Day one down.

Apparently this years Lolla uniform is no shirts for dudes and teeny tiny shorts and half-shirts (bras?) for girls. It makes me feel ancient.

Here we go!

Four days of Lollapalooza. Will I survive? Not drinking will certainly help but OH MY GOD WHY FOUR DAYS?!

How to survive Lolla: 2016 edition.

Photo by Annie Lesser

You are welcome.

Quiet before the storm...

Lollapalooza. For four days. Will Tankboy survive?

Currently binge-watching...

Winona Ryder in Stranger Things, and no, she's not an axe murderer.

I've been trying to keep myself occupied and not going out, so I've been gorging myself on movies and television shows for the last couple months. The one I'm currently ripping through is the buzz show of the moment Stranger Things and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. There already seems to be some sort of backlash (which I swear is more based on the show's instant popularity and not it's actual quality) so ignore that if it's dissuading you from taking it in.

I can admit I'm the perfect target demo though, since the series draws it's inspiration from the '80s that formed so much of my original cinematic experiences, but again, don't let anyone tell you the show is simply driven by nostalgia.

I'm only halfway through, so I'm trying to avoid actually reading much about the show. It's so difficult to avoid spoilers nowadays, huh?

Guess who I'm seeing this weekend?

The Blake Babies! And they chatted with me ahead of their show so check that out!

I had better weeks, I’ve had worse weeks.

When I look through the early years of this site everything seems so exciting and dramatic. As one would expect the person over a decade older looks at that other guy with a bit of wonder. For all the craziness that was actually such a simpler time. Sometimes I’m jealous of that other guy, and sometimes I think he’d be jealous of me.

This is a week where I think we’d be a little jealous of each other. Because I’m going to see Hall & Oates tomorrow night!

Gotta get amped!

After so much writing last weekend I realized how little I’ve been writing lately, compared to my past. One of the reasons is physical, but the other has to do with my general motivation. Summer is usually a when I feel energized and excited but this year I’ve been unusually sluggish. I was always the one pushing Mich to get up and at ‘em to the gym in the morning and lately I’ve found I’m having a hard time doing even that much that early in the day.

I’m working on it but it feels weird.

P4K was a blast.

Carly Rae Jepsen, photo by Annie Lesser

I admit I went into Pitchfork this year a little unsure of the bill, but I ended up really enjoying the bands. Read all my coverage!

• Pitchfork Day 1: Stoners Love Broken Social Scene And Carly Rae Kills
• Photos: Sufjan Stevens Makes Everyone Dance At Pitchfork Day 2
• Photos: Chance The Rapper Pops Up At Pitchfork Day 3

Sober-fork.

I made it through my first festival in decades while staying sober! Holy makerel!

Festival season!

Kicks off today!

Here's who you should see at the Ptichfork Music Festival this weekend!

A photo I took at a long, long ago Pitchfork Music Festival.

My preview is live over at Chicagoist! This is the first year I handled the whole thing solo, and it's also the longest preview we've run since I wanted to make sure there were recommendations for folks through pretty much all of each day.

Check it out!

Wait and see...

I'm gonna see these cats play over the weekend and I really hope the tune above is in their set...

Back to square one.

Another dead end.

So the chiropractor could do nothing for my right arm, back and shoulder. After months of diligent efforts on his part he finally had to throw n the towel. I appreciated his approach as he attempted to exhaust every possibility, but in the end all was for naught. He gave me methods to alleviate the pain, but that only lasts a few minutes at a time at best.

The thing about chronic pain is that you learn to live with it. And it’s the worst. For instance lately the pain has been so bad that typing is an aching, excruciating chore. But I’m a writer, so what else am I going to do? So I learn to live with it. Of course what that means is while it doesn’t effect my paid work it’s growing difficult for me to write for myself. So I guess you could say the other thing about chronic pain is that you don’t really notice what it’s slowly stealing from you until it’s probably too late.

So now it’s back to the specialist that referred me to the chiropractor in the first place. I’ve been doing everything I can to figure out how to heal this pain, and am open to anything and everything. I admit I’ve been less than stoked to give into shots or pills or (shudder) surgery; to be honest if they can’t figure out what’s causing my pain I don’t think any of those things would be particularly effective anyway.

It’s frustrating.

Getting lost in the sound of musixx.

Jamie xx, photo by Flavien Prioreau

Here's a fun little collection of all the samples used in Jamie xx's In Colour, an album that has been slowly growing on me.

I mean "Gosh" is an immediate monster of a track, but I have to admit the remainder of the album didn't reveal itself so immediately to me. I love when something I think might be a little slight at the outset actually grows deeper and warmer with each subsequent listen.

Run through the video below to find out where most of the sonic elements came from throughout the album and enjoy!

My week in a nutshell.

"Is this thing on?"

This has to stop.

It's getting to the point where I just don't want to leave the house or read the news any longer.

A crossroads.

I'm officially middle-aged. I think I need to figure out what I want the second half (well, hopefully a little longer) of my life to look like. There are things in my world that are going well, and there are things that are not. I'd like to think that by this point I can start eradicating the things that are not.

Trying to cheer myself up.

It's been a rough couple of days, so here's a picture of the cake my co-workers got me for my birthday last week. It never fails to make me smile.

Saw Guns N' Roses last night.

Photo by me. I had a great seat!

It did not suck. Axl, Slash and Duff actually looked like they were having fun together!

UPDATE: My review of the show is live!

I had a very lovely birthday, thank you very much.

I spent yesterday doing nothing and largely staying offline, and then Mich took me out to a very nice steak dinner. Today we're spending the afternoon going on a ride on SEEEEEADOOOOG, a longstanding joke / desire of ours. Yippee!