CurtBlog

Wow, what an amazing show. I've seen Radiohead twice and I have to say for sheer power and energy, the rock show Muse put on last night at the Aragon might just be better. Now I've never seen Radiohead in a smaller venue, only at Alpine Valley and Coachella. And it was awesome, but the Muse guys might just be snapping at their heels for the mantle of best British rock act if this keeps up.
The venue was perfect for this sort of show, big open room with ornate art deco/gothic decorations and a vault ceiling, just one of the great old Chicago theaters. Amazingly enough, although I've been in Chicago for over 3 years now and seen a decent amount of shows, I've never seen a show at the Aragon before. The crowd was hyped for the show, ready for something big before the band even took stage. I have to say I love being in a rock crowd that really loves the band and sings along. I love to sing along at rock shows. In fact, in the middle of "Time Is Running Out", Matt cut away from the mic and the crowd took over singing "bury it, won't let you bury it, won't let you smother it, won't let you murder it.." before Matt came back in "our time is running out...". It was awesome.
The addition of a keyboardist on this tour really adds a lot to flesh out the bands sound in more of a live organic way (they used a lot of keyboard loops anyway before) and he also sings, so the background vocals were spot on and sounded much like the new album for much of the time. They played probably half the songs from the new album, including my current favorite "Starlight" and a piano version of "Soldier's Poem" that worked just as well as the acoustic guitar version on the album. Sprinkled in were a number of favorites from Absolution that were all responded to with roars of approval from the crowd, with the one notable missing exception of "Sing For Absolution".
The lighting and set design were rather inspired, with a really unique video treatment running in the background on a bunch of small rectangular screens that contained a mix of live footage being shot in front of the stage and video loops designed for the show. Nothing over the top, just really artistic and it added a lot to the energy of the show.
After the prerequsite crowd encouragement, the band stormed back on stage for an inspired encore set that opened with "Take A Bow" and ended with a thunderous "Knights of Cydonia". As before when I saw them at the Metro, I can't help but be impressed with the sheer musicianship and stage presence of this band. Aside from the rather envious talents of Matt Bellamy, Chris and Dom lay down an amazing rhythm section that just never lets up and anchors the wide variety of tonal palettes Matt brings with guitar and piano. It's just one in a long tradition of amazing 3 piece bands and certainly my current favorite.

So Monday I had one of those exercise stress echo tests. Due to the major bad voodoo in my mom's side of the family for heart disease (Grandfather dead from heart attack, uncle dead from heart attack, you get the picture) and mom's heart surgery last year, I asked my doctor if it would be smart just to check out the ticker and he agreed. More of a baseline than anything, we didn't expect to find anything bad yet. So I went in Monday early in the morning having had nothing to eat or drink (including coffee), so it was just a joy. The people were nice enough and I didn't have to wait long, ended up joking around with the techs a lot. They start off with an ultrasound of your heart, so that was kinda cool because if I turned my head just right I could see the monitor. Man, our hearts work hard, it looks like the thing is just going to town. Almost violent really. But you have to hold your breath while they take the shots, which is hard enough, but get this. You also have to do it right after you get off the treadmill wheezing and gasping for air. Sounds easy, right. I don't know how the old folks do it. The treadmill program lasts for 20 minutes, but the tech said she has only seen 4 or 5 people make it through the whole thing in the 2 years she has been there. I of course thought I would do okay, since I'm younger and I run, etc. Made it to 13 1/2 minutes before I had to quit. It's pretty challenging because you have all this stuff hanging off you, they are taking your blood pressure on and off and you have to hold on to the bar in front of you. So definitely the most awkward running position possible, especially with the incline. There are 2 techs and a cardiologist watching the whole time, so you definitely feel like a lab rat. I guess this must be what it is like to get old, being poked and prodded and stuck before a live audience. But everything looks good and my blood pressure stayed pretty stable, so the medicine seems to working just fine. All in all, an interesting experience to say the least.

That's right, Kristin and I are engaged. Late Saturday night/early Sunday morning we went on our 4th edition of the LATE ride. The LATE ride is a early AM bikeride through various parts of Chicago that benefits the Chicago Park System and generally draws about 8000 riders. This event has a lot of history and memories for us, so I thought it would be the perfect occasion to propose. I first did the ride in 2003 soon after I met Kristin and soon after I moved to Chicago. I had just started travelling to California for work, so I still didn't know people very well. A group from church was going and I thought it sounded like a lot of fun. On that first ride, Kristin and I ended up riding together for quite a bit of the ride. Between racing ahead of the others and trying to beat each other (4th grade flirting in retrospect), we had a fairly serious conversation where I talked to Kristin a lot about my background and past. I think it freaked her out a bit, but she also was intrigued and was a great listener. This was well before we started dating, but I already thought she was really cool and wanted to get to know her better. On the 2004 ride, I had just quit traveling and was back in Chicago and we had been through quite a bit of back and forth over whether or not we should date. We emailed a ton while I was traveling and had some really good phone conversations as well. So on that ride we were flirting a lot, much to the disgust (and amusement) of our friends. and a few months later we were officially dating. And then last year we did the ride as a couple and actually had a bit of an argument at the end and ended up having a really good conversation about it and talking about some cool things. Anyway, there are more details, but you'll have to ask me because I'm not going to post them here.

The ring barely made it in time as they finished setting it Saturday morning and I had to sneak up to pick it up without Kristin knowing. I figured at some point she would be looking through my bag for something, so I hid it in a little plastic baggie inside the plastic case of a tire repair kit. Good thing too, because she went through my bag looking for my phone at one point. The sun was coming up as we were finishing the ride and we almost stopped to watch, but we were so nearly done we decided to finish. We walked over to Buckingham Fountain where there were tons of people scattered about and found a spot that was at least somewhat private to watch the sunrise. And that's when I asked her and she said yes (once again, you'll have to ask if you want more details).

Although we were fairly exhausted and didn't get much sleep, I had made reservations for the evening at Spring to celebrate. Kristin was radiant and beautiful despite the fatigue and very excited when she found out where we were going. She didn't know until we were walking up to the restaurant. We had also visited Green Zebra which was created by the same chef and really enjoyed that. We had a delightful waiter who was very funny and charming. We didn't want to drink too much since we were already half asleep, but we did want some wine. So he just paired some half glasses with our appetizer (grilled octopus) and soup (heirloom tomato gazpacho) and then a full glass with our entree. Kristin had the sockeye salmon and I had scallops with oxtail. Both were just amazing. Then the waiter treated us to glasses of moscato to celebrate and we had this delectable chocolate peanut butter bar dessert with homemade peanut butter ice cream. yum. what a day, what a day.

There are a couple of pictures on Flickr and I'll be adding more before long.

If you want to see some of my latest grilled concoctions, including my first attempt at slow barbequed ribs (which were amazingly tasty), check out my food set on Flickr. Here's a preview

Got to give my 2 cents on the Atlas framework for the CMP media folks, specifically in relation to the June CTP