I'm in the throes of new office Mac bliss. I didn't realize that my old eMac was slowly grinding to a non-working condition. It all went down yesterday and now I'm kicking it live with a newly souped up eMac that does two things my old comp quit doing. It plays CDs and it opens and closes windows. I also archived like 4,000 emails after dumping like 5,000 more. All in all, it's a spring cleaning of the digital variety that makes me feel good.

A quick survey of blogs and I discovered that the music writer blogger that I find repulsively pretentious in writing but actually quite nice in person is exactly that way on in the blogosphere. Not so shocking.

So the CDs are getting listened to at a furious rate. I'm hopefully screening the new Matthew Barney joint this weekend. Also, I will suggest you see the Devil and Daniel Johnston. I have a piece in the next Time Out on DDJ and I trust you will enjoy the film even more than I did as I saw it in a lousy screening room with a notebook and a bunch of crusty academic types.

And then there is this fezteefal stuff going down. Chicago is turning out to be a kind of music festival central for this summer. We're getting Lollapalooza again and the Intonation and Pitchfork festivals, which have a big nasty rivalry going. Music festivals are a good time and a good value cash-wise so I say bring-em on. I think the Intonation might have the most adventurous line-up, Pitchfork the most solid and Lolla (obviously) the biggest and safest names. The Intonation fest is curated and dominated by Vice Records associated artists.