Festivals Galore

This time next week, I'll be embedded in the mayhem known at Pitchfork Fest. Last year I didn't go at all, so this year I'm making up for it by doing double duty. I'm helping Saucony out for a few hours each day, then I'm making use of my press pass. It's going to be a looonng weekend, but hopefully a lot of fun. I'll need to take a lot of photos, shoot some videos, and try to interview bands all the while trying to keep my wits (and sunscreen) about me. Then of course I'll have to quickly turn everything into some awesome blog posts. That'll be the challenge, but I'm always up for a challenge. I know by the end of the weekend I'll be pretty exhausted and sunburnt, but I think it'll be worth it. I'm still waiting to see if I'm getting a press pass to Lolla. That'll be the ultimate reward and yet another exhausting good time. I'm also getting two press passes to that festival in Portland I mentioned in my last post. The boyfriend is going to my "photographer." We have yet to book the trip, so I really want to do that soon.

I feel like I get to do a lot of cool things through my writing, but the downside is, I'm not making a lot of money through it. That's why I have to pick up gigs like working for Saucony and the t-shirt company to help pay my bills. The thing is, I'm not in it for the money, per se. I just love being able to cover cool events and then write about them. I keep hoping I can take my clips and use them to build more clout for myself. Inevitably, I'd love to have more high profile gigs and get paid a shitload for them, but we're also in a recession and most publications can't afford to pay a lot. I'm trying to hit up the New York Times about writing for them. The boyfriend's cousin works for them and provided me with a contact. We'll see what happens. The other night the boyfriend mentioned I should do something with all of the interviews I've done over the years. I have probably written over 100 articles on various bands from all over the world, artists, people, etc over the past five years. I keep thinking I should turn them into a book or at least integrate them into that book I've been supposedly writing for the past four years. But, I don't have any contacts with publishers and thus don't want to go through this whole thing and have it not get published, yunno? Or maybe I should just do it for myself, just to have a huge portfolio to sift through. Either way, I've definitely accomplished a lot with my writing, but sadly, I could always accomplish so much more.

Besides the constant flow of writing, I'm still trying to get Myopenbar off the ground. We're still trying to throw parties to no avail. We have three business partners now who I think can help us throw some cool parties. I just like the idea of saying "business partners." It's been harder to get liquor sponsorship than I thought, but there's definitely a lot of interest. It's nice to know we have fans and that there are a lot of people willing to work for us.

Sunday morning, the boyfriend and I are driving up to Saugatuck, MI for the night. I've never really been to MI (unless you count the time I drove through Detroit 10 years ago), so I'm looking forward to it. We're staying one night at a bed and breakfast located near the lake. I'm hoping for some quality beach time. Tonight I'm going to an open bar thing where one of the NY Housewives will be making an appearance, and then I'm off to a friend's b-day party. The weather here continues to be so erratic. It'll either be cold one day, then rain the next. This is seriously cutting into my pool/sunbathing time! Speaking of pools, I wanted to start swimming laps, but then I found out it costs $22 for the adult lap session at the public pool. Screw that! I wish I had my own private pool to do laps in. Oh well. I've decided to stick to jogging for the meantime. I really want to get into shape.