It's Britney Bitch!
Tonight I went with Tido to see Britney Spears at the Toyota Center downtown. I took a paid day off work tonight so I could go, as did Tido. I told him to be at my house at around 7 (concert started at 8:30), but he had never been to my house before and he was so scare of getting lost he actually showed up an hour early. Good thing I was actually a home, heh. We sat around chit chatting for a bit until I needed to take a shower. While I was showering Tido chatted with my mom, and he realized, as I did long ago, that she is pretty effing awesome. Right before we left, Tido went outside to smoke cigarette. My mom actually went outside and asked him for one. Ugh. My mom is not a regular smoker; she had one cigarette after Hurricane Ike last year, and I found out she had one the year before that while she was in NEw York. Still though, even one a year is too many as far as I'm concerned, and I did give her a little bit of shit about it. Oh well.
We got dowtown and I belated realized that A) I had forgotten to go to an ATM like I intended to and B) you need to pay to park just about anywhere downtown. So after some searching and being very mindful not to drive too far away from the Toyota Center (scads of one-way streets make it hard to backtrack), I did find an ATM and we parked.
The tickets I initially bought were for a way high up section, but as we went up there looking for our seat, the section we were supposed to see it was blocked off for some reason. We asked guest services about it and they just told us that for some reason they weren't sitting people there, so our seats had been moved. We got MUCH better, much closer seats. Not like, front row or anything (or even remotely close), but much closer with a better view of the stage. People were seated on all sides of the Toyota Center, with the stage down in the middle. It was a really neat setup so there weren't really many seats that could be called bad per se.
Promptly at 8:30 the show began with the first opening act, Kristinia Debarge. She sang a cute song from her debut album called Future Love (which can be heard here and which sounds VERY 90s/early2000s kpopish to me) as well as her catchy single Goodbye (listen here). It was a short, entertaining set, and the interplay with her and her dancers (though she was neccassarily dancing per se) was quite cute.
Next up was the "main" opening act, Jordan Sparks. She ran through 4-5 songs and sounded great, I have to admit. Her backup singers also did some pretty cute routines with her. One of the songs she performed was her new single S.O.S, which I'm really trying not to like because it so shamelessly samples an 80's song I really love, but I found myself singing long despite myself. Her speaking voice or some reason was MUCH more chipmunky than I can ever remember it being. Odd.
After Jordin Sparks performed, there was an intermission about about 20 minutes, during which I took a bathroom break. Finally the lights dimmed again. After a MUCH too long intro involving some acrobatics by circus peformers ('Cuz it's the Circus Tour, get it?), Britney Spears finally came out and performed the first song, Circus (Get it? GET IT??). I have to say one of the first things I noticed is that Britney looked gorgeous. She was definitely a far from the train wreck of the not-so-distant past. One thing I have to say about her set is that it was never, ever boring. She had tons of dancers, acrobats and so on onstage the whole time, with plenty of pirotechnics. Live, Britney has such an incredible presence that it was almost, ALMOST easy not to notice that frankly, she just doesn't dance the way she used to. Yes, there was a lot of movement on the stage, but a lot of the movement on her parts was just prancing about the stage, writhing on various structures, etc. On the songs where she actually did some serious hardcore choreography (on songs like Boys and I'm A Slave 4 U, to name a couple), it was like, Thank GOD. One interesting highlight was Britney's cover of Alanis Morisette's You Ought Know (which, shockingly she appeared to be actually singing), which sounded pretty good. Something I noticed is that Britney is, like, the fasterst customer changer on Earth. She would run offstage and her dancers would do some stuff, and what seriously seemed like not even a minute later, she'd run back onstage in a completely different outfit. Overall she sang everything I expected her to, though I would have liked to have heard Gimme More and My Perogative. She closed the show with Womanizer, as I assumed she would.
Overall, despite my minor nitpicks (WAY too much circus gobbledegook between songs being another one of them), I really enjoyed the show, and I think I would have liked it even more if Beyonce's far superior concert wasn't still so fresh in my mind.. However, Tido wasn't really feeling it. He had seen her before on one of her other concert tours, and said she was MUCH better then, which I could believe, but oh well.
After the concert we went to Mai's to eat. I'm about nearly done with my month-long moratorium on drinking sodas (just in time for my trip to Austin where I'll probably be eating a lot) and eating a Mai's just reminded me that some foods just aren't the same without a big, cold glass of Dr. Pepper with tons of ice, and Chinese food is definitely one of them. As of Friday I can offiicially have sodas again, but I'm going to have them vary sparingly. I've lost 11 pounds in the past month, so I'm pleased about that, but I believe you can have anything in moderation. So instead of guzzling Cokes all the time, I'm only going to have one when I really, REALLY want one the way I did at Mai's tonight, which actually is not all that often.
So looking forward to getting away to Austin this weekend. Yay!
We got dowtown and I belated realized that A) I had forgotten to go to an ATM like I intended to and B) you need to pay to park just about anywhere downtown. So after some searching and being very mindful not to drive too far away from the Toyota Center (scads of one-way streets make it hard to backtrack), I did find an ATM and we parked.
The tickets I initially bought were for a way high up section, but as we went up there looking for our seat, the section we were supposed to see it was blocked off for some reason. We asked guest services about it and they just told us that for some reason they weren't sitting people there, so our seats had been moved. We got MUCH better, much closer seats. Not like, front row or anything (or even remotely close), but much closer with a better view of the stage. People were seated on all sides of the Toyota Center, with the stage down in the middle. It was a really neat setup so there weren't really many seats that could be called bad per se.
Promptly at 8:30 the show began with the first opening act, Kristinia Debarge. She sang a cute song from her debut album called Future Love (which can be heard here and which sounds VERY 90s/early2000s kpopish to me) as well as her catchy single Goodbye (listen here). It was a short, entertaining set, and the interplay with her and her dancers (though she was neccassarily dancing per se) was quite cute.
Next up was the "main" opening act, Jordan Sparks. She ran through 4-5 songs and sounded great, I have to admit. Her backup singers also did some pretty cute routines with her. One of the songs she performed was her new single S.O.S, which I'm really trying not to like because it so shamelessly samples an 80's song I really love, but I found myself singing long despite myself. Her speaking voice or some reason was MUCH more chipmunky than I can ever remember it being. Odd.
After Jordin Sparks performed, there was an intermission about about 20 minutes, during which I took a bathroom break. Finally the lights dimmed again. After a MUCH too long intro involving some acrobatics by circus peformers ('Cuz it's the Circus Tour, get it?), Britney Spears finally came out and performed the first song, Circus (Get it? GET IT??). I have to say one of the first things I noticed is that Britney looked gorgeous. She was definitely a far from the train wreck of the not-so-distant past. One thing I have to say about her set is that it was never, ever boring. She had tons of dancers, acrobats and so on onstage the whole time, with plenty of pirotechnics. Live, Britney has such an incredible presence that it was almost, ALMOST easy not to notice that frankly, she just doesn't dance the way she used to. Yes, there was a lot of movement on the stage, but a lot of the movement on her parts was just prancing about the stage, writhing on various structures, etc. On the songs where she actually did some serious hardcore choreography (on songs like Boys and I'm A Slave 4 U, to name a couple), it was like, Thank GOD. One interesting highlight was Britney's cover of Alanis Morisette's You Ought Know (which, shockingly she appeared to be actually singing), which sounded pretty good. Something I noticed is that Britney is, like, the fasterst customer changer on Earth. She would run offstage and her dancers would do some stuff, and what seriously seemed like not even a minute later, she'd run back onstage in a completely different outfit. Overall she sang everything I expected her to, though I would have liked to have heard Gimme More and My Perogative. She closed the show with Womanizer, as I assumed she would.
Overall, despite my minor nitpicks (WAY too much circus gobbledegook between songs being another one of them), I really enjoyed the show, and I think I would have liked it even more if Beyonce's far superior concert wasn't still so fresh in my mind.. However, Tido wasn't really feeling it. He had seen her before on one of her other concert tours, and said she was MUCH better then, which I could believe, but oh well.
After the concert we went to Mai's to eat. I'm about nearly done with my month-long moratorium on drinking sodas (just in time for my trip to Austin where I'll probably be eating a lot) and eating a Mai's just reminded me that some foods just aren't the same without a big, cold glass of Dr. Pepper with tons of ice, and Chinese food is definitely one of them. As of Friday I can offiicially have sodas again, but I'm going to have them vary sparingly. I've lost 11 pounds in the past month, so I'm pleased about that, but I believe you can have anything in moderation. So instead of guzzling Cokes all the time, I'm only going to have one when I really, REALLY want one the way I did at Mai's tonight, which actually is not all that often.
So looking forward to getting away to Austin this weekend. Yay!