let's stumble towards success and pack some snacks for little breaks

Man, if you have a chance to see Tim Minchin live, do it. But maybe don't watch all his videos first, because his show is pretty much greatest-hits-of-YouTube. Which is totally fine! He put little twists on all his well-known stuff, and he did play a couple of songs I hadn't heard. And the standup was all new to me. But even if I'd already seen it all, his charisma in person makes his live show immeasurably better than the videos. It probably helped that the audience was so into it--I don't think I've ever seen a more enthusiastic crowd, they gave him three standing ovations.

The venue asked us not to take video, and I mostly didn't? But he started singing "Hallelujah," and after the first chorus with the whole audience singing, I couldn't help recording the rest. But there isn't any actual video, I kept it pointed at the floor so I wouldn't get nabbed by the security dudes. (Speaking of the security dudes, he got two of them to hug each other. It was adorable.)



Mike and I had a blast. Thanks, Mom and Bill! (And now I have the one song he didn't play, "Canvas Bags," stuck in my head because I spent the whole show expecting it.)

Hands-down best moment of being a production assistant for Jonathan Coulton on Friday: carrying one of four cakes in a procession with Jonathan, Paul, and Storm. I think Storm got part of it on video- I hope it makes it onto the DVD. I thought four cakes wasn't going to be enough for the sold-out show, but there was actually quite a bit left over.

For those of you wondering who the heck this Jonathan Coulton guy is, here's his website, and here's an article about him that appeared on the Yahoo! main page on Friday. You may have heard "Code Monkey," "Still Alive" (from Portal), or "Re: Your Brains." He posted a while back about needing PAs for this show, and otherwise_nyc pointed me toward it. He'd already gotten the people he needed by the time I e-mailed him, but he contacted me a few days before the show to see if I was still available. (I wasn't, but I damn well made myself available. You don't pass up something like this.)

Other highlights from the day:

-I stuck a mini-flashlight and a Leatherman in my pocket before I left, figuring they might come in handy. Sure enough, I used both of them within fifteen minutes of stepping inside the theater.
-At one point, Jonathan handed me eight twenty-dollar bills and asked me to get fives. I went to several stores before I managed to break them all, and realized after I had succeeded that the three places I'd gone to were a smoke shop, a liquor store, and a porn theater.
-Part of the concert involved Jonathan playing "Still Alive" on a version of Rock Band that hasn't come out yet, so earlier in the day, I got to hang out with one of the Harmonix people who actually created Rock Band.
-JoCo and Co. failed "Still Alive" at 99% during the show. The Harmonix dude said that that's practically impossible to do.
-When I opened a bag of yellow polypropylene rope to use for blocking off areas for the cameras, I discovered a priceless little booklet entitled, "Proper Use And Care Of Rope." The first page begins, "CAUTION! IMPORTANT ROPE KNOWLEDGE."
-The camera script included some amusing bits, including "***JIB: swivel, scan the audience (wide lens); swoop and hunt, scare people," "The next song is his 'last song' (not really though)," and "Shoot people eating cake." (When I read that last, my immediate reaction was, "Cake AND death!")
-Jonathan thanked his PAs onstage, and several clusters of friends of mine hollered when he said my name. Thanks, guys. :P

Most of what I actually spent my time doing was grunt work- taping down cables, hauling furniture around, fetching things from across the building, etc. But it was fun. I got to watch the camera guys doing their thing, and all the other behind-the-scenes activity necessary for something like this, which was fascinating. Gaff tape is now my bitch, after a lot of trial and error. My muscles certainly got a good workout. Nearly everyone I met was nice and polite and fun to be around, including Jonathan, with whom I got to chat a bit. I got free food, and got to watch the concert for free too. All in all, it was a great experience, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the DVD.

The Strokes (Oct. 1 at Memorial Hall): $30
Muse (Oct. 25 at the Uptown): $32
Kasabian (Oct. 3 in Lawrence): $37
Nickelback and Hoobastank (Sept. 16 at Kemper Arena): $150

I feel like there should be a "priceless" at the end of that list, but that would really only make sense if I'd bought the above tickets, and I haven't... though I'm really, really tempted to spring for Muse. I can't do the Strokes because I'll be in California, and I can't do Kasabian because it's the day after I get back and it's in Lawrence, and the Nickelback tickets are too expensive to seriously consider. But I really love all the Muse I've heard, and trollprincess said they start off their show with "Apocalypse Please," which I think might be worth thirty bucks all on its own. Would anyone be interested in going with me?

EDIT: Apparently the date for the Muse concert was wrong- it's actually September 15 (next Friday) and I don't get paid until next Friday, so it doesn't look like I'll be able to go. Plus, available tickets are more like sixty bucks than thirty. *sigh*

He hates her. Not with the simple, childish loathing he has for Potter that is seamlessly absolute; neither with the subtle, vicious hatred for his father, who is as wonderful and terrible as God; no – his hatred of her burns hot, passionate, flickering and roaring, fed by nothing but disgust for her and all she is and consumed by the need to disobey and rebel from all he is by loving her.

macabresinclair wrote me some KICKASS Ginny/Draco love-hate! Go read!

So yeah, life has been okay. Yesterday I hung around downtown all day. In the hardware store, an old lady (like 80 years old, and about five feet tall) complimented my zipper pants. It was awesome. Then I think I made some Hispanic construction workers nervous by watching them cut open the street. I went to Bizarroworld, and Ground Zero (a skate store with way too much pink to be a skate store), and several bookstores, and a bunch of other places, and on the way back I stopped at the truffle shop. I got an apricot rum truffle, and the shop owner gave me an extra champagne one 'cause he's cool like that, and I stopped to watch this guy Brian teach his dad how to play chess. I played the dad after they were done, but Brian was hovering over his dad's shoulder telling him what to do and the shop owner Sonny was hovering over mine doing exactly the same thing, so really I wasn't the one who won.

Today I went to the old homeschool Park Day, and saw Catherine (along with the twins and Clara), Grace, Rain, and a bunch of other people I hadn't seen in forever. Rain dyed her hair blue-black and started wearing makeup, so I didn't recognize her at first. She's a lot cooler than I remember her being. We did bad things with Wite-Out, and talked about life. She might maybe possibly be moving to Kansas City, which is where her mom lived until age nine. I went with her to watch her ballet lesson (she looks awfully strange in ballet garb) then we hung around downtown again until eight-thirty, when the Davis Musical Theater Company's production of Evita started. We got in for free because there were reporters there and they wanted it to look like lots of people showed up. While we were waiting for the theater to open, this guy handed us flyers for a rock band performance at Cafe Roma. The bands were called The Cheese and Red Tape Apocalypse, so we decided to go check it out during the fifteen-minute intermission. We ran all the way to Cafe Roma, to find a guy with a harmonica singing about love. Clearly, this was not our destination, so we checked the other Roma (Espresso Roma) and found them messing with mikes and stuff. After about five minutes of sitting there, and random noises from the mikes, the band started playing. If you could call it "playing." It sounded like random VERY-high-decibel noise with whale-call imitations mixed in. We left pretty quickly, eardrums literally hurting and headaches forming in our brains, to find that we'd missed a crucial part of the musical. I didn't like the music much anyway, and I don't know the history behind it, but it was still a disappointment. I did get Rain's LJ name, though.

Also, my aunt just e-mailed me, offering to fly me out to New York for Blair's sixteenth birthday party in April. I'll call Mom tomorrow and check, but it should be cool- my class schedule is Tuesday-Thursday and the party's on a Saturday. Yay party!