Sunday, May 29, 2016

if you ain't gonna do me right, i might just do you in

Boston's climate today was a frozen hellscape - it was thirty degrees cooler than it was yesterday. At first, we were super psyched about this since we almost died from the sun yesterday...but we were cold all afternoon/evening, and the fact that we weren't sweating constantly means we didn't get dehydrated, which means we had to use the gross portable toilets more than once (although to be fair, they were significantly cleaner than could have been expected at this stage in the game).

However, cooling off was welcome, if only because it might not be too hot in the apartment to sleep tonight. I spent this morning lazing about in bed since I needed to recover from several nights of no sleep - I'm not all the way there yet, but this morning went a long way toward restoring me. After I woke up, Ritu and I sat on the couch and watched "Lemonade" (Beyonce's recent music video/movie) - we'd already tried to watch it twice while doing wedding invitation stuff, but we decided to watch it this morning so we could focus on the production. It was pretty off the wall crazy, and I loved all of it.

But eventually we had to go see live music instead of video music. But first we had brunch tapas at Barcelona, which is in their neighborhood - I've never had brunch tapas before, but these were so fucking delicious. Ritu and I split the spicy shrimp and grits (good news: I was able to eat two shrimp without throwing up, and I had oysters the other night, so I'm hopefully that I'll get over my seafood aversion at some point), and we also split the crispy pork belly with this really fresh, delightfully tart tomatillo salsa, which was probably my favorite thing. I also had the short rib hash with an egg on top, which gave the pork belly a run for its money - the short ribs were perfectly cooked and falling apart, and the egg on top of the potatoes/peppers was a nice touch. I finished off with some patatas bravas (fried potatoes with spicy mayo/aioli), which were not strictly necessary, but were v. welcome.

Of course, we also had two cocktails each, because that's apparently how we roll. Then we went to the festival for day three - and unlike yesterday, once we got there we stayed there. As I mentioned, we were all cold (although we were at least dressed more appropriately than a lot of people there) - but it was a really fun afternoon/evening. We saw Vince Staples first - he was a rapper whose intrasong commentary was totally hilarious (railing against drug use and 'youth culture', encouraging kids to go to college - did I mention he's 22?). Then, Charles Bradley and His Extraordinaires performed - he has an amazing soul/blues voice, and dresses like he has been famous forever (or dresses like Vidya, maybe), but I looked him up and he's in his mid-sixties but just released his first album a few years ago (before that, he was homeless, and at some point a chef, and then a James Brown impersonation act).

After that came the Front Bottoms, which we mostly skipped in favor of finding someplace out of the wind where we could drink some wine. Elle King was after that, and she may have been my favorite performance of the night - she sings 'Exs and Ohs', which I've loved for awhile, as well as a lot of other great, raspy-voiced songs of note. Oddly, she's also the daughter of Rob Schneider, and you can kind of see it on her face if you know it (but would never ever guess otherwise).

After Elle King, we grabbed some food from the food stands, and then we watched Janelle Monae, Haim, and Disclosure, with random breaks at certain points for more wine. All three of them were great - I particularly liked how female-centric today was and how strong the female vocalists were. So the festival ended on a high note, and I would definitely consider coming back - it was nice to do a city festival that was still not that crowded and still easy to get a lyft to/from (we only waited four minutes after the concert ended for a lyft, which would never happen in SF).

Then we came home, ordered pizza (because we're now all wired to require a midnight supper), and watched half of Zoolander 2 because I recommended it and Ritu and Bill are gullible. And now I need to sleep - I have stuff I want to do with Ritu and Bill tomorrow (mostly eat food, drink, and do some wedding stuff), and then I'm catching a ferry to my next destination tomorrow afternoon, where I shall write like a madwoman all week. Goodnight!

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