Lollapalooza

Well, am on day 7 of my 10-day trip here, so is sort of time to catch up on what I've been doing.

After arriving in slightly later than expected on fri evening, myself and my friend Katie headed back down to chicago first thing on sat morning where we met up with Katie's friend Sue (who was hot!) and a few of her friends before heading off to the gig. First off, Lollapalooza was mad! It definitely lives up to its nickname of "Stonerpalooza" - nearly every gig I was at had someone passing the joints or the pipe around! This plus the liter of vodka we snuck in on the saturday in a water bottle made the day very very interesting. Got to see Gnarls Barkley (who was great), The Flaming Lips (who sucked), Queens of the Stone Age (not too bad) and a few other random bands - there were 8 stages and so you'd just wander around until you heard something you liked. Luckily the weather had cooled down to about 80F or so, so I didn't bake too much in the sun. After the concert was over, we headed out to the bars, where I learned the pain of listening to "oirish" music in chicago! :-( Finished up the night around 4am, with me and Katie sleeping in the spare bed in Sue's flat (no, nothign like that, strictly platonic!).

I reckon maybe we overdid it a bit on the saturday as we didn't manage to drag our sorry hungover carcasses to the gig on sunday til abput 3:30pm or so. Then again, seeing as part of the delay was getting a big american-style breakfast in the cafe across from Sue's, I didn't mind so much - a big plate of ham, scrambled eggs, and blueberry pancakes covered in maple syrup sure does help settle the stomach after a big night out! When we finally got there anyway, we did the same wandering around as the day before (but with less vodka), and the only real act I knew all day was Matsiyahu - the Jewish rapper guy I discovered on the web a while back. The main headline of the night was the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who normally rock but whose gig sucked a bit for most of it 'cos they have the new album out and had to play all the as-yet unknown crap off that. The gig was just about starting to get a bit good when we had to leave - me and Katie had to drive all the way back to Milwaukee that night yet so we decided to skip out a bit early and beat the crowd. Manged to get back to cheesehead country in one piece anyway without either of us falling asleep in the jeep (which would have been ok for me but not for her, as she was driving), and there I was, back where I'd arrived 48hrs earlier but with a lot more music (and alcohol!) in me than when I got in!