(no koalas were harmed in the making of this post)
While my roommate and our kidnapped friend slumber peacefully in the next room over, my body has apparently been convinced that I am at a convention and that I need to not sleep because I have other shit to do. WELL, I DON'T. SO I'M MAKING OTHER SHIT FOR MYSELF TO DO.
Here's part 1 of my Slamaganza adventure. [EDIT 2019: I'm here having a nostalgia party and have edited this post to correct shining_chaos's name and pronouns!]
I was having a miserable time sleeping Friday night, partly I think because I was so excited and partly just because I've been doing sleep so badly lately. I was tossing and turning and got maybe four or five decent hours? Gross. I MIGHT HAVE GOTTEN MORE, HOWEVER, if I hadn't been awakened at 6:15 with a phone call. Now IDK if you all really understand this, but my phone is borked. Like, STUPID-borked. One of the ways in which it no longer works is that anyone I call or anyone who calls me, I can't hear them at all through the earpiece of the phone. They can hear me just fine. It's not a connectivity problem or anything wrong with the call itself. It's my phone. So I get this call from an 888 number and I answer and I'm like, "I'm sorry, but my phone is broken. It's better to reach me by text or email." Then I hang up and try to roll back to sleep - but then it hits me. This is probably the airline calling with news about my flight re: Hurricane Irene. I nearly vomited and/or burst into tears right then. I was already a wreck from getting NO sleep and from my period starting the night before and this was not an emotional blow I was prepared to suffer.
They called again, though, and I finally resolved to go downstairs to a phone that actually worked and call them back. While I was on hold they called me a third time. Finally I got through to a real person and she was able to tell me that my flight from Lynchburg to Charlotte had been postponed from 11:21 to 2. This would obviously make me miss my connecting flight, so she got me on another one instead. (I nearly cried again on the phone with her. But she was really nice, way nicer than I possibly could have expected or deserved, it was wonderful.) We resolved the situation immediately, but she also warned me that the flight may be subject to even more changes, and to keep checking the USAir website. The anxiety of this was enough to trigger my nausea even further and when I went back to bed I mostly just curled there and tried not to die until Mom and Bill woke up.
FORTUNATELY, my flights went fine, although my nausea didn't really abate. Unfortunately, it meant I wasn't going to make it to Chicago until 5:15 and it would take me even longer than that to get over to the hotel, so I made up my mind I was going to go straight to the theatre (which meant I didn't get to shower which was DISGUSTING but I got over it sjdghals). I made it to Charlotte and found the closest bathroom to my gate so I could change my pad (deal with it I'm gross bluh) and while I was in there this wonderfully chipper custodian lady was puttering through and she just brightened my day like no other. She was griping pleasantly to me about the ingrained smell of the bathroom, and reminding us all that there were free breathmints and mouthwash over by the sinks if we needed them, and singing to herself about cleaning the bathrooms while she did so, and she was just fucking lovely. I didn't even see her face, and I wish I had. I did snag a mint on the way out, because I knew my breath probably wasn't the greatest and also because I was hoping the mint would calm my stomach. It didn't, :/, but I knew I had to eat something before I got to Chicago because I didn't know when I'd be able to eat next. I finally made myself go through some carrots/celery/ranch dip and a Naked juice, which I do think was helpful.
In the meantime (on my first flight, on my layover, on my second flight, in the taxi) I plowed through most of the first Hunger Games novel! That's probably what I'd be doing right now if I weren't typing this up, ahahaha. Don't spoil meeeee~
I finally arrived in Chicago and went to turn my phone back on and...the display wouldn't light!! SHOCKER. OH BROKEN PHONE I JUST HATE YOU. D: I was trying to text like four different people to establish I was there and work out plans, but you can't exactly text when your entire phone display is black (not like the display isn't working - like it's on, but only displaying black. PHONE YOU ARE DRUNK). I had to turn it off and turn it back on about 20 times between landing and making it to the taxi lane outside before I FINALLY got it to work again. But then I was off to the theatre!!!!! Even though I still had my giant stupid backpack and my rocket in the cardboard box. Hawkward. I rode the elevator up with a group of super-underage girls and their chaperone parents. They seemed all right :3 But then I got to the theatre lobby and was like OH MY GOD EVERYONE IS HERE. Seriously it had to have been like 5:45 by then and the house opened at 6 so I was like, oh man oh geez. AND EVERYTHING WAS PURPLE because the slamaganza shirts are purple and people had been getting them and then putting them on and I was like, man do I feel awesome for not having brought my Keep Calm shirt NOW. geez.
Naturally in this sea of people I was like, shit, how do I find MY people?? But once I used my brain that ended up not being too hard, because I was like: duh, they will be the closest to the front because they are smart and have been here for so long. Which was how I found shining_chaos, sitting on the floor in their Pigfarts hoodie, in a mass of people circling around to take turns playing Connect 4 against Matt Lang. oh yes. I was so relieved to finally be in a position where I could just relax that I basically collapsed to the floor/on top of them and was like, "BLUUHHHHHH." AND LIKE, THEY DIDN'T ACTUALLY REACT AT FIRST. Connect 4 with Matt is apparently that engrossing??? ahahaha. But when they finally were kind of like "oh wait there is a person on me um this is awkward" they turned around to look, and then realized it was me and hugged the fuck out of me. It was beautiful ;~; spencerrrrr
So we had this intense hug and then I was like, where's Kelsey? and apparently like RIGHT as I was saying that Kelsey came back so Spencer was like "...she's right there!!!" and suddenly she was standing over me and I was like, waahhhh! GUYS I LOVE MEETING INTERNET FRIENDS. IT'S SO AWESOME. And both of them are so much more adorable IRL asjdalkgjs like I just get the feeling that we are all three of us not the most photogenic LOL but I was like shit we are cute right now. I loitered around the Connect 4 business for a little bit but my backpack was kind of in the way so I was like, where is a place I can put this, and Kelsey took me over to where hers was and Spencer showed me the cake they made for BHoldz's birthday and then they were like oh yeah get in line get your card and your shirt! Because the way they were letting people into the theatre was by playing cards - three different decks, and then each suit within the deck. So I was like, hey June, sup, here's my ticket but the name on it is this other girl because she gave it to me. And June was like, well, whoops, we gave your card and your shirt voucher to her when she checked in. And I was like, SHIT I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS GIRL LOOKS LIKE OR WHERE SHE IS HOW WILL I FIND HER IN THIS SEA. But that ended up not actually being all that hard because not too long after, she tumbl'd or something and was like "totally just saw Dylan Saunders!!" Kelsey and I had seen Dylan and EKG get off the elevator and head backstage, and we were like "she must either be downstairs or...or that's her right there!" So I got my card and shirt thing from her (apparently I didn't submit my shirt size soon enough. Which was her fault because she wouldn't give me the confirmation number from her ticket until it was way too late and it was really hard for me to not just say that to her face sigh oh well). My card ended up being the nine of diamonds, which is a pretty cool card and I wish I could have kept it for scrapbooking purposes. (Maybe they'll let us have them today? since it's the last day.) LOL I ran into Allegra and she was like DAMMIT PLAYING CARDS JUST MAKE ME THINK OF HOMESTUCK and I was like IKR SIGH.
We returned to the scene of Connect 4 to discover that someone had FINALLY beaten Matt, for the first time that evening (and a Slytherin too, represent~). Then idk this part is messy, but Connect 4 cleared out at some point, I gave Spencer their Tumblr shirt at some point, we drifted around for a bit but then back up to the front at some point, and then managery folks were shouting about letting people in! But they were like "just chill for a sec okay it will happen soon but BE NICE ABOUT IT." So we had to back up from the door a little ways and I ended up with my back to the door of the theatre, shoved into Spencer and Kelsey('s boobs) kind of with this nice older man off to my right who turned to the person he was with and was like oh, see, that's one of Corey's designs and then leaned over to me and was like "My son is the one who designed your T-shirt."
I'm.
sorry.
WHAT.
I had this moment of ohmygodisthisactuallyhappeninghowisthisevenhappeningrightnowWHAT horrified eye contact with Spencer, like we literally panicked but then I was like SHIT IF NO ONE SAYS ANYTHING THIS WILL BE THE MOST AWKWARD THING TO EVER AWKWARD so my mouth kind of broke off from my brain because it was being stupid and was like "Oh, awesome!" Fortunately I didn't have to flounder for too long because then he noticed my rocketship and was like "Wow, that's impressive!" and I was like "Haha yeah! It's like...75% complete...there's still some signatures that I really need" and he was like "Yeah? Who else are you missing?" and I was like "Well....your son...Joe Moses, Lauren, uhhhhh" and just autopiloted straight through it and I was just alksjdghakjsg. Eventually the crowd shifted a little so he wasn't near us any more and I was like SPENCER. SPENCER. SPENCE. and they were like HOW DID YOU EVEN KEEP TALKING YOU WERE JUST MAKING WORDS AND I WAS LIKE WHAT and we were just like LITERALLY OF ALL THE HUNDREDS OF FANS IN THIS ROOM RIGHT NOW HOW WERE WE THE ONES HE WAS RIGHT NEXT TO AND TALKING TO AND WHAT. and we were dying. guys I had a full-on conversation with corey lubowich's dad. I'M GOING TO SOB.
They started calling people in by the decks of their cards and of our four-person entourage Kelsey was first. So we were like SAVE US SEATS!!! and she totally did and then Spencer and Megan went in because they were LITERALLY the first people from the second deck and then I was like, midway through the third deck. But I got in and they still had a seat for me and Spencer was like "lol you have to sit next to me because you're cooler than Megan" and I was like HANG ON, THIS IS EXACTLY WHERE I SAT FOR STARSHIP. Well, it was where Trisha sat at Starship, and Spencer was actually in the seat where I was and then Megan was on the aisle where that other loud girl was. BUT STILL. I was like what ahahaha this is actually hilarious.
So we're sitting there chilling waiting etc. and I guess Spencer tweeted about us talking to daddy lubo and tagged me and then this girl in front of us whips around and is like "SPENCER!! -- three-pee-willow the one who wrote - " and I was like "Oh, hi! :)" and she was like, shut up. AND THEN I HAD THIS MOMENT WHERE I WAS ACTUALLY SEMI-INTERNET FAMOUS FOR ONCE OH MY GOD THIS WAS SO WEIRD. Like she was freaking out about actually meeting me and was like "That AVPM/Glee crossover OH MY GOD" and I was like "ahahaha yeah I LOVED writing that asdkjgalsdg" and she was like "I was the person who was like 'EVERYONE MUST READ THIS DO IT NOW' and forced it on so many people" and I was like "omg you're amazing what." And we were still kind of being stupid about it when Lauren Pais or someone came in and started shouting like HEY IF YOU LEFT A BACKPACK IN THE LOBBY WE CAN'T BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT.... and Kelsey and I were like lol shit that was us. So we got up and went out and got them and hers wasn't that big but mine is ENORMOUS and I was like "uhhhh june, is there a place I can put this because IDK what I would do with it at my seat, can I leave it somewhere" and they were like "well there isn't any intermission, could she just leave it by the door...." and then this really awesome nice guy who was working one of the cameras was like "She can leave it under the tripod if she needs to, it'll be safe there." And I was like, REALLY?? and thanked him a million times and god he was so nice and I wish I knew who he was omg. (Sadly, the rocketship box - the one with all of me and Lizz's drawings all over it that has traveled the country several times - did get left in the lobby, and I don't have it any more. YOU LIVED A GOOD LIFE, ROCKETBOX. YOU WILL BE MISSED. ;~;)
So I went back to my seat and my excited fangirl (what even) was like HEY TAKE A PICTURE WITH ME I MET YOU and I was like LOL OKAY ON ONE CONDITION: please pronounce my username correctly! and so I told her how it really is and explained that it comes from Threepwood and then we took a picture and then THE SHOW STARTED. Nick gave the little curtain speech shenanigans and it opened with Dylan singing I Wanna Be and making us all sing along! And eventually everyone else made it out to sing on it too and everyone got a solo line including corey~ and Spencer and I began the first phase of a long and intense fangirling process. WE WERE NOT PREPARED. like even just seeing him wandering the space before the show started I had been like "I cannot look at him because if I do I will just STARE and I won't STOP" and we were clutching each other's hands and smacking each other in the knee and it just. it only got worse.
Here, let me like, post a list of things that happened before I start trying to get into the details of our stupid fangirl reactions.
+ StarKid show song covers/pseudo-singalongs! These were great :3 They were kind of limited in repertoire to a decent chunk of Starship and then a smaller chunk of Potter stuff just based on the cast they had available and the kinds of replacements that were actually reasonable (with the exception being all four official-dikrats dudes ironically doing Coolest Girl), but if I remember correctly they did the following:
--- I Wanna Be (whole group)
--- Get Back Up (Corey subbing for Moses)
--- Gettin' Along
--- The Way I Do (Brian subbing for Joey)
--- all-dudes Coolest Girl trololol
--- Voldemort Is Going Down (Brian subbing for Joey and Jaime for Bonnie)
--- Stutter (everyone doing backup dancing!)
--- Kick It Up A Notch (Corey subbing in for both Jim and Joey)
--- Beauty (Jaime taking the whole first verse and then other people jumping in for various lines in verse 2)
CAN YOU SEE, BY LOOKING AT THIS LIST, THE THINGS THAT SPENCER AND I HAD PROBLEMS DEALING WITH, MAYBE??? BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW IF YOU CAN. I'm pretty sure Coolest Girl was when they grabbed my hand so hard that I think I will have a bruise and by the time he got shoved back on stage to be fake Joey in KIUAN I think I might have cried at least once. MY LIFE IS JUST SPIRALING DOWNWARD, YOU GUYS. Ugh I am just. if either of us had been there without the other it would have been so sad and so hard but we spent the whole time LITERALLY clutching to one another to hold each other out of the fanflail abyss and screaming I AM SO GLAD YOU'RE HERE RIGHT NOW. Guys I love Spencer so much I just cannot even. ALSO, Dylan was definitely the most, like, encouraging of people to sing along even though he was trolling us hard - he was like "we're gonna do Get Back to Hogwarts" when they did Coolest Girl and "we're gonna do the Dragon Song" when they did Kick It Up A Notch (the second of those being a much less successful psychout because I knew a) the show was nearing the end and b) they would not finish the show without doing that song). He also was trolling WHEN we were singing along when we got to the power notes at the end of songs, he would pause and all the fangirls would sing into the dead space and then he'd be like "HEY! :/" but totally kidding. He was great.
+ Brian Holden doing a bit as a smarmy announcer and screening us video clips of the highlights of season 12 of So You Think You Can Glance. There were two of these and they showed us the contestants interacting with choreographer!Denise in the order in which they were eliminated:
--- Round 1 - Claude (Dylan) and this blonde girl I didn't recognize (faking a German accent, she had some fake German name too and I don't remember what it was I will pay more attention tonight)
--- Round 2 - Melinda (Jaime) and Corey
--- Round 3 - Julia and DJ Scriggle-Scraggle (Brian)
--- Round 4 - Tenise (Lauren) and Robert (pretend blind!Nick Lang)
--- Round 5 - Meredith's character and Beanis (Nick Gage)
But it turns out the winner was actually (spoiler!!) Mark Swiderski. Brian announced this still doing his pseudo-Zach bit, the band having been onstage the entire time, and Mark did like the most casual two-second glance out to the audience and everyone was like YEAH!!! lol. Denise said later during m&g stuff that SYTYCG kind of became her baby project that she really really pushed for and she was like NO GUYS WE HAVE TO DO THIS. ahaha.
+ Joe Walker doing a recurring clowning bit. This was actually fairly straightforward clowning and didn't really have any kind of StarKid twist beyond "we all know this is Joe Walker which makes it funnier." To include: trying to spin a ceramic plate (and failing), trying to walk across a "tightrope" of gaff tape stretched between two chairs (and failing), trying to dive into a tiny cup of water (and failing), and then doing a couple of gymanstic tumbles and shit really gracefully (but then tripping over everything and even semi-busting the amp by legitimate accident on his way off stage). Clara graciously provided an entertaining musical sting from the keyboard.
+ MAGIC-OFF: Matt the Magnificent vs. ...Corey. LOL. The whole shtick of this was that Matt was ~AMAZING AT MAGIC~ and was going to face-off against Corey to prove that, but that really Matt was like pathetically incompetent and Corey just kind of stood there and did tricks flawlessly and didn't even speak. Matt had a cape. Also mismatched socks. He took quarters from the audience for a trick that never happened and also then did a trick that Justin Kredible does ahahahaha but was doing the whole thing like...reading the instructions on how to do the trick aloud. (So the punchline of it was kind of ruined for me because I have seen JKreds do the trick like twice in an unironic manner. oh well ahahaha Matt was still adorable.) He looked like really nervous and awkward and we were all like, we can't tell if he's playing this up for the bit they're doing or if he's actually nervous and awkward, bawwww matt. (This also involved a lot of him basically just swearing at Corey and calling him a bastard and an asshole and god knows what else and it was glorious. I would watch a whole show of just Matt and Corey being obnoxious at each other via stage magic.)
+ Meredith Stepien Stand-Up Comedy: Making Fun of Darren Edition. THE MOST BLATANT MOMENT OF STRAIGHT-UP 'FUCK YOU WHY ARE YOU FAMOUS' AHAHAHAHA. Basically a long shtick about how her mom used to hate Darren because she was convinced all men coming into Meredith's life were going to whisk her away and make her do weird kinky kidnapper stuff to involve making cat noises, but that now that he's famous her mom LOVES~ him and collects all sorts of media clippings about him and guilts on Meredith hard for not being on Glee and not being famous like Darren. bahahaha it was all obviously fake or at least EXTREME exagg but it was funneh~. Then New Nick (Nick Gage who is a friend of Meredith's) came out and they did a love song together and the punchline of that was that Meredith had been singing about him the whole time but he was actually singing about being in love with Darren bahahaha. JACK STRATTON'S FACE DURING THIS WHOLE PART I thought he was going to diieeee~ (he is weirdly non-hairy atm and it is weird. like. his beard is gone AND his poofy hair is gone and I almost didn't recognize him and I was like "wait that has to be jack tho because drums WHERE DID YOUR HAIR GO.) And then they did this original song of Nick's about sandwiches. PRETTY SURE MY FACE GLAZED OVER AS IF HYPNOTIZED THE ENTIRE TIME. I just remember that I just kept repeating "I don't think you guys understand. Like. I don't think you understand. I need this song. You guys don't understand. SANDWICHES." I talked to him after the show and gave him my email and he is going to send it to me!! AND THEN IT WILL BECOME MY RINGTONE. SANDWICHES. omg it was the greatest ever.
+ Jim and the Povolos set~ :3 Featuring Lauren standing in for a couple of the absent members. Dylan and Mark did a Bob Dylan song just the two of them and then they did a couple originals and a couple covers. They made us get on our feet and dance and it was magical :3
+ ERIC KAHN GALE WROTE AND READ ALOUD TO US AN EPIC POEM ABOUT BRIAN HOLDEN'S BIRTHDAY. IT WAS SO GLORIOUS OMG so it was like this giant ridic adventure about how Brian's widow's peak is actually going to save the world from evil space aliens because it will power this epic spaceship and it's a good thing that he's getting ~lol old~ because now his hairline is perfect!!! I CANNOT ACTUALLY RECOUNT HOW EXCELLENT THIS IS YOU WILL JUST HAVE TO HOPE THERE IS A GOOD VIDEO EVENTUALLY. It included not once but TWICE rhyming "26" with "sucks dicks." Brian was DYING and EKG is such a good writer and ahahaha. (When he came on he got literally THE smallest round of applause of the entire night and I was like DICCCKKKKSSS we will cheer louder tonight :3)
+ "What happened up in that theatre between you and Matt Lang is a complete secret, so, naturally, the whole internet knows." COME ON, GUYS. I love how the two things he SPECIFICALLY said were "Don't post this on Tumblr" and "don't tell my dad" and you guys had to go and ruin it~ sigh. But yeah there was about a 3-second slideshow/title cards video Matt presented presuming that sometime in 2012 we will get A Very Potter Senior Year. If you hear anything from anyone that has more information than that sentence I just typed, they are extrapolating and jumping to conclusions and blowing things out of proportion because that was literally all that happened. He told everyone to shut everything down, bitched for a moment about how the project was going to be nearly impossible because of Darren, and then played a 3-second video. THE END. (Also it was Matt, not Nick, and anyone saying otherwise is wrong~)
+ And they also played a video from Snow City Arts and told us that as of yesterday morning they'd raised over $11,000 for the charity!! StarKid fans get shit DONE. hurrah ♥
But so yeah they finished on Beauty and then we sang Happy Birthday to BHoldz and that was pretty much it! The show finished at about 8:40 and it was aaaawwwesome and then we filtered back out into the lobby to meet and greet and socialize! They announced the winners of the Snow City Arts raffle partly to actually do it but partly as a distraction while the team snuck out of the theatre so they didn't get mobbed to death ahahaha. God, I don't think Joe Walker ever had fewer than 10 girls surrouding him in this sad awkward halo. Like Brian I think was getting the most people because it was his birthday but he was back in this hallway/corner in such a way that he had some breathing room whereas Joe was just trapped up against a wall. He's SO NICE UGH I just don't like to think about people like taking advantage of how nice he is to the fangirls bawwww. I got separated from my group a little because they were on a mission to deliver BHoldz's fancy birthday cake so I just kind of scoped around looking for people who hadn't signed my rocket yet so they could! I think I went to Denise first. She had this faaaaabulous peacock feather hair clip omg I wanted it~ and she was being super-nice and cute and her parents were there which was adorable. She got really excited about my rocketship and wrote "WHOA!!! COOOL!!!" when she signed it ahahaha amazing. aaaand I got Meredith to sign it, she was cute about things and drew me a little space alien man because she always draws pictures, and I talked to Matt Lang for like .2 seconds and got him to sign it (he signed on one of the gold fins, he was the first person to do so, REBEL~), and by that time I had FINALLY spotted Corey having surfaced from within and I was like yes. yes. yes. WAIT SHIT WHERE IS SPENCER. They was still back in the bowels of the theatre trying to deliver the cake and I went and screamed at them and was like I NEED YOU and they were just like CAKE and I was like OKAY I GUESS I CAN WAIT BUT SERIOUSLY..... because like NO ONE was around him and I was like WE HAVE A CLEAR SHOT LET'S DO THIS but we didn't ahaha.
So while I was waiting I also talked to Lauren and to EKG~ and got both of them to sign the rocket and yusss. (The rocket was such a topic of conversation this time! The audience was way more fun than when I went to Starship, I think I must have just been at Starship on a bum night, people were lame. But this time everywhere I went was DOES THAT GO TO PIGFARTS? and I WANT HERMIONE GRANGER AND A ROCKETSHIP and even just WHOA THAT'S SO COOL and one girl stopped to look at it and saw Darren's autograph and touched it and legitimately screamed. ahaha.) Speaking of conversations I had a great one with Eric about how we have the same initials~ and he was like "Do people always say, like, you should get an EKG lol" and then he sighed the rocket "EKG!!!" because he is clearly the best.
EVENTUALLY SPENCER SURFACED AT LAST and we went to go have Coreytimes and we took this picture:
OH YEAH. I told him specifically to sign on the bottom where there was room and he STILL signed small as crap. No, you beautiful idiot, I want your whole giant signature.
whatever.
I wanted to talk to him some more but I got distracted doing shit with Spencer for a second and then Ash had cut in to talk to him instead ahahaha. Spencer vanished to go get EKG to sign their Kindle but I just loitered awkwardly and then broached the subject of MY CUPCAKES, and it basically went like this:
C: That was you?
E: yyyyep. bahaha.
C: You can't hold me to that, though, it was moving so fast in the chatstream -
E: You spoke a full-on sentence, though! You were like yes I will make you cupcakes. You said. It's right there in the video.
C: Well you can't hold me to promises that I don't intend to keep!
E: Well I don't think you should make promises if you don't intend to keep them!
C: Oh come on. I didn't know you were going to be here -
E: Yes you did. I told you.
C: ...oh. yeah. I guess you did.
E: yes. /pout
C: Well okay, look, the truth is I really did want to make cupcakes for this. And I was like, whoa that's a lot of cupcakes, but I was going to do it, but then they told us we couldn't bring food....
E: Well that is not very nice of them.
C: Yeah but they kind of have to say that so they don't get like, sued.
E: Well. SOME OTHER TIME. IN THE FUTURE.
C: yeah maybe if we do something somewhere...else....
lol bawww corey lubowich you are an indian giver. WHATEVER. When this was finally over and done with I went back to find Spence.
I found them in the middle of a heated discussion about their Kindle with EKG because LOL apparently, Lauren has one but refuses to really use it and it just sits around. But he was like, You have to go show this to her, because the case of Spencer's Kindle has this neat light built into it and even if you leave the light on by accident if you turn the Kindle off the light turns off too and Eric was seriously like "No, please, really, go tell Lauren Lopez that I sent you over to show her this." And so we went back to Lauren and Spencer was like SO I AM UNDER EXPLICIT INSTRUCTIONS and was demonstrating all the cool stuff and Lauren was like "THAT IS ACTUALLY REALLY NEAT BUT...okay in all seriousness my one gripe about Kindle atm is that you can't get all the Harry Potter books." And Spencer was like Well but they are doing that with Pottermore and also you can just get bootleg PDF versions and do it because you can load PDFs on Kindles and Lauren was like "hmmm...where did you get that case though" and Spencer was like "amazon???" and Lauren just goes "oh okay sweet, I love Amazon" and was basically like YOU ARE KIND OF SWAYING ME BUT I STILL DON'T KNOW SO HMMMMM. it was silly ahaha.
Then we were kind of wandering being dumb and I was playing with my puppy kitties and my rocket and we went back over to Meredith for some reason I think someone needed a signature from her and also we had Kelsey again. And Meredith ended up being on the floor sitting down to sign T-shirts because that was easier and we all kind of sat in a lump around her and had ~story time with Meredith~ and Denise stopped by again (and she didn't actually end up telling us a story ahahaha) and yeah~ and then I was like NO LEGIT I NEED TO POTTY THO because I needed to change my pad bawww gross :( and so we went to the bathroom, and when I finished up Spencer was outside the bathroom chatting with...the same group of girls I rode the elevator with! and we talked about Puppy Kitties and them not getting to go to Starship because they got wind of it too late and how I am old because they were like 13 and I was like WTF BABIES. I WAS LIKE "I'M OLDER THAN JOEY RICHTER." bawww. They drifted away eventually and then EKG came back by again and we gave him the lowdown about our Kindle pitch to Lauren. He was like "Lauren is so damn stupid omg." and it was hilarious ahahaha and then he went to get a drink of water and Spencer and I were still messing with the puppy kitties and we were like WAIT. WE HAVE TO GET A PIC WITH NICK AND THE PUPPYKITTIES~ and so we did and that was awesome too!
Then Spencer got lost doing SOMETHING ELSE AGAIN idek they might have been looking for kelsey or I have no idea. I think then they started yelling at us to leave? But Kelsey was still waiting on Walker so Spencer and Megan and I kind of had to loiter and so mid-loitering I got my rocket signed by Clara! The last person to do it. I was like "If you can find room lol Matt was kind of a rebel and signed on one of the fins so you could do that I guess or go on the bottom next to Corey or" and she was like "MATTHEW LANG.... I'll do this one that's facing him :3" and so she signed a fin too! And I was like yaaayyyy cool and she was all, I hope you enjoyed the show thanks for coming out! and I was like Yay it was awesome see you again tomorrow night! and she was like OH you are coming back? awesome!!
AND THEN WE HAD TO LEAVE.
So we spill out into the streets and I make this cool girl I kept running into with a rainbow dangly thing on her glasses take a picture of all four of us.
hooraaaaayyyy funslam brigade. (who are you, rainbow dangly girl, let's be friends omg I spoke to you like four random times.) We have to hustle to get Megan on the train back to the other station where Spencer's mom is supposed to be getting both of them but actually will just be getting Megan because KELSEY AND I KIDNAPPED Spencer :3 AND MADE THEM STAY THE NIGHT WITH US~ and so we do all of that and come back to the hotel TO FIND THAT IT IS LOCKED. Because it was after 9pm and we hadn't managed to check in yet so we didn't have keycards and we had to get someone to let us in ahahaha. The concierge was this AWESOME guy named Brian - starting to think I have some sweet-ass luck with Chicagz concierges - and he was chatting me up about the rocketship and joking with us really awesomely and he was like, you've been upgraded to a double~ and I was like WHAT FO FREE? which was so awesome because it meant we didn't have to try to put all three of us in one bed! And so I signed off on our check-in form and he was like "here's your room number" and it was 220. So we went up to 220 and I swiped my card and it...didn't work! And I was like wtf. And Spencer says "are you sure it wasn't like 202?" and I was like "I saw 220 definitely but I'll look...I guess..." and it turns out the pack of keys he gave us actually said two-ten. So we go down the hall to 210 and the key works and swipes us in but... THAT IS SOMEONE ELSE'S ROOM ALREADY!! Which I had been kind of afraid of, I was like shit we are going to key in and there will be people and they will freak but fortunately we saw no people, just a woman's stuff all over the bed. So we went back downstairs in the Smallest Elevator Ever and I was like yeah...this is not 220.... And Brian fixed it for us and we got back and ACTUALLY went into 220 this time and all was dandy~.
And then TUMBLR FOREVER. Just sitting around talking about all the fun things that happened and all the best moments and how hard Spencer and I died at everything Corey ever did, and then I called Nicole to tell her all of these things as well because I had gotten this cryptic-ass text from her during the show that just said "IS IT TRUE" with no context or ANYTHING ahahaha so I just yeah. And I had to express all of my FEELINGS~ to Nicole. and she gave me so much shit for the thing with Corey's father and I was like fuck you asdkjgahsldg. And then she went to bed~ and Kelsey and Spencer and I stayed up FOREVER laughing about Intimate Personal Details and bread. You can check my tumblr from the past 12 hours or so to get a better picture. SHENANIGANS. And we helped to try to bust up some of the AVPSY rumors and I ate the complimentary Goldfish crackers out of our room while Spencer drank the complimentary Diet Cokes. And we laughed a lot, and uploaded pictures (but so many of Kelsey's got corrupted and it was so much sadtimes bawww COREY CAN YOU FIX THIS lol). OMG AND AT ONE POINT WE HAD CACKLED REALLY HARD BUT THEN STOPPED and right into the gap of silence that was left some dude walking down the hall right outside our door was just like, "AAWWW-right~" AND WE LOST OUR SHIT GUYS I CAN'T EVEN, YOU HAD TO BE THERE WE WERE DYIIINNNNG~ We laughed our asses off pretty much straight on through till 3am Chicagz time, which was kind of obscene considering I'd been awake since what was technically FIVE am Chicagz time, and finally I was like guys. Guys, bed. So Spencer and I shared a bed because we were too lazy to tug out the sofabed and Kelsey had the other one and then SLEEPZ.
...for like three hours lol. I woke up obscenely early this morning because apparently my body thinks it needs to be in anime con mode. Look, just because I am tagging this post with my con!tag doesn't mean... I tried to roll back over and sleep again but it wasn't happening so I got up, took a MUCH-NEEDED shower oh god I am DISGUSTING, and then started writing this post! A little over halfway through we stopped for breakfast, and sent Kelsey on her way back home :( Spencer went with her, to hop off at the train stop near their house to grab some stuff (like my things she got me at Leaky!) and charge her laptop, and they should be coming back around 2ish, at which point we are going to grab some IHOP and then head back over to the theatre~ to loiter & make sure we get THE BEST SEATS for tonight. (The Best Seats proved to be front row in the stage-left chunk of seats on the aisle. These people got Joe Walker's plate smashing at them, Matt Lang taking their quarters, Dylan singing at them/touching their hands concert style at least once, and Corey for all of Stutter right in their faces. yes.)
a couple things I couldn't work into the narrative of this post that were still cool:
- Dylan introducing the band and being a big giant sweetheart and calling Mark Marcus Swiderskus
- us getting excited about going to Nick with our puppy kitties only to see a girl with a MLP and be like SHIT WE JUST GOT ONE-UPPED :/
- corey looking straight at us and I would say having at least ten seconds of eyesex with me during get back up *______*
- actually talking to New Nick about the sandwich song and him telling me about how he doesn't have twitter but he has an alter ego who does but he's a technophobe and will only tweet from the public library
- screaming I CAME ALL THE WAY HERE FROM WHERE THE HURRICANE IS like eight times probably
- lauren pais telling me the KIUAN shirt was her favorite and me being like ME TOO~ that's why I picked it when I was getting it fo free :D and telling her I won the contest and her being like oh that was you!! so great :3
- matt about to say "ladies and gentlemen" and just saying "ladies and...girls" and us being like NO THERE IS ACTUALLY AT LEAST ONE BOY HERE WHO IS NOT A DAD LOOK and pointing him out dramatically and idk I think he was gay and he was so excited to meet Denise but at least it was testosterone l o l
- this
- a bunch of other shit fuck so much awesome shit happened
SO UHM SPENCE YOU SHOULD COME IN AND FILL OUT ANY DETAILS I AM FORGETTING~
Round two: tonight!!
Here's part 1 of my Slamaganza adventure. [EDIT 2019: I'm here having a nostalgia party and have edited this post to correct shining_chaos's name and pronouns!]
I was having a miserable time sleeping Friday night, partly I think because I was so excited and partly just because I've been doing sleep so badly lately. I was tossing and turning and got maybe four or five decent hours? Gross. I MIGHT HAVE GOTTEN MORE, HOWEVER, if I hadn't been awakened at 6:15 with a phone call. Now IDK if you all really understand this, but my phone is borked. Like, STUPID-borked. One of the ways in which it no longer works is that anyone I call or anyone who calls me, I can't hear them at all through the earpiece of the phone. They can hear me just fine. It's not a connectivity problem or anything wrong with the call itself. It's my phone. So I get this call from an 888 number and I answer and I'm like, "I'm sorry, but my phone is broken. It's better to reach me by text or email." Then I hang up and try to roll back to sleep - but then it hits me. This is probably the airline calling with news about my flight re: Hurricane Irene. I nearly vomited and/or burst into tears right then. I was already a wreck from getting NO sleep and from my period starting the night before and this was not an emotional blow I was prepared to suffer.
They called again, though, and I finally resolved to go downstairs to a phone that actually worked and call them back. While I was on hold they called me a third time. Finally I got through to a real person and she was able to tell me that my flight from Lynchburg to Charlotte had been postponed from 11:21 to 2. This would obviously make me miss my connecting flight, so she got me on another one instead. (I nearly cried again on the phone with her. But she was really nice, way nicer than I possibly could have expected or deserved, it was wonderful.) We resolved the situation immediately, but she also warned me that the flight may be subject to even more changes, and to keep checking the USAir website. The anxiety of this was enough to trigger my nausea even further and when I went back to bed I mostly just curled there and tried not to die until Mom and Bill woke up.
FORTUNATELY, my flights went fine, although my nausea didn't really abate. Unfortunately, it meant I wasn't going to make it to Chicago until 5:15 and it would take me even longer than that to get over to the hotel, so I made up my mind I was going to go straight to the theatre (which meant I didn't get to shower which was DISGUSTING but I got over it sjdghals). I made it to Charlotte and found the closest bathroom to my gate so I could change my pad (deal with it I'm gross bluh) and while I was in there this wonderfully chipper custodian lady was puttering through and she just brightened my day like no other. She was griping pleasantly to me about the ingrained smell of the bathroom, and reminding us all that there were free breathmints and mouthwash over by the sinks if we needed them, and singing to herself about cleaning the bathrooms while she did so, and she was just fucking lovely. I didn't even see her face, and I wish I had. I did snag a mint on the way out, because I knew my breath probably wasn't the greatest and also because I was hoping the mint would calm my stomach. It didn't, :/, but I knew I had to eat something before I got to Chicago because I didn't know when I'd be able to eat next. I finally made myself go through some carrots/celery/ranch dip and a Naked juice, which I do think was helpful.
In the meantime (on my first flight, on my layover, on my second flight, in the taxi) I plowed through most of the first Hunger Games novel! That's probably what I'd be doing right now if I weren't typing this up, ahahaha. Don't spoil meeeee~
I finally arrived in Chicago and went to turn my phone back on and...the display wouldn't light!! SHOCKER. OH BROKEN PHONE I JUST HATE YOU. D: I was trying to text like four different people to establish I was there and work out plans, but you can't exactly text when your entire phone display is black (not like the display isn't working - like it's on, but only displaying black. PHONE YOU ARE DRUNK). I had to turn it off and turn it back on about 20 times between landing and making it to the taxi lane outside before I FINALLY got it to work again. But then I was off to the theatre!!!!! Even though I still had my giant stupid backpack and my rocket in the cardboard box. Hawkward. I rode the elevator up with a group of super-underage girls and their chaperone parents. They seemed all right :3 But then I got to the theatre lobby and was like OH MY GOD EVERYONE IS HERE. Seriously it had to have been like 5:45 by then and the house opened at 6 so I was like, oh man oh geez. AND EVERYTHING WAS PURPLE because the slamaganza shirts are purple and people had been getting them and then putting them on and I was like, man do I feel awesome for not having brought my Keep Calm shirt NOW. geez.
Naturally in this sea of people I was like, shit, how do I find MY people?? But once I used my brain that ended up not being too hard, because I was like: duh, they will be the closest to the front because they are smart and have been here for so long. Which was how I found shining_chaos, sitting on the floor in their Pigfarts hoodie, in a mass of people circling around to take turns playing Connect 4 against Matt Lang. oh yes. I was so relieved to finally be in a position where I could just relax that I basically collapsed to the floor/on top of them and was like, "BLUUHHHHHH." AND LIKE, THEY DIDN'T ACTUALLY REACT AT FIRST. Connect 4 with Matt is apparently that engrossing??? ahahaha. But when they finally were kind of like "oh wait there is a person on me um this is awkward" they turned around to look, and then realized it was me and hugged the fuck out of me. It was beautiful ;~; spencerrrrr
So we had this intense hug and then I was like, where's Kelsey? and apparently like RIGHT as I was saying that Kelsey came back so Spencer was like "...she's right there!!!" and suddenly she was standing over me and I was like, waahhhh! GUYS I LOVE MEETING INTERNET FRIENDS. IT'S SO AWESOME. And both of them are so much more adorable IRL asjdalkgjs like I just get the feeling that we are all three of us not the most photogenic LOL but I was like shit we are cute right now. I loitered around the Connect 4 business for a little bit but my backpack was kind of in the way so I was like, where is a place I can put this, and Kelsey took me over to where hers was and Spencer showed me the cake they made for BHoldz's birthday and then they were like oh yeah get in line get your card and your shirt! Because the way they were letting people into the theatre was by playing cards - three different decks, and then each suit within the deck. So I was like, hey June, sup, here's my ticket but the name on it is this other girl because she gave it to me. And June was like, well, whoops, we gave your card and your shirt voucher to her when she checked in. And I was like, SHIT I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS GIRL LOOKS LIKE OR WHERE SHE IS HOW WILL I FIND HER IN THIS SEA. But that ended up not actually being all that hard because not too long after, she tumbl'd or something and was like "totally just saw Dylan Saunders!!" Kelsey and I had seen Dylan and EKG get off the elevator and head backstage, and we were like "she must either be downstairs or...or that's her right there!" So I got my card and shirt thing from her (apparently I didn't submit my shirt size soon enough. Which was her fault because she wouldn't give me the confirmation number from her ticket until it was way too late and it was really hard for me to not just say that to her face sigh oh well). My card ended up being the nine of diamonds, which is a pretty cool card and I wish I could have kept it for scrapbooking purposes. (Maybe they'll let us have them today? since it's the last day.) LOL I ran into Allegra and she was like DAMMIT PLAYING CARDS JUST MAKE ME THINK OF HOMESTUCK and I was like IKR SIGH.
We returned to the scene of Connect 4 to discover that someone had FINALLY beaten Matt, for the first time that evening (and a Slytherin too, represent~). Then idk this part is messy, but Connect 4 cleared out at some point, I gave Spencer their Tumblr shirt at some point, we drifted around for a bit but then back up to the front at some point, and then managery folks were shouting about letting people in! But they were like "just chill for a sec okay it will happen soon but BE NICE ABOUT IT." So we had to back up from the door a little ways and I ended up with my back to the door of the theatre, shoved into Spencer and Kelsey('s boobs) kind of with this nice older man off to my right who turned to the person he was with and was like oh, see, that's one of Corey's designs and then leaned over to me and was like "My son is the one who designed your T-shirt."
I'm.
sorry.
WHAT.
I had this moment of ohmygodisthisactuallyhappeninghowisthisevenhappeningrightnowWHAT horrified eye contact with Spencer, like we literally panicked but then I was like SHIT IF NO ONE SAYS ANYTHING THIS WILL BE THE MOST AWKWARD THING TO EVER AWKWARD so my mouth kind of broke off from my brain because it was being stupid and was like "Oh, awesome!" Fortunately I didn't have to flounder for too long because then he noticed my rocketship and was like "Wow, that's impressive!" and I was like "Haha yeah! It's like...75% complete...there's still some signatures that I really need" and he was like "Yeah? Who else are you missing?" and I was like "Well....your son...Joe Moses, Lauren, uhhhhh" and just autopiloted straight through it and I was just alksjdghakjsg. Eventually the crowd shifted a little so he wasn't near us any more and I was like SPENCER. SPENCER. SPENCE. and they were like HOW DID YOU EVEN KEEP TALKING YOU WERE JUST MAKING WORDS AND I WAS LIKE WHAT and we were just like LITERALLY OF ALL THE HUNDREDS OF FANS IN THIS ROOM RIGHT NOW HOW WERE WE THE ONES HE WAS RIGHT NEXT TO AND TALKING TO AND WHAT. and we were dying. guys I had a full-on conversation with corey lubowich's dad. I'M GOING TO SOB.
They started calling people in by the decks of their cards and of our four-person entourage Kelsey was first. So we were like SAVE US SEATS!!! and she totally did and then Spencer and Megan went in because they were LITERALLY the first people from the second deck and then I was like, midway through the third deck. But I got in and they still had a seat for me and Spencer was like "lol you have to sit next to me because you're cooler than Megan" and I was like HANG ON, THIS IS EXACTLY WHERE I SAT FOR STARSHIP. Well, it was where Trisha sat at Starship, and Spencer was actually in the seat where I was and then Megan was on the aisle where that other loud girl was. BUT STILL. I was like what ahahaha this is actually hilarious.
So we're sitting there chilling waiting etc. and I guess Spencer tweeted about us talking to daddy lubo and tagged me and then this girl in front of us whips around and is like "SPENCER!! -- three-pee-willow the one who wrote - " and I was like "Oh, hi! :)" and she was like, shut up. AND THEN I HAD THIS MOMENT WHERE I WAS ACTUALLY SEMI-INTERNET FAMOUS FOR ONCE OH MY GOD THIS WAS SO WEIRD. Like she was freaking out about actually meeting me and was like "That AVPM/Glee crossover OH MY GOD" and I was like "ahahaha yeah I LOVED writing that asdkjgalsdg" and she was like "I was the person who was like 'EVERYONE MUST READ THIS DO IT NOW' and forced it on so many people" and I was like "omg you're amazing what." And we were still kind of being stupid about it when Lauren Pais or someone came in and started shouting like HEY IF YOU LEFT A BACKPACK IN THE LOBBY WE CAN'T BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT.... and Kelsey and I were like lol shit that was us. So we got up and went out and got them and hers wasn't that big but mine is ENORMOUS and I was like "uhhhh june, is there a place I can put this because IDK what I would do with it at my seat, can I leave it somewhere" and they were like "well there isn't any intermission, could she just leave it by the door...." and then this really awesome nice guy who was working one of the cameras was like "She can leave it under the tripod if she needs to, it'll be safe there." And I was like, REALLY?? and thanked him a million times and god he was so nice and I wish I knew who he was omg. (Sadly, the rocketship box - the one with all of me and Lizz's drawings all over it that has traveled the country several times - did get left in the lobby, and I don't have it any more. YOU LIVED A GOOD LIFE, ROCKETBOX. YOU WILL BE MISSED. ;~;)
So I went back to my seat and my excited fangirl (what even) was like HEY TAKE A PICTURE WITH ME I MET YOU and I was like LOL OKAY ON ONE CONDITION: please pronounce my username correctly! and so I told her how it really is and explained that it comes from Threepwood and then we took a picture and then THE SHOW STARTED. Nick gave the little curtain speech shenanigans and it opened with Dylan singing I Wanna Be and making us all sing along! And eventually everyone else made it out to sing on it too and everyone got a solo line including corey~ and Spencer and I began the first phase of a long and intense fangirling process. WE WERE NOT PREPARED. like even just seeing him wandering the space before the show started I had been like "I cannot look at him because if I do I will just STARE and I won't STOP" and we were clutching each other's hands and smacking each other in the knee and it just. it only got worse.
Here, let me like, post a list of things that happened before I start trying to get into the details of our stupid fangirl reactions.
+ StarKid show song covers/pseudo-singalongs! These were great :3 They were kind of limited in repertoire to a decent chunk of Starship and then a smaller chunk of Potter stuff just based on the cast they had available and the kinds of replacements that were actually reasonable (with the exception being all four official-dikrats dudes ironically doing Coolest Girl), but if I remember correctly they did the following:
--- I Wanna Be (whole group)
--- Get Back Up (Corey subbing for Moses)
--- Gettin' Along
--- The Way I Do (Brian subbing for Joey)
--- all-dudes Coolest Girl trololol
--- Voldemort Is Going Down (Brian subbing for Joey and Jaime for Bonnie)
--- Stutter (everyone doing backup dancing!)
--- Kick It Up A Notch (Corey subbing in for both Jim and Joey)
--- Beauty (Jaime taking the whole first verse and then other people jumping in for various lines in verse 2)
CAN YOU SEE, BY LOOKING AT THIS LIST, THE THINGS THAT SPENCER AND I HAD PROBLEMS DEALING WITH, MAYBE??? BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW IF YOU CAN. I'm pretty sure Coolest Girl was when they grabbed my hand so hard that I think I will have a bruise and by the time he got shoved back on stage to be fake Joey in KIUAN I think I might have cried at least once. MY LIFE IS JUST SPIRALING DOWNWARD, YOU GUYS. Ugh I am just. if either of us had been there without the other it would have been so sad and so hard but we spent the whole time LITERALLY clutching to one another to hold each other out of the fanflail abyss and screaming I AM SO GLAD YOU'RE HERE RIGHT NOW. Guys I love Spencer so much I just cannot even. ALSO, Dylan was definitely the most, like, encouraging of people to sing along even though he was trolling us hard - he was like "we're gonna do Get Back to Hogwarts" when they did Coolest Girl and "we're gonna do the Dragon Song" when they did Kick It Up A Notch (the second of those being a much less successful psychout because I knew a) the show was nearing the end and b) they would not finish the show without doing that song). He also was trolling WHEN we were singing along when we got to the power notes at the end of songs, he would pause and all the fangirls would sing into the dead space and then he'd be like "HEY! :/" but totally kidding. He was great.
+ Brian Holden doing a bit as a smarmy announcer and screening us video clips of the highlights of season 12 of So You Think You Can Glance. There were two of these and they showed us the contestants interacting with choreographer!Denise in the order in which they were eliminated:
--- Round 1 - Claude (Dylan) and this blonde girl I didn't recognize (faking a German accent, she had some fake German name too and I don't remember what it was I will pay more attention tonight)
--- Round 2 - Melinda (Jaime) and Corey
--- Round 3 - Julia and DJ Scriggle-Scraggle (Brian)
--- Round 4 - Tenise (Lauren) and Robert (pretend blind!Nick Lang)
--- Round 5 - Meredith's character and Beanis (Nick Gage)
But it turns out the winner was actually (spoiler!!) Mark Swiderski. Brian announced this still doing his pseudo-Zach bit, the band having been onstage the entire time, and Mark did like the most casual two-second glance out to the audience and everyone was like YEAH!!! lol. Denise said later during m&g stuff that SYTYCG kind of became her baby project that she really really pushed for and she was like NO GUYS WE HAVE TO DO THIS. ahaha.
+ Joe Walker doing a recurring clowning bit. This was actually fairly straightforward clowning and didn't really have any kind of StarKid twist beyond "we all know this is Joe Walker which makes it funnier." To include: trying to spin a ceramic plate (and failing), trying to walk across a "tightrope" of gaff tape stretched between two chairs (and failing), trying to dive into a tiny cup of water (and failing), and then doing a couple of gymanstic tumbles and shit really gracefully (but then tripping over everything and even semi-busting the amp by legitimate accident on his way off stage). Clara graciously provided an entertaining musical sting from the keyboard.
+ MAGIC-OFF: Matt the Magnificent vs. ...Corey. LOL. The whole shtick of this was that Matt was ~AMAZING AT MAGIC~ and was going to face-off against Corey to prove that, but that really Matt was like pathetically incompetent and Corey just kind of stood there and did tricks flawlessly and didn't even speak. Matt had a cape. Also mismatched socks. He took quarters from the audience for a trick that never happened and also then did a trick that Justin Kredible does ahahahaha but was doing the whole thing like...reading the instructions on how to do the trick aloud. (So the punchline of it was kind of ruined for me because I have seen JKreds do the trick like twice in an unironic manner. oh well ahahaha Matt was still adorable.) He looked like really nervous and awkward and we were all like, we can't tell if he's playing this up for the bit they're doing or if he's actually nervous and awkward, bawwww matt. (This also involved a lot of him basically just swearing at Corey and calling him a bastard and an asshole and god knows what else and it was glorious. I would watch a whole show of just Matt and Corey being obnoxious at each other via stage magic.)
+ Meredith Stepien Stand-Up Comedy: Making Fun of Darren Edition. THE MOST BLATANT MOMENT OF STRAIGHT-UP 'FUCK YOU WHY ARE YOU FAMOUS' AHAHAHAHA. Basically a long shtick about how her mom used to hate Darren because she was convinced all men coming into Meredith's life were going to whisk her away and make her do weird kinky kidnapper stuff to involve making cat noises, but that now that he's famous her mom LOVES~ him and collects all sorts of media clippings about him and guilts on Meredith hard for not being on Glee and not being famous like Darren. bahahaha it was all obviously fake or at least EXTREME exagg but it was funneh~. Then New Nick (Nick Gage who is a friend of Meredith's) came out and they did a love song together and the punchline of that was that Meredith had been singing about him the whole time but he was actually singing about being in love with Darren bahahaha. JACK STRATTON'S FACE DURING THIS WHOLE PART I thought he was going to diieeee~ (he is weirdly non-hairy atm and it is weird. like. his beard is gone AND his poofy hair is gone and I almost didn't recognize him and I was like "wait that has to be jack tho because drums WHERE DID YOUR HAIR GO.) And then they did this original song of Nick's about sandwiches. PRETTY SURE MY FACE GLAZED OVER AS IF HYPNOTIZED THE ENTIRE TIME. I just remember that I just kept repeating "I don't think you guys understand. Like. I don't think you understand. I need this song. You guys don't understand. SANDWICHES." I talked to him after the show and gave him my email and he is going to send it to me!! AND THEN IT WILL BECOME MY RINGTONE. SANDWICHES. omg it was the greatest ever.
+ Jim and the Povolos set~ :3 Featuring Lauren standing in for a couple of the absent members. Dylan and Mark did a Bob Dylan song just the two of them and then they did a couple originals and a couple covers. They made us get on our feet and dance and it was magical :3
+ ERIC KAHN GALE WROTE AND READ ALOUD TO US AN EPIC POEM ABOUT BRIAN HOLDEN'S BIRTHDAY. IT WAS SO GLORIOUS OMG so it was like this giant ridic adventure about how Brian's widow's peak is actually going to save the world from evil space aliens because it will power this epic spaceship and it's a good thing that he's getting ~lol old~ because now his hairline is perfect!!! I CANNOT ACTUALLY RECOUNT HOW EXCELLENT THIS IS YOU WILL JUST HAVE TO HOPE THERE IS A GOOD VIDEO EVENTUALLY. It included not once but TWICE rhyming "26" with "sucks dicks." Brian was DYING and EKG is such a good writer and ahahaha. (When he came on he got literally THE smallest round of applause of the entire night and I was like DICCCKKKKSSS we will cheer louder tonight :3)
+ "What happened up in that theatre between you and Matt Lang is a complete secret, so, naturally, the whole internet knows." COME ON, GUYS. I love how the two things he SPECIFICALLY said were "Don't post this on Tumblr" and "don't tell my dad" and you guys had to go and ruin it~ sigh. But yeah there was about a 3-second slideshow/title cards video Matt presented presuming that sometime in 2012 we will get A Very Potter Senior Year. If you hear anything from anyone that has more information than that sentence I just typed, they are extrapolating and jumping to conclusions and blowing things out of proportion because that was literally all that happened. He told everyone to shut everything down, bitched for a moment about how the project was going to be nearly impossible because of Darren, and then played a 3-second video. THE END. (Also it was Matt, not Nick, and anyone saying otherwise is wrong~)
+ And they also played a video from Snow City Arts and told us that as of yesterday morning they'd raised over $11,000 for the charity!! StarKid fans get shit DONE. hurrah ♥
But so yeah they finished on Beauty and then we sang Happy Birthday to BHoldz and that was pretty much it! The show finished at about 8:40 and it was aaaawwwesome and then we filtered back out into the lobby to meet and greet and socialize! They announced the winners of the Snow City Arts raffle partly to actually do it but partly as a distraction while the team snuck out of the theatre so they didn't get mobbed to death ahahaha. God, I don't think Joe Walker ever had fewer than 10 girls surrouding him in this sad awkward halo. Like Brian I think was getting the most people because it was his birthday but he was back in this hallway/corner in such a way that he had some breathing room whereas Joe was just trapped up against a wall. He's SO NICE UGH I just don't like to think about people like taking advantage of how nice he is to the fangirls bawwww. I got separated from my group a little because they were on a mission to deliver BHoldz's fancy birthday cake so I just kind of scoped around looking for people who hadn't signed my rocket yet so they could! I think I went to Denise first. She had this faaaaabulous peacock feather hair clip omg I wanted it~ and she was being super-nice and cute and her parents were there which was adorable. She got really excited about my rocketship and wrote "WHOA!!! COOOL!!!" when she signed it ahahaha amazing. aaaand I got Meredith to sign it, she was cute about things and drew me a little space alien man because she always draws pictures, and I talked to Matt Lang for like .2 seconds and got him to sign it (he signed on one of the gold fins, he was the first person to do so, REBEL~), and by that time I had FINALLY spotted Corey having surfaced from within and I was like yes. yes. yes. WAIT SHIT WHERE IS SPENCER. They was still back in the bowels of the theatre trying to deliver the cake and I went and screamed at them and was like I NEED YOU and they were just like CAKE and I was like OKAY I GUESS I CAN WAIT BUT SERIOUSLY..... because like NO ONE was around him and I was like WE HAVE A CLEAR SHOT LET'S DO THIS but we didn't ahaha.
So while I was waiting I also talked to Lauren and to EKG~ and got both of them to sign the rocket and yusss. (The rocket was such a topic of conversation this time! The audience was way more fun than when I went to Starship, I think I must have just been at Starship on a bum night, people were lame. But this time everywhere I went was DOES THAT GO TO PIGFARTS? and I WANT HERMIONE GRANGER AND A ROCKETSHIP and even just WHOA THAT'S SO COOL and one girl stopped to look at it and saw Darren's autograph and touched it and legitimately screamed. ahaha.) Speaking of conversations I had a great one with Eric about how we have the same initials~ and he was like "Do people always say, like, you should get an EKG lol" and then he sighed the rocket "EKG!!!" because he is clearly the best.
EVENTUALLY SPENCER SURFACED AT LAST and we went to go have Coreytimes and we took this picture:
OH YEAH. I told him specifically to sign on the bottom where there was room and he STILL signed small as crap. No, you beautiful idiot, I want your whole giant signature.
whatever.
I wanted to talk to him some more but I got distracted doing shit with Spencer for a second and then Ash had cut in to talk to him instead ahahaha. Spencer vanished to go get EKG to sign their Kindle but I just loitered awkwardly and then broached the subject of MY CUPCAKES, and it basically went like this:
C: That was you?
E: yyyyep. bahaha.
C: You can't hold me to that, though, it was moving so fast in the chatstream -
E: You spoke a full-on sentence, though! You were like yes I will make you cupcakes. You said. It's right there in the video.
C: Well you can't hold me to promises that I don't intend to keep!
E: Well I don't think you should make promises if you don't intend to keep them!
C: Oh come on. I didn't know you were going to be here -
E: Yes you did. I told you.
C: ...oh. yeah. I guess you did.
E: yes. /pout
C: Well okay, look, the truth is I really did want to make cupcakes for this. And I was like, whoa that's a lot of cupcakes, but I was going to do it, but then they told us we couldn't bring food....
E: Well that is not very nice of them.
C: Yeah but they kind of have to say that so they don't get like, sued.
E: Well. SOME OTHER TIME. IN THE FUTURE.
C: yeah maybe if we do something somewhere...else....
lol bawww corey lubowich you are an indian giver. WHATEVER. When this was finally over and done with I went back to find Spence.
I found them in the middle of a heated discussion about their Kindle with EKG because LOL apparently, Lauren has one but refuses to really use it and it just sits around. But he was like, You have to go show this to her, because the case of Spencer's Kindle has this neat light built into it and even if you leave the light on by accident if you turn the Kindle off the light turns off too and Eric was seriously like "No, please, really, go tell Lauren Lopez that I sent you over to show her this." And so we went back to Lauren and Spencer was like SO I AM UNDER EXPLICIT INSTRUCTIONS and was demonstrating all the cool stuff and Lauren was like "THAT IS ACTUALLY REALLY NEAT BUT...okay in all seriousness my one gripe about Kindle atm is that you can't get all the Harry Potter books." And Spencer was like Well but they are doing that with Pottermore and also you can just get bootleg PDF versions and do it because you can load PDFs on Kindles and Lauren was like "hmmm...where did you get that case though" and Spencer was like "amazon???" and Lauren just goes "oh okay sweet, I love Amazon" and was basically like YOU ARE KIND OF SWAYING ME BUT I STILL DON'T KNOW SO HMMMMM. it was silly ahaha.
Then we were kind of wandering being dumb and I was playing with my puppy kitties and my rocket and we went back over to Meredith for some reason I think someone needed a signature from her and also we had Kelsey again. And Meredith ended up being on the floor sitting down to sign T-shirts because that was easier and we all kind of sat in a lump around her and had ~story time with Meredith~ and Denise stopped by again (and she didn't actually end up telling us a story ahahaha) and yeah~ and then I was like NO LEGIT I NEED TO POTTY THO because I needed to change my pad bawww gross :( and so we went to the bathroom, and when I finished up Spencer was outside the bathroom chatting with...the same group of girls I rode the elevator with! and we talked about Puppy Kitties and them not getting to go to Starship because they got wind of it too late and how I am old because they were like 13 and I was like WTF BABIES. I WAS LIKE "I'M OLDER THAN JOEY RICHTER." bawww. They drifted away eventually and then EKG came back by again and we gave him the lowdown about our Kindle pitch to Lauren. He was like "Lauren is so damn stupid omg." and it was hilarious ahahaha and then he went to get a drink of water and Spencer and I were still messing with the puppy kitties and we were like WAIT. WE HAVE TO GET A PIC WITH NICK AND THE PUPPYKITTIES~ and so we did and that was awesome too!
Then Spencer got lost doing SOMETHING ELSE AGAIN idek they might have been looking for kelsey or I have no idea. I think then they started yelling at us to leave? But Kelsey was still waiting on Walker so Spencer and Megan and I kind of had to loiter and so mid-loitering I got my rocket signed by Clara! The last person to do it. I was like "If you can find room lol Matt was kind of a rebel and signed on one of the fins so you could do that I guess or go on the bottom next to Corey or" and she was like "MATTHEW LANG.... I'll do this one that's facing him :3" and so she signed a fin too! And I was like yaaayyyy cool and she was all, I hope you enjoyed the show thanks for coming out! and I was like Yay it was awesome see you again tomorrow night! and she was like OH you are coming back? awesome!!
AND THEN WE HAD TO LEAVE.
So we spill out into the streets and I make this cool girl I kept running into with a rainbow dangly thing on her glasses take a picture of all four of us.
hooraaaaayyyy funslam brigade. (who are you, rainbow dangly girl, let's be friends omg I spoke to you like four random times.) We have to hustle to get Megan on the train back to the other station where Spencer's mom is supposed to be getting both of them but actually will just be getting Megan because KELSEY AND I KIDNAPPED Spencer :3 AND MADE THEM STAY THE NIGHT WITH US~ and so we do all of that and come back to the hotel TO FIND THAT IT IS LOCKED. Because it was after 9pm and we hadn't managed to check in yet so we didn't have keycards and we had to get someone to let us in ahahaha. The concierge was this AWESOME guy named Brian - starting to think I have some sweet-ass luck with Chicagz concierges - and he was chatting me up about the rocketship and joking with us really awesomely and he was like, you've been upgraded to a double~ and I was like WHAT FO FREE? which was so awesome because it meant we didn't have to try to put all three of us in one bed! And so I signed off on our check-in form and he was like "here's your room number" and it was 220. So we went up to 220 and I swiped my card and it...didn't work! And I was like wtf. And Spencer says "are you sure it wasn't like 202?" and I was like "I saw 220 definitely but I'll look...I guess..." and it turns out the pack of keys he gave us actually said two-ten. So we go down the hall to 210 and the key works and swipes us in but... THAT IS SOMEONE ELSE'S ROOM ALREADY!! Which I had been kind of afraid of, I was like shit we are going to key in and there will be people and they will freak but fortunately we saw no people, just a woman's stuff all over the bed. So we went back downstairs in the Smallest Elevator Ever and I was like yeah...this is not 220.... And Brian fixed it for us and we got back and ACTUALLY went into 220 this time and all was dandy~.
And then TUMBLR FOREVER. Just sitting around talking about all the fun things that happened and all the best moments and how hard Spencer and I died at everything Corey ever did, and then I called Nicole to tell her all of these things as well because I had gotten this cryptic-ass text from her during the show that just said "IS IT TRUE" with no context or ANYTHING ahahaha so I just yeah. And I had to express all of my FEELINGS~ to Nicole. and she gave me so much shit for the thing with Corey's father and I was like fuck you asdkjgahsldg. And then she went to bed~ and Kelsey and Spencer and I stayed up FOREVER laughing about Intimate Personal Details and bread. You can check my tumblr from the past 12 hours or so to get a better picture. SHENANIGANS. And we helped to try to bust up some of the AVPSY rumors and I ate the complimentary Goldfish crackers out of our room while Spencer drank the complimentary Diet Cokes. And we laughed a lot, and uploaded pictures (but so many of Kelsey's got corrupted and it was so much sadtimes bawww COREY CAN YOU FIX THIS lol). OMG AND AT ONE POINT WE HAD CACKLED REALLY HARD BUT THEN STOPPED and right into the gap of silence that was left some dude walking down the hall right outside our door was just like, "AAWWW-right~" AND WE LOST OUR SHIT GUYS I CAN'T EVEN, YOU HAD TO BE THERE WE WERE DYIIINNNNG~ We laughed our asses off pretty much straight on through till 3am Chicagz time, which was kind of obscene considering I'd been awake since what was technically FIVE am Chicagz time, and finally I was like guys. Guys, bed. So Spencer and I shared a bed because we were too lazy to tug out the sofabed and Kelsey had the other one and then SLEEPZ.
...for like three hours lol. I woke up obscenely early this morning because apparently my body thinks it needs to be in anime con mode. Look, just because I am tagging this post with my con!tag doesn't mean... I tried to roll back over and sleep again but it wasn't happening so I got up, took a MUCH-NEEDED shower oh god I am DISGUSTING, and then started writing this post! A little over halfway through we stopped for breakfast, and sent Kelsey on her way back home :( Spencer went with her, to hop off at the train stop near their house to grab some stuff (like my things she got me at Leaky!) and charge her laptop, and they should be coming back around 2ish, at which point we are going to grab some IHOP and then head back over to the theatre~ to loiter & make sure we get THE BEST SEATS for tonight. (The Best Seats proved to be front row in the stage-left chunk of seats on the aisle. These people got Joe Walker's plate smashing at them, Matt Lang taking their quarters, Dylan singing at them/touching their hands concert style at least once, and Corey for all of Stutter right in their faces. yes.)
a couple things I couldn't work into the narrative of this post that were still cool:
- Dylan introducing the band and being a big giant sweetheart and calling Mark Marcus Swiderskus
- us getting excited about going to Nick with our puppy kitties only to see a girl with a MLP and be like SHIT WE JUST GOT ONE-UPPED :/
- corey looking straight at us and I would say having at least ten seconds of eyesex with me during get back up *______*
- actually talking to New Nick about the sandwich song and him telling me about how he doesn't have twitter but he has an alter ego who does but he's a technophobe and will only tweet from the public library
- screaming I CAME ALL THE WAY HERE FROM WHERE THE HURRICANE IS like eight times probably
- lauren pais telling me the KIUAN shirt was her favorite and me being like ME TOO~ that's why I picked it when I was getting it fo free :D and telling her I won the contest and her being like oh that was you!! so great :3
- matt about to say "ladies and gentlemen" and just saying "ladies and...girls" and us being like NO THERE IS ACTUALLY AT LEAST ONE BOY HERE WHO IS NOT A DAD LOOK and pointing him out dramatically and idk I think he was gay and he was so excited to meet Denise but at least it was testosterone l o l
- this
- a bunch of other shit fuck so much awesome shit happened
SO UHM SPENCE YOU SHOULD COME IN AND FILL OUT ANY DETAILS I AM FORGETTING~
Round two: tonight!!