What I Did On My Summer Break(Down) Pt. IV - I Wore a Superhero Cape to Lollapalooza

Other people my blogroll can give you better descriptions about what happened at this year's Lollapalooza, Aug. 5-7 in Grant Park (yeah, it was a month ago, get over it) than I can. But I will say that it was fun. Not as good as last year, but a good time nonetheless.

AT&T, a major sponsor of the festival, "accidentally" deleted an anti-Bush comment by Pearl Jam as part of their webcast of the event (apparently AT&T did the same thing last year during the Flaming Lips set?), so that was really awesome. I love AT&T. Also, I could not make long distance overseas calls in the AT&T tent, like I could last year. And the little plastic fans they gave out were useless landfill. So in my opinion, their presence as a sponsor is totally useless. AT&T sucks and needs to go.

I did want to discuss, however, how awesome me, Richard and our friends Tomas and Sarah are because we got ahold of some sweet-ass superhero capes and wore them on Days 2 and 3 of the show, as seen in the photo below.

[Sarah and I in our amazing superhero capes, Saturday at Lolla.]

Why did we wear superhero capes to Lollapalooza, you ask? Because we are awesome, I said (geez you people need to pay attention).

Here's pretty much how it happened. On Friday, after a few* drinks of vodka and Smartwater (yeah, it tasted about as good as it sounds), and Budweiser Select (yeah, it tasted about as good as it sounds too) and watching the antics of the keyboardist from Ghostland Observatory rocking a cool sliver cape, a history-making conversation ensued that went something like this:

Sarah: "Check out the keyboardist's cool cape. So sweet."
Me: "Yeah, that is awesome. People don't wear enough capes these days. This is a major problem with society, I believe."
Sarah: "I wish we had capes that we could wear to Lollapalooza!"
Me: "Yeah! Like, if each of us had a sweet sparkly superhero-looking ones."
Sarah: "Yes! With those cool old-school big collars."
Richard: "We could each have different colored ones. I want a red one."
Me: "This is actually one of the best ideas ever devised in the history of mankind. ** Let me make a few phones calls."

Some of you may remember how my Grandma made my and Niner's cool Panda costumes for Halloween last year (chronicled here and here). Grandma was a professional seamstress for decades, and she loves making stuff for me - since I will never give her great grandkids, in times like this I can serve as both her grandson and great grandson. When I called to ask if she could whip out four different colored adult-sized shiny capes with collars in less than 24 hours, she didn't bat an eye.

According to my mother, who went with Grandma to the fabric store, there was a conversation between with the clerk that went like this:

Grandma: "I need 3 yards each of the following fabrics."
Clerk: "Wow, how colorful! What is this for?"
Grandma: "I am making my grandson and his friends some capes."
Clerk: "How adorable! Is your grandson in a play at camp or something?"
Grandma: "No."
Clerk: "Is this for a school project then?"
Grandma: "No, he just wants them for some concert he's going to. For Halloween, I made him a panda costume."
Clerk: "Is your grandson a special needs child or something?"***

And so it came to pass. For most of Saturday and parts of Sunday, we walked around all day with our capes on, like we were superheroes, like it was the most normal, logical thing a person could do (it helped that we drank heavily again). We got a few looks, but we also got even more "awesome!" and "sweet capes, dudes!" comments. Everyone was jealous of our awesomeness.

Plus, it made us easy to spot when we got separated from each other.

[Even Superheroes need cash sometimes.]

* And of course by a "few" I really mean a crapload - or, at least enough to make the idea of wearing capes to Lolla seem like a good one.

** OK, maybe I didn't really say that. But I can tell you that I was so excited about wearing a cape that I was at least thinking it.

*** OK, so the clerk didn't say this, but ten bucks it was what she was thinking.