"Organic Firewood for sale"

I'm back from Hillside Festival, dry and happy. I can't begin to tell you how much fun it was - great performances, delicious variety of food, a community atmosphere. I'm tied up for today, but I've got the pictures and words all sorted out and will have the write-up going tomorrow. I may divide it 3-fold

• Hillside - The Music, where I see some great bands and get blown away by a couple of performances, notably a video of Thunderheist putting on a clinic on how to hype a crowd into a dancing booty shaking mass.
• Hillside - The Festival Experience, where we see get the ideal experience of how a festival is run, and I rave about how f'n clever the organizers are.
• Hillside - Lessons Learned for Next Year, where I jot some notes down about what worked for me this year and what I would do differently next year - and you're all coming with me.

Off to Hillside Festival

I'm off to Hillside Festival for the weekend - I'll post all about it on Monday, and then I'll be working on getting posts up with more regularity. Have a great weekend!

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog

What's a writer, like say Buffy the Vampire/Angel/firefly creator Joss Whedon, to do with spare time during a writer's strike? Why, you put on a musical comic book video thingie. Presenting Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day. It's over the top and wonderfully funny - NPH makes a villain the hero of his own story, and Nathan Fillion is great as the brash and oblivious hero Captain Hammer. If they ever made a Futurama movie, Nathan Fillion is Zap Brannigan.

Joss's Master Plan

ONE WEEK ONLY! AN INTERNET MINISERIES EVENT!

"Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog" will be streamed, LIVE (that part’s not true), FREE (sadly, that part is) right on Drhorrible.com, in mid-July. Specifically:

ACT ONE (Wheee!) will go up Tuesday July 15th.

ACT TWO (OMG!) will go up Thursday July 17th.

ACT THREE (Denouement!) will go up Saturday July 19th.

All acts will stay up until midnight Sunday July 20th. Then they will vanish into the night, like a phantom (but not THE Phantom – that’s still playing. Like, everywhere.)

The videos are available on iTunes for a nominal fee for keepsies.

Feist on Sesame Street

Take kittens, roll them in fluffy bunnies and let them loose in a cupcake store, and it wouldn't be half as adorable as this appearance by Feist on Sesame Street. She looks like she's having a ball, and check out the expression on her face at the end of the clip after the song ends.

Feist announced at Canada's Juno awards earlier this year that the day she spent taping the segment was the best of her life.

"I mean, c'mon please, it's the Muppets we're talking about," she said.

"('1234') brought me two days ago to Sesame Street and it was the Muppets and it was the best day of my life. I'm sorry Junos, but the Muppets trump everything!"

With a whiff of nostalgia and a hint of vanilla perfume...

IT WAS 20 YEARS AGO TODAY: The top ten singles from July, 1988:

"Pour Some Sugar on Me" -- Def Leppard
"The Flame" -- Cheap Trick
"New Sensation" -- INXS (causing flashbacks to my Grade 7 trip to Quebec City)
"Hold On To the Nights" -- Richard Marx
"Mercedes Boy" -- Pebbles
"Roll With It" -- Steve Winwood
"Hands to Heaven" -- Breathe
"Make Me Lose Control" -- Eric Carmen
"Nite and Day" -- Al B. Sure
"Dirty Diana" -- Michael Jackson

Comment which you can't really disagree with:

In Diablo Cody's "Candy Girl," the memoir of the time she spent in the exotic dancing industry, she refers to "Pour Some Sugar On Me" as the greatest song for those purposes ever.- Matt

via ALOTT5MA