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doing bshorty in the big apple.
so, i may have mentioned that i went and saw blake perform on the today show on thursday. possibly.
here is my recap.
brace yourself; it's long. (that's what she said. or i guess what HE said would make more sense.)
so, on tuesday night i spoke to my semi-friend (and now total friend, she's fucking rad) donna, who i've been seeing around the internets in various places for several years and had met once for 30 seconds in atlantic city. i knew she'd gone to the today show before for other people, and i was pretty sure she was going for blake, and since
ashley was kind of iffy on heading down, i figured i might end up flying solo and i needed someone to keep me from getting lost and wandering aimlessly around manhattan. so donna gave me her number on tuesday, and i called her and we chatted for a bit, and she totally kind of adopted me and suggested getting a hotel room so we had kind of a home base to leave our stuff, shower, maybe sleep a little, whatever. i agreed, because the earliest train i could take into the city on thursday morning would've gotten me into grand central at 5:50, which would've been way too late for any kind of decent view.
ashley had offered to go along if i waited 'till morning, but i couldn't deal with traveling all the way down there and not having a good spot, so i bailed on her (sorry spizzy! ilu.) and just went down on wednesday night. i caught a train to grand central and met donna (she came and met me at the track, she's all maternal like that, it's so cute) and her friend jacqui. i hit it off with both of them just incredibly well, so it wound up being a FABULOUS evening/morning.
so we headed out of there and went to the hotel to drop off our stuff. we took an incredibly convoluted route which included us heading way west on 51st even though our hotel was on E 51st. oops. we took fully an hour and a half to get there. although we did stop at one point to sit down and swap wacky stories about various idol-related things.
so we got to the hotel and checked in and went up to our room. we were on the 14th floor, which was the top floor, and i was all "penthouse, bitches, what what!" and then we saw our room, which looked like this and was so tiny all three of us immediately burst into hysterical laughing. i know hotel rooms in manhattan are small, but this was just fucking hilarious. also, we couldn't find the air conditioner for the longest time so it was ungodly hot in there for quite a while. but it was clean and everything was in nice condition, so whatevs.
we had dinner at the olive garden in times square, which my boyfriend mocked me about (he also mocked me for eating at friday's last time i was in the city, wtfever, SCOTT) and got back to the hotel around midnight-ish, i guess. we strolled by rockefeller center on the way back to the hotel and they were already setting up the stage. it was exciting. well, i was excited. hee.
so, since we wanted to get there early to get in line (we originally said 3:30, but wound up getting there around 4) and it was already around midnight, we decided we wouldn't bother sleeping. so we went back to the hotel and sat in our teeny little room (we dubbed it "the closet") and gossipped and giggled and then took showers since we had to be cute for bshorty.
armed with diet coke and/or red bulls, we headed over to rockefeller plaza. there were a handful of people ahead of us, but not very many - maybe 5 or 6? we parked on the sidewalk and goofed around with some amusing/skeevy guy (i'm still undecided) and surfed the internet via sidekick/blackberry. some dude came by around 6-ish and gave us this, like, 10 page document with a more-or-less minute by minute breakdown of the show. i saw that blake had a rehearsal at 6:40, squeed, and saw that he was performing "she will be loved" at 8:50, so i posted on twop to give people a heads-up, because i'm cool like that. (and someone then reposted what i said on idolforums, and some poster over there was apparently all "oh really? well, i don't believe that person." lol.)
we saw blake arrive a little bit after six in the middle of a swarm of people - they hustled him in pretty quickly and all i could really see was his hair. actually, those little platinum streaks were great! he's so tiny that he's hard to spot in a crowd, but you could almost always find him by those highlights. we have dubbed them "the beacon."
so, finally, FINALLY, they let us into the audience area at...well, it must've been around 6:40, because we come around the corner, and who's sitting on stage but bshorty! i squeed and grabbed donna and we hustled up to the front. we wound up with a great spot, we were smushed right up against the railing in the front. i died ten thousand times over how cute he was. he looked really tired, tho. and kind of stunned to be awake at that hour, lol.
various things that happened, some of which i already posted on twop, sorry.
ummm. so then was the show. if you didn't see it, here you go:
at some point (i think before either of them performed), he and jordin went around and signed autographs and took pics with the people in the VIP sections. i saw blake posing for a couple of pics with kids and my ovaries exploded. also at one point i saw him bending down to talk to a kid and it was just really cute.
after he performed, he left pretty quickly. they hustled him down the side (his bodyguard is on him like white on rice at pretty much all times, btw, which makes me happy - he's so LITTLE, you guys) and he disappeared. we shoved our way out of the crowd, desperate for coffee, and found ourselves right next to a mob of people clustered around a black escalade, into which one blake lewis was attempting to climb. he took pics with a few people, and then his bodyguard pretty much shoved him into the car, lol. a minute later, tho, the window slides down, and out pops this adorable little face.
it was so cute, you guys. he was just beaming, really feeling the love. seeing him just...being, and becoming? truly joyous. like donna said, i wish i could bottle up that moment. so i can remember it when 2 years from now he's either a) some huge star who'll never be so accessible, or b) been screwed by 19/clive davis/etc and is back in seattle. i kept telling donna and jacqui - they had better not fuck him up. i've seen and heard way too many horror stories about former idols. clay lost his fucking mind, i hear carrie's turned into a massive bitch (she's probably hungry, girl is looking WAY SKINNY), poor bo got handed shitty material and then dropped by the label, even kelly is going through all this bullshit with clive. blake has worked so hard and he's so talented and such a good guy - if he turns hard or mean or crazy or bitter i'll be so, so sad. but he seems well-adjusted and more or less together ("organized chaos" i guess!), so i'm hoping he'll be ok and stay himself. because he? is fucking amazing. ♥[/random moment of rambling concern]
after blake got whisked off, we split on out of there, got some starbucks, and went back to the hotel to collapse for a little while. we poked around on the internet a little bit and rewatched some of jacqui's video footage, then we headed out of the hotel around 11:30. we headed to our separate trains at grand central and i pulled out of there at 12:51. made it back to the train station without incident. stopped at a rest stop on the thruway so i could use their wi-fi to download the mike & juliet performance i'd been hearing everyone rave about; this is how crazy this man makes me. spoke tobina a couple of times, including calling her to be all "OMG BLAKE HAD ASHTON MICHAEL WITH HIM AT THE KEANE CONCERT!!!1one!" because we appreciate their whole fabulous thing quite a bit.
got mildly lost getting back into town, but did in fact make it home in one piece. obviously. flung myself down in the living room and fired up the tivo. saw myself for a second at the edge of the frame and very small. i was really there, y'all! me 'n bshorty, in the same place, breathing the same air. infinate!
sigh.
love.
in conclusion:
(all the pics and soundcheck vids in this entry are courtesy of jacqui.)
here is my recap.
brace yourself; it's long. (that's what she said. or i guess what HE said would make more sense.)
so, on tuesday night i spoke to my semi-friend (and now total friend, she's fucking rad) donna, who i've been seeing around the internets in various places for several years and had met once for 30 seconds in atlantic city. i knew she'd gone to the today show before for other people, and i was pretty sure she was going for blake, and since
ashley was kind of iffy on heading down, i figured i might end up flying solo and i needed someone to keep me from getting lost and wandering aimlessly around manhattan. so donna gave me her number on tuesday, and i called her and we chatted for a bit, and she totally kind of adopted me and suggested getting a hotel room so we had kind of a home base to leave our stuff, shower, maybe sleep a little, whatever. i agreed, because the earliest train i could take into the city on thursday morning would've gotten me into grand central at 5:50, which would've been way too late for any kind of decent view.ashley had offered to go along if i waited 'till morning, but i couldn't deal with traveling all the way down there and not having a good spot, so i bailed on her (sorry spizzy! ilu.) and just went down on wednesday night. i caught a train to grand central and met donna (she came and met me at the track, she's all maternal like that, it's so cute) and her friend jacqui. i hit it off with both of them just incredibly well, so it wound up being a FABULOUS evening/morning.so we headed out of there and went to the hotel to drop off our stuff. we took an incredibly convoluted route which included us heading way west on 51st even though our hotel was on E 51st. oops. we took fully an hour and a half to get there. although we did stop at one point to sit down and swap wacky stories about various idol-related things.
so we got to the hotel and checked in and went up to our room. we were on the 14th floor, which was the top floor, and i was all "penthouse, bitches, what what!" and then we saw our room, which looked like this and was so tiny all three of us immediately burst into hysterical laughing. i know hotel rooms in manhattan are small, but this was just fucking hilarious. also, we couldn't find the air conditioner for the longest time so it was ungodly hot in there for quite a while. but it was clean and everything was in nice condition, so whatevs.
we had dinner at the olive garden in times square, which my boyfriend mocked me about (he also mocked me for eating at friday's last time i was in the city, wtfever, SCOTT) and got back to the hotel around midnight-ish, i guess. we strolled by rockefeller center on the way back to the hotel and they were already setting up the stage. it was exciting. well, i was excited. hee.
so, since we wanted to get there early to get in line (we originally said 3:30, but wound up getting there around 4) and it was already around midnight, we decided we wouldn't bother sleeping. so we went back to the hotel and sat in our teeny little room (we dubbed it "the closet") and gossipped and giggled and then took showers since we had to be cute for bshorty.
armed with diet coke and/or red bulls, we headed over to rockefeller plaza. there were a handful of people ahead of us, but not very many - maybe 5 or 6? we parked on the sidewalk and goofed around with some amusing/skeevy guy (i'm still undecided) and surfed the internet via sidekick/blackberry. some dude came by around 6-ish and gave us this, like, 10 page document with a more-or-less minute by minute breakdown of the show. i saw that blake had a rehearsal at 6:40, squeed, and saw that he was performing "she will be loved" at 8:50, so i posted on twop to give people a heads-up, because i'm cool like that. (and someone then reposted what i said on idolforums, and some poster over there was apparently all "oh really? well, i don't believe that person." lol.)
we saw blake arrive a little bit after six in the middle of a swarm of people - they hustled him in pretty quickly and all i could really see was his hair. actually, those little platinum streaks were great! he's so tiny that he's hard to spot in a crowd, but you could almost always find him by those highlights. we have dubbed them "the beacon."
so, finally, FINALLY, they let us into the audience area at...well, it must've been around 6:40, because we come around the corner, and who's sitting on stage but bshorty! i squeed and grabbed donna and we hustled up to the front. we wound up with a great spot, we were smushed right up against the railing in the front. i died ten thousand times over how cute he was. he looked really tired, tho. and kind of stunned to be awake at that hour, lol.
various things that happened, some of which i already posted on twop, sorry.
- he started warming up with "hello, i love you." he sang the doors, people! i squeed and hit donna. this would end up happening a lot.
- immediately after that, he sang a little song with the lyrics "not warmed up, not warmed up, eeeeeeeeverybody i'm not warmed up." it's in this video (which jacqui took, because she wins at life) and it's fucking ADORABLE. there's lots more fun stuff in that vid; it's 5 minutes of goodness.
- he was obviously super tired. besides just looking adorably sleepy, he said at one point (after singing a few bars and then just stopping) "i can't sing, it's too early." aw. i guess that's what he gets for spending the previous night drinking coors light at the keane show with ashton michael, lol.
- he is seriously the cutest guy i have ever laid eyes on. i have no fucking idea how a 25-year-old man is so damn ADORABLE, but he really, really is. it's funny, because watching him on TV i'm all "OMG LET ME HIT THAT PLZ" but then seeing him, all i wanted to do was cuddle him to death. WTF? he actually had a similar effect on bina, so maybe that's just some weird part of the blake lewis experience.
- here's some video of him being all soundcheck-y and musician-y. which was cool to see. he may have been half-asleep, but he was on the job. ♥
- as you can probably tell from that vid, he was having some tech issues - i think there was concern that the loop machine would record the crowd again like it did on regis & kelly; he was fussing around with it for quite a while, trying different stuff. finally he just appealed to the crowd that was already there. he explained what he was going to do with the looping, and he was like "they're going to cue you to scream, but if you could just not scream, that would be good, so we don't mess up television history." lol. you can catch the tail end of his request, as well as a little of him being adorable and talking to the crowd in this video of jacqui's. he was very natural and comfortable in front of the crowd. he really sounded like he was talking to a bunch of his friends; i think the video gives an idea of it. and it was hilarious, when his performance started, you hear some people scream, and like the entire front section bust out with a "SHHHH!" but it was ok, bshorty silenced everyone with a wave of his hand and a "thank you," because everyone is his bitch. that's right, you are too, you know it. :P
- at some point during the actual show (it must've been right before he performed, since he was on stage), they played a snippet of his version of "this is my now," the sucky coronation single, and he had this hilarious WTF look on his face when he heard it. he really hates that song, y'all, lmao.
- despite that, he was standing off to the side during jordin's soundcheck and singing along with her. very cute.
- her soundcheck was right after his, and she came on stage while blake was still up there and they hugged. they seem very sweet and supportive of each other.
ummm. so then was the show. if you didn't see it, here you go:
at some point (i think before either of them performed), he and jordin went around and signed autographs and took pics with the people in the VIP sections. i saw blake posing for a couple of pics with kids and my ovaries exploded. also at one point i saw him bending down to talk to a kid and it was just really cute.
after he performed, he left pretty quickly. they hustled him down the side (his bodyguard is on him like white on rice at pretty much all times, btw, which makes me happy - he's so LITTLE, you guys) and he disappeared. we shoved our way out of the crowd, desperate for coffee, and found ourselves right next to a mob of people clustered around a black escalade, into which one blake lewis was attempting to climb. he took pics with a few people, and then his bodyguard pretty much shoved him into the car, lol. a minute later, tho, the window slides down, and out pops this adorable little face.
it was so cute, you guys. he was just beaming, really feeling the love. seeing him just...being, and becoming? truly joyous. like donna said, i wish i could bottle up that moment. so i can remember it when 2 years from now he's either a) some huge star who'll never be so accessible, or b) been screwed by 19/clive davis/etc and is back in seattle. i kept telling donna and jacqui - they had better not fuck him up. i've seen and heard way too many horror stories about former idols. clay lost his fucking mind, i hear carrie's turned into a massive bitch (she's probably hungry, girl is looking WAY SKINNY), poor bo got handed shitty material and then dropped by the label, even kelly is going through all this bullshit with clive. blake has worked so hard and he's so talented and such a good guy - if he turns hard or mean or crazy or bitter i'll be so, so sad. but he seems well-adjusted and more or less together ("organized chaos" i guess!), so i'm hoping he'll be ok and stay himself. because he? is fucking amazing. ♥[/random moment of rambling concern]
after blake got whisked off, we split on out of there, got some starbucks, and went back to the hotel to collapse for a little while. we poked around on the internet a little bit and rewatched some of jacqui's video footage, then we headed out of the hotel around 11:30. we headed to our separate trains at grand central and i pulled out of there at 12:51. made it back to the train station without incident. stopped at a rest stop on the thruway so i could use their wi-fi to download the mike & juliet performance i'd been hearing everyone rave about; this is how crazy this man makes me. spoke to
bina a couple of times, including calling her to be all "OMG BLAKE HAD ASHTON MICHAEL WITH HIM AT THE KEANE CONCERT!!!1one!" because we appreciate their whole fabulous thing quite a bit.got mildly lost getting back into town, but did in fact make it home in one piece. obviously. flung myself down in the living room and fired up the tivo. saw myself for a second at the edge of the frame and very small. i was really there, y'all! me 'n bshorty, in the same place, breathing the same air. infinate!
sigh.
love.
in conclusion:
(all the pics and soundcheck vids in this entry are courtesy of jacqui.)
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