Blog: Tankboy

Photo of GalPal and me by Ryan Mitchell The wind is howling—HOWLING—outside my window, and I can't wait to get out of town on vacation soon. The 9-to-5 has been KEE-razy, all of my own making since I quite literally asked for it and I'm actually happy to be in this situation (and, as an aside, this is not one of those times when someone says they're happy that they're busy at work when in fact they're miserable but are afraid someone they work with [...]

Oh my oh my oh my but buying a Blu-ray player that streams and then immediately subscribing to Netflix has completely changed my viewing habits because even though 97% of the movies / shows available for immediate viewing are kinda bunk the other 3% are totally rad and, FINALLY, it looks like I have no excuse to catch up with and watch every episode of the critically lauded series so I can finally judge for myself whether it is truly "all that" or not.

ME: Wow, he's in really good shape. I need to step it up at the gym. SHE: Mm-hm. ME: I reckon it'll take a week or two. SHE: Riiiight. ME: OK, maybe three weeks. He is pretty big.

GOBBLE GOBBLE! [Insert hand turkey here]

In the States tonight is a night where everyone goes out and gets shitfaced. In the old days it was because all your high school chums and family you never spoke to were in town but in modern times that's no longer really the case since we're all pretty much in constant contact with who we want to be in contact with anymore. So it's just an excuse to get drunk. And the cats in the video below were FAMOUS for getting drunk. This is also an elaborate excuse to post a video of Keith Moon behind [...]

I'm looking forward to December! Right now I'm in the middle of the yearly "let's get all this done before the holidays" madness at the 9-to-5. On one hand I'm thankful because the craziness makes time rush by drawing the holidays ever closer at great speed. On the other hand, the deadlines are also rushing my way! It's cool, I can totally handle it! But it does tend to restrict my non-9-to-5 output since so much of my attention is heading towards a single resource. How're you holding up pre-holiday season?

I dunno what it is about The Stepkids that compels me to keep writing about them . Oh yeah, now I remember, it's because I dig their music. I keep going back to their live set from CMJ (which you can own FOR FREE ) and now I'm digging this totally tripped out new video from the band for their song "Suburban Dream." As The Stepkids themselves might say, dig it, man.

I almost forgot to tell you! I'm DJing tomorrow at Beauty Bar! At an '80s night! SUPER EARLY. I'm on from 9-10:15 p.m. so you gotta get there early to hear my set, but it'll be totally worth it because if you RSVP ahead of time there'll be free champagne flowing from 9-10 p.m. BALLER. Leg warmers not required.

We had the Chicagoist reader meet-up last night at The Owl and it went incredibly well. So many people came out and I actually do love meeting the readers, even the ones who leave the snarkiest of comments. Listen, if you write for a widely read site you should never lose sight of the fact that the readers are the ones making you widely read. So I always try and give them my best and don't take it personally when they don't like what I write. Anyway, it was loads of fun. mean, look! [...]

Thank god for our tamale guy!

I had intended to get you up on the right overly sampled old school spliced together with tape and a razor blade foot by sharing a download of Paul's Boutique: The Instrumentals , but the site I originally stumbled across the finest version of that never-released collection seems to no longer exist. Dang. It does appear as if the link to the actual collection DOES still exist though! However I'm not going to run the risk of sharing it with you because, well, copyright is a weird thing -- and it gets even [...]

My life has been even more go go GO GO lately than usual. There's a whole bunch of reasons for this, all of them positive ones, but that still doesn't mean it's 100% fun for me. Let's call it 89% fun, 10% stress and a 1% mixture of coffee and endorphins triggered by trips to the gym. Anyway, we're mere hours from the Chicagoist meet-up (tomorrow, Thursday November 17) so prepare for my excitement /anticipation of that glorious event to throw the percentages above into serious flux because I'm 100% excited to meet readers, enjoy complimentary [...]

...a picture will have to do!

I'm currently revisiting the entire Pink Floyd catalog for a longer piece I'm going to write about the current reissue series. I can't decide if it'll run on Chicagoist or Donewaiting yet, but I'm leaning towards the latter just because I have a feeling it may be kind of lengthy. As I'm going through them I'm being reminded of so many things because this catalog is such a part of my musical DNA. Many folks fall into either being fans of early Pink Floyd or late Pink Floyd (and I don't [...]

Seems about right...

Some days you write tons and other days you don't wanna write at all but one thing remains certain through it all. You gotta write.

It's that time of year when everything seems to get crazy -- I think folks all around are trying to get "responsibilities" taken care of before the holiday season -- so I can understand if you've missed a few of the things I've written about or aren't in the loop with everything I have going on. Hell, I can barely follow me all the places I'm active in. So, let's sum it up! Google Reader killed it's awesome share function, forcing everyone through a narrow corral into the Google+ zone. So if you want to keep [...]

Photo by Joe Lukey Soft Speaker are currently one of my favorite local bands. I've been following them for a while now and have quite enjoyed watching them grow past my initial expectations and develop into something that has surprised me as each of their releases makes the sorts of subtle shifts only evident in a band that's honestly trying to discover its true self. I say it a lot better on Chicagoist in my review of their latest album Vortrobos , so read that . [...]

Ah, college. After looking through a bunch of a friend's photos from my college days I am officially feeling old. And nostalgic. And realizing what a great crew I ran with in the early '90s. But mostly old. I'm the one of the left, by the way.

Some days it feels like you've been gone forever and other it feels like you're still around and I've just forgotten to call you for too long. Either way I still miss you.