Soooo, today for lunch I ended up at the Subway down in the Rockefeller concourse. It might be the only Subway sandwich shop that is actually in a subway.
Amazing.
Anyways, as I was just about to get in line, who do I notice is there?
Damn right, Jared.
You know, the "he used to be fat, but then he only ate Subway so now he's skinny" Jared.
Well, it was pretty awesome and it felt like the Universe was kind of folding into itself.
Sure, these girls look boring and not that model-y, but we all say that every time. By the end, they mostly all turn out to be great somehow. And apparently, for some reason, there's a pair of (ghostly looking) twins on the show this time around.
Oh Tyra, you clever devil.
She's also made sure to include what has become a staple of the best show on television: The girl from North Dakota. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you CariDee from Fargo.
That makes FOUR cycles in a row with a NoDak lass. Amazing and great.
Anyways, start your research and get ready to place your bets. The Third Annual ANTM Pool will be forming shortly.
The Amazing Internet Yesterday, a friend and I were talking about how much we loved this certain part in the movie "Predator". It's the one where Duke kinda goes nuts and keeps saying the same line from a Little Richard song over and over while going off to fight the bad guy.
Last weekend, Aaron Melander came back to NYC again.
This time he was here to go camping upstate in the mighty Adirondacks with me, Vince and Dan.
He arrived Thursday night and I went out to meet him at JFK airport. He was nice enough to lug an extra set of camping gear (his girlfriend Lisa's - thanks Leezor!) all the way out here from Minneapolis since I don't have any.
After picking up our tiny little golden colored rental car, we drove into Brooklyn to pick up the Vincent and then headed out towards Albany.
After a thousand delays and horrible traffic, we finally arrived at Dan's house at 12:30am.
Almost immediately after getting out of the car, I felt a squish under my foot. I thought for sure that I had stepped in some dog poop, but instead... ...I killed a poor frog.
It totally bummed me out.
Luckily, Dan is the ultimate host. Immediately upon entering his apartment, we were treated to cans of Coke, pizza, Doritos, Xbox, beer, and then, from out of nowhere: Dairy Queen!
It was seriously one of the best hours of my life and I almost totally forgot about that squished frog.
The next morning, we got up early and drove another two hours to get to our hiking trail.
And we were off...
The plan was to walk a giant loop: 10 difficult miles the first day, then camp for a day, then 6 easier miles back on the third day.
Pretty much right away, we started going over crazy obstacles like this:
As promised, the first ten miles were strenuous, but a lot of fun. We spent a lot of time climbing over and in between boulders and generally going straight up into the hills. Here's Dan being assisted by his two walking sticks, affectionately named "Two Pronger" and "Stamper".
We got to the top and took a break to take in the epic view of the thousand foot rock cliffs that the guidebook told us about. Aaron also stared at this little green inch worm that was on his hand.
There was no rest for us though, since as soon as we reached the summit, it was time to start heading straight down towards Lake Colden, where we were going to set up camp for the night.
After a seriously delicious freeze dried meal (just add hot water) while sitting next to the lake, it was time to set up our tents.
Almost instantly after unpacking our sleeping bags, the sun went away and it became dark. There were no fires allowed here for some reason, but luckily we had our cool little head lamps to shine in each other's faces.
Aaron made us some coffee, we ate some M&M's and drifted off to La La Land.
The next morning we got up and brushed our teeth in this stream. Then we just sat on the rocks in the warm sun for a while and zoned out while Dan told us about how cold he had been the night before.
Apparently he bought a new sleeping bag for the trip, but accidentally (I think) got a "Junior" size. This only came up to about his nipples once he got inside of it. Since the temperature got down to 45 degrees that night, Dan battled the cold by pulling his socks onto his arms and wearing his t-shirts over his face.
Yikes.
Anyways, after a hot, revitalizing breakfast of oatmeal and coffee, we set out to take over one of the nearby lean-to's.
We ended up with this great one that overlooked Lake Colden. Still feeling lazy, we plopped down and played some Whist. I had to re-learn how to play, thus Aaron and I got whipped by Vince and Dan.
Dammit.
At one point shortly afterwards, this happened:
You start to do strange things when you're out in the remote woods.
Vince went for a swim in the freezing cold lake. And then he headed out to another lake to do some fishing.
The rest of us stayed put: my knee hurt, Dan's everything hurt, and Aaron wanted to read a book. Instead of reading though, big Aaron went down to the lake and filtered some water for us to drink while Dan and I played frisbee.
After about a half hour of this, Dan somehow convinced us that it would be awesome to somehow beat Vince to the fishing lake. He swore that we could do it. I had my doubts, but soon we were off, racing through the forest. At some point an hour later, and with the help of the forest ranger (seriously), we found him in this dried out lake bed. I totally couldn't believe it.
Supposedly, according to that ranger, the lake was somewhere in here. I also heard that the Pet Sematary was in there too.
We ended up giving up on this mystical fishing spot after a while since the forest became literally impenetrable.
Somehow we made it back to our camp before it got dark.
Just in time for Dan to crawl into his junior sleeping bag. How awesome is that thing? You can tell he's pretty excited about sleeping with socks on his arms again.
Well, we all made it through the night to face a chilly upstate New York morning.
After a lowly breakfast of only a Cliff bar each, we raced off onto the trail home. Of course we stopped for pictures along the way.
Probably the oddest thing that we came across along the way was this memorial stone that was literally in the middle of nowhere, six miles from the nearest road. We were all perplexed as to how and why this was here.
Well, thanks to the mighty internet, you can find out about David Henderson here.
Pretty crazy.
After this point, we started to get hungry. We nearly sprinted the six miles back to our car with dreams of hot coffee and eggs dancing in our heads (well, at least that's what I was thinking about).
About two hours later, we made it. Here's Dan signing us out of the trail.
Victory!
And what better way to celebrate such a great trip?
Yep.
In all, it was a fantastic time. My foot still hurts for some reason, but I'd go again in a heartbeat. This time I'd bring some pants though.
Lollapalooza 2006 For my birthday this year, the illustrious Kelly got me a ticket (and a plane ride!) to this year's Lollapalooza in lovely Chicago.
The last time I was in that town was about 8 years ago, and in January, so I was excited to visit in the warm summertime.
The last time I was at Lollapalooza was way back for the fourth one in 1994 with the Smashing Pumpkins, etc. I also went to the second one in 1992 when the Red Hot Chili Peppers were the headliners.
Guess who headlined this time, 14 years later (JESUS! FOURTEEN???!)? Yep, the same band.
Anyways, I seriously never thought I'd ever find myself at another one of these things, but, after battling a 5 1/2 hour plane delay at stupid LaGuardia Airport the night before, there I was.
DAY ONE: For some reason, we didn't get to the show until about 3:30 on Friday afternoon. We missed a few bands that I wanted to see (Stars, mostly), but since there were so many lined up, it didn't really bother me too badly. Plus, I ran into them doing a photoshoot: Um, band photoshoots are hilariously silly.
The concert(s) took place in Chicago's Grant Park, which is a REALLY big place. I read somewhere that it was 3/4 of a mile from one of the main stages to the other.
Sometimes it felt like 34 miles.
If I remember correctly, the first show that I saw was Ryan Adams. I thought it was kind of boring, so Kelly and I went to find one of the many (and reasonably priced, I might add...) beer tents.
Then we went to watch Lady Sovereign. All I could think of when watching her was how awful it would be to hear that voice first thing in the morning if for some reason you were married to her.
A bit later, we went to watch the Raconteurs. They were pretty good, but I was more interested in watching My Morning Jacket play and for some reason they were scheduled at the same time (on the opposing main stages).
By the time I made that long-ass trek, I only got to hear about four songs. They really were great though and their songs really work in big outdoor venues like this.
Next up, I had to decide between seeing Sleater-Kinney or the Violent Femmes.
I know that since Sleater-Kinney is breaking up after this tour, I should have watched them.
Oh well...
The show that I wanted to see most on day one was next: WEEN!!! Goddammit they were awesome.
Here's some YouTube evidence:
After the show, we met up with Kelly's friend Kamil who we were staying with. He wanted to go find his friend who does the lights for Death Cab For Cutie (they were playing opposite of Ween). Turns out his friend is a super nice guy and lives in my neighborhood, Greenpoint. We ended up hanging out on their tour bus for a while. At one point, Ben Gibbard came in and talked about his Teenage Fanclub t-shirt that he bought off the internet (nerd!). Then he stole a bottle of Jack Daniel's and headed out into the night.
On the way back to where we were staying (Evanston), I spied something with my eye: Dairy Queen!!! Thank you Chicago!
DAY TWO: We arrived at the park at a more respectable 1:00, just in time for Kelly to go see the Cold War Kids, while I ran off to see the lovely Feist. She's pretty great, but I'm not sure how well her songs fare in huge outdoor environments like this. Plus, she had to battle the sounds coming from the other nearby stages.
One of them being Peeping Tom: I hadn't ever heard of this band, but someone told me that Mike Patton was in it so I ran over to check them out.
Well, I still love Mike Patton, but this music kinda sucked.
After two songs, I had enough and ran back over to watch the rest of Built To Spill's set.
While there, I saw the craziest sunburn ever: Look at that poor sucker's neck! I don't even remember anything about Built To Spill because I just kept staring at it. Ouch. Worst farmer's tan ever, right?
Next up, a long walk over to see Wolfmother.
Perry Farrell came out to introduce them and man, is that guy skinny. The crowd was really excited for these guys and they rocked it as usual.
Here's someone's borrowed YouTube video of "Apple Tree". You can see Perry in the background.
Next was a decision between seeing Gnarls Barkley or Sonic Youth.
Not being able to decide, I went to both. This was my third or fourth walk across the expanse of Grant Park.
Luckily, there were many beer tents along the way.
After Sonic Youth, Kelly met up with me and we waiting for the Flaming Lips to come on. We were treated to some songs by the Dresden Dolls, who were playing the next stage over.
Jesus. What a horrible band. They did a cringe-inducing cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" as well as a cornocopia of their other god-awful songs.
Thankfully, the Flaming Lips eventually came on. They did their usual schtick: balloons, santa clauses, aliens, confetti, etc.
Yes, I agree that it is getting really old at this point, but it went well with the festive atmosphere.
Also, I had had about six beers by that point.
After five or six songs, we headed back across the way to catch the end of Common's set.
We found a nice hillside to sit on and relax.
Then the New Pornographers played.
Then it was time for Kanye West.
Dammit. He rocked that place. It was easily the most attended show up to that point and people were going bananas.
Awesome.
Oh yeah, did I mention that Grant Park is home to that fountain from the intro to "Married With Children"? Well, yep, it is.
DAY THREE: The last day.
We got up even earlier so we could go watch Sparta, who's drummer Tony is a pal of Kelly's. They started at 12:30.
On the way to Grant Park though, we walked right by Millenium Park, which I had been wanting to check this out all weekend.
In case you don't know, Anish Kapoor's "Cloud Gate" is there. Everyone calls it "The Bean", though. It is amazing and great. Click here to learn more about it.
Right next to the Bean is somegthing that might even be better: "The Crown Fountain". Read about it here.
Then it was on to the music...
One thing that was funny about this weekend was how many Segways I saw. Crazy.
Anyways, we watched Sparta play and then found some grass to lay on.
We got up to watch Hot Chip play. They were pretty fun, but I couldn't stop watching this guy dance to them:
Later, we watched Andrew Bird and a couple of songs from the Shins, who are incredibly boring live.
After Queens Of The Stone Age, I ran over to watch the awesome Broken Social Scene play. I thought that they sounded really, really great. Plus, the entire band was there.
The only crappy part was that they only got 45 minutes to play. Whoever set that up is a total idiot.
Here's some YouTube of them playing "Shoreline":
Feisty!
After they finished, we went back to our spot on the hill to watch the Red Hot Chili Peppers play. I was way too exhausted to try and fight my way up any closer, especially after seeing them at the tiny Irving Plaza a few months back.
They were good though.
And that was the end of the big show. I seriously never thought that I'd be able to make it through three days of being outside in the sun, watching 130 bands. It ended up being a lot of fun though. I'm even already wondering if I'll go back next year...
On the way back to the car, we walked by these again: Even at this hour, there were still tons of kids (and adults) letting themselves get spit on by the giant faces.
Once back in Evanston, we had one last DQ stop.
We ended the night, and the trip, by visiting Lake Michigan. Spooky.
So that's it folks, the big Lollapalooza wrap-up.
Next up: Camping in the Adirondacks! If I make it out alive, that is...
