stupidest publicity stunt ever? answer: yes.
anyway, off to metro center h&m for a bit o' shopping goodness, and then to trivia night at fado! i haven't been in several weeks, so i thought i'd return, as i've forgotten what the stinging failure of losing badly feels like.
wow. lollapalooza actually has a really good line-up this year. wilco, flaming lips, morrissey, pixies, sonic youth...however, naturally, it looks like not too many of the really good bands will be playing the festival when it comes to the d.c. area; august 12 we get Morrissey, Sonic Youth, PJ Harvey, Modest Mouse, Le Tigre, BRMC, Von Bondies. august 13 we get String Cheese Incident, Flaming Lips, Gomez, Polyphonic Spree, Michael Franti & Spearhead. fucking string cheese incident. okay, actually, i lied, because the first day has about four bands i'd be quite happy to see, and the second day i'd love to see the flaming lips if i could be assured that they would actually get top billing over the string cheese incident, because if not, that just ain't right.
anyway, i'm pretty sure we're not getting most of the good acts (ie, wilco and the pixies) because the venue, merriweather post pavilion, is actually the 10th Circle of Hell, and the important musicians are in the know, and have widely decided to avoid the place entirely. i mean, i saw the worst concert of my life at the merriweather post pavilion. and, i mean, it was RADIOHEAD. you have got to be in hell to make a radiohead concert seem like a trip to the dentist.
really, everything about that particular concert was so terrible and incompetent and UNFUN. i bought the tickets while in venice, and could only get lawn seats because of the time difference, but, oh well, i figured i could enjoy radiohead from a distance as well as from the front row, because they are so supremely awesome. and, you know, even if merriweather is in maryland, if i leave like three hours before the concert, it really shouldn't be a problem to get to this place that's 45 minutes away, right? so we can have pretty good seats. and, well, even if we don't have lawn seats that are that great, i know radiohead is touring with a few big screens, so we can at least watch on those, because those big screens are always fun -- thom is always sticking his face in the little camera and looking cute. and also, even if the screens don't work for about 75% of the concert, at least we'll be able to hear the music, and that's the important part, isn't it?
no no no no no and no. 1) radiohead sucks from far away. it's just the case. i am spoiled - i've seen them 12 times, never more than a hundred feet away, usually in the first twenty rows, once even in the pit. and it's a far different experience than when you're about two miles away in the sweltering, mosquito-soaked heat on a hill that actually is not a hill and provides approximately zero incline so you can't actually even get a glimpse of the band, let alone the deliciousness that is ed o'brien. 2) getting to merriweather was, perhaps, the worst experience of my life. even listening to the bends on the way up did nothing to make me feel better about getting to the show incredibly late. instead, i kept listening to the songs, some of which are my very favorite songs ever, and i kept getting angrier and angrier that a. merriweather was so fucking far away and b. maryland people can't drive and c. the people at the venue handled traffic problems so incompetently that they were making me miss RADIOHEAD. did they not understand the enormity of the situation?? i don't get to see radiohead all that often. i mean, like once a year pretty much on average. and it is like a fricking spiritual experience for me.
but whatever. i get over it. we pulled into the parking lot and heard strains of 2+2=5 and race to the lawn, which is so crowded at this point that there remains only the tiniest sliver of space at the very top of the hill, which, as i've already pointed out, is not really a hill -- it's just kind of a lump of grass with no slope. so i looked up eagerly to the three massive screens perched onto of the roof over the stage. nada. they weren't working. it was early, so i tried not to stress about it, but when it was like an HOUR LATER and they still weren't working and i hadn't even seen a bit of lovely thom or hot ed or hardworking phil or swingy-haired jonny or bouncy colin...well. it was like an eight-grader was setting up a digital presentation to his class. the screens would flicker on and off for a few minutes, giving us the slightest bit of hope, and then fade to black for half an hour at a time.
and also, i'm getting really tired of complaining about this concert that was almost a year ago, and i can guarantee that you're getting tired of hearing about it, but the sound sucked.
so that, my friends, is why i will never return to merriweather post pavilion, even for the flaming lips, even if wayne pours fake blood over his suit, even if they have the large animal-costumed people up on stage dancing around and passing out in the heat. not even then. nope. sorry.
Jeff has posted some more photos of our last BBQ on his site. So now, with evidence safely archived in two distinct locations, future historians' ability to piece together that fateful afternoon is virtually assured. "Charred flesh... and alcohol?!" I don't want to oversell it, but this could be a digital Rosetta Stone for a world that's forgotten how to grill.
And with that, the post reached a length of one paragraph. The end.
a couple of thoughts from this weekend:
and
besides the cicadas and the eyeball-scorching heat, it was actually a pretty good weekend. tommy mentioned that friday night, we went to a party on top of the cairo, thrown by jen callaghan and a few other people that i vaguely knew. the party was fun, and the view from the cairo is unbeatable, but tommy's bullet by bullet description of the dc-ness of it all captures it perfectly. i need me some more arlington barbeques or a night at the galaxy hut. actually, i think my roommates and i plan on throwing a summerfest once the cicadas and their rotting nastiness are gone from this world -- late june? we'll see.
saturday night, becca and naomi and i ventured out to clarendon grill, expecting a dj so we could dance the night away. however, we instead encountered some terrible ass-clown band that covered like, linkin park, so we hightailed it out of there and across the street to mister day's, a sports bar/club i'd never been to before. it was fun, and there was dancing, but it was skank-filled to the brim.
at one point, i got tired of dancing to usher's "yeah" for the third time, so i leaned over a table to chat with the girls. i glanced back at the dance floor over my shoulder and noticed a young guy looking at me, and i was all like, oh great, back off you whippersnapper, i've had enough guys trying to get on this tonight, uh huh, so just turn away. then the guy taps me on the shoulder, and turns out it's my young cousin (with a new unrecognizable hairstyle). great. i felt officially ANCIENT and LAME. though it was nice to see him, because he's a sweetheart. apparently he's partying the summer away in northern virginia before heading to ut-austin for engineering grad school.
around 1am, becca and naomi drop me off at tommy's house, where's he spent the night with mark zuckerman playing some retarded assassin video game on the xbox live or whatever it's called when you can come together with other nerds across the world to play the same video game simultaneously. thing is, the porch light's on, and now there are like, oh, FIVE THOUSAND cicadas covering his front door. i screech around outside for about 10 minutes, while mark and tommy do nothing to help me because they are too busy losing at their video game (they make lousy assassins), but eventually tommy holds the door open for me and i hunker down, run up the sidewalk, and make a flying leap through the door. i felt like i should have gone into a rolling sommersault afterwards, but instead just kind of landed awkwardly, skidding into the coffee table.
on sunday, i decided to go to the gym, where i ran four miles. there's nothing for motivation like realizing that in six days, you're going to the beach with a bunch of other bloggers/people with digital cameras, and one way or the other, unflattering pictures of you in a bathing suit ARE going to end up on the internet.
later that afternoon, i participated in a time-honored tradition: Helping Your Boyfriend Shop for Clothes. it was great; we ended up at tyson's mall about 50 minutes before closing time, so the pressure was on and we were able to make all sorts of split-second decisions. should tommy buy those green cargo shorts or the flat front khakis? THERE'S NO TIME -- GO WITH THE CARGOS! leave the khakis behind! GO, GO, GO!
so, in an incoherent nutshell, that was the weekend.
and i just heard from my dad to tell me that my brother lost his wallet and all of his credit cards and IDs in hawaii, and is now on a submarine somewhere in the pacific. awesome.
