Why I Oughta...

Yesterday afternoon, I cut out of work early (I left my desk...) and Maisy and I headed downtown to meet up with Nat. We were all set to head to the Jeff Twedy Show at the Abbey Pub . Good times, right? Turned out great! Well, I got there a bit early and Nat hadn't gotten home from work yet, so me and Maisy ran over to Barker and Meowsky for a new sweater and she dug it. It's a pinch big, but hopefully she'll 'grow' into it. (She's turning into a bit of a 'fatty arbuckle' as it is!!) We got back and Natalie was home. Outsmarting ourselves, we thought, 'Hey! Let's just get chow at the Abbey instead of SoupBox or Tomatohead . Irish Nachos and Ruebens and such. Well, as we're walking up to the Abbey, sure as shit, we run into Jeff Tweedy, his wife Sue Miller, their 2 boys, what appeared to be one of Jeff's cronies/guitar techs/friends, and a hot nanny. Jeff was carrying 2 clamshell carryout styrofoam containers and the kids weren't ...

Doing an entire 'Year in Review' would be daunting, as I can't quite remember what happened 6 weeks ago, let a lone 6 months ago, but what I can do is tell all you--my loyal readers--what I think was/is the biggest story of 2005 in and around Chicago. ....Drum roll please........... The Biggest story in 2005 was the City of Chicago's 'about-face' on live, outdoor music in the City's parks. What? Live music as the biggest story of the year?!? WTF, Parrillo?!? What about the 'Drought of '05', or the White Sox, or Hired Truck, or Marshall Field's closing? Well...those are all good stories. They're all qualified for 'Biggest Story of the Year', but they don't have the same impact to me as the City's Leaders embracing live music. I wrote about it back in July when both Lollapaloza and Intonation were put on to rave reviews, despite the repressive heat. Dunno if you realize what is happening here. We just went from th...

Where do I begin? Should I start with the new line-up? The venue? Tweedy's Salad? All of it was amazing. I kinda consider myself a hardened concert-goer. I see a lot of shows and enjoy a lot of stuff, but this was over the top. I went with my brother-in-law Marc out to Dekalb. We arrived at something like 8ish and headed over this cool bohemian coffee shop on the main drag in DeKalb. (I had a turkey panini and he had a 3 cheese... which to me is just a toasted cheese (or some of you may call them grilled cheese)) Anyway we get there and the security was really tight...... They had a granola girl sitting on a bar stool checking your name off a list. Sweet. $4.50 24 oz sodas. Which was nice. Otto's is tiny. Tiny stage. Ever been to Mabel's in Champaign? About like that. It was cool. We were near the soundboard and kind of on a riser. Could see everything except when Tweedy went down on his knees for one song.... Well they opened with "ashes of american flags...