I was standing on the sidewalk at Clark & Belmont when I was "discovered" by these ad types doing a spec shoot for Cheer Dark. They asked me to pose for some photographs- 50's style with the bottle- and gave me $60 for my troubles. Hilarious! Cheer Dark is for goths and punks, keeps your blacks as black as your soul. A great bit of co-option because even countercultures do chores- it's kinda sweet. It's only a spec shoot, to pitch to Cheer, but I could end up on a billboard. That would be rich!

Also standing on the corner (this time at North and Damen) some kids came up to me and asked if they could take my picture. No problem, happens all the time. But afterwards we were talking and they were asking where I lived and suddenly they're like "wait a second... you're NOT the lead singer for The Used?"

Went down to Pilsen for the fourth, and so many fireworks were being set off that the streets were ankle-deep with red paper. Somebody bought some marshmallows for our ears. Then we went inside and checked out this woman's personal zoo, with bats and raccoons and squirrel-monkeys and parrots and some kind of large carnivorous bird. Got to spend a lot of time playing with a serval, what a beautiful animal (and huge!) Then we retired to the abandoned convent and checked out the hearse and vintage firetrucks and ate some raspberries from the secret garden and schemed to convert one of the fire trucks to an ice-cream truck.