this is my life

Pitchfork Music Festival

Of which you can see the official recaps here and here at pitchfork.com

I was in Chicago all week leading up to Pitchfork, so here are some visual highlights from that part:








It is, apparently, Pirate Summer in Chicago because the Field Museum is having a pirate exhibition.





This picture was taken at the beach by my brother's apartment.

As for Pitchfork, my personal viewing set list went something like this:

Friday

1. Yo La Tengo



The band played a great set. As some of you already know, Pitchfork had made the headlining acts abide by the rules that the fans "write the night"--so everybody voted on what each band was going to play. As a result I heard most of the hit Yo La Tengo songs, including such highlights as "Tom Courtenay" and "Autumn Sweater". However, I never claimed to be a music writer so a) I can't remember the exact setlist and b) I can't give any sort of critical examination of any of these bands. BUT I will say that the set was fun and that Ira Kaplan looked like he was having an epileptic fit when he started doing mad noise drones during many of the set's freakout songs. I was three rows back for this, the closest I got to any stage during the entire festival, so I shot my Pitchfork wad on the first day and first show that I attended. However, the Flaming Lips did manage to go out with a bang, which you can read about below.

2. Million dollar Ratatat bike




So in the record tent there was a sign for a million dollar Ratatat bike. I could have solved this mystery by simply asking the guy at the table why the bike was so expensive, but I preferred leaving it unsolved. Besides, it's way more fun to walk around gasping in horror: "ONE MILLION DOLLARS? WHO DOES RATATAT THINK IT IS? IS THIS BIKE MADE OF PURE GOLD?" I speculated that the bike was so expensive because it was for charity. It also could have been an art piece. ("Hey, you wanna come to my apartment later? I've got this keen million dollar ratatat bike." Try this pick-up line, guys. It gets the girls every time). Needless to say, I was astonished.

3. Built to Spill



There was no real reason to post a picture since, as you can see, I was far away from Built to Spill. But damn if it wasn't a baller show. I really enjoyed seeing them as they were my favorite band in high school for about a month. The highlights of the show included "Carry the Zero", "Conventional Wisdom", "You Were Right", and opening the entire set with "Liar." My brother suggested that Built to Spill should play a set some time with every song they allude to in "you Were Right," which I think would be DOPE.

The lowlight of the show was, of course, the fact that they didn't play "Car," probably the most popular Built to Spill song. It was assuredly voted number 1. My entire Pitchfork posse claims conspiracy. When my brother was muttering to himself, "what, no Car?" an overly enthusiastic girl practically jumped down his throat to agree.

Another thing to point out about Built to Spill is that Doug Martsch looks like a bobble-head doll on stage, regardless of how fast or slow the song is. Look out, Pitchfork 2010: I'll be there, selling limited edition, 500-run Doug Martsch bobble-head dolls! Get them for $200 while supplies last! And maybe I'll sell the last one for, shall we say, ONE MILLION DOLLARS?! (I'm looking at you, Ratatat).


Saturday

This day was definitely a dud for me on the music front (all Beirut fans simultaneously gasp in horror). This was partially affected by the fact that my boyfriend was suddenly ill and couldn't attend. Hence I took no pictures of my own, but click on the links if you want to look at the images I chose online to fully encapsulate my experience of these three acts.

1. Mf Dooom
I don't listen to MF Dooom's music and probably never will in any serious way. However, he rolled out on stage in that incredibly cool mask, and it was enjoyable to see him all fun-sized and far away looking like a supervillian. I think the picture says it all: MF Dooom was clearly the hippest (and blackest) act to play Pitchfork. Although I haven't looked at the entire setlist to back up that claim.

2. Beirut
Beirut was boring. Beirut sounded terrible in the open air. Beirut was like a big indie rock candy bar that gave me a cavity when I was 7. Le yawn. But I will say Zach Condon is dreamy. Take a look at the picture. Ain't it da truf?

3. The National
The National was, admittedly, also boring. Hence the boring linked photo. I heard the two songs I wanted to hear--"Slow Show" and "Mistaken for Strangers"--and then bounced before the bumrush to the green line train at the end of the set. We went to Wicker Park and got drunk.

Sunday

Sunday was a good day. Sunday, in fact, rivalled Friday in its awesomeness, though there were no gratuitously overpriced bicycle discoveries for me to constantly reference.

1. $20 Squid Poster



Read it and weep bitches! This poster is MINE!

But all bragging rights aside, one of my favorite parts about Pitchfork is the poster sale, where local artists from around Chicago bring together their silkscreen posters and sell them. I didn't buy any posters last year, but this year it was a difficult decision. It essentially came down to squid suit and a poster that said "U is for Unicorn," but squid suit won out. The artist who made this piece was definitely my favorite of the day. He also had a poster of famous beards throughout history which included many Civil War soldiers (the south represents!)

2. M83
This video link doesn't encapsulate the awesomeness of M83 and I wish I had taken a video of them now. They were incredibly energetic and played a lot of fun dance music. They also included "Don't Save us from the Flames," for which I was grateful, although they didn't play "Unrecorded." Why no Unrecorded, M83? Why?

But the girl from the group was wearing an overly fabulous blue sequined long-sleeved shirt and spent most of the set bopping up and down. Whenever they talk the entire crowd sighed, as they are le french with le sexy french accents.

2. Grizzly Bear

To be honest, I spent most of the Grizzly Bear set wandering around the Flaming Lips stage, trying to find an appropriate spot with my cousin and my boyfriend. But what I overheard was damned good. I will also take this time to mention (as I must have said a million times that day) that I saw Grizzly Bear over a month ago at a small venue in Chapel Hill and it was infinitely better than Pitchfork, if only for the fact that there were 15,000 fewer people. They did not play "He hit me." Oh, I should link to that as well. Watch this.

3. The Flaming Lips.

I have my own youtube videos for this! Wee! Watch them below!

The show started off with a video on this big LCD screen they had set up of Wayne Coyne's naked wife dancing around. The video then zooms in on her vagina. Wayne came out into the crowd in a giant blow-up hamster ball and rolled around for about half a minute. He never really came near my part of the crowd, but oh, don't I wish.

And then came the first song: infinite amounts of confetti and balloons.



This was at the end of the first song. It's a very short clip but I wanted you all to get the idea of truly how many balloons were floating about during the first song. It was a beautiful thing, the way the Flaming Lips mercilessly pelted the crowd with big, soft balloons.

So the set went on. They didn't play nearly as much music as I would have hoped because of all the additive stuff (the hamster ball, the hype leading up to them coming on stage, Wayne constantly talking between sets), but they played a good show. I am not a flaming lips die hard so I can barely remember any of the songs, but they played both Yoshimis, She don't Use Jelly, and, of course, Do You Realize.



This was the finale, "Do You Realize," where they pumped more confetti out than I've ever seen in my life in one place. Ever. It was like the V-day ticker tape parade in Union Park. I'm sorry the video cuts off and doesn't get the entire song but I wanted to live my life instead of just recording it, so next time mon petit readers.

Regardless of how you feel about their music, seeing the Flaming Lips live was an amazing experience. They almost made me convert to following the band around the country, if only because I could be immersed in confetti and balloons during every show and watch scantily clad bunny girls dance on a stage.

So that was Pitchfork. Any questions?

my name is stella...i work in leathuh

true crime: an anthology

I just returned from a weeklong trip to chicago, which meant I was termporarily completely unavailable for post on the site, but I'm back.

I attended the Pitchfork music festival during this trip, which was awesome, but I am not ready to post about it yet (read: i haven't uploaded any of my pictures or video) so I am reduced to writing about my current read: True Crime, an anthology of the best crime writing from American History.

Amazon link here.

I've never been an avid reader of serial killer or crime stuff, though I am guilty of having read the occasional Mary Higgins Clark novel. When I picked this book up at my brother's apartment, though, I was instantly hooked. The first story I read was about the Black Dahlia, the media name given to Betty Short, a pretty girl drifter who was tortured for two days and murdered, given the Joker's smile and cut in half. This case was never solved, though most of these articles give the psychological profile of the killers.

So this book makes for good airplane reading. And good shock reading. And my weak gender analysis is, of course, that it's interesting how many of these killers are men and how many victims are female.

A list of some of the more interesting cases (And their respective wikipedia links) below.


1) The Black Dahlia: as described above
2) The Menendez Brothers: Two sons of a wealthy Cuban businessman who worked in Hollywood. They lived on Elm Drive in the Hills. They shot their parents until they were virtually unrecognizable.
3) Richard Speck: slayed 8 nurses in Chicago. Before being caught for the massacre, he was also probably responsible for some 8 other murders in the Great Lakes area.
4) Loeb and Leopold: two sons of wealth who wanted to commit the perfect crime: kidnapping and murder. They killed a younger boy by hitting him over the head with a chisel, and then poured acid over his body to make it difficult to ID the corpse.
5) Ed Gein: Gein, probably the most interesting case, is the basis for almost all horror movies. ever. More specifically, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Psycho, and both serial killers in Silence of the Lambs (geee-ross), though he erred more of the side of Buffalo Bill than Hannibal Lector.

jessica the hippo

Incredible footage of a hippo living with a family in Africa. Credit to Jezebel for bringing this to my attention.

Jezebel's first post about Jessica
Jessica also fancies motherhood

16 and pregnant

so i've been watching the MTV documentary series 16 and pregnant this summer, though I wasn't sure why at first. MTV has always aired the show "Engaged and Underage" which doesn't deal explicitly with the same subject matter, but still falls under the "too young, too soon, & too fast" genre that the TV channel likes to explore. Anyway, as seen in the trailer above: 6 girls, 6 pregnancies, 6 1-hour episodes.

After watching my first episode of the series, I was immediately hooked. It's like watching a car crash in slow motion from a nightmare state while you're lying paralyzed in your bed. Every episode is full of what.the.fuck moments, and horrifying reality checks about why these girls are too young to have kids. On some level I'm uncomfortable with the sense of shock-and-awe that I get from the show. It makes me feel morally superior, snobbish, entitled, and bourgie. I never would be in the situations these girls are in, and each episode I wish I could turn back the clock and sit down with them to discuss the nature of boyfriends and sex in high school. High school is not an easy time in anyone's life. I would hardly try to argue that it is inappropriate to have sex in high school as natural desires and curiosities will inevitably take their course. But these decisions are complicated by the maturity levels of both the girls and their boyfriends (or mysterious sperm donors, as one episode barely dealt with the issue of the father), and sometimes the reasons why teenagers have sex and how aren't made in the clearest, more careful state of mind.

So what should one person take away from the show? I'm not sure. If these episodes were aired in a perfect society I would hope that everyone could watch these girls' stories with the right mixture of empathy, sympathy, and hope. Unfortunately, the editing and the real-life experiences that make up each episode usually lends itself to viewer judgment: in my case, overall relief that this.is.not.ME. Sometimes I fantasize that these shows could be used as educational videos in high schools nationwide; however, I wonder if high school students are introspective enough for these girls' lives to make an impact on future generations. One can only hope that, at bare minimum, nobody watches these shows and thinks it's cool to get pregnant at 16.

I'll probably have to return to discuss the final episode, as I've only seen the first five. They break down something like this:

1. Maci: Tennessee girl with a boyfriend. They move in together after they discover she is pregnant. After she gives birth, the boyfriend peaces out mentally and clearly hates fatherhood. He tries to compensate with an enormous tattoo. Their marriage plans derail and they have a discussion (featured in the preview above) where he declares "if you didn't get pregnant, we wouldn't be together.) Maci, a self-described over-achiever, graduates from high school a semester early and enrolls in a community college.

2. Farrah: Iowa girl with no boyfriend. The father of the child is never shown on screen, though he attempts to contact her early in the episode. This episode was rife with conflict between the mother and her daughter; sometimes I wonder if the mother educated Farrah on birth control at all. Farrah's mother also had a stupid, bovine look about her: the overall lack of love and empathy that she showed on camera towards her daughter was hard to watch. Farrah graduates from high school, but only after she enrolls at a community college instead of attending her regular school. She loses her best friend who tells the entire cheerleading squad about the pregnancy and fears the taunting and the rumors at her old high school.

3. Amber: Indiana girl with a boyfriend who proposes during the episode. There were two stand-out details about this episode. First, Amber and Gary seemed like the most quintessential, American tourist kind of couple. They ate every meal at a fast food restaurant and Amber's brother was in the military. Second, this particular episode was the only one with even a shred of hope. Amber and Gary were young, definitely, and had a few lessons in maturity to learn, but they also seemed to genuinely love each other. At one point Gary buys a PS3 but then returns it after he sees how much grief it gives Amber and her family. It might not have been the best initial decision, but he tries to atone for it, which is more than I can say about the boyfriends in any other episode.

4. Ebony: Colorado girl with a neanderthal boyfriend. This girl's story was the most heartbreaking. They both dreamt of enlisting in the Air Force after graduation; Josh, however, did not seem to care about graduating a single iota. Long after she decided to keep the baby, she discovers that she and Josh both can't be in the Air Force because of Air Force policy: if there is a child involved, they do not want both parents deployed at the same time. She eventually decides to put her full efforts into Josh: making sure he graduates from high school, making sure he enlists in the Air Force. As a result, she does not graduate. Josh, additionally, no longer wants to marry her as they had planned because "we're already 17 with a baby, do we want to be 17 and married?" I watched this episode with my mother and during the last heartbreaking scene where Ebony recounts what is happening in her life and the fact that she didn't graduate from high school, both of us cried. She was a sweet, smart girl who seemed determine to succeed; her boyfriend couldn't stop acting like he was 5 long enough to give a shit.

5. Whitney: Georgia girl with a boyfriend. I'm writing this blog post as I am watching this episode because some of the moments in the episode were too memorable too ignore.

a) Witness Whitney claim at the mall that everybody is looking at her because she "has a beach ball under her shirt." Whitney, have you thought about the fact that everybody is looking at you because you have a camera crew surrounding you?
b) Witness Whitney's weirdly named friend Eerie claim "a lot of people don't want to hang out with you because they think they'll get pregnant too." Pregnancy is a disease, right Eerie.
c) Witness Whitney's grandmother claim "If you'd have not gotten pregnant and still be in school, you'd still have a lot of those friends. You feel lost without your friends don't you." Rubbing salt in the wound, grandma.

Those three soundbytes are only the tip of the iceberg of the bludgeoning-over-your-head sob stories that these shows consistently use to make their point.

So i'll come back later to summarize the final episode. But ultimately I'm not sure what MTV wanted to accomplish here. If it's a scare tactic for their younger demographic, I fear for its effectiveness. If it's a viscious form of schadenfreude, then I wish they hadn't filmed these pregnancies.

quail eggs craft time

I wanted to show you guys an image of all three of these things together, but I'm having trouble with le blogspot pre-formatting.

Regardless, look above to see a craft project I finished today: quail eggs mounted on purple wood. I'm a proud mama...I'm thinking I might do something with chicken eggs next.

nightmare city

i woke up with a start last night from an extremely vivid nightmare. i ended up laying in bed for about 15 minutes, exhausted, but forcing myself to be wide awake so i could shake the feelings the dream had jumbled up inside of me. I was so scared I didn't want to fall asleep and find that I was right back in the dream.

To summarize:
I dreamt that I was on the set of a Law and Order show, where the plot was supposed to be a talent show in which a member of the audience got killed. I was applying to work at the theater where the talent show was held, so I was extremely conscious of the people I would have to be around if I got the job. Once the talent show commenced, however, two people died in very gruesome bizarre ways: a girl doing trapeze fell to her death, a boy on roller skates fell over vomiting. Somehow I knew that my co-worker, an overly eager guy, was causing the deaths, and I spent the rest of the dream trying to figure out how to turn down the job and get out of the situation. When i finally found the person with whom I had been interviewing, he walked me to a back corner of central park. After I told him my news, he nodded, and then tried to kiss me. I jerked my head back and woke up, because that physical action in the dream had been mirrored in real life.

There were so many obvious parallels to my life in this dream. My fear of getting a job and moving on; my fear of never getting a job. Death, life, living in new york, not living in new york. god i wish i had a job.

because you should all know this