There's a Hippie-Rapper-Raver-Skater Music Fest in DeKalb County That You Should Check Out Next Year. It's Called Stompkee Fest.

When I first heard about an outdoor music fest in Earlville, IL called "Stompkee," I pictured shirtless guys in combat boots mid-air, but about to stomp on some kimchee in the woods. Kind of like Michael Flatley from Riverdance, but bald and on steroids.



But no, no, Stompkee is the name of the street near where the fest was originally held, in the District of Cornfieldia, where people would walk around all naked and wild — so I heard from one veteran Stompkee-ite. The fact that it was more “commercial” this year, its sixth year (they posted the event on Facebook, made a website, etc) supposedly caused some people to not attend. But 100 acres of camping, swimming and fishing in DeKalb County hardly seemed commercial for a city girl like me, coming from the Lolla-Land of Chicago. We camped underneath a willow tree, listened to DJ beats deep into the night by a campfire that bordered on a bonfire, and were woken up at 6am by people drunkboarding on the wooden skate ramp next to us.



The days were lazy, and the four stages — including a Barn Stage — were spread out, so you got not only a dose of scenery but a shot of exercise. We'd hear meanderings of Phish covers, but then catch a newer rap group at the hip-hop stage right by us. We wandered the grounds, got healthy grub from the House Cafe tent, and crappy grub (and bug spray) from the camp store. We diddled on the graffiti wall, before a more professional crew from my Humboldt Park neighborhood took it over, and met a guy who had some eye-poppin' eyeball glasses. His girlfriend — minus her pink hair — reminded me of another girl I met who sported tattoos of the two members of Insane Clown Posse, Shaggy 2 Dope and Violent J, on her thighs. She was real nice, just like every other Juggalo I've ever met. Scout's honor.








The grounds were beautiful, at a place called Stonehouse Park, which also hosts events like Octoberfest, weddings — and combat-recreation events like RISING, "a live action game putting you into the heart of the zombie apocalypse." We didn’t see any zombies, but there was body painting. And while I didn’t see anyone stomping on kimchee at Stompkee, I did see combat boots — worn by a military-type guy, believe it or not, recruiting for one of the staged battle events. I'll just say that having a guy with a fake gun unexpectedly creep up on you at night while you're zoning in on a campfire is a little freaky, hmmm? That was only to be topped by him demonstrating how to load it and talking about what they do to make it spark like it's really shooting bullets. I videotaped part of his explanation for your viewing pleasure.





One band that really caught my attention was a group from Chicago called thuMp (yep, I kept their spelling, not to be confused with the other trip-hop/soul band Thump...just kidding). No but seriously, they're amazing. Their sound makes me feel like I'm bumping down the streets of Harlem in the 1970s, inspired and ready to live life. You can listen here. I like that their bio reads: "We’re influenced by everything from rice bread to hip-hop." Ha ha, rice bread.

The Evolution vs Creation Debate — Courtesy of a T-Rex and a Christian Fish

So my friend Ian, a Six Flags Great America disciple, spotted this in the vast universe that is the theme park's parking lot. A T-Rex eating the Christian Fish symbol? Hmm.

Well, you could interpret it as someone saying that evolutionary theory trumps creationism. Or else — well, dinosaurs get hungry too, you know? And in Christianity, Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit (known as the Trinity) feed the soul...and most Christians take communion, ingesting the Body of Christ, right?

So I'd like to offer up that this T-Rex is actually a "Trinity Rex" and is merely partaking of the holy sacrament of the Eucharist.

This is the Word of the Leah. Thanks be to Six Flags.

Oh, Comma, You Make Things So Nice

The added comma makes this much more of a request than a demand, doesn't it? Saw this on a Metra train on the way to Geneva, IL. Okay, Metra sign, I won't smoke — since you asked so nicely.

Let's Play "Find the Grammatical Error"

And no, "penis" isn't spelled wrong somewhere. (I had a friend once who was convinced that it was spelled "penus," and to this day I think that's a more palatable formation of the word. I'm going to go draft an open letter to Webster's now, excuse me.)

But first: I spotted this March 1980 copy of Playgirl at the best book/music store in Chicago — Shake Rattle and Read in Uptown.

So It's Called Wizard World? Or Comic-Con? Con-Artist World...Con? Who Cares, I Met Anthony Michael Hall.

So I kept saying I was going to "Comic Con" in Chicago, when a comic-convention nerd friend of mine says: "You mean Wizard World?" I've heard it called both, so I figured it's like when people interchange Comiskey Park and Sox Park — oops I mean U.S. Cellular Mitosis Field. Maybe the Wizard of Oz would have the answer?



But for any related blog posts I'm going to bow to the usage of "Wizard World" because the storm clouds that we drove into to get to Rosemont, IL seemed like a scene out of Harry Potter. Oh, and there was hail too, but not the kind that pummeled our car and roof last month. Here's a pic of those mad wizard clouds before the storm, I felt like Helen Hunt driving into a tornado in Twister. Or maybe the Wicked Witch in a funnel cloud if she'd been driving a car instead of a bike.



As we began the game of Okay, You Go Jump Out of the Car and Save That Parking Spot, my friend Amanda started talking about how she has some old comics in boxes somewhere, like the Superman from when (spoiler alert!) Superman dies. I was more of a Archie and Betty and Veronica reader myself, I think it partially had to do with the fact that I could read the balloon bubbles better. And sure, maybe I liked Veronica's outfits and Betty's tomboyishness, but looking back on it now, I wonder if reading those were the best thing for a young impressionable girl to be reading, I mean here you have these two girls constantly fighting over this guy, I mean, really? And over ARCHIE? Hey girls, let's go drink some more of that Kool-Aid.

But one of my faves from that realm was a series of Veronica travel comics (sans any Archie drama) that had her going to different parts of the world, I remember I couldn't wait for it to come in the mail. There's "Veronica in Japan, "Veronica in Greece, "Veronica in Mexico"....



In "Veronica in Hollywood" her and her father try to help save a film studio, and an assistant busts in to announce opening day figures for their recent release: "It's going to be a bigger blockbuster than even 'STAR WARTS'!"

Speaking of Star Warts, or rather Star Wars — check out the blinged-out C-3PO-esque Star Wars headset I got! Maybe I'll be DJ Princess Leia for Halloween. I started to gain inspiration by taking pics with any Princess Leia I saw, and the next day played Radio Producer Leia for the green info-tainment show I do work for, "The Mike Nowak Show."





So I bought the C-3PO headset from a booth for a store in Naperville, IL called Toy+Life. They also had some mad screenprints — the Yoda is by Free Humanity a graff crew out of LA, and the Marvin the Martian is by Arvik:




Oh! And we happened upon the booth of an insane clown that was Angus Oblong, an amazing artist and creator of The Oblongs, this rad animated series about a family whose members are missing an arm or leg here and there due to the tainted water in their hometown, the pharmaceutical capital of the world. It's based on Angus' book called "Creepy Susie & 13 Other Tragic Tales for Troubled Children." The limbless 1950s-like dad is voiced by Will Ferrell, and the rest of the characters and aesthetic remind me of like Ren & Stimpy meets Futurama meets Family Guy. In the episode "Please Be Genital," Ferrell's character, Bob Oblong, is at work at Globocide — he opens up his lunchbox with his nose, peers inside, and says: "Hmm, ironic. We spent all morning capping pesticides, and my Manwich has been gnawed by a rat." The clip also features an ever-so-necessary John Denver Film Festival.





And okay, here's — deep breath — Anthony Michael Hall! He was there because of Dead Zone (a TV show based on Stephen King's 1979 novel), and he was one of the first people we saw when we walked in — okay, the second, Vivica Fox was the first. It cost like $40 to get your pic taken with him, so we just gawked for awhile. Then about an hour later we saw him just walking around, and bee-lined toward him like Judd Nelson toward Molly Ringwald's crotch in The Breakfast Club. Amanda shouted "He doesn't even have a license, Lisa!" from Weird Science. Then I chimed in with, "You gave me a birth control pill?!! Do you know what that can do to a guy my age?!!!" from Sixteen Candles. He laughed and his lip kind of curled up, just like his geeky Farmer Ted character but without the braces.



So, Wizard World...Amanda thought it was just going to be a bunch of stodgy nerdy comic collectors, but decided to come along anyway, and was so jacked that she bought like 10 T-shirts. I bought a couple The Lost Boys film stills from Hollywood Book and Poster Company, and then accidentally left them behind. But thankfully held on to the two music DVDs I got too, "The Best of Beat Club" and "Glam Rock."




So maybe it's best they don't call it Comic Con after all, because that makes people think that the only things being shopped are comics. Which is obviously not true, just ask this guy carrying a life-size blow-up Superman doll up a jammed stairwell in the parking garage:

I'm Going to Rave About This Rave Flyer Show

There are a ton of things going on in Chicago today as Oscar Arriola will tell you on his awesome Fotoflow blog (custom low-riders show in Pilsen!), but I'm just going to do a quick post here about a show in Logan Square that will feature a ton of rad rave flyers from 1992 to 2001 — "Eternity: The Rave and Club Flyer Collection of Bridgette Buckley" is from 5-9pm at The Storefront, 2606 N California. Buckley started collecting these little paper critters after her first rave in Boulder, and will be spinning tunes from the time.

Be ready to hang out — if it's anything like the last thing that Marc Fischer from Public Collectors held at this space, there'll be a lot to comb through and listen to, and people to talk to. See, the whole idea of Public Collectors is that we each have a ton of cool material — music, zines, flyers — that represent a part in history, but never make it into any kind of museum or anything for other people to enjoy (besides your friends, who maybe don't even appreciate how cool your stuff is anyway!). So Fischer sets up these gatherings where people can check out each other's collections.

Last week, he laid out his own underground fanzine collection from the 80s and early 90s. And there was a ton of old cassettes that you could play! from Husker Du to the Beastie Boys to Bad Brains to the Descendents — here's a cool little video I took.



He even had a zine that Jim DeRogatis did back in the day — "Reasons for Living" in New Jersey — and a ton of other zines that featured gritty band images and simple interviews (one zine had an interview with Husker Du, and it started out with Bob Mould and Greg Norton talking about how they're from Minnesota and how people would go out and get birchwood from the forest to burn in their fireplaces)...this was a big way people found out about the music and bands they loved pre-Internet. Thank you zines and zine makers.

My Butthat Cherry Has Been Broken

So I was IM-ing with a friend yesterday, and screwed up the spacing between "but" and "that" which gave birth to "butthat." Ha ha. I said (wrote) butthat. And it was the first time I heard of it! Here's the Urban Dictionary definition for butthat ("A lesser form of the word asshat, used in polite company.") And here's an awesome photo of a butthat. Heh heh.

Oh — welcome back "Beavis and Butt-Hat"! I mean, Butt-Head. The show's coming back to MTV in October, and I vote that they introduce a new character — Butt-Head's cousin, Butt-Hat. Ha! I can see it now: "Beavis and Butt-Head (and Butt-Hat) Do America."