well…i'm back from chicago. we had a whirlwind jam-packed weekend in the "windy city," to say the least. the first place we hit once we got into town was the always amazing flattop grill. i introduced my cohorts (rebecca, star and mr. king himself) to one of my favorite places on the planet to eat. everyone ended up stamping it with their own personal seal of approval. i finally busted out some plum sauce and an egg, for all those who know what he hell i'm talkin' about.

after that it was straight to the double door to see hot snakes. we only missed the first band, and i almost wish we had missed the second, they were pretty standard. pretty boring. and the drinks were too damn expensive (and weak) to make them any more interesting. so we suffered through by making fun of the various chicago people that look like bizarro versions of our friends here at home.

then hot snakes hit the stage. and the roof of the place was completely blown off. it was hot as a motherfucker up in there, but we still stuck it out in the very front. they played all the hits, including an old pitchfork song. simply amazing. they closed their first set with salton city and early on in the song, john (reis. speedo. whatever) took the mic off the stand and shoved it in my face so i could scream "give us a kiss." if you don't know what i'm talking about, go back and listen to that first hot snakes record, stat!

when they were done playing, we filed our sweaty asses outside to get some much needed fresh air. we followed some friends of rebecca's back to their place to stay the night. now…i've been in some sketchy places before, but this place was truly a dump. the guys were cool as hell, but i seriously thought a rat was going to jump out of the nearest pile of whatever and bite my fucking face off. we ended up walking down the street to some horribly overlit dive of a bar and had one drink before getting pissed off about more weak drinks and overly creeped out by all the light. back to the dump. straight to sleep.

today we hit the art institute to see a huge exhibition of gerard richter's paintings. tons of amazing stuff. really. go see it asap.

and then we came home.

and now i'm typing this.

and now i'm gonna go get some serious drinking done.