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I bought my very own domain name and moved somewhere else on the Interwebs… peruse these archives at your leisure if you’re interested in learning a little bit about the past.  If you want to keep current, send me an email or leave me a comment and I’ll point you in the right direction!

Haircut Dilemma

This is my hair now (I’m on the right):

This is my hair 3 years ago (3rd from the left, but PS, aren’t my friends adorable):

I’m thinking of going back. Votes? It’s only about 3″, but when you’ve only got 6 or so to work with… that’s a big chop-off.

PS. I wish I was as little as I was when I was 22. Damn.  Walking all over campus every weekday and to the bars and home on the weekends did a body much better than cabs and busses.

NyQuil is My Hero

5 Reasons I Know I’m Sick
- I’m crabby.
- My body can’t pick a consistent temperature.
- I turned down a beer at my softball game.
- My whole body feels like it ran, biked, and yoga’ed yesterday and that’s very not true (I drank beers and ate fried pickles).
- Tacos don’t taste good.
- My shoulders lack the strength to support my head, which feels like it’s going to roll off of my shoulders.
- I can’t count.

Blah.

Twins vs. Mariners 8-16-08

Hi from the metrodome! Go twins!

501 Reasons to Lie on a Date?

Interesting. Form your own opinions, but from an advertiser’s perspective? Risky, compelling, and probably nails it’s target audience.

sexy Levi’s ad

Identity crisis

With the purchase of the new phone not only did I switch numbers altogether but I’m no longer in the 651 area code. I’m a 612 now. This St paul girl is still coming to terms with that.

Redefine Success

Co-worker Ben:  Wow, I’ve actually managed to get kind of caught up today!
Me: I… am not yet falling behind.
Co-worker Ben:  Hey, now that’s still a success!

Lolla – Brand New, Okkervil River, Spank Rock, DJ AM

Oooh! A four-for-one here. This is because I only caught glimpses of them, but it was enough to either make an impression or make me want to check out more.

Brand New is a rock band out of Long Island that kind of reminds me of something like Linkin Park meets something Mark Hoppus could’ve orchestrated. The verses are smooth and harmonic, but the choruses are loud and rowdy. I really, really dig ‘em. What I overheard of their live show makes me want more. They can really tear it up on songs like “Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows”, but are perfectly capable of bringing it down with melodic ballad-like songs such as “Soco Amaretto Lime.”

We overheard Okkervil River while we tooled around looking for beer, food and shade. These guys are folksy indie rockers out of Austin, Texas that I think I could get into once I heard more of them, but what we heard from a distance sounded pretty cool.

Spank Rock and DJ AM were pleasant surprises that we stumbled upon while making our way from the south to the north end of the park. Spank Rock was pretty cool, but DJ AM drew us all into the crowd with his mixed version of MIA’s “Boys.” (PS, MIA is hot, and that song is uber fun). Alex got some great pictures (I’ll post ‘em once/if he sends ‘em to me!), and the crowd just ate it up. Great, great DJ (from someone that doesn’t know a whole lot about DJs, I at least know this is one to check out).

Whose CD’s will I buy? Brand New fo’ sho’
Who will I see when they come back to Mpls? Brand New, absolutely. Okkervil River if they’re opening for a band I’ve got on my “bands to see” list. As for the DJs? Probably not. I’m not much for the club scene, but if they made it to something of a show rather than just spinning at a local club, I’d be more interested.

Lolla – Lily’s Full Band List

Here’s the full list of bands I saw + bands I wish I’d seen.

Friday, August 1

Artists/Bands I Saw:

Duffy
Gogol Bordello
Mates of State
Radiohead

Artists/Bands I Wish I Saw (but didn’t because of scheduling conflicts):

Louis XIV (but I saw them when they played the Varsity here in the spring)
The Black Keyes
Cat Power
The Raconteurs (probably the one missed I wish I’d seen the most)
VHS or Beta’s DJ set

Saturday, August 2

Artists/Bands I Saw:

Devotchka
Brand New (kind of)
Okkervil River (kind of)
Lupe Fiasco
Spank Rock (part of it)
DJ AM (part of it)
Toadies
Rage Against the Machine

Artists/Bands I Wish I Saw (but didn’t because of scheduling conflicts):

The Ting Tings (got there too late)
MGMT (same time as Devotchka)
Broken Social Scene (same time as Lupe)
Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings (same time as the Toadies)
Wilco (played the same time as Rage)

Sunday, August 3

Artists/Bands I Saw:

Black Kids
Iron and Wine
Flogging Molly ( wow ! )
Gnarls Barkley (the last half)
Mark Ronson
Kanye West

Artists/Bands I Wish I Saw (but didn’t because of scheduling conflicts):

The Weakerthans
The Whigs
Blues Traveler
The National
Nine Inch Nails (played the same time as Kanye. I’ll discuss this in my Kanye review later, but I wish I’d have seen NIN instead)

Lolla – The Logistics (Day 3)

We took our sweet time getting up and moving on Sunday morning. Opting for O’Shaughnessy’s Irish Pub across the street from Loren’s instead of The Golden Nugget, we started here for breakfast and Bloody’s.

I had a breakfast sandwich with Irish bacon (if you don’t know what that is, basically it’s bacon that wants to be ham or ham that wants to be bacon).

Ok, so after breakfast we hopped again on the Brown line, transferred to the Red Line at Belmont, and then made our way back to the masses at Grant Park. First stop? Wine + beer.

Next stop? Sean has been intent on seeing Chromeo since we got here. I’d planned to catch the first part of that and then hop to the next stage over and see Black Kids, but I got antsy waiting for Chromeo to start and left the boys there while I hopped over to the Citi stage. I got to Black Kids a few minutes early and met up here with another favorite colleague (who also probably happens to be the cutest rep I work with). Here, I street-danced my little heart out to all their songs, especially “I’m Not Going to Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance.” (Here’s the video)

After this one, I hiked across Grant Park to check out Iron and Wine on the Bud Light stage. This was a great chance to sit in the grass, hang out, grab some water, and just rest my legs before the dancing that Flogging Molly would inevitably bring.

I found a big enough space on the concrete, and this is where the boys and I met back up. Here, we jumped our little hearts out to the Irish punk GENIUS that is Flogging Molly. Great, great, GREAT show.

Next, we hiked BACK over the other end of the park to plant ourselves in a good spot between the MySpace and AT&T (big) stage so we could catch the end of Gnarls Barkley before Kanye took the big stage. Gnarls ended with a Radiohead cover that just about knocked Sean and I off the deep end.

In between Gnarls and Kanye, the MySpace stage featured Mark Ronson. Look him up – seriously.

Mark Ronson’s MySpace page

He’s a producer, kind-of-cover-artist, singer. I’m not quite sure how to explain it, because he didn’t quite “cover” these songs, but remixed them and did something cool with them that makes him not only fun to see live, but also respectable as a music man. Review to come later, but seriously – this was one of the best parts of the weekend.

And then there was Kanye. I have to admit, I wasn’t as impressed as I’d expected to be, but at least the crowd didn’t boo him a la Bonnaroo.

Post-Kanye, we headed back to the Ice Box. Loren called it a night early, since Monday was just hours away and he had to work the next day. Cesar crashed hard, but Sean and I stayed up for a smoke and then watched Adult Swim cartoons until sleep came.

* Monday, August 4, 2008 *

We got up and moving early enough on Monday to meet another Chi-based colleague of mine for some really awesome Mexican food (this seemed to be the theme, with the Taco Bell start on the way out of town and the couple of fast Mex stops that were made over the weekend). We ate at Uncle Julio’s Hacienda, this AWESOME Tex-Mex place just outside the city.

They’re known for this drink called a “Swirl,” which is a – you guessed it – swirled concoction of frozen red Sangria and frozen margarita. I opted for a beer instead, since I was the driver, but Sean and Cesar each had two, and they were both slightly drunk for the next hour. Cesar, especially. Janine (my rep) got us a to-go order of sopanillas (the Tex-Mex version of NOLA’s beignets, but with a honey dip), and Cesar tore into these as soon as we were in the car. He almost didn’t share, but somehow Sean played moderator and made him give me one. They were incredible!

Anyway, this set us on our journey out. We made it home in about 6 1/2 hours despite a little bit of construction and two stops – one on the west side of Rockford, IL and the last at the two-hours-to-home mark of Tomah, WI.

The weekend was absolutely incredible. I tried new things, heard new bands, made new friends – all in all had the most amazing time I’ve had in a long time. Highlight of my summer, hands down.