believe the song and display synced up. Still it was a really beautiful moment and one which I'll treasure forever.

Alright, I'm too tired from the sweltering heat to stay awake much longer. Tomorrow is going to be a long day including an afterparty. I'll update at the end of the day if I'm still awake enough to be coherent.

Update (9:10 am Sunday) Sometimes in life you have to take the good with the bad, the better with the bitter. So when you take a frisbee to the face at Lollapalooza, try to remember it was at Lollapalooza that you blocked a frisbee with your face. Call the guy a fucking asshole and move one with it.

There are too many bands to see to waste your time on some piece of human trash (Seriously, this guy was a total dick. No "Sorry"s, just laughing.) and you were on your way to see Broken Social Scene. Which Dan and I did see. For the first of two times. As the sun was setting behind the Chicago skyline. Which was awesome.

The second time was later that evening at the Metro. After an ordeal with the doors not opening until when the opening band Yeasayer was supposed to be on stage, BSS hit the stage around 12:30 in the morning and played straight until 2:15. There wasn't a lot of duplication between their set earlier in the day and they actually played my favorite song, "Lovers Spit." Dan and I caught a cab home after the show and climbed into bed at 3 am.

Update (10:39 am Monday)

I'm back at work today and, despite having the worst dry-mouth ever last night, I woke this morning without Lil Wayne voice. I'll have to try even harder next year.

My brother wasn't able to stay for yesterday's festivities. All of the bands he wanted to see started after 5:00 and he had a 7 hour drive back to Minnesota to tackle. We went to brunch out in Bucktown with one of his friends, we said our goodbyes (all the way until this upcoming Saturday) and he drove home.

He does get a million points at life though because he figured out a way to take off his wrist band and get it onto my other friend's wrist. Since he has a big wrist and her wrist is small, he cut his band close to the clasp and then she and I stitched it onto her wrist with a needle and thread. We tightened the clasp so it covered the stitches and it looked like it had been on her wrist all along.

While there we saw three different acts and all three were an absolute jam. Flogging Molly is always great, Girl Talk was off-the-hook and then Mr. Kanye West brought his manic energy to the people. Overall Lollapalooza was great and I'm glad my bro was there to share it with me.

P.S. The new Ghostface and Raekwon?

If You Ain't Gonna Ride Fly Then You Might As Well Hate

Though it came out two Fridays ago, it took me until last Wednesday to see "The Dark Knight" for a couple of very valid reasons. Foremost in those reasons is that I spent all of that weekend at the Pitchfork Music Festival listening to Public Enemy, The Hold Steady, Jarvis Cocker, Ghostface Killah and Raekwon, Vampire Weekend and Dinosaur Jr as well as others.

On Saturday morning my friend and consistent concert companion Patrick and I were walking to the train to take out to the festival. Walking in the other direction was a kind of lumpy kid with colored hair and too big clothes with army boots. Back in high school this kid would be considered a goth and, while I wouldn't have been slamming his head into a locker, I could have counted on this kid listening to Marilyn Manson, not really giving a shite about school and owning at least one shirt with Brandon Lee as The Crow on it.



Except this kid's shirt didn't have Brandon Lee on it. The face printed white on black and staring back at me wasn't The Crow. In a moment it all snapped together for me. The long run of Brandon Lee as the dead celebrity that most exemplifies the dark and brooding soul of a teenager was over. Fourteen years on the top ended quickly and quietly overnight on Thursday with the old king being deposed by a new prince of crime. It had barely been a day and a half since the first midnight screenings of "The Dark Knight." But already Heath Ledger was the new Brandon Lee. The Crow Is Dead! Long Live The Joker!

Now I could go off on a tangent about how the icon has changed from a hero who is righting a wrong and curing the world of its ills to a cynical villain who is creating chaos in the world. I'll just say post-Columbine it became very easy to vilify the outsiders who sat by themselves at lunch. Apparently those attitudes have not faded completely in the last ten years.

The point is this. Going back to the day they announced Heath Ledger would be playing The Joker... check that... going back to the end of "Batman Begins" when he flips over the playing card, it was apparent this movie would be riding on whomever played The Joker. When they cast Heath Ledger, it seemed an oddball choice and this role would have forever remained his legacy whether he'd died or not. I'm so sure of it, I actually wrote these first five paragraphs before I even saw the movie. And, having now seen the movie, I can tell you his legacy will be he was the only inspired thing in an otherwise terrible movie.



One of the things that "Batman Begins" got right was it returned the astray Batman franchise from focusing on flash and visuals and celebrities playing the villains to the dark and deep story of a man who brings justice to an unjust world. The movie walked you through the development of Bruce Wayne into Batman and you could see the dynamic character growing and learning. You could feel his motivations changing and expanding. At the beginning of the movie, he's ready to shoot the man who killed his parents. At the end of the movie, he allows the man who really killed his parents to die. He's stopped fighting the symptoms and started curing the disease.

Well, that one movie detour into truly timeless elements was short-lived. The franchise quickly and noisily reverted to 90% stunts, 10% "There's good and evil in the world. Get it?" The line I've been pushing this past week is that the movie should've been called "Die Hard With A Batman." But the truth of the matter even that is a misnomer because the third Die Hard movie actually had more plot than "Dark Knight." This movie was a return to the failed form of the earlier movies with flash and visuals and "Hey, it's that guy," playing a larger part of advancing the movie to its finish than things like story, character growth and dramatic rise and fall.

Which is what makes "Dark Knight" ultimately more than a bad movie. It's a disappointment because of the potential re-starting the franchise held. This franchise could've been a study in the human character wrapped into a blockbuster's skin. Now it's just the hollow skin. My guess is too many fingers ended up in this pot and the auteur sense used to make "Batman Begins" into a great movie was squashed under a mountain of memos. These movies cost and make too much money to just let someone like Tim Burton or Christopher Nolan play with them for too long. Eventually these pieces of art are about making money for the studios and to do that you have to appeal to the largest audience possible even if it means watering down your product to the point of oblivion.

My only solace will be to watch the "Watchmen" trailer over and over until it comes out next March. They can't possibly screw up the sequel to that. Word up to my fellow comic book fans who get the joke!

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

When the original Spider-Man movie came out in 2002, I was disappointed by it. I felt like the action looked too CGI-ed, the story was weak and the Green Goblin lacked any real motivation to be, y'know, evil. I was one of the people who helped it to $115+ Million in box office on its opening weekend. But that was the only time I saw it in the theaters and never watched it on DVD. However when the second movie came out, it was my favorite movie of 2004. My best guess is that since the first one made Sony so much money, they left Sam Raimi alone for the second one.

Which is exactly what seems to have happened to Hellboy in a roundabout way. The first one came out in 2004 and wasn't very good. It had some promise but didn't follow through on it largely getting lost in the smart aleck aspects of Hellboy instead of the comic book's mythology. Normally that's the end of the line for an action movie franchise, especially one that doesn't even make back its production budget. There was a catch. Guillermo Del Toro, the director of "Hellboy", made "Pan's Labyrinth" as his next project. That movie was well-reviewed and raked in more than four times its production budget. Suddenly Del Toro was a hot director again and the door was reopened for a Hellboy sequel.

The result, "Hellboy 2: The Golden Army", is the best movie of this year so far exceeding "Iron Man", "Get Smart" and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall". Basically Del Toro was allowed to work to his strengths. He was able to build a fantastic world on the mythology of Hellboy (that's basically what comic books are, modern hero mythology) and make a visually stunning movie which doesn't feel like it was whipped up on a Mac. The number of practical effects in this movie are refreshing in the world that gave us both Hulk movies. Add in that the story suceeds on the both the Big Problem and little problems levels and it's what makes a great comic book movie.

It's amazing on some level that Hellboy movies are being made. Just like DareDevil, Iron Man and Elektra, the level of awareness of the Hellboy character amongst the general non-comic-book-reading populace should be limited to the family and significant others of people who read Hellboy. Instead a really good and well-done too sequel to an earlier box office bust based on Hellboy was the number one movie this weekend. Almost 8 years to the day from when my brother and I saw the X-Men movie at the Mall of America, the comic book movie has become more than just an abberation or a curiosity that lives off of previously existing fans. It is healthy and survives under its own merit as a viable genre and that's amazing like Spider-man.

Dedicated To The One I Love

These three songs go out to my newest and best friend. Consider this a mini-mix tape from me to you.



Follow your dreams.



Remember the good.



Live without regrets.

(P.S. Don't worry too much about all of the words. It's the choruses that really matter.)