I don’t think I’ve experienced such a low after so many highs in a long time.
I had a feeling that something bad was going to happen. I swear. Last week after all the Conan/Florence/Sasquatch/Spoon/Chris Hardwick/EIC awesomeness was all over, I just knew it had to end.
This past weekend, four of my sister’s peers were in a car accident just this side of the bridge. They hit a patch of gravel in the rain and flew into a ditch, hitting 3 trees on the way down. Noah Turgman, the driver, suffered fatal injuries, and Anna Heacox is still in the hospital with a broken back and potential brain damage. Harvey and Emery sustained minor injuries, and they’ve been back at school most of the week.
Libby knew Noah. I didn’t know him, but I knew his sister. We’ve known Anna since 6th grade when she was on Libby’s basketball team, and she’s one of Lindsay’s best friends. I played golf with Anna senior year, I’ve hung out with the girls loads of time since I’ve graduated, and when I heard that she’d be going to Western with Libby next year, I was really really glad.
I don’t consider myself a religious person. Hell, I’m not even sure what I believe anymore, which is fine with me, but I prayed for the first time on tuesday since my grandmother died in 2002. I tend to hold grudges, so me and God haven’t really been on speaking terms since then. But in all of this mess with Noah dying and Anna in the hospital, we didn’t know if she’d wake up. I’ve seen enough doctor shows to know that swelling in the brain doesn’t always end well. At that moment, sitting in traffic on 19th, in the rain, I started to cry in my car. Anna’s a great kid, and it wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be fair to Anna, or to her family, or to all her peers. I love my sister and her friends so much, and they’d had enough pain for one week. I didn’t want for the death of two of their peers to ruin their senior year.
I remember how hard it was my junior year when Brian, Josh, and Arthur died. I didn’t even know them, and it was still hard. It took Outlook weeks to figure out how to cover their deaths. Three boys, three deaths, three weeks in a row, and one of them a suicide. It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to deal with in all my years as a student journalist. The editorial board discussed it for hours. We were almost split down the middle about how to cover it, and in the end I felt like we did the right thing doing two memorials instead of three, but I still felt dirty. I felt dirty and hated by my peers because of it.
Since then, there haven’t been any deaths at PHS. None. Until now.
After we heard the news on Saturday, it messed with everyone. Rumors started, horrible rumors that didn’t need to happen. It took the local news outlet – THE PENINSULA GATEWAY – until Sunday to post a link on their Facebook page to the News Tribune story. This whole ordeal has made me lose complete faith in The Gateway. Sorry if you like it, but I hate it. By the time I tweeted at the TNT and Gateway, I had more information than the TNT gave back to me.
But my point isn’t about hating on the news. Because they do good things sometimes. Komo 4 sent a reporter to a bonfire the kids had Saturday night to share memories about Noah. One day. One day to organize over 100 kids together at one friend’s house. I highly doubt all these kids were friends with each other, or even knew each other, but Noah brought all them together, and what’s happened since then has been the most inspiring thing I’ve ever seen.
Anna’s been in a medically-induced coma since Saturday, and all the procedures she’s going to need is going to cost a lot of money, and it will take time, because no one knows what kind of brain injuries she endured. On Monday – TWO DAYS AFTER THE ACCIDENT – enough kids organized together for the school to wear pink in honor of Noah, because it was his favorite color. Tuesday they wore green for Anna, and wednesday they wore yellow. Instantly the kids started planning a barbeque to raise money for her care, and to make tee-shirts with Anna’s favorite walrus silkscreen to sell. They got tee-shirts donated from different companies around town, and the Boosters provided money for them to buy hot dogs for wednesday’s barbeque. I don’t know how they did this so fast, but yesterday when I was at the barbeque, multiple people were already wearing shirts that simply said “Noah” and had the friendship symbol underneath it.
They raised over $2500 yesterday at lunch. Selling hot dogs, cupcakes, and Otter Pops, as well as taking donations up to $100 from random people. I skipped my first class to take pictures of the event, and my sister needed the car anyway.
That last one is just a small amount of kids compared to everyone that came. And they had two lunches to cover. Mom had to go to Costco and get more hot dogs because they were all out after first lunch.
They’re gonna do it again on Saturday, and on Sunday run a 5K as a fundraiser for Anna.
I’ve never been more proud of my sister and her friends. Being at the barbeque yesterday almost brought me to tears again, because it was so wonderful.
The doctors put in a feeding tube yesterday, and today Anna coughed, and I guess just a couple hours ago they started slowly taking her off the coma medicine, and it’s the best news I’ve heard all week. I’ve never been so glad to hear about someone coughing than I was this morning.
I’m just keeping hope that May starts out as well as April did.
I’ve told quite a few people this, but I feel like something bad is going to happen to me soon. I mean really. It’s like the stars have been doing a conga line in my favor for the past 3 weeks. I’m serious. I don’t mean to gloat, but this is a list of everything good that has happened to me in the last 3 weeks.
1. I got editor-in-chief.
2. I got press-passed to Spoon.
3. I inexplicably got after-show passes to Spoon, in turn, meeting them.
4. I got groped by Chris Hardwick, then met him, and he signed my gun-wielding cougar bag (yes, in that order).
5. I got press passed to Florence + the Machine, who was amazing.
6. (THIS IS THE BIG ONE) I GOT CREDENTIALS FOR SASQUAAAAAAATTTCCCHHH!!!!
7. Mom and I went and saw Conan on Monday, which was already awesome…
8. …but then he brought out special guest EDDIE VEDDER. WHAT THE HELL?
9. And mom got out of a ticket for a moving violation after Conan’s show in Seattle.
Now my car needs to explode or something. Or my hard drive will die. Or we won’t get all new technology for Ledger next year. Oh god please not that.
Or maybe karma is coming back around after all the crap that happened from 2006-2008. I mean, I got a life-threatening disease for no apparent reason and the first college I went to sucked ass, and a 5-year friendship ended in a ridiculous clusterfuck. And 2009 was pretty scary too. Mom got in a car accident, Dad collapsed, Gary crashed his car, and we had to give him Cedric back. I don’t know. Hopefully all this good stuff is my return for everything shitty that has happened the last 4 years.
Okay, so I filled you in until last…fuck it was ten days ago!
Florence. I wasn’t sure if I was going to get a press pass for her until literally the morning of. It hadn’t been that close since Deck the Hall Ball, which was 5 hours before. So I got on Holy Hail’s guestlist, but once I got there they said I couldn’t take pictures after Holy Hail or else they’d take away my camera or something. So I had to be shifty. I literally had to prop my elbow on Libby’s shoulder so her head would block my camera from the security guard’s view. I mean, I got on the list, so I wanted to take pictures of the whole set. Libby was happy though, because Florence in her new favorite, and if she didn’t have to be to school the next day, I would have wanted to stay after and say hi, because Florence Welch is absolutely adorable.
This was one of my favorite shots from the night.
Um…
Saturday. Saturday morning I emailed Jaime from the Sasquatch people asking her if she got the email I forwarded from Josh with my assignment letter. She emailed me back a little later telling me that she had, and ten minutes later, she sent me this:
You are all set by the way. Approved!
That was it. And I started to cry. Crying and laughing and shaking and jumping up and down. Millie looked at my like I was a crazy person. I probably sounded like I was a complete nutter, but I didn’t care. No one was home, and I got credentials for the Sasquatch festival. Libby gets my tickets now. She gets to go. I was so nervous that my mother would have to buy her Stubhub tickets for a kajillion bucks, but she doesn’t have to. AND I can sell my Saturday ticket because Libby has prom that day, and I can probably make back any money I use to rent out the badass lens I want. I’m sure I can manage with my 28-135mm, but I REALLY want to rent the 70-200mm from Glazer’s. It’s so badass. And beautiful. And heavy, but I have a monopod that will help with that. Oh god I can’t wait. Just over a month….oh god. 5 WEEKS. 5 WEEKS AND I’M 21. REJOICE, HALLELUJAH!
Okay, I’ll calm down now.
But seriously, 5 weeks isn’t all that far off. I don’t even want to focus on school right now.
There is one buzzkill, but it will turn out better anyway. Laura’s peeps won’t let guests stay, so if I were to go to NJ in July, I’d have to pay for a hotel, and when I heard that, we were like, “hell naw.” So Laura’s gonna come to Portland for her birthday and we’ll party in PDX. I’m kind of gutted that I won’t be able to hang out with Susie in NYC while she’s there, because it’s always nice to meet my WAS peeps in person. And it’s too bad that graduation is the day before Barbara comes out, or else I’d be all for driving to San Francisco to Amber’s for a Barbara release party with penis pasta. D’aww that’d be great. But Libby’s graduating. We’ll do some cool stuff of our own.
Oh my god Libby’s graduating in less than two months. Holy shit.
I have such ADD. What was I saying? OH CONAN. Wait, I wasn’t quite to Conan yet, but I think I got the point across about Sasquatch. It’s awesomely awesome.
Now to Conan.
Mom and I got the cheap seats for Conan’s show at McCaw Hall in the Seattle Center on Monday, and I left before my third class, which is my favorite class, but Conan’s worth it. We got there way too early, so we hung out in the Center for 2 hours before going to the Sport for dinner. I got a turkey sandwich and salad, and the bread I had was so stale. I swear. It was chewy and hard to eat, and dry. Ack. The salad was good though, with crispy fried onion strings. Mmmm. Mom and I didn’t get any Conan merch, but the tee shirts were like $30. And we already paid $37.50 for the show. But now thinking about it, it was worth even the expensive seats at $77.50. If I’d known what was going to happen, I would have paid the $77.50.
Conan’s “Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television Tour” was awesome and funny, and we got to see the Masturbating bear, which is now the Self-Pleasuring Panda, which is ridiculous because apparently the Masturbating Bear is NBC’s “intellectual property.” INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. It’s a MASTURBATING BEAR for Christ’s sake! What is NBC going to do with it? And the Chuck Norris lever is NBC’s too, so Conan had to rename it. But we did get some great oldies but goodies. Mom and I would have liked to see “In the Year 2000,” but it was okay that we didn’t. Andy Richter was there, and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog was there, and Reggie Watts opened the show. That reminds me, I have to download some of his stuff. He’s hysterical. But the entire theater gasped in awe when towards the end of the show, Conan was like, “I’d like to bring out my very special guest, Eddie Vedder everyone!”
Wait, what?
No.
Really.
It can’t be.
That was mine and mother’s short dialogue as everyone was equally confounded and excited.
And Mr. Vedder walked out on stage and the audience rose into a standing ovation. It was just him and a mandolin. And after everyone sat back down to realize that he was actually standing on that stage, it was silent. He played “Rise” from the Into the Wild soundtrack, and it was so beautiful. So somber and epic, it made mom almost cry. “I want him to sing at my funeral. No really.” Mom and I talk so alike. I got video of the second half of the song, but haven’t uploaded it to Youtube yet. I should probably do that, because I have video of Conan singing too, and a great “local commercial” Andy did for the Fremont troll. “Come see what has mildly impressed out-of-towners for decades, the Fremont troll.” I love Andy.
But Conan can actually sing, and his Strat is wicked.
See! Eddie!
He has aged so well. He’s way better looking now than he was in the 90s.
OH MY GOD THAT REMINDS ME. Soundgarden played a secret show at the Showbox last friday. That was the one piece of fail I incurred this week. I failed to get tickets, but Anna got one, and she said it was amazing. The first show in 13 years, dude that’s amazing. Okay. I think I’m done. I’ll add more videos from Conan’s show if and when I get them posted to Youtube.
For now, I’ll leave you with this wonderful La Blogotheque video of Grizzly Bear. I love them
ADDENDUM: OH MY GOD WHEN I POSTED THIS THE FIRST TIME I FORGOT ABOUT DOCTOR WHO. D: So it’s down at the bottom now.
I figure since I can’t really get the reading done for my next class done, I’ll fill everyone in about my abso-freaking-lutely busy week.
No seriously. It’s the busiest my weekend has ever been, and I didn’t even do everything I could do. I still have an ass-ton of homework due Wednesday. So I’ll start from last Wednesday. Wait, no Thursday.
No, Friday. Thursday wasn’t all that exciting. We started layout early, which was nice, but it didn’t really save us any time, because we still didn’t get done yesterday until 10. But anyway, FRIDAY. Friday I had the following tasks: pack for Saturday, purchase two maple bacon doughnuts, drive to school, lay out pages, edit photos, drive to Seattle, find parking, meet Renee, give her a maple bacon doughnut, and see Spoon.
Mkay. Lemme tell you something. I thought I found amazing parking that night. It said $6, right? I paid on the way in, I thought I was done. Not quite. It turns out the next morning I had to pay an extra $24 for the night. $30 for parking. Balls. But now that I think about it, I don’t even care. It was totally worth the next two days. Because while they were ridiculously busy and kinda stressful and I got like 8 hours of sleep over the course of those 2 days, they were terrific. Like, really really really terrific. So after naively parked at the Warwick hotel next to the cute old building Renee was staying in, I walked over to the Moore to get my ticket and photo pass. I got there before Renee, but when she did get there we gorged on doughnut. It was awesome. But when I went to get my photo pass, I walked up to the will-call, gave them my name and said that I was supposed to be on the guest list for a ticket and photo pass. She took out an envelope and pulled out 3 stickers. One of which was my photo pass, but I had no idea what the other two were for.
Well,
Needless to say, I squee’d. I was quite confused, like “why do I get these? Why am I here? I’m not this cool. Oh my god life questions!” But I handed one to Renee and it made us even more excited to see Spoon. Like seriously. We got after show passes. How? But then I realized that I didn’t have my ticket, so I went back over to ask if I had a ticket. Thank god I did, so then I was all set. I love the Moore Theater. They don’t check your bags and let you bring water bottles in. That’s the one thing about the Showbox that drives me crazy. You have to pay $1.50 for a water bottle you could have just brought yourself. BUT, when we got inside the theater, no one got there for a good half an hour. Well, it was still pretty empty until like halfway through Deerhunter. Poor Micachu and the Shapes. That’s one thing I hate and love about seated theaters. You don’t have to get there first to get a spot, because you have an assigned spot. But it leaves the theater pretty empty for openers. It’s a shame that not everyone got to see all of Deerhunter’s performance, because it was awesome. Casual, and epic, and awesome. Bradford broke into this long, almost poetic story about being 27 in Seattle at the anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death. And how when he was 12 and it happened, he would say, “I’ll never be 27!” And other things. But that was pretty cool. Then this girl jumped up on stage and started beating Bradford’s guitar with maracas, shaking around the floor like a crazy person and dancing with all the band members. It was adorable. Too bad it was after the 3rd song, it would have made an awesome photo. But I was going to be bad this time. I adhered to the rules. Um…what else? Oh, Bradford kept saying, “this is fucking ridiculous, like what are we doing here?” (Hmmm, I know how he feels.)
After Deerhunter was done, the seat next to Renee’s was still vacant. I could have EASILY sat down right there, but I found my seat. All us photogs (the same ones I always see) piled up to the front to shoot Spoon. Again, we swiftly moved across the non photo pit, and oddly enough, as I was shooting, my phone vibrated telling me that I had an email. One of the other photographers, right across the stage, started following me on Twitter. ??? I dunno, it was funny.
And then they came onstage, and people went apeshit. Which is fitting, because, you know – it’s SPOON. I don’t want to go into too much detail because I still have to write my review for Popwreckoning, and it’ll get really tedious coming up with more adjectives to describe how awesome it was. I’ll just mention that everyone – including all the photographers – started dancing during “The Underdog” like silly fangirls at a Jonas Brothers concert. Okay, maybe I’ll use that description in my feature. It was fun to participate in the dance party. You can’t not dance to that song anyway. It’s so freaking danceable.
ABBY, STAY FOCUSED!
I think it was about halfway through Spoon’s set when Bradford came out to play guitar – OH WAIT! Michael Lerner (aka Telekinesis) played snare on a bunch of songs, which was a nice ‘lil local flavor. Back to Bradford, he came out and shimmied across the stage, dancing with Rob like goofballs, and I think it was during “Who Makes Your Money” when he snuck up behind Britt and thrust the guitar neck between his legs. Britt didn’t notice it for a bit, but then he stared down at his crotch and shoved Bradford back and they stumbled and giggled and it was awesome. And I don’t even know when this was either, but Britt looked down into the audience, and this was after I went back to my seat and I couldn’t see what was going on. He took his guitar off and jumped off stage to go into the crowd. Like, right into the crowd. Apparently some old dude was literally sleeping. Out like a light, and Britt went to go wake him up. Again – awesome.
Needless to say – it was all awesome. Afterwards, I made my way back up to the front of the stage to find Renee when she grabbed the set list, because she always gets the set lists. And we went out to the lobby to wait for whatever came next. As soon as the security people started shooing everyone away, I wasn’t sure exactly what we were supposed to do with our after show passes. Good god even when I say it now it sounds so flipping cool. What the hell? So it was us and a few other people who looked legitimately worthy of going backstage into Spoon’s FUCKING DRESSING ROOM. We were led behind the stage, and I turned around the glanced into the empty theater and I almost pissed myself. We climbed a steep set of stairs past Deerhunter’s tiny-ass dressing room where Jim Eno was talking with Micachu and the Shapes, and we heard a bustle upstairs. Spoon’s dressing room was small, but not obscenely small like Deerhunter’s. But still, we were in their dressing room. Renee wasn’t quite as all, “d’uh…I’M NOT WORTHY” as I was, because she’s met them like a gazillion times before. Literally, she’s following their tour right now. And she’s going to make cupcakes for Rob’s birthday this week. At least that’s what she told him. So we stood around for a bit looking like fools who for some reason got after show passes. I still was like, “I’M NOT WORTHY, I’M NOT WORTHY…WTF.” But eventually all the members of Spoon made it our way and we – and I mean Renee mostly – talked to them for a short bit before asking them to sign her set list and my ticket stub. Oh, that’s right here.
So completely running on adrenaline, endorphins and bacon doughnuts, we walked around the corner to Renee’s cute ‘lil rented apartment. $45 a night for cozy dorm-like room? WIN! I don’t know how the hell she finds these places. But I managed to upload and edit my photos that night, because I didn’t feel like sleeping. I couldn’t post them to Flickr until the next day when I found a Tully’s because the internet at the apartment was uber slow. And I didn’t notice this until I uploaded my pictures to Flickr, but I shot most of Spoon’s set in 400 ISO. What the hell? I was so confused how it got to 400 ISO. I shot Deerhunter and Micachu and the Shapes in 1600 ISO, which is what I normally do, but miraculously the pictures on 400 ISO turned out awesome. No wonder they had no noise. I’ll have to shoot shows at the Moore more often. Brilliant lighting = brilliant photos, not to mention much easier. No need to shoot in black and white to relieve the super-saturated red light. Nope, theater lighting is pretty.
Before I move onto Saturday, I’ll post some of my favorite pics from the show. I’m so happy with this set!
Now I can the difference in noise on the Spoon and Deerhunter pics. Britt and Rob are SO CLEAR.
Friday, done.
Saturday, begin.
Saturday morning came way too early. I woke up at about 6, because I couldn’t fall back asleep. So about 4.5 hours is all I had, which actually was probably better than getting 6 hours. I always seem to be really really sleepy on 6 hours of sleep. By that time I’d reached the deep REM cycle. 4.5 hours it’s still nap-mode. But anyway, I woke up and got ready, didn’t take a shower because I was lazy. Just put my hair in a ponytail. I didn’t really know how many blocks I’d have to walk. Turns out I didn’t walk. It was 8 blocks away technically, but you couldn’t walk there without passing through a drug-dealer-infested street. I learned that when I was driving and a bunch of crackheads tried to flag me down in my car. IN MY CAR THEY WERE TRYING TO DEAL. But I missed the turn and ended up going like 5 miles out of my way down to the industrial area, and I got to the Bell Harbor Conference Center with like 2 minutes to spare when I left with 40 MINUTES TO SPARE. Boy do I suck with directions. Really.
I got to the conference center at the exact same time Niki did, and I was still pretty high from endorphins from the night before. Who needs sleep? Not me! We took the elevator up the third floor where everyone else was waiting, and they had free food. FREE BREAKFAST. I was so happy, because when I woke up it was too obscenely early to eat breakfast. 8 am is perfect for breakfast. So we ate our breakfast and I told everyone about my amazing night before, and tried not to sound like I was gloating. If I sounded like I was gloating you guys, tell me. I’m sorry. I like sharing my excitement. And I took my ticket stub out and they all – well some of them – ogled at it. And I squee’d again.
We went to a few sessions, learned a few lessons, and met with some of the Daily staff. Only about half of them came and introduced themselves, but the ones we did meet – Andrew, Lexie, and Nicole – were pretty cool. I can’t even fathom having just one job to do on the paper, which is what they do all the time because it’s daily and they have over 100 people on staff. ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE. We have TWELVE. That was my favorite part of the conference, meeting with them – because they are people that we can legitimately collaborate with, even though I’m starting to hate that word.
Here are some shots of us, sans me, since I was taking the pictures.
We got free lunch too, which was nice. After the conference, I tried to convince any of my fellow Ledgerites to join me at an awesome comedy show with Chris Hardwick, but no one obliged. I actually contemplating not going because I had so much homework due for Wednesday (which I still have not done yet), but then I thought that I’d regret not going. I’ve done that too much this year, and since I’m going to get paid more this quarter, and I might not even go to New York in July, I didn’t feel bad about spending more money on tickets and parking. I found an $8 parking garage a couple blocks away from the Showbox, which was great because it was half the price that I normally pay for parking. Definitely not parking right next to the Showbox anymore. Just let me tell you, I know my way around the Market now. It took me forever to find a place with free wi-fi for me to upload my Spoon pictures. I went into Starbucks naively thinking that I’d get wi-fi since we get it at school, but you needed AT&T. So I left and searched “free wi-fi pike place seattle” on my phone, and they gave me 3 locations. Tullys was about 5 blocks away, so I went to Tullys and uploaded my pictures, bought a chai and waited a ridiculously long time to use the bathroom. I swear this girl spent like 15 minutes in the Tullys bathroom. It pissed me off.
Oh well, because the rest of the night was totally worth waiting to pee and paying $30 for parking the night before and not doing my homework. I just wish I could have shared the experience with someone else. GAH I need to find people to hang out with who live in Seattle. It would surely make my spontaneous trips less lonely.
I stood in line for about a half an hour before they opened the doors, and alas, there were still tickets available! The Showbox set up chairs. CHAIRS. There are never chairs at the Showbox. It was weird. I sat right up front, because no one else did, but I was just a bit off to the left side, near the bathroom and the speakers. I think they started the show around 8-ish. Possibly before that. I dunno. Molly Lewis started the show with funny ukulele songs about breaking up with Wikipedia and a cover of Britney Spears’ “Toxic.” Apparently she might be playing at next month’s “w00tstock 2.0.” Yes. Three hours of nerd and music, featuring WIL FREAKING WHEATON and ADAM FRAKKING SAVAGE. To borrow from Trenton’s vocabulary – ADAM’S A SAVAGE. Okay, nerd tangent over.
Wait, no, nerd tangent NOT over. It’s FAR from over.
After Molly Lewis came Mike Phirman who told some jokes and played some songs. The mic kept cutting out, which led to some funny jokes – both from Mike and from Chris. My favorite joke was about how Mike wants marijuana legalized merely because he has an idea for a business venture. A pot cookie company called Chips A-huh. It’s better when you hear it, but it was funny. I didn’t take any pictures because my crappy camera was dying, but this guy did. Apparently he was part of the Street Team that Chris put together from his Nerdist website.
Here’s some of my favorites from his Flickr page.
So I have even more of a total nerdy fangirl crush on Chris now. It’s ridiculous. He came out with a tiny polo on, and told nerdy jokes about the south, G4, Cracker Barrels, Motorhead, Tacoma, his nerdist street team and tentacle porn. No seriously. Right when Chris got on stage a couple of his street teamers held up signs that said “Hard for Hardwick,” and “You’re my Palate Cleanser.” D’aww. And then a guy who was sitting behind me threw a rolled up poster to Chris on stage. Curious as to what it was, Chris opened it up and it was hentai tentacle porn. And he proceeded on a tangent about how ridiculous hentai is.
This is the only video I found on Youtube from it. They were kinda prohibidado about filming, but this guy didn’t care.
Some girl sitting at the bar kept shouting like “my kids love you on Barnyard!” Chris asked her where she was from, and she said Tacoma and people laughed. It turned into a theme. Apparently Seattleites hate Tacoma. I gotta admit, if I had Seattle all the time, I’d hate Tacoma too. One girl in the front had an awesome purse made from the face of Animal from the Muppets. At some point Chris was like, “oh my god is that your purse? That’s awesome! Can I see that?” And she walked up to the stage and showed it to him, and he proceeded to make noises like Animal, and the girl walked up a little closer and told him that his zipper was down. This was halfway through the show, and his fly was down the entire time. So hilarious.
And toward the end of the show, he brought Mike back on stage to sing some songs – INCLUDING THE PI SONG. At this point there were 3 mics on the floor after they died. The awesomeness of the show KILLED THE MICS. So I think this was the second song they played, but during their “Anything” song, where it’s all about determination, how you can do anything, fly like a bird, unless you’re a girl – Chris decided that he’d croon to the audience. Since it’s a power ballad, he got all up in people’s faces and sang right to them while Mike played guitar onstage and kept singing. Chris started on the right side of the stage, being all ridiculous and serious, and as he got closer to the left side of the stage, he got more and more intense, grabbing people and almost seducing them, right? So he walked up to the guy sitting two seats down from me, and he grabbed his head and shook it around while belting out this song about perseverance.
Then he got to me. Seriously. I kinda got molested by Chris Hardwick. Seriously. He got right up in my face and sang right to me, grabbed my face and started to crawl on me, grabbed my ponytail and I got a faceful of Chris’s chest. I have to say that I awestruck with the WTF-ness of it all, but I kind of enjoyed it. Okay, I was really excited when he grabbed my face. I mean, I see him on TV every week. And he was like, crawling on me.
Come on, stop looking at me like that.
So after the last song, Chris announced that he’d be in the lobby signing stuff and taking pictures, because “apparently people like that.” I stood line in front of these two high school guys, who were clearly nerds themselves. Except in all of this, I didn’t have anything for him to sign. I had $20 bills and the Ledger business cards. But I had my purse. My gun-wielding cougar purse.
I swear, it’s the only thing I had. But maybe I could turn it into a “thing,” where I get all the famous people I meet to sign it, so it’s not just Chris Hardwick and then WAS. I almost felt kinda bad for having the first signature on my bag to not be from WAS, but then I saw what he drew, it made me happy.
And the first thing I thought of to talk about was Spoon, because he mentioned earlier in his set referencing a hypothetical heckler, “hey if we leave now, we can make the last ten minutes of Spoon!”
So I said, “I was strategic and saw Spoon last night so I could see you tonight!”
“Ah, great! I haven’t seen them in a long time, how was it?”
“Awesome. And Britt totally jumped into the crowd to wake up an old guy who was sleeping.”
And Chris looked up from my bag for a second and said, “what the hell, who sleeps during a Spoon concert?!”
“I know, it was ridiculous.” And I said some sort of thank you and asked for a photo, and the guy standing behind me took it with the crappy coolpix.
“It’s really bright.”
“That’s what Photoshop is for.” And Chris laughed. And I squee’d and said thank you again and walked away.
Eeek yay.
I just have to say that there weren’t enough Doctor Who fans in the audience, because when Chris made a DW reference, “Doctor, are we going to take a trip in the TARDIS?” in a British accent, and like four people shouted. I screamed so loud. Seattle needs more Who fans. We really do.
LAST WEEKEND was the Doctor Who series premiere. I have to say that I love Matt Smith. I felt really bad for a bit that I liked him because I felt like I was cheating on Ten, but now I don’t feel as bad. Matt did such a good job. Like a really good job. I so excited for this season. I was house-sitting for Andrea’s old neighbor and their horrific dog, and I downloaded the episode while I was doing nothing surrounded by an incredibly windy day. Heck, I was getting paid $20 a day to do my homework and make sure the dog doesn’t go too apeshit. I’m all for that. So what else better to do than watch Vlogbrothers videos and download Doctor Who? Ahhh, spring break.
I mean, look at Matt. He’s adorable.
I love him. And I love Karen. And I love what Moffat has done so far. I still feel a little nostalgic about the old Tardis and sonic screwdriver, but it’s still early, and I’ll probably end up loving both of them. We need more Doctor Who love, seriously. At least Nerdfighteria is all for the Doctor Who love.
I think I’m done now. Holy hell that was a long, photo-loaded post. But I told you it was a busy weekend. Was I right?
THIS IS A TANGENT. 