Lollapaloozing*

On this one-week anniversary of the first day of Lollapalooza 2012, I am finally ready to talk about it. Here's a bit of what happened.

Heading downtown
The artsiest kid I know liked this picture on Facebook, so I'll probably frame it.

Early Friday in the park 

I saw these bands on Friday:

First Aid Kit

The Growlers

Yellow Ostrich

Dr. Dog

Metric

The Head & the Heart

The Shins

The Black Keys

The Head & the Heart

The Black Keys during Everlasting Light

To sum it up I was so completely blissed out after Day One that the next morning, I was sitting on the sidewalk before breakfast with a mutilated bloody toe and broken bag zipper when someone told me my fly was down, and I felt absolutely zero shame. Then things escalated.

I saw these bands on Saturday:

Delta Spirit

The Tallest Man on Earth

Franz Ferdinand

Bloc Party

Avicii

The Tallest Man on Earth

This guy shortly before being kicked out.

Franz Fredinand was excellent, but the pole climber stole the show.

The afternoon was broken up by a storm (hence the shorter list) but the during-storm time was one of the best parts of the weekend. I was reunited with one of my college roommates,

SO MUCH JOY SO LITTLE POSTURE

and the Tallest Man on Earth tweeted at me. 

Even though this tweet was 100% factual, I know it came from the heart.

I 'm sure he liked my response:

Ode to Lolla Bliss

alas, no shout-out at the show. He was still perfect.

As we left, my male friends got in a fist fight under a bridge defending my friend and me (we're ladiez). Basically some drunk kids started a verbal fight, things escalated, then my malefriend lunged out of nowhere and grabbed a kid by the shirt before he could hit my ladyfriend in the middle of a busy intersection while our other malefriend (my ladyfriend's boyfriend) held off two other guys. It was just like the one fight I saw when I accidentally watched Twilight + (terror) - (CGI) - (werewolves) - (infidelity--looking at you, Kristen Stewart).

THEN we were near our hotel when a drunk lady (Chicago pulled a total Milwaukee this weekend) let two dogs out a door of her building. They took off down the street, and it was a cute Lady and the Tramp moment until we realized that they were about to run into oncoming traffic. We caught them and returned them to their owner, who was not that grateful. I will chalk it up to my mud-covered body and Jenna Maroney-esque expectations. (No parade?!)

On Sunday we saw:

Bombay Bicycle Club

Trampled by Turtles

Sigur Ros

Of Monsters and Men

Florence + The Machine

Bombay Bicycle Club--check out that storm damage

Trampled by Turtles

My view for 90% of Sigur Ros because it's hard to look at things that beautiful directly.

JONSI

Sigur Ros was INCREDIBLE. Everyone was amazing (especially The Head and the Heart, Black Keys, Tallest Man, and Florence), but Sigur Ros was by far the best. It was actually my favorite performance I have ever seen in the history of my life. I've never heard a group live before that was so much better live than recorded. Usually if someone's great live, I think, "Wow, they sound exactly how I hoped they would!" (i.e. Ingrid Michaelson). But Sigur Ros (specifically, Jonsi's voice) is SO MUCH BETTER live than recorded. It sounded like what a whale call must sound like underwater in the best way possible. I realize that doesn't sound too tempting, but trust me. It made me understand why echolocation works. It was a sound so beautiful I just wanted to be as close to it as possible. From the minute they opened with Svefn-g-englar, no one wanted to move. And no one could speak intelligently for so long after it. If you get the chance to see them, DO IT. It's been four years since the last time they were in North America, so it could be a while until you get another chance.

Also my roommate overheard someone ask if it was Sigur Ros or Sugar Ray, which is the second most amazing thing I heard that day.

This was only a tiny snippet of the weekend, but it was ridiculous. In a nutshell, go to Lolla if you get a chance, see Jonsi if you get a chance, don't let the fact you like Elizabeth Olsen misguide you to watch Martha Marcy May Marlene (another story for another time).

*I resisted the urge to make that "Lollapalosing" for YOU. But it will show up in a future "Opportunities Carrie Bradshaw Missed" post. I promise.

On Ingrid Michaelson, Lingerie Shorts, and Intimate Moments with Strangers' Dogs

Ingrid Michaelson talking to a fly on her arm

Here are noteworthy parts of my Tuesday. 

First, there was the conference I helped plan for work. Some highlights:

• The venue looked like the Crossroads Motel from Breaking Bad from the outside. On the inside, it was saloon-themed and covered in tile that most likely came from a McDonald's built in the 1970's. Tile and trellises everywhere. If anyone needs a reception location for a shotgun wedding, I know one that's probably available that day.
• On what was maybe the least stressful day of all time, the woman I was working for kept running around and saying, "Make it work! Like Tim Gunn! We're on Project Runway!" We were not on Project Runway. We were discussing rural wealth with small town mayors.
• My personal computer ended up being used to show PowerPoints. In between every speaker, this picture of DiMaggio (my desktop background) was shown to 200 of my least close friends

This M83 song is the only caption that fits.

Basically a good time might have been had by some. 

After that I changed in my car (in the parking lot of a sketchy motel, I know) into a pair of shorts that my mom said look like lingerie. However, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't attract even the most CraigsList post-y man, and I like them. So armed with Leandra's advice, stories of the two Prom nights I spent babysitting, and eighteen years of success, I vowed not to attract nor talk to anyone who appeared male and wore them. 

No one hits on a girl with a pleather jacket tied around her waist.

Then I drove back to Indianapolis and had time to kill before meeting my friend for Ingrid Michaelson's show. I spent part of it reading Ayn Rand behind a column at a Cajun restaurant and the other part calling my sister from a bench. During that bench time, a cute dog on a walk came over and licked me on the face. At the time I thought it was fine, most likely because I have been desensitized to dog slobber by living with this guy for 3 years:

Precious face-licking dog nugget

Ten minutes later, I realized it is probably not socially acceptable to have intimate moments with strangers' dogs. Five minutes after that, I was pretty okay with it again. That leads me to the questions of the week: How much interaction with a stranger's dog is too much? Is it like a baby where you shouldn't touch it without direct permission? Should you ever let a stranger's dog lick you on the face? Did that dog lick my face because it saw my lingerie shorts?

After I stopped worrying about whether the dog was rabid, I met my friend for one of my favorite concerts I have ever seen (and I go to a lot of shows). She was also wearing pleather.

Pleather galore

Much to no one's surprise and everyone's delight--probably mostly my mom's (Hi, Mom!)--no straight, single men go to Ingrid Michaelson concerts. Although if you are a straight, single, desperate man, going to one of her shows could be the indie equivalent of going to a Twilight premiere.

Her husband, Greg Laswell, opened. Here's a picture of him singing songs.

If you want an idea of what he sounded like while wearing that fedora and playing guitar, listen to this. I was pretty into it. Then he sang with Ingrid, then the opening set ended. 

After that Ingrid's set began. Before she came on, this Ke$ha song played, which surprisingly set the tone for a way more uptempo show than I was expecting. Then Ingrid sang a bunch of songs. Most were from her new album, but she also did amazing covers of Skinny Love by Bon Iver and We Found Love by Rihanna. Her voice is as perfect live as when recorded, and she told great stories in between songs and interacted with the audience a ton. See her live if you ever get a chance.

Ingrid singing this song with Greg Laswell

An added bonus of the show was seeing her bandmates, Allie Moss and Bess Rogers. They're also flawless. I'm a huge Allie Moss fan (check this out), and the two lines of Somewhere Over the Rainbow that she sang would have put Connie Talbot to shame.

Basically the show was perfect, and I successfully did not attract any male attention while wearing the lingerie shorts. It more than made up for my afternoon at the McDonald's motel.

The Head and the Heart Concert

Last night, I saw Trampled by Turtles and The Head and the Heart at an outdoor concert in Indianapolis. If you haven't heard of either, listen to this song by The Head and the Heart as you read the rest of this post to feel like you lived it with me.

I wore this,

and due to the relative lengths of the tunic and shorts, I rocked a hotly-contested "J.Crew half-tuck." I hate to get too deep on this, but it probably goes back to a traumatic incident in first grade when I wore a super-long Pacers t-shirt that made it look like I was nakey jakey/nudey rudey from the waist down. Note to parents: think before you let your kids walk out of the house sans half-tuck. 

Back to the concert: I went with these pretty people, 

one of my best friends from high school (don't let those good AP Chem lab partners slip away) and her college boyfriend. They're extremely stylish and cool and run this awesome prep Tumblr page together. Also, they did the most amazing job of not making me feel like a third wheel. I greatly appreciated this, since I'm a dish best served single and will only be put in more and more of these situations as my friends and I enter adulthood and pair off. We're all going to Lollapalooza together in a month, and I'll take notes about what they do so right because the single friends-couple friends dynamic is a difficult one to navigate. What pros.

Anyway, the concert audience was a strange combination of humans (Central Indiana, holla atcha) and the people-watching was stellar. Also stellar: these delicious ice pops that come in flavors like Lemon Basil, Chili Mango, and Avocado. If you're in the Indianapolis area, FIND THEM. Best $3 you can spend on a sweltering hot day. Everything smelled like sweat and weed, it was 90 degrees with the sun down, and the bands were even better live than I was anticipating. What a perfect summer night.