Things That I'm Into: Dancing Thom

This makes me laugh. A lot.

(via Paste magazine, via the Dancing Thom blog)

Things That I'm Into: Commuting Anthems

Sometimes I go through phrases with "commuting anthems." I usually rotate them in and out every two or three weeks. My commute is about a five or six song commute. Here are three that have firmly been in the commuting anthem rotation for the last weeks:


Arcade Fire, We Used to Wait


Passion Pit, Sleepyhead


Black Keys, Next Girl

Listen away, peeps.

Things That I'm Into: Music + Skyline

Lollapalooza 2010 (Sunday): Mumford & Sons, Yeasayer, Frightened Rabbit, MGMT, The National, Arcade Fire

Hot, sweaty, too many people. But also so so fun. Arcade Fire was probably my best show of 2010 so far.

Things That I'm Into: David Bowie Posters

This poster is in the stairwell of my local Chicago Public Library branch. I can't really explain how much I love it.

He's reading Dostoevsky's "The Idiot." Amazing.

Things That I'm Into: Table in a Bag

For our wedding we were gifted a table in a bag. Why would you ever need a table in a bag, you may ask?

Well, the answer to that was obvious when we attended a Backstreet Boys concert @ Ravinia.

Yes, Backstreet Boys. A friend from highschool used to be sort of ironically obsessed with the backstreet boys back in the 90s, but somewhere that ironic obsession turned towards true adulation. So we had to get him tickets to see the reunited band for his birthday.

Ravinia was great, as usual. Backstreet boys- who knew you had so many deep cuts? I would have been perfectly fine with a picnic and three or four hits. Two hours is too long to continue to find the humor.

But the yuppie table in a bag was sweet.  Definitely need to break it out more often.

Things That I'm Into: Free Music

If you are into music and are like, "oh, I wonder what new albums I should buy this summer?" and then you are like "maybe sub pop has some good new albums" and then you are like "omg there are so many how do I choose?" then maybe you should download this from amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Bang-2010-Sampler-Amazon/dp/B003JFTAPO.

It's free and has 15 songs from 15 different sub pop artists that have/had albums coming out in 2010. 

Samples from some of my personal fav 2010 albums are on there- from beach house "teen dream," avi buffalo "avi buffalo" and caribou "swim." I highly recommend any of those albums, esp beach house, but you can obviously check them out yourself on this free sampler. And I'm definitely buying the Blizten Trapper when it comes out TUESDAY. 

** PS In general Amazon is way sweeter than itunes when it comes to digital music. Usually albums are $5.99 or $7.99, plus they always have 100 $5 albums a month. But maybe that's another post. 

Things That I'm Into; New Music Mondays at Millenium Park

Picnic tacos, lemonade, nice weather, music by Besnard Lakes, Frank Gehry bandshell: sweetness.

Things That I'm Into: Wishing I Was Saw Local Natives at Schubas Last Week

VERY sold out show, and not even craigslist came through for us. That's what you get for living in Turkey when the tickets went on sale.






This is my favorite song of theirs (#2 on their awesome album Gorilla Manor). This is when I'd say "oh well, we'll see them at pitchfork!" but we can't go because we have a wedding that weekend. WAH WAH WAH.

Anyway, LOCAL NATIVES. Into them.