We promise we love many elements about the Christmas season: the festive decorations, the spirit of togetherness, the delicious foods ... but other elements make us want to stab our eyes out. At the top of our list are awful Christmas songs. While there are some songs that make us reminisce about our childhood (anything from the A Very Special Christmas album is fair game), there are others that almost induce involuntary vomiting. We......

It's been a long time since Chicagoist was on a good scavenger hunt. Too long. But the lucky folks at the University of Chicago have an opportunity to do so every year. The 21st annual University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt (aka Scav Hunt), where UC students partake in a 4-day scavenger hunt that takes them around campus, the city, and on road trips (not to exceed 1000 miles), began first thing yesterday morning. The 300+......

Sunday was supposed to be our recovery day from college football, but when a friend called with free tickets to Cheap Trick at Ravinia, we got off the couch and gathered our music festival gear. We jumped on Metra's Ravinia Special and were dropped off right at the festival's entrance - quite the service for a $5 round trip price tag. We set up our lowly space with a couple of blankets and cooler, which......

Now, we know this is immature, but COME ON! Of all the words in the English language you could have chosen, that’s the one you go with? We know it’s late in the day, but you’re a national newspaper for crying out loud. Crack a thesaurus. And he was fingered by someone named Scooter. Which is weird because we have a friend who had the same thing happen to her at camp. Also, is......

Last night at the behest of a friend, Chicagoist went to Double Door to see Nashville Pussy and Zeke. We had been regaled with fabulous stories of how great these bands are live – so we decided to check it out for ourselves. Zeke was fun speed metal with grandstanding and indecipherable lyrics. We just checked out the lyrics online and it’s the basic cars, women, and alcohol that were being screamed about. Zeke,......

As the organizers of Lollapalooza struggle to dot their I’s, cross their T’s, and leave the bags of money behind the correct trees, Pitchfork does them one better by announcing they’ll be “curating” the first Annual Intonation Music Festival on July 16th and 17th at Pulaski Park. (Curating? Huh. So that’s what pretension smells like). But let’s leave our own sarcasm aside for a moment because Pitchfork has done something really crazy and released a......