A few months ago, I saw that Shawn Mendes and Charlie Puth were coming to Pittsburgh in August. I thought this would be a nice “Chooch & Erin are Loose” event because he loves Shawn Mendes and I like Charlie Puth a lot. They were playing PPG Paints arena (#foreverConsol) and the cheapest seats were going for $18.50. Reasonable! Especially since we didn’t care about super close.

If you read my KCON posts, I mentioned in one that I was just a casual Charlie Puth listener until we were in some broad’s Uber in Newark on our way to the convention, and whatever radio station she had on was talking about his current single “Attention,” and how there is a part near the end where his voice sort of cracks/cuts off. They mentioned this because most pop singers would have re-recorded that part, but Charlie opted to keep it because it showcased the emotion he was feeling when he sang that song.

Then they isolated that part for the listeners and I was in tears in the backseat of this stranger’s SUV, and just like that, “Attention” was forever changed for me. It was no longer just a pop song that I heard a lot on several radio stations.

Prior to this, I only knew him from that song he sings with Selena Gomez, “We Don’t Talk Anymore,” which is heartbreaking, too.

Flash forward a month or so. Things were calming down, the G-Dragon show was over, Warped Tour was done, so I figured that I better get those Illuminate tour tickets while I was thinking about it….

….and….

….no, it wasn’t sold out per se….

But there were like NO SEATS LEFT HARDLY. I counted nine of the cheap seats available and none of them were together. And then there were a sprinkling of seats near the stage, but BACK, at an angle, so you would be basically looking at the sides/backs of the performers. Plus, those seats were $65 before all of the fees that Ticketmaster takes in order to pay off the Devil or whatever the fuck it is that they do with that extra shit. Fucking criminals.

I mean, I like both of these singers, but not $65 worth.

So I gently broke this to Chooch who was just like, “Oh that’s fine. As long as you get to go to all YOUR concerts, Mother.”

Ouch.

But I mean, he’s not wrong, lol.

The next day, Henry was all, “Hey Star 100 is giving away Shawn Mendes tickets to caller 10” and I was like, “Cool story bitchboy, but I’m at work, so this is officially your mission.”

And that motherfucker won!

Well, kind of…

He was caller 10 but his piece of shit phone was crackling or something so they hung up.

I was so angry and made sure that everyone at work knew what a deadbeat dad he was.

The next day, I was on late shift so Chooch and I sat in my room, next to the radio, with our fingers ready to dial as soon as they said “caller 10.”

It was around this time that I actually listened to what they were saying on the radio and it wasn’t actual tickets to the concert: it was two passes to a PRESHOW PRIVATE PERFORMANCE with CHARLIE PUTH!

And then out of those winners, one grand prize winner would win tickets to the concert too.

This seemed like a sweet enough deal to me, and even Chooch was like, “Fuck yes, I want this even more than concert tickets!” and for him it’s probably because he weighed his options and a fifteen minute sit-down performance seemed more convenient to his lifestyle than a two hour concert in a big arena.

I have never won SHIT on the radio, so I wasn’t holding my breath. And true to form, it was just busy-busy-busy.

“Oh well, I’m sure they got a winner by now since we’ve been getting a busy signal for the last 5 minutes,” I sighed and by sighed I mean that I punched a hole in the wall and kicked a fucking puppy I’M JUST KIDDING.

It was just one of Chooch’s stuffed animals, and my fist didn’t go through the wall.

This time.

“How do you know it’s busy?” Chooch asked after I called the lady who won a cunt for not even sounding excited when they put her on the radio.

“Because….of the noise it was making? The busy signal?” I said slowly, emphasizing the words in a condescending fashion because that’s just how I do.

“Oh, I didn’t know what that noise meant. I thought it was just a special ring tone,” Chooch shrugged. And yeah, I guess he really wouldn’t know what a busy signal sounds like! Ugh, every new generation gets weirder and weirder.

Meanwhile, Henry was still trying to get through every hour after this since I couldn’t do it once I was at work*, and I even had my mom trying to win for us.

*(I mean, I could but I rarely make personal calls at work so why start now, sorry Chooch.)

An hour after I got to work, Henry texted me and said, “I won.”

Yeah right, I thought. This motherfucker!

“That’s not even funny. Don’t joke about that, Henry,” I texted back.

But he swore that he wasn’t lying. And he wasn’t!

*************

Today was the day of the performance, and we had to be at the Cambria Suites by 1:15 to get checked in. Henry had arranged with the radio station to put it in my name instead of his, since ID was required. He accompanied Chooch and me on our voyage downtown today anyway, and I like to believe it was just as a precaution in case it was still in his name, and not because he was chaperoning us which is what he was clearly doing, ugh.

Just kidding, I was happy he was chaperoning. I didn’t want to be responsible for things like, “How do we get to the Cambria Suites” and “Do I need to feed my kid at some point, or are we good for a few more days?”

We arrived shortly after noon and the Star 100.7 broads told us we could just hang out on the patio until check-in started. So that’s what we did and it would have a lot better if I hadn’t been so fucking anxious and sweaty like I was waiting to see a dentist and not some pop singer who is kind of famous but not all the way famous.

Henry was happy because the patio was right outside of the hotel bar and since we took the trolley downtown, he treated himself to some daydrinking.

I made Chooch take pictures with me because everyone else was taking selfies and being all happy together and I wanted that too, goddammit. He was such a little fucker about it though. I guess he was mad because I made him wear these blue pants that I like but “make him look like a clown.” My days of dressing him are coming to an end.

As it got closer to 1:15, more and more people were rolling up. Mostly soccer mom types escorting their daughters and their friends. One super annoying guy had three little kids with him, so did he win twice?! I was mad because they were one of the last people to arrive and somehow of course made it second in line.

Chooch and I were about 20 people back from the start of the line, so I was satisfied with that. When we signed in (my ID worked thank god, because Henry was cozy at the bar by then), I also signed up for a chance to win a meet & greet with Charlie. My hands were shaking really bad because my nerves know no bounds anymore, so my name was like, “Erin Kell—-”

I shrugged and stuffed it into the box, never thinking about it again because I don’t win things, remember?

So we’re in line, and it’s almost 2pm at this point which is when the performance is about to start, when one of the radio ladies was all, “Hello we’re going to do the drawing now! Unfortunately, there can only be five winners because Charlie really doesn’t have much time.”

Understandable. There were other radio stations also giving away concert perks (I know because we were trying to win everything in hopes of actually scoring tickets in the process) so I didn’t doubt for a second that the guy was busy as fuck.

She starts calling out names.

One of them is “Erin Kell—–” and she shows it to another radio lady who says, “Kelly. Erin Kelly.”

I was only mildly paying attention, more interested in people-watching as usual, when hearing my name snapped me out of it.

“Oh wow that’s me!” I said jovially like some Midwestern mom, and walked away to get my meet and greet passes!

Drunk Henry was sitting fifteen feet away at the bar and didn’t know that I won!

“What was that for?” he texted me.

So I sent him a picture of the pass and he was all, “Oh wait, you won!?”

YEAH I WAS SHOCKED AT MY LUCK TOO HENRY.

I was fucking trembling at this point. I hadn’t let my brain imagine this far ahead. Now I got to actually meet the guy too? Oh god.

“I’m going to ask him if he loves Bambi,” Chooch said, grabbing one of the passes from me. Have I told you yet that Chooch has been calling Drew “Bambi” and then recently also became obsessed with the movie and tried to get us to buy it at Target but I was like, “I’m not paying $25 for a cartoon that gave made me feel suicidal without even knowing it as a child!” I yelled. And then on Friday, after G-Dragon’s birthday festivities died down, Chooch “accidentally” bought it On Demand, and I don’t just mean he rented it for like $6 or something; no that little bastard bought a digital copy of it for $22 so now we own the fucking movie and Henry was originally going to call the cable company and dispute it but then was like, “FUCK IT, IT’S YOURS NOW. BUT YOU’RE GOING TO PAY FOR IT.”

Then he watched it twice on Saturday and sent me all these crying GIFs.

So anyway, his new thing is asking everyone if they love Bambi and it’s so embarrassing. He yelled it into CVS when we walked by last night and the automatic doors opened.

Finally, the door to a small banquet hall-type room was opened and we were all ushered inside. Rows of chairs were lined up. Chooch got the last chair in the second row and I saw behind him. It ended up being perfect because all of the seats in my line of vision were occupied by small children so my view wasn’t obstructed at all.

Before Charlie came out, one of the radio ladies was like, “Does anyone have a question for Charlie that we can ask him when he comes out?” and Chooch immediately sat up straight in his chair and tossed me a devilish look over his shoulder.

“Don’t you even fucking dare!” I hissed and then he thought better of it. YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT.

Anyway, Charlie came out before she even had a chance to finish introducing him because he said he didn’t like introductions and right off the bat, he was so real and down to earth! I loved him even more and was really hoping that it would go this way and not like, “Ugh, let’s get this over with. #obligations”

He talked about Primanti’s, the fact that he didn’t know that Wiz Khalifa is from Pittsburgh until he was on his way here today (he did a song with Wiz and it’s currently the #1 most-viewed video on YouTube, apparently), and congratulated us for having a lot of bridges. Then he was like, “OK let’s do this” and dove right into “We Don’t Talk Anymore.”

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Some lady behind me screamed afterward, and Charlie said, “That was an A,” and demonstrated by pressing down on a key of his keyboard. “That means you’re really high-pitched. You could probably even do a D,” and then he played that key too. “Sorry, that was so nerdy. Now this just sounds like a lecture.” And we all laughed.

I just read recently that he went to Berklee so that gave him some extra cred in my book.

Guys, he sang “Attention next and I was shook.

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And he beat-boxed! I really like this song a lot. Anytime I’m upstairs and I say my jam is on, Henry knows it’s this song because I keep Top 40 radio on in the bedroom and he mumbled once, “It’s the only American song you like right now.”

It’s true.

So he only did those two songs, and some people were bitching about it later; the lady who called Henry with the info for today’s event mentioned that he would only be singing two or three songs, so this wasn’t shocking and I wasn’t disappointed. I was just really glad for this opportunity because he’s pretty well-beyond the whole “intimate venue” stage of his career it seems.

And how are you going to bitch about something that you didn’t even have to pay for? Some Americans are never happy.

Right after, they made everyone who didn’t have the meet and greet passes leave the room. Charlie came back out and we all got to have our picture taken with him.

WHY am I still so awkward at 38?! Chooch and I got up there and even though I was rehearsing things like, “Thank you for doing this for us” and “You sounded wonderful!” all I could say was, “HI YOU’RE AWESOME.”

That’s my fucking socially backward go-to.

Because he doesn’t already know he’s awesome.

Or that this is what his fans think.

He was just like, “Oh, thank you!” and then the radio people took our picture before I was ready and we left.

Then I had the excruciating task of waiting for them to post it to INSTAGRAM. Ugh, fml.

Ugh, whatever. It’s fine. I’ll take it.

I just want to give a shoutout to the Star 100.7 girls who were running the show today. Everyone was so nice and things seemed to go off without a hitch, and they more or less were on time with everything. I don’t involve myself with radio stations very often because none of the music I REALLY like is played on the radio, but I have had bad experiences in the past with DJs from the local alternative station, so I was kind of braced for rudeness. But nope — just a very pleasant experience!

*****

Afterward, we hung around downtown. We had lunch at Noodles in Market Square and then went to Millie’s, where Henry had a bitchbaby moment when Chooch and I each ordered the two flavors he was considering so he did that annoying, “Then I just won’t get any” bullshit sob story. God, call your mom. It’ll back up her theory that I’m an asshole girlfriend! But then he ended up getting a scoop of strawberry. How generic.

(Sike — it’s Millie’s strawberry, so it’s probably amazing and gilded with the sweet kisses of the actual Strawberry Shortcake.)

Chooch had cherry pie and I had blueberry lime graham.

So good. Millie’s is the best ice cream in town. I hope someone brings Charlie Puth a pint after the show tonight!

Henry, with the excuse that he was tired from having three beers and not just that he has a sleeping problem, fell asleep waiting for the trolley.

(I took this picture accidentally, with flash, even.)

Then he fell asleep ON the trolley.

Chooch and I were incredibly slaphappy after a day of meetin’ & greetin’ and ice cream and Henry tripping on a curb at one point downtown, that I straight up peed my pants (JUST A BIT) after we got off the trolley. Chooch knew he had me right where he wanted and kept antagonizing me over and over, making up dumb jokes about Henry that weren’t funny at all but I was fucking delirious so a few more pee drops escaped and then I hit my head off a corner of a wall and couldn’t even talk properly without all of my words coming out slurred and janky from the laughter. I looked like a real Brookliner, you guys. A real fucking druggie weirdo.

Came home and immediately changed my clothes on account of the pee, and then spent the rest of the day watching my Instavids over and over because YOU JUST WANT ATTENTION, YOU DON’T WANT MY HEART, BLAH BLAH BLAH TODAY FUCKING RULED.

The release of the Warped Tour lineup is one of the most anticipated days of the year for me (see also: Someone Needs Friends, a Life, and Hobbies). But I have to be honest, this year’s lineup left much to be desired for me. I was really stoked for Dance Gavin Dance of course, but there was nothing else that really grabbed me, and Warped Tour is not really something you go to just to see thy one band you love play a 30 minute set.

But then last month, I gave the lineup another once-over. I’m. It sure if more bands were added by then or what, but I suddenly saw a bunch of small bands that I somehow missed the first time I looked at it, and the excitement snapped back and hit me like a buckle-laden Ehrbarkeit*.

*(I was reading about German bricklayers, as one does. Sue me.)

It’s been almost two weeks now since our glorious full-day romp under the blazing sun to the surround-sound tune of competing screams and machine-gun drumming, but I would be remiss not to recap the bands we saw because one day when I’m Henry’s age, I’m going to have a muddled mind and need help remembering if we saw Boston Manor or Boston Manners.  Who knows?!

And maybe someone will walk away with a new jam or two after reading this, which is is always my greatest hope. I wish sharing music was my job!

Here’s a rundown of bands we saw (some just partial sets):

• Eternal Boy
• American Authors
• Lakeshore
• Boston Manor
• Microwave
• Silent Planet
• New Year’s Day
• Our Last Night
• Jule Vera
• Hands Like Houses
• Movements
• Courage My Love
• Andy Black
• Attila (NOT BY CHOICE)
• Dance Gavin Dance

Eternal Boy:

Pittsburgh pop-punk veterans. They used to be known as SpacePimps but recently gave themselves a brand makeover. One of the guys, Rishi, is the man responsible for the Pittsburgh-based pop punk Four Chord Festival. I went to the last one and saw Eternal Boy for the first time and was surprised how much I liked them. So I made it a point to check them out again at Warped. They were the first band to play on the Full Sail stage so we got our pop-punk on right away.

They kept talking about their new album Awkward Face, and I was like, “WOW THAT’S SO ME AND YOU, CHOOCH. WE ALWAYS MAKE AWKWARD FACES. HERE, MAKE AN AWKWARD FACE AND I’LL TAKE A PICTURE” and Chooch finally snapped and said, “Oh my GOD, they’re saying Awkward PHASE, not FACE!” and his tone was a glimpse into the future, where I suddenly am phased out and not cool anymore. Ugh.

Anyway, they weren’t as exciting as I remembered them to be, so we moseyed on over to the Journeys Right Foot stage to check out….

American Authors

I mean, I’m not a giant fan, but I know that one song, you know, That Song that is played on the radio and was in a bunch of movies two years ago (probably?). I couldn’t remember the song though and kept telling Henry and Chooch, “No seriously, they have one really popular song and you’ll know it when you hear it, I swear” and they probably thought I meant popular in the Alternative Press sense and not Top 40 radio.

But then finally, for their last song, they invited some peeps on stage from Save Ferris and when the opening notes wafted off into the amphitheater, Chooch was all, “OMG THIS SONG? THIS IS THEIR SONG!?” and even Henry was like, “Oh wow, this song, OK.”

Anyway, it’s this song:

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Which segues perfectly into…

BOSTON MANOR

YEAH BOI. This is the shit I was looking for on this day. Boston Manor is a pop-punk (sort of? but not?) band from Blackpool, England and they’ve been on my “must-see” list for quite some time now. They did NOT disappoint. Energy? Check. Passionate screams? Check. Poignant lyrics? Triple check all the way to Vans tent for a bandanna to sop up your tears. I was so pumped! Even Chooch was like, “I like them! But I’m going to walk around now. Come on, Daddy” because Chooch is what you’d call…a kid? Possibly with ADHD? Who’s not easily impressed? Whatever, let them leave.

Side story: During Boston Manor’s set, there were two older women in front of me. One of them spotted one of the guys from Bad Omens off to the side of the stage. They were performing next, so the whole band was milling about, and these old broads were flipping their shit. They had legit point-and-shoot cameras which they pulled out of their fannypacks, and they were practically stepping on each other trying to take pictures of these guys. I thought this was a bit odd, not that these old ladies couldn’t be down with Separations, but this band is not big at all so it’s not like they were trying to sneak a pic of, I don’t know, Barry Manilow or something.

But then a younger girl wearing steampunk goggles strutted over, and it turns out she was with the old bitches. They were frantically trying to pantomime to her over top of Boston Manor that the guys from Bad Omens were behind the barrier, and she did that snotty girl thing where was like, “WHAT????” with a disgusted look on her face, like the “why are you talking to me in public?” kind of look.

(See also: the Bitch from Milky Way look.)

But then she understood what was going on and became downright FRANTIC. She started looking all around and then marched over to the side of the stage, where she was able to get the attention of one of the Bad Omens guys (I know nothing about this band, although I’m listening to them right now for research, and they kind of sound like Bring Me the Horizon — newer, not old). He came over and let her under the yellow caution tape, where she gave him a bundle of bananas from her backpack and he gave her an appreciate embrace.

So, that happened.

But Boston Manor!! So fucking good.

Lakeshore

We came across Lakeshore randomly as we passed by the Hard Rock stage, and they were pleasant enough to get me to stop. This was also around the time Henry discovered free Slurpees, so we were a bit distracted. But we did chill out for most of their set and at one point, I said something about how they sounded familiar, like something I would have listened to in 2008 or 2010, and Henry said he was thinking the same thing, actually wondering if we had seen them before around that time, and then we were all HAHAHAHA at our symbiotic relationship. How can I put this delicately without sounding like I’m hating on them, because I’m totally not….they had a bland yet pleasing sound that makes it perfect to have on in the background, and it’s interesting enough that you will eventually ask yourself, “I like this—who is it?” and then you realize, “Oh it’s Lakeshore, why can’t I ever remember that??”

Does that make sense?

I thought they were a good fit for Warped Tour, a good palate cleanser — not too pop punk, not too screamo.

Anyway, Chooch was determined to get the singer’s autograph afterward, even though he totally didn’t care about the music at all, because this was around the time he realized that there were areas in the official Warped Tour to get bands’ signatures. So like collecting the signatures of all the characters at Disney World, except in a more violent and dirty environment.

By the time the singer got to the merch booth, Chooch realized that Lakeshore didn’t have a page in the program (only some of the bands did), so he got the dude to just sign the front. He also got their set list. I was like, “Why didn’t the guy just sign the set list?” and Chooch had no answer for me. Henry and I were too busy chilling in the lawn when this was going down. Chooch does shit on his own now, you guys.

Microwave

I was devastated when we missed Microwave at Riot Fest last year (someone was playing at the same time, but I can’t remember who). I got to see the singer do an acoustic set, and that was cool, but I really had started to grow fond of Microwave around that time and was hyped to see them. Finally got my chance at Warped and I was…pretty disappointed. Maybe it was just a bad atmosphere and somewhere like the Smiling Moose would be better?

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Henry was not impressed at all, and I was like, “But no really—-they’re a great band! I swear!” Ugh. They didn’t sound bad, per se, but they just didn’t have that spark that captivated me. I won’t give up on you, Microwave! Next time you’re in Pittsburgh, it’s on.

Silent Planet

They were playing on one of the big Monster stages in the parking lot and Chooch actually expressed interest in checking them out. However, when we got over to their stage, that’s when we saw that Gwar was doing a meet-n-greet, so we got in line for that and Silent Planet became background noise. Sorry, Silent Planet! You seemed good when I was paying attention! Good and screamy!

Jule Vera

Chooch has been clamoring to see this band again ever since he saw them open for Never Shout Never in 2016. Plus, they just put out a new album so we were both stoked to hear some of the new songs live. They unfortunately were playing on the Journeys stage,  but it was luckily still early enough in the day that it wasn’t too crowded in front of the stage — the pit is so small under that amphitheater and it makes it really hard to get up close for some of the bigger bands, which kills me.

I made Henry buy Chooch earplugs since we were so close to the speakers, which are all a billion times more loud on those stages. And also because I wanted to know what it feels like to be a parent who’s on top of things.

(It didn’t feel like anything special really.)

Jule Vera was fun to watch, as usual. Maybe Warped Tour isn’t the best venue for this but I was sad when they didn’t do their crazy collective drum solo, which is incredible to watch. It’s what sold me the night we saw them at Mr. Small’s, and when Henry and I saw them last year at Riot Fest, even he was impressed. And he is not usually moved in the slightest when it comes to bands of any sort. Still, they had a great set and Ainsley’s vocals were on point as usual.

I turned around before they were over, and spotted sleeping in one of the seats behind us, head back and mouth open. HOW?! It was so fucking loud down there!

After they were done, Chooch and Henry ran (OK, Chooch ran and Henry meandered) up the hill to Jule Vera’s merch booth so that he could get them to sign his Warped program. He had already talked to them at the beginning of the day when they were setting up their booth but he didn’t have his program yet, god forbid. While that was happening, I walked over to the other side of the amphitheater for….

Hands Like Houses

These guys are on my forever Can’t Miss list. They are just so beautifully Australian and I especially love the guy up there on the left, whom I have been adoringly referring to as The Tim Curry Guy for the last five or six years because he looks like if Tim Curry was in a band in the 70s ok?! So if you’ve been around for previous Warped Tour posts, chances are you’re already acquainted with these bros from Canberra (which is where I met The Cure in 2000, so these Aussies are dear to my heart).

This was probably my least favorite time seeing them though because I HATE THAT AMPHITHEATER. I know, you get it by now. And there was douchey fuck boy who came barreling through the crowd halfway through their set, pushing me and several other girls out of the way, and bro’d out with his sweaty pits exposed for all to smell. Eventually he bull-dozed his way further into the crowd and I was free to breathe again.

After HLH, this happened:

And Chooch even asked them for a picture all on his own! I guess when he was in line before, it was a signing only, so he snagged them later on when no one else was around.

Movements

Ughhhh! I have been dying to see these guys again ever since Chooch and I saw them a year in Cleveland with Pierce the Veil. I hate comparing them to La Dispute simply because they have that spoken word element, but there are so few bands like this in our scene right now so the comparison is inevitable. Post-hardcore, emo-revival — I don’t care what you call them, just go listen. They are like a breath of fresh air and make me feel like I’m young again, and that everything is worth fighting for, DON’T GIVE UP.

Ugh!!!!!!!!

Henry said they “weren’t bad” which is a solid B in Professor Henry’s Warped Tour Band Grade Book.

I think this is a good song of theirs to share, in light of Chester Bennington’s recent suicide and the topic of depression being on the table again, and it should never be taken off the table because while these things don’t go away, they can be managed and overcome—I struggle with it quietly but never silently, and sometimes the struggle gets loud. And it’s OK to get loud. (Sorry, Henry.)

Please support Movements. This band is going to be huge. They’re going to touch a lot of lives. I love them.

Courage My Love

I can’t tell you how long I have been trying to see this band, but we always pass each other like ships in the night. The singer, Mercedes, used to date Craig Owens (BadxChannels, ex-Chiodos), which is how I first heard of them. I miss them every time they’re at Warped Tour or in town though! This time I made sure they were on my list, and we even got to the Full Sail stage before they started.

Henry thought they were ‘just alright” but I really enjoyed it. Warped Tour is such a fucking sausage party, and it’s definitely been slammed for that in the past, so it’s always nice to see some solid females on these stages. Some of them are just not our speed at all (Chooch and I absolutely couldn’t stand this one British band on the Skullcandy stage with a girl singer, I can’t remember their name but they were ska and just super screechy and annoying). OK I just looked it up for the sake of my fake journalistic tendencies, and they’re called Sonic Boom Six.

MORE LIKE SONIC BOOM SUX, AMIRITE?! OH SNAP.

But no, Courage My Love was beautiful and had a pleasing aesthetic, and a girl drummer who also sings! Tyler from Sworn In came over and sang on one of their songs, and I was observing him afterward, standing in the back corner of the stage, watching Mercedes adoringly to the point where I wondered if they were dating, but after creeping on her Instagram, it appears she’s dating some Canadian guy?

:(

I wanted it to be a Warped Tour romance.

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Afterward, Chooch ran to their merch booth because he had to get her to sign his damn program (I don’t think they were in it though so she signed the front). While he was waiting for Mercedes to come over, I noticed that the singer – Henry – from Boston Manor was just chilling in the middle of the lot, so I coaxed Chooch into getting him to sign his program, because Boston Manor had a page in it. Not-Our-Henry seemed totally stoked to sign this for Chooch. “Your set was awesome,” Chooch said, and Cooler-Than-Our-Henry said, “Aw, thanks buddy!” and he sounded SO HAPPY. Little does he know that I was the one who stood there during their whole set, giving them my undivided attention, while Chooch decided he needed to patrol the grounds for free shit.

But whatever.

What a nice guy! I wanted to buy something from their booth but I was trying to conserve money for our upcoming G-Dragon trip. Ugh, I just want to buy all the records though!!

Meanwhile, Chooch got to meet Mercedes and was all red-faced and nervous about it:

I told him we should start a scrapbook for all his concert memories and he glared at me. Then I glared at myself because what a mom thing to suggest.

Dance Gavin Dance

Finally, the band of the hour! Except that first we had to endure an entire Attila set. They were playing on the other stage and we got to the dumb amphitheater early because we wanted to get a good (enough) spot for DGD since Chooch has never seen them. Suffice to say, this was the furthest back I’ve ever been at a DGD show and I was so sad about it.

But first: an Attila rant. This band is just so shitty, like a next generation Limp Bizkit. All their songs are filled with “suck my fuck”s and the amount of little white girls throwing their fists in their air during these vapid, meaningless hardcore party songs made me feel sick to my stomach, because Fronzilla is the biggest sexist piece of shit motherfucker to walk the grounds of Warped Tour and he deserves zero fame and credibility. This music is what little suburban rich kids listen to in Daddy’s Hummer to feel like a bad ass. Even Chooch was like, “This shit is awful.” I wish Kevin Lyman would stop inviting this worthless band back to Warped Tour, but I guess at the end of the day, it’s all about that cash money.

Also, never forget the time Fronz was on MTV’s Made. 

The meanest thing about Warped Tour is that you only get to see your favorite bands perform for 30 minutes. IT’S CRUEL  And Chooch and I were sharing the role of Goldilocks, trying in vain to find the spot in the amphitheater that was “just right.” This resulted in us getting separated from Henry who was sitting in a seat way up front but in an area where Chooch couldn’t see at all. It was excruciating. I wanted this to be on one of the Monster stages so fucking badly, where we could snuggle into a spot on the side of the stage and feed off the energy of the crowd. Their was no energy to be fed in this scenario! The crowd was weak. People were milling about in front of us the whole time. I wanted to be standing.

But, at the end of the day, Chooch was able to see everything and since it was his first DGD experience, this was all that mattered. When you’re a kid, it’s important to be able to see! And good thing too, because he was dying over Tilian’s slick dance moves.

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So far away! Boo, hiss!

Here is the video for their newest song, please enjoy it thoroughly. It’s got that 1980s yacht rock slow jam sax:

*********

And this concludes my 2017 Warped Tour experience! I’m sad that I missed Beartooth, Separations, Counterparts, Blessthefall, and Being As An Ocean. That’s the downside of Warped Tour: too many great bands playing simultaneously!

The only thing Warped Tour was missing was Emarosa. Sigh – it just didn’t feel like Warped Tour without them, after being spoiled with two consecutive years of them!

Hope someone out there found a band or two to explore. There were a lot of great ones this year!

It wouldn’t be summer around here if I didn’t expound on Warped Tour in at LEAST three separate blog posts. It is quite literally my Christmas in July and I savor this day every single year. EVERY SINGLE YEAR!

We woke up early Friday morning and it was pouring. Not just pouring, but STORMING. And the forecast for the rest of the day looked dismal as well. All clouds and lightning. I sadly (but also excitedly since I still haven’t been able to wear this) tucked my rain poncho into my Bled Fest bag and we went on our way.

At breakfast, dumb Glenn trolled  me a with a text that said “great day for an outdoor concert” and I could imagine sitting at his dumb desk at desk work, looking at three different weather sites at once and laughing sinisterly. I IGNORED THE BAIT.

But then by the time we got to Warped Tour at 11, the skies had turned a bright, beautiful blue and the sun was a’blazing.

“We were promised overcast,” the metalhead guy in front of me sighed, clad in black all the way down to his platform skull-encrusted shit-kickers. So I figured it was safe to finally reply to Glenn’s text with a cheerful, “It really is! Blue skies and sunny!”

Amber told me later that Glenn was so giddy over the original forecast that he wanted our whole group to send me taunting texts!

SUCK IT GLENN!

OK, so this post will be primarily a collection of photos from our day. Chooch is supposedly going to help me with captions SO WE’LL SEE.

Chooch: “It me!”

American Satan is a movie that Andy Biersack from Black Veil Brides is in so Henry and I did a big matchy-matchy eye roll every time we walked past one of the posters. Not huge fans of BVB at all, but I will say that we caught a few minutes of Andy’s solo stage (he goes by Andy Black) and it wasn’t too bad.

Where’s Chooch-o?

Chooch: What are you doing to meeeeee?

I smooshed Chooch’s hair down so it looked more Caesar-esque because it made him look like the singer from Boston Manor but Chooch hates what I like so as soon as I took this picture, he gave his hair a hearty swipe with his sweaty meat paw and totally ruined the look. Chooch is like the Warped Tour Prince, Mr. Been There Done That, Master of Meet-n-Greets, Virtuoso of Racing to the Vans Tent to Get the Free Prize.

Someone from Jule Vera assumed this was his first Warped Tour, which made Chooch scoffingly say, “Um this is my fifth rodeo, partner.”

Or…you know, something like that.

Chooch: What’s Daddy grabbing? Someone’s boob!

Wow, that would be the boob of either a giantress or a circus girl on stilts, son. Or maybe Jeffree Star?!

(OMG I just realized that I don’t think Jeffree Star was at Warped Tour this year!)

While Chooch and I were spectating Lakeshore on the Hard Rock Stage, Henry slipped away into the wilds of Warped Tour. We just shrugged and kept on watching the band because we don’t need Henry.

(OK I TAKE IT BACK WE NEED YOU HENRY PLEASE DON’T LEAVE US.)

A few minutes later, Henry came causally ambling back to us, happily scooping a Slushie into his moustachioed maw.

Chooch and I sang various tunes of “HOW WHAT WHERE WHY? WE WANT! WE WANT!” while Henry just stood there smirking. Finally, he pointed to where the free Slushie truck was set up and Chooch and I were like VROOM VROOM MOTHERFUCKERS, running through the crowd with a mission.

Yeah boiiii!!Free Slurpees all day long! I only had one though. Henry had approximately 15. Henry is really good at making the best of a bad situation. Does he WANT to go to Warped Tour? Hard no. But you better believe he’s going to milk it for all its worth.

Same with Chooch. That little shit was coming back from the Maltesers tent every time I turned around. And hey, speaking of those chocolate balls, they were delicious! I thought they were going to taste like Whoppers, which I strongly dislike, and they SORT OF did but they were coated with the thickest, creamiest chocolate ever and so fucking delicious. ARE THESE IN STORES YET?!

Chooch and Henry played some game in that tent while I was busy, you know, enjoying bands which is the whole point of Warped Tour the last time I checked. Something about moving Maltesers with a straw or something and I guess they lost which is amazing because they both suck so hard!

Chooch: These are better than Malts or whatever they’re called.

WHOPPERS, SON. WHOPPERS.

For the first time ever, there wasn’t a single band on the big stages that we wanted to see (well, there were a few but the schedules overlapped too much with the bands I REALLY wanted to see, so I had to skip Blessthefall, for example). Maybe this is why Warped Tour didn’t really feel as Warped this year. Don’t get it twisted – we still had a great time. But I feel like we spent most of the day under the ampitheater because most of the bands we wanted to see were playing on the two Journeys stages there and that’s my least favorite spot. It’s hard to get close to the stage and the atmosphere is just off. I want all my favorite bands to be playing on the two main stages in the parking lot! UGH.

#WarpedTourProblems

Chooch: You should go to Warped Tour because there’s a lot of stuff you can do! A lot of amazing merch, and amazing bands, there you go. It’s a summary.

Wow, Chooch should do commercials. And also read more books to broaden his weak vocab!

But seriously, the merch just gets better and better. Chooch and I both wanted a Pentagram shirt that said “Hail Seitan, Go Vegan” on it but then I would have felt like a poser because I’m not a full-time vegan, just a regular old vegetarian.

I wish I could encapsulate the sounds and smells of Warped Tour (maybe not the stinky armpits stench though) into a live action snowglobe so that I can enjoy it all year round. It’s my favorite environment. All the stages of stanky bass and gutteral bellows, all the (poor) fashion choices, all the vulgarity from the carny-esque merch slingers—it’s a fucking scene kid dreamscape.

Speaking of scene kids though — I REALLY miss the scene kids from the 2007-2010 era. Gone are the raccoon-haired scene queens and the fluorescent YOLO booty shorts and the crabcore stages and the swoop-y hair on the boys. I miss this! Now it’s mostly just a bunch of regular looking kids with tattoos and piercings but nothing extraordinarily flamboyant.

We noticed that there were a lot more families there this year, which is interesting. There were a lot of older bands on the tour this year, specifically to get the older fans to start coming out again, and I guess it worked. Usually Chooch is one of the few kids out and about but there seemed to be a TON this time. Don’t worry — none of them were as cool as Chooch though.

And here is a random accidental upside photo of body-painted legs.

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Chooch played a Name That Tune-type of game at the Truth tent and was getting super frustrated because he never knew BOTH the name of the song and the band, only just one or the other. I eventually left because Movements was starting on the nearby Full Sail stage, and that’s when Chooch finally got one right: some song by Migos?! I have no idea who this even is, but he won a super sweet t-shirt that has A DONUT ON THE POCKET. I love the Truth tent.

OK, my next Warped Tour post will be about the bands, and then we can close this chapter until next year!

Warning: This blog post is a shit show of typos (probably), gross overuse of exclamatory statements, and a landmine of videos that no one will watch. Please just pretend that you’re reading the blog of a fifteen-year-old and then it will make more sense.

Ahhhh, this was the night I was waiting for! Twice and CNBlue were both performing and I was pinching myself repeatedly because HOW WAS THIS NOT A K-DREAM?

Henry dropped us off at the Prudential Center around the time line-up was beginning. This was one of my few complaints about KCON and maybe it’s more of the Prudential Center, but holy shit was this a clutserfucked disarray of clueless people, Chooch and myself included. The side of the arena we had lined up the night before was completely different so I asked one of the KCON volunteers and he said we needed to be on the opposite side. So we left a perfectly good line and trudged back to the side where Henry had dropped us off, only to find five messy lines full of people who had no clue where they were supposed to be. I know this because I kept asking people if we were in the right line and it was a bunch of undulating question marks, people.

So many confused souls.

Some of the guys from the AT&T tent came over near our line with huge boxes of extra finger heart hats and they started giving them away, so at least we got a small prize for getting in line a million hours early when we had seats. We got one for Henry too who refuses to wear his in public because he knows he can’t pull off that k-look.

Meanwhile, a girl in the next line over noticed my Pierce the Veil shirt and started singing “Yeah Boy & Doll Face” and we lowkey became best friends.  OG PTV fans unite!

We finally got to go inside after having security scream in our faces about what we couldn’t bring in and Chooch was about to lose his shit because like me, he hates being screamed at by authority figures—it doesn’t scare him, it just makes him want to fight. THIS IS SUCH A GOOD TRAIT HE PICKED UP FROM MOMMY.

Once we were safely in our nosebleed seats, we took a selca (selfie for you Americans) to send to Henry who didn’t answer right away because he was probably at a strip club –  LOL JK he was most definitely laying in bed at the hotel, watching lame TV shows on his phone.

One of the first things I noticed when dipping my toe into the Kpop pond was that the audience was always waving some type of glowing wand in every live video I watched, no matter what group it was. That’s when I learned about LIGHT STICKS and how each group has their own design.

I wanted to buy one immediately but then I never did because I honestly never thought I’d be attending any Kpop concerts in the near future—I love when I’m wrong about these kinds of things!

We couldn’t find any light sticks on the first day because we didn’t look hard enough, but by the second day, we got our coveted Awesome Wands! They didn’t have merch for each individual group (aside from some unofficial stuff like pins, etc) so we had to stick with the KCON light stick which was better than nothing! I just wish I had bought a Twice Candybong online beforehand like I was considering.

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On this second night of KCON, we were treated to a tear-jerking violin performance by Jun Curry Ahn (“This is from ‘Goblin’!” I yelled in Chooch’s ear during the rendition of Crush’s “Beautiful” and Chooch just rolled his eyes because he won’t let himself trust-fall into the strong yet cushion-y arms of Korean dramas) who also did a bit of dancing too when he performed his cover of BTS’s “Spring Day.” I loved it! But when I sent Henry the short clip I recorded, he was just like, “OK.” Nothing impresses Henry, except for airplanes, and possibly when he knows the meaning of a moderately large word used on NCIS.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BWeGXtfhLof/?taken-by=ohhonestlyconcerts

The dance group 1Million also performed and Chooch and I were blown away. I want him to learn to dance but he doesn’t seem to understand just yet that being a good dancer gets the girls.

As soon as 1Million was done, the KCON intro started up, getting us all hyper and screaming. I expected Up10tion to come out first, but KCON had a surprise for us! They put together a JYP tribute stage (JYP is one of the labels/agencies in S. Korea) and who rose up from below the stage?

Momo, Nayeon, Mina, and Sana from Twice! They performed part of “Bad Girl Good Girl” by Miss A, and I’m pretty sure the girl behind me had a bloody throat from shrieking. Then they left the stage as Jihyo, Tzuyu, Dahyun, Chaeyoung, and Jeongyeon (Chooch’s and my bias!) came out to sing Wonder Girls’ “Nobody” (I just made Henry do the KpopX workout routine to this song last weekend!) and then my throat joined the throat of the girl behind me in a collective pool of blood:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BVyPh3DBiaP/?taken-by=ohhonestlyconcerts

The JYP special stage ended with all nine of them performing JY Park’s “Honey.”

[Fun crossover-culture fact for my non-kpop people: JY Park (the head of JYP, obv.) has a music video featuring Conan O’Brien and Steven Jeun from “The Walking Dead.” Watch it or not. I’ll never know.]

Now that Twice got us all riled up, the main event was ready to begin with Up10tion completely wowing us with their dance moves and super adorable fan engaging. Chooch was getting all kinds of fashion tips from them (who am I to deny my son of the hot pink blazer he now desperately covets?) while I was feeling the beginning of a new obsession starting.

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THEY WERE REALLY FUN, OK.

And they performed the new song they were talking about at the fan engagement that morning, and I loved it! When the video was finally released a week later, I was so excited and now I will post it here and make you all watch it (no seriously, you have to watch this one):

NCT-127 was next and while I was interested, I wasn’t expecting to get all caught up in the hype. They’re clearly one of the latest “it boy groups” that all the girls are fighting over and even though I watched some of their videos, and even one of their appearances on Weekly Idol (which is how I learned one of them is from Chicago and his name, obviously, is Johnny), I just wasn’t getting caught up in it. One of the kpop dance workouts I do uses their song “Firetruck” and I actually don’t care much for the song but I like the dance routine so it’s one of the ones I do regularly. Well, I’m here to tell you that I now officially love the song and the group because their moxie-level is higher than that dude who sold me iced coffee in an alley head shop. Chooch and I agreed that the boy groups on night two were the best and mostly because of their dancing.

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I get it now, girls. And if I hadn’t gotten it right away, I sure as fuck would have been chugging the kool-aid after they finished their awkward Fortune Wheel and came back to perform CHERRY BOMB. (Again, this was another song that I wasn’t feeling when it was first released, but after those basslines nearly brought the house down, I was fucking sold and have this song playing in my head at least 127 different times a day.)

Because the word “honestly” is in my blog, I feel like I need to be a little negative for just one quick second and admit that I hated their outfits OK MOVING ALONG…

(I mean, their dancing pretty much makes up for their weird Uncle-Rodney-Came-to-Xmas-Dinner-in-1968-Drunk-Again pantsuits.)

OK, what happened next was that Chooch and I were skyrocketed straight up into Kpop heaven. Straight the fuck up, no rest stops, no traffic, no time to fight over the music selection.

BECAUSE IT WAS TIME FOR TWICE!

Sure, we already had a sneak peek earlier in the night with the JYP special stage, but nothing could have prepared us for the aegyo explosion as they performed Signal, Cheer Up, Knock Knock, and motherfucking TT!!!!!

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Oh, stop! Have you ever seen more perfect angels on a stage?!

Chooch and I were sufficiently shocked and awed. After each song, Chooch sat up straight and clapped with the purest sincerity, like he was at the opera, and it was so adorable. He said they were his favorite of the whole weekend and I have to agree — the whole place just exploded with enthusiasm the entire time they were on stage.

For their turn at the Fortune Wheel, they got “photo time” and they made the best of it. HOW ARE THEY SO ADORABLE?! I sent this to Henry and he was like, “Is that all they did the whole time was make cute poses?” and Chooch and I were like IT WAS DURING THE FORTUNE WHEEL, DUMMY.

This guy next to me was there with his wife, I guess, and his expression never changed all night. He never smiled, applauded, laughed—-nothing. He eventually got up and left during Twice and never came back. Some people just weren’t meant to feel joy I guess.

I wish Blake had been there with us — he really likes Twice too! And Henry admitted that he was sort of sad Chooch took his ticket because he was secretly to see Twice. Guys, I make him watch a lot of Twice TV, where they’re out and about being super adorable and funny. We’re all Onces in our house (THAT’S WHAT TWICE FANS CALL THEMSELVES, GET WITH IT).

There’s a video of Tzuyu and Jeongyeon in Times Square during KCON weekend, standing in a crowd and watching a bunch of people do a dance cover of TT – and they went completely unnoticed. I would have died if I turned around and saw them standing behind me!

I have tons of videos from their stages (in kpop world, they will say, “We hope you like our next stage” before starting the next song; these are the things I’m learning on your behalf, you’re welcome), but I will spare you.

I can’t remember now if Up10tion did their special Broadway stage before or after Twice, but in any case, they came out and performed some Abba song from Mama Mia, whatever the song is where they said “honey,” I don’t know musicals. This was adorable though because Up10tion fans are called Honeys! Oh, kpop.

The finale of the whole KCON experience was CNBlue. They’re the most veteran out of the whole lineup, and the only group that’s also an actual band. The lead singer, Yong Hwa, is my favorite Running Man guest! He’s made more guest appearances on the show than anyone else, and he is just a great competitor AND SO NICE TO LOOK AT.

They started off their stage with “Between Us” and I was having heart palpitations.

Yong Hwa gave such good fan service, too! He was all over the stage, taking selfies with audience members’ phones, dancing so prettily – it was a phenomenal performance, and Yong Hwa’s English is so good!

Really, there isn’t anything more I can say other than [INSERT 823981 SUPERLATIVES HERE]. KCON was so dreamy, so jam-packed with fun and amazement and opportunities, and honestly it was just what me and my little family needed. A break from the bullshit, into this surreal world of pop perfection.

During the Goodbye Stage, I started crying (of course) and Chooch started talking about “when we come back next year” and I was like, “OMG ARE WE?!”

“I don’t know, I’m not in charge of that!” Chooch said. Ugh that’s right: Henry is.

I woke up bright and early on day two of KCON and demanded that Henry go down to the lobby and score us breakfast muffins since Chooch and I are pathetic children with little-to-no life skills and depend on our burly manservant to keep us alive.

In other words, I didn’t have my makeup on yet.

When we went downstairs to wait for our Lyft, the lobby was bustling with tour groups preparing for a day in NYC, and I felt a twinge of jealousy.

Originally, we were going to skip the convention on the second day and go to NYC instead since we were so close that we could actually see it from Newark and it was TANTALIZING. But then I ended up scoring that fan engagement for Up10tion on the day we registered, and that was scheduled for 11am on Saturday. We considered going after that, but I started to panic about all the unknowns: the traffic; getting engulfed by the dark underbelly of the city, never to resurface; being seduced by the bright lights and losing all track of time; getting stabbed in Central Park — YOU KNOW, ALL THE NORMAL NYC THINGS.

Plus, none of us have ever been to NYC (I’ve only been to JFK and LaGuardia airports, which don’t count) and would a few hours on a Saturday afternoon truly be enough to satiate the naive tourists in us? So we decided that we would come back another time, when we have nothing else to do, and can devote a whole weekend to shuffling around in fanny packs and sun visors.

Alas, our Lyft driver rolled up around 9:45 and Henry started tersely whispering, “Sit in the front. Erin, sit in the front. Please sit in the front.” And then as I slid into the backseat next to Chooch, “Fuck you.”

I guess he felt uncomfortable sitting in the passenger seat next to the young girl driver? Lol.

Chooch and I both preferred Friday’s Lyft driver over this one. Friday’s was super talkative, but Saturday’s was very stiff and quiet. She had vinyl stickers all over her car, begging for a five-star rating. Girl, Jessica Simpson was playing on your radio when we got in the car. No 5 stars for you.

This reminds me: the Lyft driver from KCON day one had on some Top 40 radio station from NYC and the DJs were talking about Charlie Puth, how in his latest song “Attention,” there is a part where his voice cracks a little, and how most pop singers would have been like, “I need to re-record this part” but Charlie was like, “No, keep it. This is real and my emotions caused this” or whatever. I’ve heard that song several times prior to this but never noticed the part they were talking about until they played it and isolated the exact word where his voice kind of turns into a whisper and it gave me actual chills. Now I have much more appreciation for Charlie Puth and have listened to that song a million times since that day because it moves me to tears.

I will always think of riding in the backseat of Lyft Driver Carolina’s car, past the Newark airport and into the industrial section of Newark, every time I hear this song.

The second day of the convention was mostly the same, but with different panels and fan engagements. We hit up all the booths again, filling up on more free samples, and this time we managed to get Henry in on the Drama Fever action. We chose the Goblin background this time but it was dumb with three of us because the whole point is that you’re supposed to wear a red scarf and then stand facing to the right with your arm outstretched so it looks like you’re pointing at the Goblin’s sword BUT WHATEVER IT’S FINE.

Every single person in line in front of us won at the wheel spinning thing so we had a feeling that we were about to kill the streak. Plus, the people remembered my Instagram name and I think they were like, “OH SHIT, CAN’T HAVE A DOUBLE WINNER!” so we lost, UGH. I was hoping to win a Twice fan engagement but WHATEVER IT’S FINE I’LL LIVE.

:(

We should have posted the picture on Chooch’s Instagram instead. I’m so stupid.

Aeound 10:30, I made my way to the area where the fan engagement lines were. Since I was just in the basic no hi-touch audience for this one, I felt much less stress. That is, until the boy in front of me dipped under the yellow queue tape because there was literally no one line so I followed suit AND WHO IS THE ONE WHO GOT YELLED AT? ME! THE SHEEP!

Ugh, that’s the second time I got scolded at one of these damn things! I will try harder to stand up straight and be a perfect Pollyanna rule abider next time! God I felt like such a dick! But then I also had rage because hello THAT GUY DID IT FIRST, yell at him, too. :(

But the next security person I encountered totally made up for it — she was such a character and really made the most of her job of checking our fan engagement tickets and clicking her little people-counter thing by interacting with us, dancing, and just being a damn fool. The girl several people in front of me apparently had a hi-touch card and the security lady was all, “OOOH SHIT GIRL, you in the WRONG LINE! You better get your butt over there so you can touch your cute little Korean boys!” and then she made sure the other security people let the girl into the correct line. It was so nice of her!

I loved that lady. Why couldn’t they all be as nice as her? :(

This time, I was smart and left my purse with Henry so that I didn’t get all held up in that fucking bag-check fuckarow again, although it seemed like they had sorted out the system by Saturday and the lines were moving pretty smoothly.

Similarly to KNK, I didn’t know much about Up10tion but these fan engagements really make it impossible to not fall in love with the groups, regardless of how well you know them. Kevin Woo was the MC for this one and they jokingly asked him to be their 10th member, since one of the guys left, taking them down to a nine-member group and making their name awkward. (Kevin Woo used to be in the kpop group U-Kiss, in case you didn’t know, but now he’s the host of an English kpop show in Seoul called After School Club. Now you know.)

Up10tion said that they were going to debut their new song “Runner” at the show that night, and then one of them sang a quick verse and I knew I was going to like it. Then some older woman in front of me farted, which was already horrible, but another woman was fanning herself with one of the cardboard fans that 7397498274 booths were handing out, and in the process she was essentially volleying the other lady’s fart right into my face at break-neck speeds. It was like fart-concentrate, not having the chance to disperse on its way to my nostrils. I was straight up gagging, you guys. Straight up gagging.

Even with the farts and scoldings for fake line-jumping, the Up10tion fan engagement was worth it. It was similar to KNK’s, in that there was a brief and language-barrier’d Q&A session, and then they also played charades (the audience’s category choice was overwhelmingly “animals” which was not my pick — I was in the minority who wanted them to act out kpop songs, but whatever). Super fucking fun though, especially watching their awkward display of aegyo.

(I’m obsessed with aegyo. I wish Henry more of it.)

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Meanwhile, Henry and Chooch were across the street in the other part of the convention that had all of the food and kpop vendors, but more importantly: the large, air-conditioned Amazon Mobile Masters tent. Chooch pretty much camped out in there and it was soooo boring to me. However, while I was in my fan engagement, Chooch got involved in some contest inside. There was an area with a bunch of Amazon Fires set up, and every so many hours there was a new game challenge going on. From 10-12, it was Crossy Roads. Chooch loves that game, and the top 3 high scores won prizes. First places got an Amazon Fire, and Chooch was determined to win. By the time I made my way over there, he had the current high score with 30 minutes left.

He was stalking that area like a cat looking for a mouse. All the Amazon volunteers thought it was hilarious and kept teasing him. “That guy’s coming close to beating your score, you want me to kick him?” one of them jokingly said to Chooch who looked like he was about to chew through his lip.

He was making me nervous with his pacing, so Henry and I went outside to look at all of the things he wouldn’t let me buy because I’m not a 16-year-old with a locker to decorate, UGH. However, I did buy a Twice pin at one of the booths, because they were raffling off a Twice Candybong (that’s what Twice’s light sticks are called,  I TEACH YOU SO MUCH!) and in order to enter, all you had to do was purchase one Twice-related item from their booth. I had my eye on the Twice zombie pin anyway, so I gladly bought it. The girl at the booth told me that I just had to put down my contact info on a clipboard after some other girl was finished with it, so I was standing there patiently when some fucking pushy dickhead guy came barreling through the crowd and said, “I WANT TO ENTER TOO” and started PULLING THE CLIPBOARD from the girl while she was still writing, I couldn’t even believe his audacity, maybe because I wasn’t raised to have total disregard for those around me, and it always blows my mind when I witness this kind of ME ME ME I WANT IT NOW behavior. It was the only disheartening moment of all of KCON, fan-wise, which I guess is a good thing. Most people were super chill and not pushy assholes at all.

“You have to buy something from this booth in order to enter,” I said, but he completely ignored me and went right on scribbling his shitty info down.

“He’s going to be the one who wins, too,” I cried to Henry afterward, who asked if I said something to the girl at the booth, but NO I DIDN’T because I’m tired of always being the fucking tattle-tale in life. I didn’t want some pointless confrontation to sully my experience at KCON so I chose to move on with my Twice pin shining brightly on my shorts next to G-Dragon. <3

(Spoiler: I didn’t win the Candybong.)

Back inside the Amazon tent, things were heating up. Chooch made frenemies with some guy who didn’t care about the challenge until he found out what the prizes were, and then he came close to beating Chooch’s score while Chooch was nervously hulking around, wringing his hands and dabbing his brow.

One of the Amazon guys came over and asked, “He yours?” and then started cracking up when I said sighed. Chooch won over all the Amazon people in there and I feel like they were would have been just as sad as Chooch if he lost.

Butttttt, he doesn’t lose. Because he’s freaking Good Luck Chooch. So then we had to stick around while the brat was presented with his Fire and got his picture taken in the Winner’s Chair.

Maybe I should have entered that Candybong raffle in Chooch’s name. :(

“I’m glad I came in first and not second because that prize was an Echo, and I already won one of those yesterday,” Chooch said with a wave of his hand, like the Echo was quite literally yesterday’s news. I can’t believe this kid and his luck.

I drowned my bitterness in a piping hot cup of ttkeokbokki after that and all was right in the world again.

Then after lunch, we were walking past the convention stage and the I Love K-Food people were there, tossing some of their products out into the crowd. OF COURSE Chooch’s grubby hand shot up and snatched the very last thing of ramen that was chucked.

Ugh.

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This video is actually from the first day, I think, but I can’t stress enough how much fun I had watching people dance. The dancing is really what drew me into kpop in the first place, because the exercise routines I do adapt a lot of moves from the music videos and incorporate it into the aerobics. I have very little rhythm and fail miserably anytime I try to learn legit choreography, but this method works for me. I wish I could do the official dances though! I’ll keep trying and hoping that it clicks.

After milling about for another hour or so, we decided to leave so that Chooch and I wouldn’t be totally drained at the concert later, like we had been the night before. That’s a lot of time under the sun. We wanted to get ice cream, anyway, and I can’t believe that there were no stands at KCON serving patbingsoo, or any type of bingsoo for that matter! What a disservice to the KCON patrons!

This was the line for one of the fan engagements as we were leaving.

We took a Lyft back to the hotel and grabbed our car. I found a place on my least favorite app, Yelp, called Nasto’s. It was supposed to be a classic establishment in Newark but I was more interested in going because of the name.

It turned out to be a good choice because they had a thing I’ve never heard of called tartufo – I had the peanut butter version and it was AMAZING. Like a large ice cream version of a buckeye.

Are buckeyes regional? I don’t know, but my Grandma Kelly used to make them all the time when I was a kid and they were the best buckeyes I’ve ever had. Literally just a small nug of PB coated with glorious chocolate. The best. So this was like an inflated one of those, with a delicious mound of vanilla ice cream underneath that cap of chocolate, with ribbons of sweet-ass peanut butter swirling through it like candied veins. Ugh, it was so good that Chooch immediately ordered one too after just seeing mine.

Henry got a scoop of cannoli and something else that he can’t remember because he’s lame. I feel like we were not getting along around this time for some reason and it probably had nothing to do with the fact that I needed a nap.

Copying me.

I consulted Roadside America for some adventure ideas but almost everything was in NYC. I did find some type of cemetery that had like, tunnels in it or something, that wasn’t too far away. Henry was so angry because we ended up having to go over some toll bridge, and then I started flipping out because I looked to the right and the Statue of Liberty was RIGHT THERE, like very close, and I am seriously terrified of the Statue of Liberty, to the point where I’m pretty certain I will never be able to tour it like a true American and that’s something that I will have to carry with me on my own, OK, so don’t try to reason with me!

But then NYC was right there too, a stone’s throw away, and Chooch was freaking out because he wanted to go so badly and I did too (mostly because there are 58 different ice cream places over there on my list) but there was just no way we could swing it. And then the cemetery we were looking for turned out to be super small with no parking and some type of festival/farmers market was happening so we were like FUCK THIS and went back to the hotel to get some rest before the concert, and by “get some rest,” I mean that Chooch and I went to the fitness room and proceeded to sweat our asses off like maniacs training for the Giddy Olympics while Henry went to Subway to get us dinner.

Only one more part left to go of the KCON saga. OMG, can you manage to trudge through to the end?!

This was taken before the show started, which is why there are so many empty seats. 

When Twice and CNBlue were announced as two of the groups performing at this year’s KCON, Henry knew there was no way  out of it. My love for Twice knows no bounds and Yong Hwa, the lead singer of CNBlue, is one of my favorite Running Man guest stars. Those two groups alone were worth it to me.

When we bought our tickets, it was just me and Henry going but then at the last minute, Chooch decided he wanted to go as well. Tickets for the concert were pretty steep, and not only that but if we bought a third ticket, someone would have to sit alone. Henry the Martyr gave up his ticket so that Chooch could experience the awe and majesty that is Kpop live.

Henry did admit though that he was a bit sad about it because he had some curiosity of what it was going to be like. It’s not everyday you get to see Kpop groups perform live in the States. It’s not like skipping a Dave Matthews Band concert because you know you can just see them again next year. With Kpop, YOU NEVER KNOW!

Concert entry line-up started around 6 so Henry reminded us not to talk to strangers and then peaced out back to the hotel.  It took over an hour for us to get inside the Prudential Center, even with all the specific lines that were designated for each ticket tier. I wasn’t too concerned though because we had seats so it’s not like we needed to be OMG First. (I still had a little bit of that urgency bubbling up inside me though, ugh.)

Security was especially dickish at this place, screaming at everyone in line and mocking the people who were told to throw out all the food samples they were given at the convention. We’re talking full-sized packages of Korean snacks, you guys. Bowls of instant ramen, pitched. People were arguing that it was stuff given to them from convention booths but security gave no fucks and pointed out the garbage cans. I was thankful that Henry took all of our stuff back to the hotel with him, because we had A LOT of food in our bags.

Chooch was really angry about this and I told him blogging about it might be a good exercise of stress relief but then he was like “Wow, suddenly I’m not mad anymore, bye.”

As soon as we made it through security, Chooch wanted a $7 soft pretzel.

“This is why they don’t want you bringing food in here,” I said sadly, withdrawing from Chooch’s college fund.

The tickets I bought were the second cheapest being offered. They went on sale after I sold my soul for G-Dragon tickets, so I’m lucky I was able to buy tickets AT ALL. We were in the nosebleed section for sure, but there was still somehow one level higher than us. It was so steep and scary.

“Well, I guess we won’t be standing during this one,” I laughed, gripping onto the backs of the seats as we slowly shuffled down the row to our designated spots, but Chooch was like THANK GOD because he hates standing at shows.

There was a preshow, hosted by Kevin Woo. We got to watch people win flights to Korea, ugh. The one girl was all, “I want to go to M Countdown and hopefully see BTS….again!” and Chooch and I were puking in our hands. The Olympic committee guys were there again and everyone applauded them loudly — I loved all the Olympic spirit that was happening at KCON! I usually don’t like the winter Olympics (Summer all the way) but obviously I’m super stoked for these ones.

The concert started promptly at 7:30, with KNK! I TOUCHED THEM! I kept reminding Chooch, who was like, “I KNOW, I GET IT!”

The screaming could have been unbearable, but I was SO INTO the whole atmosphere of this thing, that it was only making me incredibly giddy! I couldn’t believe that I was getting to see all of these amazingly beautiful kpop groups perform live, outside of YouTube!

KNK was so great, as expected. They only performed three songs, because the whole purpose of this concert was that it was supposed to be like the Korean weekly music show, M Countdown, where current popular artists come on and perform their chart-toppers. So it’s more like a sampling rather than a full set, and we were totally OK with that. The set-up was perfect for someone like Chooch, with a short and stubby attention span.

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Chooch has no opinion of KNK and said that he can’t keep KNK, Up10tion, and SF9 apart.

Next, Yuju from Gfriend and Dongwoon from Highlight came out and performed Beauty & the Beast, in a special nod to Broadway. I would be lying if I said I didn’t cry during this, and we all know by now that I might be a terrible person, but a liar I’m not. (I mean, look how often my honesty gets me in trouble.)

What I really loved about this part of the concert is that it highlighted (lol) the sickeningly beautiful voices of kpop idols that often get overshadowed by the choreography-heavy stage performances. When it’s all stripped down like this, their voices are able to shine and it’s a great reminder that not only are kpop stars beautiful and sick dancers, but they can fucking sang, y’all.

Chooch: “One of the only Beauty & the Beast songs I know, and it was so sweet.”

The next group to perform was SF9 and I barely knew anything about them, but based on the reaction of the crowd, these boys are way more popular than I realized. The girl in front of me threw her head back in such robust ecstasy that I thought she was going to break my shin bone thing.

They were so freaking good!!

https://instagram.com/p/BV-9osnBNqu/

So the Fortune Wheel was bizarre. SF9 performed like two songs and then stopped to give their obligatory fan service, which just so happened to be “spinning” the Fortune Wheel.  Chooch and I were like “dafuq is happening right now” because these are not things that happen at the shows we’re accustomed to! But it turned out to be pretty entertaining and we got to see the personalities of the group members really shine outside of their tightly choreographed performances. It was slightly awkward because they were speaking 99% in Korean and we had to try and read the subtitles on the screens, which were in LIGHT BLUE FONT.

Anyway, they chose some basic brunette named Paige in the front of the P1 stage area and then two of them proposed to her and it was so dumb but also slightly adorable and she was like kind of crying and swooning through the whole thing, but then couldn’t pick which proposal was better so she picked all of them, what a cop-out. This song-and-dance went on FOREVER when all we really wanted was ACTUAL SONG-AND-DANCE. GIVE US THE SONG-AND-DANCE. Fuck Paige in P1!

Chooch: “God, they took so long with that, it was basically all that and no concert!”

Here is the best SF9 song, in my opinion. Also, SF stands for Sensational Feeling, lol.

Next up, finally, was Gfriend! I only know of them through Sarahkpop, one of my go-to kpop dance workout channels on YouTube. One of the first kpop routine of hers that I did was to a GFriend song, almost two years ago. Admittedly though, the only song I was really anticipating was “Fingertip,” which is their current hit.

I felt that out of all the groups, they were the most awkward when doing the standard introductions. Yerin was unable to be there due to “scheduling conflicts” which is confusing to me because if your actual job is being in a kpop idol group, shouldn’t your schedule be the same as the schedules of the other members? But what do I know!

Of course, when they performed “Fingertip,” everyone went nuts. Chooch said they were his favorite of the whole night and gee, I can’t imagine why.

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I thought they were fun, but they were missing the charisma that seems more prevalent in girl groups like Twice, Red Velvet, SNSD, etc. Maybe I need to watch more of their variety show appearances, though, before I start judging.

Chooch: “They were very shy and like, nervous I guess?”

OK, the next act was someone I was really anticipating: Zion.T! He’s collaborated with G-Dragon in the past, and I just really love his R&B style. There aren’t many solo Korean artists that stand out to me, but he is for sure someone who doesn’t need the support of a idol group. He can command a stage all on his own, without choreography even! Oh man, I thought he was so smooth and totally enjoyable. Henry doesn’t like him because he’s been on Infinite Challenge in the past and Henry thinks he looks like a jerk. #jealous

Anyway, he came out behind a piano and did a few lines from “Complex” and I thought I was going to faint. If G-Dragon had walked out for his part, I probably would be writing this from some Newark mental hospital right now.

Chooch: “He was good, I don’t know.”

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The headliners of night one was Highlight, and I was very curious about this one. So a quick background: they were originally known as BEAST, and they were very popular. One of the guys in Beast, Hyunseung, was actually in the running to be a member of BIGBANG back before they debuted in 2006, but he was eliminated in the end in favor of Seungri (I literally can’t imagine BIGBANG without Seungri and it gives me a stomachache every time I think about how close he was to not being in the group). Hyunseung went on to join another agency, and then became one of the original members of Beast. Anyway, he eventually left to pursue a solo career a few years back, and the rest of Beast recently re-debuted as Highlight. There was a lot of criticism when this happen – it seemed like fans really hated the name and wanted them to just remain as Beast. I don’t know, none of this affected me at all.

Chooch: “Highlight was good, my ear drums exploded, but that’s OK.”

They had such great stage presence and energy! The girls around us were fucking screaming their throats raw. I thought the girls behind me were 13, but I turned around at one point and saw that they were definitely in their mid-to-late 20s and it just made it even better. Kpop inspires mass hysteria, you guys! Chooch’s eyes kept bugging out because of the surround sound shrieks he had to endure all night.

Highlight also did the Fortune Wheel, but theirs was short n’ sweet – they just had to take a selfie. 

https://instagram.com/p/BWIYm4kB9MS/

At the end of the night, all of the artists were introduced again for the goodbye stage and I legit shed some tears.  The whole night, I just kept thinking, “I can’t believe I’m here! I can’t believe I’m seeing this!” Kpop has really turned my life around, as ridiculous as that sounds, and I was just so full of life in tha moment….

….but also really fucking tired.  Chooch and I screamed and applauded until the very last group left the stage, but we were beat, man. Having been outside in the sun-sizzle from 8:30am-7:00pm really took a toll on us and Chooch was close to full-fledged slumber during Zion.T, I think. 

Our Lyft driver Papa H was waiting for us outside and after failing to find an easily accessible place to eat, we ended up eating at the questionable restaurant in our hotel, where I had a veggie wrap stuffed with an entire bag of veggies from the freezer section (crinkle cut carrits, squash, and zucchini — not wrap-appropriate vegetables!). Chooch and I had to fight to keep from nodding off while Henry was wide awake having slept all night while we were in the concert, ugh. 

Day 1 was just too exciting! I couldn’t wait to wake up and do it all over again. MORE LATER!

Now that I have had a few days to rest and reflect upon my time at KCON….I still don’t feel like I can accurately recount it here. It was all such a fantastic, surreal blur.

It was almost perfect. As with most festivals and conventions, there were definitely some kinks and quirks that could be tweaked, but overall my experience was pretty freaking phenomenal.

I guess now would be the time in the blog post where I consider that perhaps not everyone reading this knows what KCON is. WELL LET ME TELL YOU! It’s a huge 2-day convention in Newark, NJ for not just Kpop, but all things Hallyu: food, culture, beauty, travel — if your heart aches for Korea, then this is the convention for you. There’s also a KCON in LA, Paris, Japan, and Mexico. It’s a lifestyle, you guys. I feel like with Kpop, you either: don’t know about it, don’t like it, or FUCKING THRIVE ON IT LIKE IF OXYGEN HAD A BEAT TO IT. I somehow was able to last for more than a year being just a casual listener before it finally sunk its candy vampire teeth into my jugular and turned me into a Koreaboo of the Night.

In addition to the convention, there is also a huge concert inside the Prudential Center both nights, with nine groups performing in total. I’m not going to lie: tickets were expensive. I already gave G-Dragon half of my vital organs & monthly salary for VIP tickets to his upcoming concert, so nosebleed seats at KCON it is!

Before we left the hotel Friday morning, I made sure we each had on a BIGBANG pin: G-Dragon for me (natch), T.O.P. for Chooch, and Taeyang for Henry “I Don’t Wear Jewelry” Robbins. Taeyang was removed immediately after the above photo was captured.

:(

Whatever – Chooch and I were stoked.

Actually, Chooch had no clue what he was getting himself into, but he pretty much will go along with anything.

Since we registered early, there wasn’t much of a rush for us to get there before 10am, but then I got an alert saying that SF9 was appearing on the small convention stage outside in 20 minutes so I rushed them out of the hotel and into the Lyft that conveniently arrived 2 minutes after Henry ordered it. Our Lyft driver got us to the Prudential Center in no time, after trying in vain to make conversation with Tight-Lipped Hank (“What’s going on at the Prudential Center?” “A convention.”). My favorite part was when she rapidly flipped radio stations when the morning radio DJs started talking about large penises. We all started cracking up and Chooch decided she was the best Lyft driver ever and was mad that Henry didn’t try to request her the next day.

The convention technically wasn’t even open yet, but the stage was in a “free zone” where literally any hobo could slither on up and spectate without a wristband. There was some promotional video being filmed with SF9, hence the KCON text alert, so we stood there and watched the awkwardness. The text said they would be dancing, but they only did a quick 10 second thing for the video and Henry was all REALLY WE RUSHED HERE FOR THAT?!

Then we walked around Newark and ate breakfast at some weird Greek place where I had a $4 fruit salad that was actually not too bad except it had a ton of grapes and I’m weird with grapes. Sometimes they make my tongue feel strange, OK?! But the pineapple and watermelon made up for it. I was trying to keep my breakfast light because I wanted to eat so much Korean food all day long. (Spoiler alert: I did not eat Korean food all day long because it was hot as fuck out there and the sun boiled my appetite right off my body.)

We got back to the Prudential Center around 10 and there was a HUGE line to get into the PyeongChang Winter Olympic section of the convention, which was in a separate lot and required wristbands to be scanned in and bags searched. It’s also where all the panels were taking place and there weren’t any I was super interested in, so we checked out the portion of the convention that didn’t require any checking in – the main drag that was loaded with all the good booths, like the Toyota tent where all the dance-offs were happening throughout the day, the InnisFree tent (BEAUTY PRODUCTS FROM JEJU ISLAND, YES PLEASE) and DramaFever which is where Henry and I watch all of our K-Drama (premium subscription up in here).

I decided that this inaugural post will focus on the first cool thing that happened to me at KCON. But let me back this bitch up first. I’m still a big Kpop n00b so I’ve been learning a lot about all the quirks and nuances that go along with being a part of fan groups, etc. Most of this knowledge comes from watching vlogs on YouTube.  Yeah, I know, am I really even 37 years old. Anyway, I watch a ton of these things because Kpop is fascinating, the fans are nuts (mostly in good ways) and the lifestyle is just….well, it’s a lifestyle. So what I learned a while back through my research is that there are these things at kpop concerts and conventions called “hi-touches” where fans literally line up to gently touch hands with a kpop group. And at KCON, there are different levels of tickets you can purchase, the two highest ones come with hi-touch “guarantees.” But for the rest of us plebs, we got actually scratch-offs when we registered to determine if we would get the opportunity to participate in any of these fan engagements. For Chooch and me, we only got the chance to win the chance to be in the audience to watch OTHER people engage in the hi-touch. That’s how I won the opportunity to be in the audience during Up10tion’s fan engagement, but that wouldn’t be until day 2 of the convention.

I was happy for any opportunity, to be honest, because I was a KCON virgin and wanted to do as much as I could!

HOWEVER.

Chooch and I visited the DramaFever booth because we saw they were giving away prizes and taking pictures, and my face hadn’t yet turned into a two day old Thanksgiving glazed ham left out in the beating sun, so I was trying to get these photo ops in the bag as soon as possible.

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I didn’t even hesitate to throw on the red scarf because Goblin is my favorite K-drama!

After having our picture taken, I had to post it on Instagram with whatever the hashtag was and then DramaFever would let you participate in their game, which was like a slot machine game and if you got three matches (of the picture you tagged on IG), then you won whatever prize was listed on the screen. I wasn’t expecting to win because I don’t usually win these types of things, but we did and it was a Fan Engagement! I figured it was probably going to be another audience thing for Up10tion since they were pretty much the  newest, littlest-known group there that weekend, but no!

I GOT A FREAKING HI-TOUCH!

FOR KNK!

OK, so KNK isn’t really huge or anything yet either but I at least knew several of their songs so I was really excited for this experience!

Of course, Chooch was all butt-hurt because he felt like he won just as much as I did but I was the one who got the prize. So the DramaFever people took pity on him and let him choose a consultation prize.

He chose a Goblin fan. <3

I was so excited that I got this Hi-Touch that I even texted Todd a picture of it, because we were talking about it one day at work and he just thought it was the dumbest/crazies concept – like, you don’t even get to say anything to these people, that’s how quickly you’re herded past them like starstruck cattle. Even Todd thought this was exciting though!

About 15 minutes after winning it, I had the thought to maybe check and see when this thing was even happening, because the card had no info on it. I found a schedule for the fan engagements on KCON’s instagram and realized that it was going to happen in 30 minutes. Yikes. I found a long line that wrapped around one side of the Prudential Center, and determined it was the right line after asking several girls if it was the KNK Hi-Touch line. Henry and Chooch were like, “OK great have fun bye” and wandered off to check out more booths, leaving me with all these giddy girls in their late teens/early 20s; most of them had hand-made signs too, some were even written in Hangul. You don’t see this shit at Warped Tour, you guys.

While I was in line, I started to fixate on my hands.

My gross, grimy American grabbers. My moist, sweat-slick paws. My clammy, pig-swelled human hocks that were about to touch super-fine Korean hands that were probably lotioned and powdered with the magical secretions of Seoul and then preserved in silk gloves before it was time to meet the fans. Why didn’t I try to find a trough to wash my meatfists in, or just lop them off altogether….UGH WHAT TO DO!

Then the line started to move and I had no choice but to walk it out.

There were numerous checkpoints where we had to show our Hi-Touch proof to staff members. The worst part was once we got through the doors of the Prudential Center where the real security checkpoint was happening. It was such a K-cluster. First, we had to place our bags down on a table and then move ahead to get security-wanded, which was fine except that people behind me started purposely putting their bags in front of mine and the two girls who were in front of me, so that after they got wanded down, their bags were already checked and good to go!

The other girls just stood there meekly, not speaking up, but I was all, “OH FUCK NO” and pointed this out to the security lady who was half-assedly rummaging through the bags with her plastic stick.

“Aw hell nah,” she sighed, and then yelled over her shoulder to the lady at the other table, “SEE? I done TOLD you this wasn’t going to fucking WORK!” and then she started yelling at the other bitches in line to slow their roll while she finally searched my shiny pink laser gun purse and the purses of the other girls next to me who were practically in tears by this point.

Ugh it was so annoying! Kpop fans are mostly cool but not when it comes time to Hi-Touch a motherfucker. Christ.

Anyway, once this was over with, I walked into a dark gymnasium-type room. There were bleachers on one side, so I guess it was some kind of auxiliary arena within the Prudential Center? Looked like a basketball thing. But what do I know. There was a small stage set up at the end and another checkpoint next to a small barricade, which was meant to separate the audience from the people who won the hi-touch.

Immediately, I did not fit in. At all. Everyone was so young and scream-y and holding up their handmade foam signs and I was just like, “WHO EVEN AM I ANYMORE?” but you guys, it was pretty fucking incredible. Even though I was just “eh” about KNK, it was impossible to not get swept up in the mania of it all. So when a cameraman was panning his camera across the crowd, I screamed my fucking face off along with everyone else.

Also — there were commercials playing on a small screen on the stage and Kwang-soo and Ha Ha from Running Man were in one so my heart got all warm and fluttery like butterflies were fornicating in one of the chambers. It was just really exciting to be around all these things that I love, outside of my house!

And then Daniel Lim came out to get us all stoked, and this was how I learned that KNK’s fans are called Tinkerbells, so that was something.

What I remember most from this fan engagement was SCREAMING.

Just tons and tons of screaming.

No—shrieking. And wailing. And flailing.

Bitches were in stitches over the KNK sighting.

There was a short (and awkward thanks to the language barrier) Q&A session, mostly things like, “How do you like New York?” and “What is your favorite American food?” Dude on the end said Big Macs because that’s the only American food he’s had, and the second guy said “hot dog” and then mimed the eating of a hot dog. It was pretty fucking adorable, I’m not going to lie, and I felt myself falling in love with them with the quickness.

Then they played a quick round of charades which was super cute. The audience chose “Kpop groups” as the category so the guys doing the Charading just basically busted out signature moves from each group’s music videos and we all ate it up, especially when it was a girl group.

After about 30 minutes of talking and charading, it was time for the Hi Touch action and I was actually getting nervous! I have only ever seen these beautiful groups in YouTube videos, and now I was minutes away from seeing five of them in real life and I couldn’t even believe my luck! The line started on the side of the room I was standing on, so I was only about 30 people back from the front of the line. We had to relinquish our hi-touch cards to the security guard letting us through to the side of the stage, so there was no chance of keeping it as a souvenir or hopping back in line for a hi-touch second serving.

From what I’ve seen and read, hi-touches are very strict in that you can’t take selfies or video or really even say more than a succinct “annyeonghaseyo.” But I heard some girl in line with me ask if we were allowed to take video and I swear I heard the staff member say yes. Or at least that’s what it sounded like.

So…I went for it.

And by the time I made it to the second guy at the table, someone swooped in from my left and swatted my phone down.

I was like, “OMG I’M SO SORRY I DIDN’T KNOW” because congratulations, Erin, you just made yourself look like a fucking rude, entitled Caucasian Trump-voting asshole.  I am such a staunch rule-follower too when it comes to these types of things so this pained me real bad and it was all I could do not to dwell on it for the rest of forever.

But regardless of my gaffe, the boys in KNK were so sweet and their smiles were like slivers of moonbeams and their hands were so soft and perfectly room-temperature and they didn’t even seem like the act of rubbing flesh with all these crazy fans was making them swallow their own bile at all. Such patient angels! 

Here I am in line to walk onto the stage. That might be the guy on the left who would later swat my phone away like it was a machete or a Meghan Trainor CD.

https://instagram.com/p/BV8Wb7eBxt2/

What a surreal, bizarre experience. I loved every fucking second of it (except for when I broke the Kpop law) even though it was basically the definition of objectification in motion, a long line of salivating girls (and boys) waiting for their 5 seconds of skinship. 

And while all of this was happening, Chooch was outside at the Asiana Airlines tent, spinning a wheel and winning an Amazon Echo. KCON is a fucking DREAM.

Me: Ugh why is Balance & Composure so fucking perfect?

Henry: I don’t know….?

Me: UGH WHY DO YOU HATE THEM?!

***********

Ok so maybe Henry doesn’t hate them per se, but he definitely isn’t a fan either and had zero guilt whatsoever about dropping me off in the Land of Post-Penguins Game Drunks on Sunday for their show at the Rex. It would be the third time seeing them in less than a year and you better believe I don’t take that shit for granted.

The height of my B&C obsession was last fall. We got SUPER hot&heavy, you guys, and I’m ok with sharing that because we’re all friends here. Their most recent album stayed on my record player for months and Henry and Chooch were all wide-eyed and tense. So while I might be all up on the Hallyu jock currently, I will always drop the Hangul long enough to let in some All American sad boy rock.

I arrived shortly after doors and had friendly banter with the bouncer, who asked if he could add to my collection of wristbands, or if I wanted to take my old one off (I usually keenmy wristbands on until they wear off on their own: my name is Erin and I’m disgusting). I shrugged and opted to take it off, so he rummaged in his pocket for what—A KNIFE? SCISSORS? A HACKSAW?—but I had already yanked the wristband off on my own. He acted like he was so impressed and made a “u so strong, girl” motion with his arms.

I love that guy.  Last time I was there, we struggled to work the ATM together. Not all bouncers are dicks, I guess!

Then I nearly got duped into changing electric companies (again!) by some girl who was standing at the door and I thought she wanted to take my ticket but NO she was just trying to start another fight between me and Henry. I literally just got persuaded by a cute college boy last fall to switch to some environmentally-sound clean energy thing and it sounded great but it was going to raise our bill by like three dollars and Henry had a fit because he googled the company and found review after review of horror stories from customers who got taken and everyday he was like DID YOU CALL AND CANCEL YET? YOU BETTER FUCKING CALL AND CANCEL.

God lay off, pops!

Anyway, when I tried to hand her my ticket, she was all, “Oh no, I don’t need that. But say, maybe you could help me? Do you like the environment?” And I said yes because sure. But as she said that, I noticed the paper she was holding said CLEAN ENERGY so when she asked if I oh the electric bill in my household, I said “No my dad does” BECAUSE IM ON TO YOU NOW, YOU LITTLE TREE HUGGER.

J/K I like trees.

“Oh! Well, when you get your own electric bill, look us up!” she said, and I was like, “Byeeeee suckaaaaa!”

(My tangents are the signs of someone desperate for compassionship. Henry doesn’t count. He’s exceptionally skilled at tuning me out. probably that’s how he cansleep  through concerts too.)

So now I was officially inside the Rex. It wasn’t very crowded yet so I slunk on over to the side of the stage because you know me, that good ol’ side bitch.

I mean…

Normally at shows, I can immediately spot the other loners in the crowd, but this show was populated by groups of friends and COUPLES WHO LIKE THE SAME MUSIC. Like, 75% of the crowd was on a date.

And then there’s me.

Leaning against a wall.

Next to a garbage can.

Le sigh!

Sometimes I feel like going to shows by myself is getting to be “not so bad” but this was not one of those nights. In fact, I was so self-conscious that I distracted myself by blogging about the last show I went to.  I literally blogged at a show about another show.

My life is so rich.

Thankfully, the first band—Queen of Jeans, from Philly— started right at 8 so I had something to do other than fidget with my phone, looking all loner-y and suspicious.

I had never heard of Queen of Jeans before and wasn’t expecting much. When I saw that three of them were girls, and two of them were dressed in various shades of 1970s afghan brown, I totally judged that book by its cover and wrote them off to be some riot grrl band. You know me! Picky with girl bands.

Anyway, you’ll be smug to know that I was wrong in my assumptions, and I ended up really, and I mean truly really very madly, loving them. Like a lot. The singer (Miriam – I’ve been reading some things, I do that sometimes, try to get some cold hard facts before I start laying down my super opinionated words) had the most unexpected voice, kind of reminiscent of Stacy King (Sucre, ex-Eisley), but with so much more power. I mean, this girl could BELT IT OUT. And the other two fucking slayed that stage right along with her, while the drummer, the lone dude, knew his place in the back. (J/K – he was incredible too.)

I can’t remember the last time I was at a show where the opening band was unknown to everyone there, yet still managed to get the whole crowd so hyped. We were LOVING it, totally eating out of their hands. They could have told us to scream, “FLYERS RULE” and….well, no, we probably wouldn’t have done it. THAT’S JUST GOING TOO FAR.

They ended with a cover.

“It’s 90s R&b,” Miriam gave us as a hint. “She’s dead.”

Right away, I was thinking Aaliyah because I’m old and used to be a yo-girl, that shit was my wheelhouse. But I didn’t want to yell it out loud by myself, so I said nothing.

AND GUESS WHAT I WAS RIGHT, UGH.

Here’s the tail end of it, where they were fucking shredding and we all lost our minds:

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And here’s a full one, please enjoy. Have a drink and relax:

The second band was From Indian Lakes. I have been wanting to see them again ever since the first Riot Fest I went to in 2014, when I was walking past the small stage they were playing on and did the whole HOLD UP WAIT A MINUTE stop-in-my-tracks-while-Henry-keeps-walking thing.

I think I was body-snatched during their set because I barely remember it aside from the initial text I sent Henry that said, “OMFG I forgot how good they are!” I absolutely cannot remember anything now. Should I be concerned?!

I do remember that they had a bright white neon marquee that said F I L and I had a fleeting thought of, “LOL, father in law” and then I was clearly hypnotized. It’s the only explanation.

Aside from aliens.

Anyway, the whole point of this post is that I went to see Balance & Composure and was caught up in the rapture just like Anita Baker and shooooooo lawd, if I could see these guys once a month maybe you could start calling me religious. As soon as Jon Simmons starts doing his dreamy Midnight Zone dance, I SUDDENLY FIND GOD.

I’m just over here fanning my face, please hold.

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They played all of my faves: Midnight Zone, Postcard, Tiny Raindrop, Quake, Reflection, Tore You Apart….OK every song they played is my favorite because there’s not a single song I dislike in their whole entire discography. They are perfect, in my opinion. And just what I needed to cap off an already wonderful weekend. Sometimes, the social anxiety is worth it when the reward is a night of beautiful music that sticks with you.

Be my prom date, B&C.

**********

It was after 11pm by the time I got home and Chooch kept asking me if I was hungry, which I thought was strange because since when does he care about how or what I’m feeling?

“No, it’s after 11 and I’m ready for bed, not food,” I said. But he just kept it up, until finally I was like, “OMG, if YOU’RE hungry, eat something then go to bed!”

“Are you sure you don’t want an ENGLISH MUFFIN?” he asked, not so subtly stressing the “english muffin” part. He did everything but the wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

Finally, I figured out that he was trying to lure me over to the toaster so that I could see they bought a new one while I was at the show. No more burnt bagels!

“We don’t even have English muffins, so it’s a good thing you didn’t say yes,” Henry mumbled.

“Do you want to listen to a RECORD?!” Chooch asked from the back porch, practically sprawled across the table the record player sits on. And I noticed there was a new speaker sitting there. Wow, what a huge night for Henry and Chooch. Send a postcard about it. Five lines.

My decision to attend the recent A Lot Like Birds show at Smiling Moose was pretty last minute. Kurt Travis was the clean vocalist of this band, and half the reason why I loved them so much, but he was basically kicked out last year due to “creative differences.”

That’s always the reason!

I was so broken up over this! How could they go on without him?! No one could replace him! First Dance Gavin Dance, and now…et tu, ALLB?

Turns out, they didn’t totally replace him. Cory, the screamer, took over clean vocals, along with bassist Matt Coate. I only had the courage to listen to one song and I ended up really liking it a lot, inspite of its Kurt Travis-less vibes. :(

So I sucked it up and bought a ticket, and ended up having a fantastic time. 

I’ll try to make this short and sweet because oh god no, not another concert recap. 

So here are some things I want to remember:

• Atlas Decay was the local opener. This was my fifth or sixth time seeing them and they are fine. 
• No natter how “at home” I feel at Smiling Moose, the fact that the room is as narrow as a Trump-supporter’s mind and cluttered with the gear of EVERY BAND PLAYING will forever have me constantly being in everyone’s way no matter where I stand. Sigh. 
• I saw the local band photographer that I briefly met outside Diesel at last year’s Hotel Books show and we pretended like we didn’t know each other, just like the last three times we saw each other at shows. #mutualsocialawkwardness

• When the second band – OWEL- started setting up, I knew in my heart I would like them because they had a girl member and she HAD A VIOLIN. I later learned that she also plays the viola and keyboard and she sings as well. Once they started playing, the deal was sealed. I loved them. If you need me, I’ll just be following them around on tour. (I mean, vicariously on Instagram. Sigh.)

OWEL YOU HAVE MY HEART. 

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• Next up was Hearts Like Lions. I saw them last year, also at that same Hotel Books show with the awkward photographer, so I was geeked to see them again, except that they weren’t as good as I remembered. Not that they sucker! Maybe the sound was a bit off or something but I wasn’t as drawn in as I was the first time. 
• Their set ended around 8 so I went back to the bar to get a drink (a Hoegaarten, ugh) and decided to forego the fourth band and watch at least the first period of the Pens game since I never get to anymore because we’re a No Cable Household (which was coincidentally the name of of the band I was skipping – just Household, not No Cable Household, to be clear) – and I’m still mostly OK with this decision! But….hockey. Anyway, they were down 0-4 before the period was even over so I chugged my gross beer and peaced out. 
• Finding a sort-of decent spot out of the way of the bands in the middle of moving their gear around, I occupied myself by staring intently into my phone (much like I’m doing now at the Balance & Composure show, waiting alone for it start), when suddenly I head someone say, “Did you see Emarosa when they were here last week?” I looked up and a guy in a Dance Gavin Dance shirt was looking at my expectantly. OH NO A CONVERSATION. WHAT TO DO? HOW TO TALK? I said I had, and realized not only was I wearing an Emarosa shirt, but it was one that just had the face of a fox on it and nothing about Emarosa. So he was a true Emarosa fan then! Fuck I forget his name already. Ryan? Mike? I don’t know, but his wife’s name was Ashley and they were both just wonderful. We talked about all the best bands and I showed them the video of Chooch crowdsurfing and of course they were disappointed to learn he wasn’t there that night. EVERYBODY LOVES CHOOCH. (OH MY LORD the laugh on this bitch standing in the bar at this Balance & Composure show is manufactured straight from the flames of hell. PLEASE LET THE FIRST BAND START SOON.) Anyway, that was awesome. Once I start talking to a stranger about music, it’s like ok me again. 
• ALLB came on and played their new album Divisi in its entirety and you know what? They killed it. It was still ALLB, just without Kurt. I pretended that Kurt was taking a sick day. Yeah, that’s it. Cory did a bang-up job with those clean vocals, and Matt looked positively joyful singing along with him. And in between songs, when we were all clapping and showing our approval, Matt said thank you and just beamed as he looked out at all of our dumb faces. It was humbling. It’s easy to turn your back on a band when your favorite member is ousted, but these guys are just way too talented to give up on. Even though my heart turned into a pulpy, aortic mosaic when Matt sang the “you’re already undressed” line from Properties of Friction. OH KURT :(

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And that concludes my succinct summary of the A Lot Like Birds show at Smiling Moose. I’m glad I got to see them many times already with Kurt and I’m gonna stick with them on this new journey. 

This post is brought to you by the letters ㅈ, ㅎ, and me standing alone miserably in between bands at the Balance & Composure show. 

I have a lot of bands that I really love lots like tater tots, and I love the feeling I get when I see them live. But there is no feeling greater than the one I get when I see Emarosa. It’s so much more than just a concert: it’s an actual show. It’s crowd involvement. It’s an intense wave of raw energy that makes you forget everything else happening in the world, because for that small amount of time, Emarosa is inviting you into their world. And it’s chaotic and honest and nearly as beautiful as G-Dragon’s face.

You guys, they are my favorite band to see live, and I see A LOT of bands live!

Chooch and I already had tickets to see them last week in Pittsburgh, when  they were supporting Pierce the Veil, but when I saw they were also doing a handful of headlining shows on their off-dates from the PTV tour, I quickly bought three tickets for their Cleveland show at Mahall’s. Emarosa twice in one week? SO FUCKING BLESSED.

Plus, Mahall’s is a very intimate venue and I was excited to get all up close and personal. You gotta see Emarosa up close.

After spending a lovely afternoon polluting Cleveland with our idiocy, we got to Mahall’s right around the time doors were set to open. Do you even know me? I am rarely late to a show. I need to see it all! Anyway, Chooch spotted Bradley in the back of Emarosa’s van when we were walking past, so he started doing that thing he does where he starts to approach, then backs away, then approaches, then flings himself against a wall in anguish. I don’t know where he gets that. I have never had a problem talking to musicians. In fact, I’m the greatest at talking to musicians. No one talks to musicians in a more bigly great fashion than me. My confidence is uuuuge. So many people came out to see me talk to the last musician I talked to. So many!

#fakenews

But back to Chooch. There were several other people standing around, observing Chooch on the brink of a nervous breakdown and it was so awkward that I couldn’t watch any longer. “Please go with him, for Christ’s sake!” I hissed to Henry, giving him a gentle (lol) shove toward the van. So Henry was like FML and went to the back of the van to get Bradley’s attention.

I stayed by the door to Mahall’s because I’m too cool for that shit.

SIKE.

I was too busy staring into my phone screen, willing it to suck me in and away from this situation. I’m always so worried that Bradley is going to think we’re psycho stalkers, or that we’re trying to use him for perks or whatever, but that is totally not who we are – we all, as a family, love Emarosa and their music so much. There are very few bands that all three of us equally enjoy, so it really brings us closer as family (lol, j/k – we fought like 87 times that day, but the fun we had negated that so we’re cool, guys, don’t worry).

Bradley came out of the van and hugged Chooch, etc but I still wouldn’t go over there because I was too scared, for god’s sake. I’m 12, remember?

According to Henry, Bradley said something like, “Wow, you don’t stop!” to Chooch, since he had just seen him FOUR DAYS prior. Then he said that if he saw Chooch in the crowd, he was crowdsurfing that night.

I laughed when Henry told me, like what a cute threat, amiright?

Meanwhile, some guy standing near me outside saw Chooch with Bradley and he asked me, “Are you guys friends?” I wish! But I told him that we just casually know him from going to so many Emarosa shows and that Chooch really looks up to him. I mean, my kid rarely gets starstruck, but you put him near Christofer Drew from Never Shout Never or Bradley Walden from Emarosa, and that boy has eight tongues that are all tied together and then shot 4 times with Novacaine.

He’s not talking anytime soon.

“Bradley’s a good role model to have!” the guy said, and I was like, “Yeah, he really is.” Especially when after seeing Emarosa, Chooch pulled out his Sing Machine for the first time in like, a year. I  think he feels really inspired by them and that is just the best thing any parent could ask for.

Please, please, please let him have a future in music!

Then when we were inside waiting to get our tickets, Bradley came in and hugged me and I was like JUST BE COOL, ERIN, DON’T DIE.

Really though, how far we’ve come from the days of being ridiculed by a former singer for driving five hours to see his band play in Buffalo because I couldn’t get the night off work to see them when they were in Pittsburgh (OMG I’m such a loser for having a job and being broke but STILL making the drive to see your shitty face) to having the current singer say it’s nice to see me.

But enough about the past – back to the show!

There were five bands playing that night much to Chooch’s chagrin. He just wants to get in there, see the band he wants to see, and go the fuck home. Eleven-year-olds, you know? Pfft. He survived the first band – Keys and Corridors – but then “had to go the bathroom” which means he wanted to go back out to where the pinball machines were.

I liked Keys and Corridors though! Anytime there’s a girl in the band, I hope with all my heart that I will like it because we need more bands with girls.

And this one had two!

Chooch came back before the second back, Forage and Wander (I think?), started to play but he was being so fidgety and making me nervous, so I made Henry take him outside. Like he’s a dog. Take the dog for a walk, Henry! And here’s a bag for his messes.

Thank god Mahall’s has re-entry. God bless you, Mahall’s.

Anyway, the second band was fine. Nothing that my ears found inoffensive.

But the third band! Oh my sweetly-spanked Mussolini, this next band was everything I needed right then.

That sweet, melodic post-hardcore vibe taking me back to 2010? Check.

Immediate excitement that made me type things like #OBSESSED all over social media? Check.

Super hot frontwoman in a leather jacket with a voice that could knock you on your ass? Double check. 

I texted Henry and said, “You’re missing this band with a super hot girl singer” and LO AND BEHOLD, minutes later, Chooch and Henry sidled up next to me.

Wow, such coincidence.

Oh! Their name is Leav/e/arth. I even love their name!!

Honestly though, they gave me that excited feeling I used to get when I was younger, seeing a local band at Nick’s Fat City and thinking, “Wow, I can’t believe this band is from Pittsburgh!” That’s how I felt during their set: “Wow, Cleveland is so lucky that have this band!” I would try to see them as often as possible if I lived in Cleveland.

Just saying, Jason!

Also, I just saw that they’re on InVogue Records so now I’m going to start hounding the appropriate parties on Instagram for a Hotel Books / Leav/e/arth tour!

Next was Cedar Green, who are on this whole mini-tour of Emarosa’s. I thought that their name sounded familiar and then I realized that I saw them three years ago in Allentown, PA when they opened for Hands Like Houses and Slaves (ugh). Cedar Green had some technical difficulty during one of their songs (ER from Emarosa came out to help them behind the scenes which was so cool of him) but honestly I thought they were wonderful regardless. They had great energy and I know I say that a lot but have you ever seen a band that’s just kind of like…there? Then you know what I mean. I was happy to be able to support them, and when they did a Twenty One Pilots cover, Chooch was on board too.

I went over to talk to the guitarist after the show that night, and asked if they’re from Allentown. He confirmed this and seemed sincerely shocked that I not only had seen them before, but remembered it, too. He called the singer over to tell him, and he was also super excited about this. I love young bands that still have that humble graciousness – it’s adorable and it makes me so excited for them! I really hope they garner lots of new fans on this tour.

They remind me of summer. <3

Ugh, and then it was time for Emarosa! I’m going to cry at the memory of it because it was one of those nights that you wish you could gather up and stuff inside a snow globe, to relive with every gentle shake. LE SIGH. My emo heart, it bleeds.

I hope that if you’ve read any of my past Emarosa posts, you’ve taken some time out to listen to their music. If not – PLEASE do yourself a favor and check out their most recent album, 131. Their whole discography is beautiful and perfectly encapsulates each era of their journey, from Chris Roetter to Jonny Craig to Bradley Walden.

But…this current era with Bradley is tops, and it’s the best starting point for a new listener. PLEASE GO LISTEN AND REPORT BACK. I’ll wait.

At an Emarosa show, you’re going to get everything from:

• charmingly funny stage banter that doesn’t come off as trite
• literal acrobatics: Bradley usually does a backflip or two; picks up their bassist and spins him upside down;  gives their guitarist a piggyback ride through the crowd; and if there’s anything around for him to climb and hang from, he’ll find a way,
• tons of crowd immersion (sometimes I think he spends more time singing in the middle of the floor than he does on stage),
• but most importantly, incredibly well-written, passionately-performed music.

And this night, Saturday May 13th at Mahall’s in Cleveland, had all of these things.

(Except the climbing, although it did seem like at one point Bradley was casing the ceiling for something to grab onto it.)

Here, just watch this. JUST WATCH IT!

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I was in tears from all of the beauty, when, in the middle of “Helpless,” Bradley pointed to Chooch and summoned him on stage. Chooch was trying to convince himself that the attention was actually for the girl next to him, but even she knew what was going on and turned to make room for Chooch.

So he goes on stage and I’m like OMG WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW ARE YOU KIDDING ME and then Bradley picked him up like a regular sack of potatoes and slowly launched him onto the waiting hands of the crowd. My fucking kid was crowd-surfing. I oscillated back and forth between: “FUCK YEAH MY KID IS CROWD-SURFING!” to “OMFG PLEASE DON’T GET DROPPED!”

I can’t even believe it. I mean, I can. Bradley doesn’t make idle threats, I guess. I mean, the night was already 100/100, but this just sky-rocketed it to extra-terrestrial levels of outrageousness. How is this band so great?!

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Chooch of course ran over to the merch table after the show so he could once again act all quiet and awkward in front of the band, and get another photo for his ME&BRADLEYFOREVER scrapbook (I’m just guessing he has one).

(The lighting was awkward!)

While I was getting my phone ready to take the picture, Bradley started whispering something to Chooch, and I figured it was probably something like, “Hey kid, stay in school” or “Be nice to your mom & dad, they love you” but NO.

Chooch told me as we were walking away that what he said was, “Why do you let your mom have that phonecase? Tell her to get rid of that.”

Ugh! Whatever! My phonecase is….lit? OK fine it’s dumb and clunky and something only someone riding on the back of a unicorn should have, but I love it. I mean, the manager at CVS asked to Snapchat it, for fuck’s sake!

It’s fine. No, I’m OK. I still love Emarosa.

(OK but seriously, if you made it to the end, now you have to go and listen to at least one song. And then buy their album. And a t-shirt. And then go see them. I’ll go with you, even. Maybe. If it’s within driving distance. And you’ll feed me.)

It’s hard to believe that nine years ago, I saw Emarosa open for Pierce the Veil at some dinky skate park venue in Buffalo, and now here I was with Chooch (a much better concert companion than the one I had in ’08), seeing them together again on a much larger scale.

Pierce the Veil is still the same band from way back when. Emarosa couldn’t be more different. Yet, the feelings (trying to stop saying FEELS all the time because Inannoy even myself) were still the same.

100%.

Henry dropped Chooch and me off at Stage AE right after work on Tuesday and I was READY. Chooch found joy in pointing out all the parents in line who were way older than me, so that was a fun game for me too, although it was also kind of bizarre because I don’t remember parents ever being at PTV shows back in the day – why are their fans getting consistently younger?!

Although in every case I’ve encountered, the parents were there because they actually like PTV too, so that’s something.

Standing in line was boring. Nothing exciting happened. No ice cream truck. I did happily shout, “TAMPON” when the security guard was patting me down and asked what was in my pocket.

And Henry mocks me for never being prepared. Pfft!

Chooch and I managed to get the same spot we had for Never Shout Never, a sweet spot against the railing, off to the right where absolutely no one crowds so we’re free to gesticulate wildly and Chooch can, god forbid, rest his weary 11-year-old bones between sets.

As soon as we claimed our spots, an older woman gave us a once-over and said, “Oh good, you’re here with a kid too!”

I get real defensive about this because I’m not just some chaperone. So I felt the need to explain that I have actually liked PTV for the last 10 years (I didn’t mention liking their first incarnation, Before Today, because I didn’t want to sound like an indigent hipster even though I do have the indignation part down pat).

“He likes them now too so he became my concert buddy,” I said, jutting an elbow back toward Chooch. Henry is still so thankful about this, btw.

Anyway, Yinzer Mom (that’s not nice – she was actually a lovely person who knew when it was fine to just stand together in silence without puffing out empty words all night) went on to tell me that her daughter got her into PTV last summer.

“I started listening to them while working out – I lost 50 pounds!” she exclaimed.

“It’s like you and Kpop!” Chooch butted in. Shut up, Chooch. The moms are talking.

It was cool to listen to an older person gush over a band that has been associated with teenage fans for as long as I’ve been into them. I don’t really understand why that is, because they’re so great, and for as many times as I’ve seen them (at least 20 times by now!), they have not put on one single bad show.

I asked her if she’d ever heard of Emarosa and she admitted that she hadn’t.

“You’re going to love them,” I promised. And then she told me that the last concert she attended was Kid Rock & Lynyrd Skynyrd 10 years ago.

Wow. Just wow.

Also, not surprising.

Then some other old broad rolled up with two young teen girls. They were standing on the floor below us, but the broad turned around to talk to us several times, my favorite of which was when she asked me if I liked Korn.

LOL.

For a minute in 1997? And then a second in 1999?

She must have been bitchin’ back in the day. I could tell by her form-fitting black attire, severely bleached hair, and faded sleeve full of hearts and daggers.

Ugh, I’m trying to do this new No Judgment thing and it’s hard. So very hard.

She was a very nice lady.

With some pretty poor choices.

The first band to play was Chapel. I had never heard of them and didn’t do my due diligence because it’s a struggle for me to leave my Korean bubble. I gave them nary a Spotify spin. I expected them to be moderately heavy, but instead we were treated with an electro-pop duo from Georgia who completely and unexpectedly slayed. The drummer was a bad-ass girl who, at one point, was beating a drum with her head. Chooch was enthralled.

He’s been learning how to play drums now too, in addition to piano. His teacher Cheryl dedicates the last 15 minutes of his piano lessons for some drummin’, and he is really into it.

“That’s your basic rock beat,” he said, nodding toward the stage during the intro  to one of the songs.

Yeah, Chooch and I were definitely fans of these guys.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BT9IM6Ih0_u/?taken-by=ohhonestlyconcerts

I kept thinking of Whitechapel in my head, and I’m glad that they didn’t sound like them.

After Chapel, it was EMAROSA TIME! It occurred to me that it had been nearly a year since we last saw them, and maybe I’m just spoiled but that is way too long and I’m glad we were able to rectify that shit. Chooch and I were fine not being closer to the stage because we’re also going to see them in Cleveland on Saturday, where they’ll be a doing an off-date headlining show at Mahalls. Way more intimate!

Bradley has bleached hair now and that was disorienting at first (Henry would have had a field day because he’s obsessed with noticing changes in band members’ hair), but then they started playing and it was like, “MY HEART IS HOME AGAIN.” How are they not taking over the world yet!?

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Bradley did all of the people-pleasing tricks: doing backflips on stage, literally immersing himself in the crowd, carrying their guitarist on his shoulders through the crowd. But most of all, he sang like a fucking anguished angel while the rest of Emarosa supported his vocals with intense instrumentals. There is no other way to explain an Emarosa show to someone other than it sounds like magic and you will be fucking engaged. Bradley will make sure of that. Every show I’ve been to, people go nuts, whether it’s their first time or fiftieth time experiencing the bombastic showmanship.

Afterward, I asked my new mom friend what she thought. I mean, she was fucking whistling (yes, she’s a whistler; sigh), fumbling to record with her phone, and screaming her crispy-haired head off.

“Holy shit! I was NOT expecting that,” she yelled. “When they first came on, I was like OK who is singing?! And then I was like, Oh! There he is, IN THE CROWD! They were AWESOME!”

I love experiencing someone’s first time with Emarosa! I’m starting to cry as I write this, someone give me a pill.

Immediately after their set, Bradley hopped off the stage and went straight back to Emarosa’s merch table, because he cares about his fans, you guys. The merch table was on  the opposite side of the venue from where we were standing and I didn’t want to lose our spots. I could have asked Yinzer Mom to save them for us I guess, but I hate talking to people.

“I’ll just go by myself,” Chooch said with a shrug, and off went my independent 11-year-old kid who doesn’t need me to hold his hand like I need Henry to hold mine. WHO IS THIS BOY!?

Anyway, he stood in line all by himself and he said Bradley playfully punched his arm when he noticed him. <3

Of course, Chooch didn’t say much because Bradley is the only person in the world who can take Chatty Chooch’s tongue. It’s amazing, really, how shy and clammed-up he becomes. But he got a picture!

<3<3<3

Chooch was angry because the guy who took the picture for them didn’t do a good job.

“It’s blurry!” he whined, and I was like, “Yeah but it’s still better than if Henry had taken it.”

Bradley asked where his parents were and Chooch was probably thinking in his head, “THEY ABANDONED ME WILL YOU ADOPT ME PLEASE BE MY NEW DAD” but instead, Chooch said he told Bradley that his mom was “over there somewhere.”

Yep that’s me, being a vigilant parent, on the other side of a venue full of drunk people and boobytraps and kidnappers.

The next band was Sum 41 and I was totally not looking forward to them. I kind of wished, selfishly, that they were the headliners so we could peace out after PTV, but no….they were right smack in the middle.

I’ve managed to go all these years without ever having to see them live, and I only know the songs “In Too Deep” and “Fat Lip.” So I was willing to give them a chance, because maybe they’d be fun. As the stage was being setup for them, the floor started to fill in with a lot of older persons; Yinzer bros who most definitely listen to nu-metal started pushing their way to the middle of the floor, sloshing their bro-beers around and just looking like genuine hooligans.

I was glad that we had a railing separating us from them because I could only imagine.

You guys. I’m probably going to offend people here, but Sum 41 now sits comfortably in my list of Top 20 Worst Bands I’ve Ever Had to Stand Through. Maybe they’re for you but THEY ARE NOT FOR ME. And apparently, not for my kid either, because he was ANGRY during their set.

He flipped them off several times, too.

Look, I’m glad Derrick Whibley didn’t like, die, or whatever, and that he got away from Avril Lavigne, but good goddamn, he is not very original with his crowd engagement and banter (getting the crowd to yell Fuck Yeah – so progressive).

Also, their set was like a billion decibels louder than the other three, and was definitely one of the loudest shows I’ve ever been to, and not in a good way. I was actually in pain, that’s how needlessly loud it was. Like, I actually wished I had earplugs.

I felt like a subwoofer was having me for dinner.

And when did Sum 41 become metal? It was basically 45 minutes of generic-sounding metal riffs, a quick Black Sabbath cover, a cover of We Will Rock You that they dragged out for 10  minutes because Derrick had to stop in the middle of it to fling more banal banter at the crowd while sauntering around the stage aimlessly.

Sum 41 guitar solos.

Sum 41 minutes I’ll never get back.

Sum 41 days of hearing loss.

Yeah, I hated them. It was the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus all over again.

It was years of enduring Dope because they wouldn’t stop touring with my beloved Cold.

It was just a waste of time. Go back to 2002, Sum 41.

But none of that mattered once Pierce the Veil came on!

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There’s not much I can say on this here blog other than they were utterly fantastic. From their stage design to the performance, it was flawless and entertaining and kept us all engaged – even my fickle kid who has been known to want to leave after three songs are played.

But he was really feeling it, and we kept elbowing each other each time our faves were played, or when Jaime would come to our side of the stage, or when legit smoke circles came bursting out into the crowd during “Circles.”

Mike’s drum set was on top of a giant stick of dynamite, even!

Pierce the Veil shows have it all!

Vic mentioned that 2017 marks TEN YEARS of them being a band and I can’t even believe it. Obviously, it makes me wistful for certain people, and a certain time in my life, but I’m glad that I can still go to these shows and not be completely sucker-punched with sadness anymore. Maybe it’s a new era. Maybe it’s because now I can share it with Chooch.

But it’s good now. Even when they threw it back to A Flair for the Dramatic – sure, I held my hands to my chest like a little old lady clutching her purse on the way to church….but no tears! I was TEAR FREE!

I AM SAVED, LORD JESUS!

I do miss the fluorescent clothes-wearing scene kids with side parts that used to make up the majority of the crowd, though. Those were the days. #StayPosi

No one even wears bows in their hair anymore!

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OMG, after they played “Stay Away From My Friends,” my new mom friend and I literally squealed and she elbowed me SO HARD (I’m delicate!) that it hurt but I’ll let it go this time since it was in the name of PTV.

Chooch was a happy boy because the last song of the encore was King For a Day. I wish that Besitos was still part of their set list, but their last album is so great that I don’t really miss it that much, I guess. (But it IS one of my favorites! God, Vic — aren’t you reading all of my letters!? Is it because they’re written in blood?!)

As we were leaving, we saw Chooch’s One True Love, Courtney, leaning against the bar with her boyfriend. Chooch has loved her since he was in 1st grade and she was the 8th grade mentor. Now she’s like, I don’t know, in some grade in high school, but we run into her a lot. We saw her earlier when she was crowd-surfing during PTV, so now I figure it’s only a matter of time before Chooch needs to step up his concert game and I AM NOT LOOKING FORWARD TO THAT SO MANY KIDS WERE WALKING PAST US WITH BLOODY NOSES AND I DON’T WANT MY SWEET LITTLE BOY TO BLEED WAAAAAH!

Sometimes I’m a mom.

Anyway! So we saw Courtney and Chooch was all, “Oh no. Oh god no” and he tried to go the opposite way, but I grabbed him by the shoulders and steered him over to her while he was literally dragging his heels. Eventually, he was right in front of her. She looked up from her phone, smiled real big, and said, “Hi Riley!” with just the right amount of taunting-ness to her voice.

His face turned so red that I feared if I pricked it with a pin, a gush of blood would come spurting out a la The Shining.

Then we went outside and ran around looking for our parents like all of the other kids leaving the show. Don’t worry, Papa H was waiting.

“What’s wrong? Why are you so flushed?” Amber asked me this morning as she walked by my desk. 

I took a few seconds to compose myself before squealing, “I just watched this G-Dragon video,” at which point there was a collective groan of “oh my god” all around me. 

But then I let her watch it and she became obsessed with trying to make fingerhearts and by obsessed I mean she practiced doing it for like 15 seconds and then went back to being a professional adult while Glenn was using his hostage eyes to plead for her to take him with her as she walked away.

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Every time I made someone watch this video today, I would giddily whisper, “OMG what’s he looking for? Oh, oh! Fingerhearts.” And then I would clutch my heart and swoon. 

Wendy thought this was dumb but then she too tried to accomplish the perfect heart-shaped placement of the fingers. 

She was watching me do it and cried, “Why can’t I do it? My fingers won’t do it right! Why?”

“Because they’re yours,” I shrugged. 

“I couldn’t imagine what he was going to pull out of his pocket,” Todd said. “But then it was just fingerhearts. That’s time I’ll never get back.”

Whatever.  Lauren thought it was adorable. And Glenn is probably at home right now waving fingerhearts in front of his baby daughter’s face. 

Basement is currently on tour with Thursday and Touche Amore and I was disappointed that there was no Pittsburgh show. But then Basement announced that they were coming here on one of their off-dates! Henry is pretty ambivalent about Basement* so I didn’t even bother asking him to go with me. I just bought a ticket for one (so sad) and told him he had to drop me off at Cattivo after work on Wednesday.

*(He didn’t go with me the first time I saw them at Altar Bar and he didn’t even stand me when I was right in front of the stage for them at Riot Fest. Henry hates British people. Pass it on.)

We got there a bit before doors opened so I told Henry to just drive around so I didn’t have to stand in line with my head down, praying no one would talk to me. So Henry drove past Cattivo and made a right.

“Hey look, that’s probably Basement’s van,” Henry said, and then, “Hey look, someone just got out.” So he turned around because I was interested in seeing who it was. It turned out to be Al, and he’s my favorite!!

He was walking down a dead end street which leads toward the river, and Henry fucking turned down the street and followed him in spite of my protests. There was literally no reason for us to be driving down there, and it was clear that we were stalking the poor guy, so he looked extremely startled when Chooch put down the window and cried, “Hi AL!!!” Like, were we about to shove a burlap sack over his head and hogtie him in our trunk? YOU NEVER CAN TELL WITH US.

“Oh, hi,” he cautiously said back to us, and then we made eye contact so I felt obligated to also say hi as I was sliding down in the front seat into the puddle of anxiety I had created on the floor.

And then Henry promptly turned the car around and drove off.

It was so embarrassing. Like when your dad drives you to school and your little brother says something dumb out  the window to the cute skater guy that you’re obsessed with, Scott Dambaugh who, what now?

Luckily, Chooch wasn’t wearing his Tuesdays with Tay shirt that features Al, because then this probably would have been just one more instance of Chooch stealing bands away from me. (NEVER FORGET: THE T-SHIRT THAT RUINED MY LIFE.)

Ugh. After that happened, I made them drop me off a block away from Cattivo so they wouldn’t have a chance to strike twice.

I was blessed to have an evening of relative invisibility. I sank into the wall and was the victim of no small talk, no sleazy accidental touching, and no drunken Yinzer rudeness whatsoever. Thank you, concert overlords.

The first band to play was Primer & Grayscale, a local band I first saw several months ago at Smiling Moose. I think they were opening the Pianos Become the Teeth show, but I am too lazy and unconcerned at the moment to fact check that. Which is why my blog is fake news. Anyhow, I fucking fell in love with these guys from the get-go and immediately started following them on Instagram and Facebook, which is actually how I found out about this show. I bought my ticket directly from them because if you don’t support local bands, you’re dead to me.

I forgot how great they are, to be honest, so hearing them the other night was like falling in love all over again. They opened with a new song and it made me catch my breath.

Please give these guys your ears for just a few moments and let their emo majesty swaddle your soul. I want them to play in my living room. LIKE RIGHT NOW. I’ll pause the Kpop that’s currently playing, just for them.

The second band was also local. Swiss Army.

They were alright and seemed to get the crowd hyped, and maybe it was just because my back was starting to hurt and I was hungry and tired, but they weren’t holding my attention. I didn’t feel all jammed up with the warm, moist feels like Primer & Grayscale had previously provided. Now I was just cold and lonely and wanting the night to hurry up and end.

Seriously though, I was “chew on my hair” hungry.

Thankfully, there were just three bands on the bill that night, and Basement started promptly at 8:45. Early shows are the best shows.

This was my third time seeing them in just over a year (remember, this is the band that threw a wrench in Henry’s original itinerary for last year’s Disney trip lol) so I felt super lucky. There’s a certain energy they exude that I was desperate to take in that night, like a sonic slap to the face to wake me up. I’ve been doing OK lately but these kinds of wake up calls are always valued.

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I quickly went from being cold and cranky to sweaty and SO FUCKING STOKED. I was still really hungry though so when I got in the car after the show and saw that Henry had a bag of pretzels, I snatched it out of his lap and ate like a hungry, hungry hippo. If concerts could curb appetites, I’d be a fucking waif.

Anyway, that was my night at Cattivo. I didn’t hate anyone and I adored 2 out of 3 bands.

YOU GUYS. Yesterday, G-Dragon announced that he’s coming to NORTH AMERICA on his world tour this summer and I almost made Henry wreck the car.

“How old are you!?” he hissed when I couldn’t stop muttering, “G-Dragon, oh my god” over and over, ruining Chooch’s birthday.

I sent Amber2 an urgent CAPSLOCK text and she was all, “Wow, your vice is coming to America.” I knew she meant to say bias.

This morning, I just about slammed my phone into Glenn’s face to show him the announcement and he was like, “Wow. That pretty little girl is coming here.”

Because that’s what he calls GD. :(

Then Wendy came over and Amber2 asked, “Did you get a text too?” and Wendy just rolled her eyes and said yes.

“Mine ended with ‘I’M DYING’,” Amber told Wendy.

“Mine had exploding heart eyes or something,” Wendy sighed.

Then I got REALLY EMOTIONAL AT WORK which almost NEVER happens and my eyes started to water (allergies) and my face was SO FLUSHED (heatstroke?) OK fine – because OBSESSION.

The small audience around my desk was like, “Wow.”

“And we were just watching that video of him yesterday!” I cried over my shoulder to Glenn, and explained to Wendy that it was a video from a few years back, when GD was doing a fan greet where people got in a line to shake his hand.

“I didn’t see him actually shake anyone’s hands,” Glenn mumbled. “He just barely touched them.”

“Yeah, well…that’s because you didn’t watch the entire sixteen minutes, Glenn,” I spat and Wendy took that as her cue to peace out from the ridiculous dialogue.

When Todd got to work, I screamed, “TODD OMG!” and Glenn was like, “LET HIM SIT DOWN FIRST, FOR GOD’S SAKE.”

It was the talk of the town. Well, office quadrant. Well, half of the office quadrant.

Anyway, tickets haven’t gone on sale yet and I am so nervous. His Seoul concert sold out in 8 minutes. Ugh! We’re (we’re, lol) hoping to go to the Toronto show because it’s on MY BIRTHDAY. Please pray for me.

I was looking at the different VIP packages (of course there aren’t any prices available yet) and now I feel like I need the gold package but Henry said it’s probably $2000. I HAVE THINGS THAT I CAN SELL. I WILL SELL MY FUCKING RIOT FEST TICKETS WATCH ME.

(OK I don’t want to have to do that but I will because not going to Riot Fest will save us a lot of $$$ GOD WHY ISN’T HENRY A DOCTOR OR AN OIL TYCOON OR A FRENCH PORN DIRECTOR*.)

*(Mostly because that would just be cool.)

“I don’t see that hi-touch thing on here, though,” Todd said when I made him also look at the VIP packages because that’s what I do – I suck people in and make them hold my hand while I obsess over things.

“Todd, that’s for KCON,” I said exasperatedly.

“Oh yeah! That’s KCON,” he said in an “I’m so dumb” tone.

Please try to keep up with my ever-changing flights of fancy.

This is going to be my last, if not only, chance to see him before he enlists in the military and IT IS ALL I COULD EVER WANT. (Aside from all the other things I want, but this is my #1 want currently!) I will be happy if I get the very top of the balcony seat, because at least I will be in the same room as the most perfect person in the whole entire world, Korea’s National Treasure, MY BIAS.

I will end this with a video of the time GD took the fall for a girl who killed her abusive boyfriend with a pineapple. <3

Chooch in 2013, when he was known to wear a wolf hat just like his idol, Christofer Drew.

On Sunday, I got to do one of my favorite things in the whole entire world: go to a show with Chooch.

We hadn’t gone to a show together since last fall when we saw the Summer Set in Columbus! So when Never Shout Never announced a throwback tour, there was definitely no question that we were going. Henry bought two tickets and cheerfully said, “Have fun!” as he mentally planned all the things he was going to do without us that night, such as: eat meat, read the circulars, chip away at his tunnel to freedom, and sleep?

I actually have no idea what he did after he dropped off at Stage AE. I tried to get out of the car as quickly as possible, before too many people in line saw me and thought that my DAD was dropping me off. Ugh, the horror.

Except that Chooch was with me, immediately marking me as a mom. Oh well. That and my gray hair.

The line wasn’t terribly long, but long enough to make Chooch grumble. These whippersnappers and their instant gratification! They don’t know the satisfaction of good things and waiting, or whatever that fucking bullshit adage is.

I’ll tell you one thing though: there were a lot of girls there with flower chains all up in their unwashed hair. Oh, that neo-hippie couture. I was just wearing jeans and a striped shirt. You know, my uniform.

Meanwhile, an ice cream truck rolled up! What smart marketing. Too bad Papa H didn’t give us any cash, so we had to stand there like peasants and watch all of the other kids rush over to grab a Push-Up.

And by “all of the other kids,” I mean four of them.

“Wow, their prices are high!” Chooch scoffed.

“Are they? Those ones over there are like, a dollar….”

But he didn’t hear me because he was too busy mentally comparing the prices with other ice cream trucks he’s seen around town, like he’s suddenly into the economics of ice cream on the go.

I was like, “OMG stop sounding like such a nerd right now, we’re in line for a fucking concert, ugh, STFU.”

Meanwhile, some Stage AE broad was pacing back and forth like a drill sergeant, yelling for all the guys to move over to the line on the right where they could proceed to the obligatory pat down from a male security person, while us girls got felt up by fellow women because that makes it better.

I had to send Chooch into the man line and I acted like I was sending him off to war.

“Are you sure you’re going to be alright?” I called after him like a smothering mother. “Wait for me inside!” That last part may have been muffled by the sound of me drowning on my tears.

But then Chooch came back because I forgot to give him his ticket, lol. This allowed some of the girls ahead of us in line to notice him, and once he got his ticket and went back to the Man Line, they started gushing loudly.

“DId you see that kid?! He was wearing a Dance Gavin Dance shirt!”

“He’s the coolest person here by far.”

“I want to take a picture of him!”

“How old do you think he is, like 13?”

OMG I was dying to holler, “Hi! Hello! It’s me! It’s me, his mom! And he’s only 10, btw!” But I didn’t want to be all High-Strung Mother so I just kept my mouth shut.

“That’s the kind of mom I’m going to be,” one of the girls said and I took a leisurely lap around Validation Bay.

Chooch was waiting for me, unscathed and un-abducted, after I emptied my jacket pockets to show the security broads that there was no room for drugs or switchblades next to all the ramping, lipgloss, and plastic toy capsules. They seemed satisfied that I wasn’t a terrorist or just your standard American delinquent with a sinister cherry bomb agenda.

Chooch and I claimed a prime spot against the railing, which I knew would be good for him since he’s a shortie with a predilection for resting on his laurels; our spot was sparsely populated so he was able to sit down without being tripped over.

There was only one opening band: Me Like Bees. I thought they were ok, definitely inoffensive to the ears, but I had listened to them before and they just didn’t stick with me. Seeing them live didn’t really change that—I was kind of bored. They reminded me a bit of Modest Mouse, calmer and less musical, and just kind of boring to me. IM SORRY.

I did enjoy their cover of Beastie Boys’ Sabotage though.

After Me Like Bees’ set, the couple next to us asked how we heard about Never Shout Never. I told them that Chooch was the one who actually got me into them, leaving out the part where I had already known who NSN was but refused to give them a chance because in my mind, it was just some lame kid who got YouTube famous for singing whiny songs. I’m glad that I let Chooch change my mind, because Christofer Drew is actually a talented song-writer and let’s be honest, he can jam that ukulele. His music just makes me really happy, and I love that it gave Chooch and I something to share.

Anyway, they were shocked that Chooch has seen NSN five times already in his young age (and met them once!), and the guy part of the couple (I think they were actually just friends, but whatever) said that when he’s a dad, he hopes he can do the same thing with his kids. That was the second time that night that my parenting style was commended by a stranger – I can’t even describe the awesome feeling it gave me.  I love getting to share these experiences with Chooch: going to shows, falling in love with new bands, fighting over who which member of BIGBANG is the best — this is my favorite part of being a parent!

Never Shout Never put on a fantastic show as always. Chris’s banter was fiery as usual, but Taylor wasn’t there to volley it back, so that was sad. But they sure busted out the throwback jams, that’s for sure!

• Big City Dreams
• Trouble
• Your Biggest Fan
• On the Brightside
• California
• Piggy Bank
• Cheatercheaterbestfriendeater
• I Love You 5
• Coffee and Cigarettes
• Happy
• Love is our Weapon
• Sellout
• First Dance
• Harmony

During Harmony, Chooch shouted in my ear, “He should sing this song to Donald Trump!”

Indeed, my little friend.

Two of my favorites were played: “On the Brightside” and “Cheatercheaterbestfriendeater” so I was happy. Chooch sang along to every single song, and in between screamed, “Jane Doe!”

Sadly, Chris did not grant Chooch’s wish.

“Ugh, I feel like I’m in middle school again! This is great!” I heard the girl next to us yell to her friend at one point, and that made me happy because nostalgia can be such a precious thing.

It also made me feel REALLY OLD because I was already in my late 20s when Christofer Drew debuted in the scene.

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“All of it,” Chooch said just now when I asked him what his favorite part of the night was. What a perfect way to end the weekend!