...In which our heroine doubles your money.

In case you weren't aware, Chicago had its coldest day since February 2nd, 2009, yesterday. I don't remember that other day - I was still down in the depths of mono, so I probably didn't even leave the dorms - but yesterday we had wind chills around -22 just around the time for my morning commute.

Perhaps the most common question or inquiry I get about Chicago besides the goddamn pizza I don't even like that much is about the weather. "Sure gets cold there, and WINDY!" Yeah, I'm really glad you know that the Windy City moniker comes from...

Guess what? It's Chicago. It gets really fucking cold in the winter. You can't walk around in a North Face and leggings and Uggs and expect to be warm. I saw a girl in bright yellow tights yesterday, and felt absolutely no sympathy for her plight. Put some clothes on! Fashion doesn't matter at any temperature below 15. My outfit yesterday was knee socks, leggings, jeans, a t-shirt, a flannel shirt, a hoodie, a hat, a down parka with its hood up, a wool scarf, and gloves. I may have looked like the kid from A Christmas Story, but damnit, I was toasty.

I dunno, I guess I just get annoyed when people make a big deal about things that are inevitable. Saying Chicago is cold is also like mentioning how corrupt our politics are: everyone knows it already, just leave it alone. Maybe my Midwestern blood is just getting thicker, but I've learned to live with the cold, and I'll still take 20 any day over 95.

End seasonal rant. Begin music business rant.

The National/Arcade Fire show is a hot ticket for Chicago, especially considering all the buzz around Bloodbuzz Ohio and The Suburbs. I've seen both of the bands before, but I skipped out on Girl Talk, and decided I'd buy tickets to this.  There was a band presale that sold out in FIVE FUCKING MINUTES yesterday, so a second show was added.

The first time I saw Arcade Fire - with LCD Soundsystem doing a fantastically danceriffic opening slot - it was in Columbus, at the LC, which is my favorite venue for a show. Tickets were $35 and I had to scramble to give my other one away, eventually settling on Isaac now of Pomegranates fame. It was October but it was still like 90 degrees, and we experienced rock n' roll church, with reverend Win Butler.

Cut to four years later. Arcade Fire is headlining Coachella, and suddenly everyone's favorite indie rockers. I'm really not trying to play the "I was there at the beginning!" card, but I was. The frustrating thing about indie rock now is that the proliferation of so many bands forces one to really have to pick and choose what to listen to. The internet is a great and terrible thing when it comes to independent music - with so much accessibility to free music, it becomes impossible for me to listen to everything.

As a result, you get a lot of shitty little buzz bands that Pitchfork likes and have funny Twitter accounts selling out show. That would have never happened in pre-internet days. So while it's good for struggling musicians, I definitely think there's an issue when it comes to quality control of said bands.

As for the tickets themselves, which everyone got themselves so worked up about yesterday, my $69 Ticketmaster purchase was done by 11:01. Coming from the school of my mother, who I watched spend hours calling Ticketmaster back when it was a phone system to get tickets, I've learned that if you want tickets for a show, you're fucking up at 10AM hitting refresh on the ticket buying screen until you can purchase. You have a pre-made account so you don't have to deal with remembering that stupid little code on the back of your credit card. You want the tickets, you be ready to get them.

Because of that, I've never missed tickets for a show. Some things, I let my own negligence get the better of me and just waited too long, but I genuinely do not understand why some people don't just get up and get their tickets as soon as they go on sale. I got GA, which rules because no one really wants chair seats for a show like that. You want tickets, you make sweet love to that refresh button until you get them.

And that friends, is your Penny Lane/Hagen family groupie skill set for the day...

Despite this 2 for the price of 1 rant, I'm in a really great mood today. This week, I did a month's worth of laundry, got Peapod delivered, fell in love with M Burger, found two of my books for school in PDF form, bought a "water pipe for smoking tobacco out of," had dinner with the ladies, got too drunk watching the Golden Globes, and didn't have to spend the coldest night of winter alone. Hopefully, this good mood carries over into next week when...da dun dun...school starts again. Only two semesters left in Chicago, insanity.