I wrote a big old long post yesterday, and my computer crashed before I could put it up. Let's try this again.

I ran up to Chicago for about 48 hours last weekend for various reasons. After having what will probably be my last pitchers of Sam Adams with Joshie Nacho at Jimmy's on Thursday night, I ran all around downtown Chicago on Friday. I got to see John and Laurie Stirratt play at a noontime show at the cultural center, which was a wonderful performance. For those of you not in the know, John Stirratt is the bassist for Wilco; Laurie Stirratt is his twin sister, and was in The Hilltops with John, and later in the band Blue Mountain. The originals were all great, and they also covered a great McGarrigle Sisters song. If you like gorgeous harmonies and pretty folk music, you should go see them sometime (and for my Chicago friends, they'll be with Kathleen Edwards at Park West in the next week, hint hint).

Later that night, Miguelito and I went out for Ethiopian and then saw Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks at Metro. They had the worst opening band EVER. Seriously. This band had its van and all of its equipment stolen recently, and by the end of their set, most of the audience wanted to steal the instruments they had managed to get ahold of and beat the band to death with them.

SM and the Jicks did make up for this, though (and Miguelito and I distracted ourselves before their set with a fun game of "what's the gender of the guitar tech?" We still don't know, since the person's name was Gail). Mr. Malkmus was as foxy and bouncy as ever, and it was nice to see him with a better rhythm section than he had in Pavement (and a much foxier one, too... ask me about the drummer, Miguelito about the hot girl bassist). Never will I forget the drummer's re-enactment of Stephen Malkmus's first sexual experience. They played Jenny and the Ess-Dog during the encore, and for the final song, Hot Drummer and Stephen switched places for a country cover (and if anyone could tell me what song that was, I would love them forever).

I almost missed my bus back to Champaign, but managed to get there. The Yank and I hung out, eating fudge or in front of coffeeshops, for the rest of the weekend. Among other things, The Yank discovered there is no such word as "barristo".

Patch Adams came into the store yesterday. The real Patch Adams. He was... interesting. My bosses were so excited they made out after he left. Also... interesting.