I spent last weekend with 20,000 of my closest friends at the beautiful Gorge Amphitheater in Eastern Washington. Perched high on a bluff that affords spectacular views of the nearby Columbia River, the venue plays host every summer to dozens of high-profile concerts, including the Sasquatch Music Festival.

This year’s line-up featured an embarrassment of alt. and indie rock riches, including a wide cross-section of national acts (NIN, Ben Harper, Kings of Leon), buzzed-about up-and-comers (Crystal Castles, Santigold, Bon Iver) and regional, NW-based bands (Hockey, M. Ward, Fleet Foxes). By my count, I saw no less than 22 performances in 3 days — and that was less than 1/3 of the total artists scheduled to appear. As they say, something for everyone.

Now that my mind and body have had a chance to recover from the elements — there is, alas, almost no shade on-site and the sun was just merciless — and the debauched madness that comes part and parcel with a 3-day event such as this, here are my 5 favorite sets from this year’s Sasquatch:

5. Sounding like a more rustic Elliott Smith, Bon Iver and his excellent backing band delivered a stirring performance that dipped heavily into the Americana songbook. Believe the hype!

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…and we’re baaaaaaaaaaaaaack after a 5 day absence.

I hope everyone had a rejuvenating holiday weekend — I know I did.

Observant readers might recall that just last week, I penned compiled a list of Dean Rooney’s most memorable foot-in-mouth lines from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. In quasi-related news, I’ve just learned that Cameron’s house — a modern property with stunning floor-to-ceiling glass windows that is perched above the forest — is now on the market.

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…is that they become outdated (all too quickly, I might add). This is especially true of t-shirt lists, as new designs are coming online all the time.

Take, for instance, my recent post on bike-inspired tees. I just found a new shirt, via Tee.MS (an excellent tee blog that unearths stylish, thoughtful shirts at a steady clip), that most certainly would have merited inclusion in the original piece.

Aside from the implied message (ride more bikes, as they are good for the environment), I really like the dark, forest shade of green (very apropos) and the clean interplay between symbol and form (conveys meaning with nary a word). I may have to add this to my wardrobe.

In a similar vein, consider my list of t-shirts festooned with sunglasses from April. After stumbling across this fresh shirt on Rumplo yesterday, I want to go back and edit my original post — I feel like there’s a glaring absence. (Get it?)

I’m really fond of the scrolling effect, the shades alternating as they do between popular styles like aviators and wayfarers, and the icy-hot color fade. Like I said, FRESH.

Let’s go clubbing: travis@founditemclothing.com

Working at Found Item Clothing, I’m often asked to view older films for “research” purposes (as if they needed to twist my arm…). Today, for instance, I watched the 1986 classic, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, a movie that hasn’t lost one bit of its comedic appeal in the twenty-plus years since its original release.

What dawned on me in the wake of this screening was the quality of the supporting cast. As much as Matthew Broderick carries the picture with his infectious, charismatic personality, the film is peppered with a number of less renowned actors and actresses that steal the show with inspired, off-beat performances. Chief among them is Jeffrey Jones as Edward R. Rooney, the Dean of Students and Ferris’ antagonist and frustrated foil. Rooney correctly suspects that Bueller is up to no good, but he is powerless to bring this truant scofflaw to justice. As the movie unfolds, his character transitions from a no-nonsense, buttoned-up authority figure to a disheveled, burned-out shell of a man, demoralized by a series of embarrassing gaffes and physical mishaps.

To mark the occasion, I’ve compiled a list of Dean Rooney’s 10 funniest dialogue snippets. Enjoy!

10. “I had a grandmother once. Two, actually.”
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I’m a little pressed for time (and energy) today, so I’m taking the lazy way out with a rocking clip that caught my attention over the weekend.

The band is called Gliss. Hailing from Los Angeles, they sound like an incarnation of early Smashing Pumpkins (I mean this in the best possible way…) crossed with the British post-punk-isms of the Jesus and Mary Chain or the equally pretty Mazzy Star. Their newest album, 2009’s Devotion Implosion, is a swirling mess of atmospheric guitars and doom-and-gloom lyrical vignettes. Think corroded vocals, stylish leather jackets, and sunglasses at night…

Official band tees can be found here.

Sock it to me: travis@founditemclothing.com