Cake In 15

On Saturday night at the OccupyMN protests, the crowd is centered around a makeshift array of plastic tents, ringed by seated protesters with arms linked and then an outer shell of standing participants. People scatter off and glom on. There are enough people so that when the chanting gets loud, you can hear them from [...]

It must have been some sort of cosmic coffee irony that the day I sat in the Intelligentsia coffee bar in the Chicago Loop and turned to Staciaann and said, “You know, this is good, but I think I prefer the Dogwood espresso,” that Jay Gabler of ArtsOrbit would re-tweet a comment referring to my [...]

10 years ago today I stayed home sick. As I’ve done unknowingly during the Oklahoma City bombing, and Columbine. I didn’t know these things would happen, but something on those mornings just made me stay in bed. I didn’t realize that September 11th would change the way our country acts, thinks and feels. I was [...]

This post is tagged “music”, but also “uncategorized”, because, well, seriously? Aren’t you happy you live in a world where Jack White can use all his rock ‘n roll powers and appreciation of classical music to give ICP a chance to invite you to toss their salads? Thought so. Props to JEFF the Brotherhood for [...]

The Northern Spark Festival is a grand, sprawling affair; a dusk-til-dawn, cross-town, caffeine-and-adrenaline-fueled art rush with more projects than we’re able to list or remember. The entire thing goes down from the evening of June 4 (sunset 8:55 pm) through to the morning of June 5, 2011 (sunrise 5:28 am) so check out the festival [...]

CakeIn15 wears its generally bleedingly liberal heart on its internet sleeve with a fair amount of regularity (click through for posts on gay marriage, institutional censorship, economics or cas’ take on Middle Eastern politics) and even when we’re not explicit about it, it’s informing how we write about the world around us. But sometimes there [...]

By JMM Well, we just moved our clocks ahead…maybe that means we’re all close to ending our collective hibernation. I certainly hope so. And, SXSW is right around the corner. But, before we move ahead, I’d like to quickly highlight a recent show at the 7th Street Entry. Hey Rosetta! Photo by Phil Maloney Hey [...]

Yesterday, before the ignoble procedural maneuver that stripped collective bargaining rights away from Wisconsin voters, John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats recorded a video of himself singing Joe Hill’s “There is Power in a Union”. He accompanied it with the following note, which is truer now even more than it was last night: “Everybody knows [...]

So The Decemberists did this really cool thing and had the fantastic photographer Autumn De Wilde shoot a bunch of Polaroid photos during the recording of their newest album The King is Dead. They included the pics in the various (but pricy) box sets that went out, making each one a collectible as no one [...]

February 3, 2011 – By JMM In 2008, when I took my then six year-old son to see Speed Racer the movie, he sat transfixed staring at the screen for the entire 2+ hour run time. At the conclusion of the movie, he stood up and loudly proclaimed, “Wow! That’s not at all like the [...]