American Idol Pt. 1

Another Summer hopeful has been achieved. On Tuesday night (7/31/07) , much to Leanna's jealousy, we attended the American Idols Live tour.

It. Was. Awesome.

We were very excited, and when we got there, the excitement did not ebb. Here's my excitement.


Yes, that's right...it's the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile! Look at me beside myself with excitement. They were filming for future commercials where you sing into the camera and they record you to possibly be on TV later. There was a huge line though so I didn't want to wait for it. Plus the only incentive for singing is they enter you in some drawing. Not even a free hot dog.

We had pretty much the only setback at the very beginning when we got there. As you can tell from the weinermobile picture, we brought our camera. The only problem was that there was a big sign on the entry door saying no cameras allowed. Hanging my head, I returned to the car and safely stashed our sony. So unfortunately the pictures end here. Sorry.

After that everything was awesome. Once you get inside there was a ton more activities. Aside from the classic buy-our-stuff booths, they also had a few karaoke places and even one dancing place. Unfortunately again, though, long lines changed our minds from participating.

Being poor collegeish aged students, we did not purchase the close up expensive seats. We purchased the cheapest triple deck nosebleed money (or a lack thereof) could buy. Portal DDD or something like that. We went up to find our seats and at the top of the escalator we took there was a Delta Center employee to direct us. She saw that we were only two and asked if that was it. We said yes and she proceeded to ask us if we wanted closer seats. Of course! We love free stuff. The catch was we had to give her our tickets and she gave us new ones. The new ones put us on the side of the stage (it had wings that went out to each side that the singers would walk out on to sing) about 10 feet away. Way sweet. We were to perfect spot to get a great view of everything.

To begin, though, our great view was a little too much. The show was scheduled to start in about a half an hour when the crew members who do spotlights etc were climbing the rope ladders to get up to the crow's nest places. There was one who looked like Santa Claus and he was having a really hard time climbing up. He had a harness to protect him but his progress was still very slow. He got close to the top but really began to struggle. Then to everyone's horror he slipped and plummeted down. The entire audience gasped/screamed. He did a complete flip and fell half the distance before the harness caught him and seemingly gave him a bad case of whiplash. Atleast he was safe, though. The entire experience, understandingly enough, really shook him though as he clung to the ladder and would not move. Another guy without a harness climbed up to help and they had to end up lowering the crow's nest (it was suspended from the ceiling) to help him feel safe enough to get down. It actually even delayed the concert by about 30-45 minutes. We're just glad he was safe.

Then the concert started. Two security guards were standing (one on each wing) as the announcer says "we proudly present your american idols". I leaned over to Crystal as commented that I liked the hair of the one closest to us because it just looked out of place on his body. Then after the announcer said that, the security guards started walking towards the middle. That's why I realized it and leaned over and said the "goateed funny looking one is Blake". The audience was confused until suddenly Blake took off his hat, wig, costume, and goatee and they realized who it was and roared in cheering. Blake has a lot of family in Utah and apparently there were roughly 80 or so in the audience. We knew the section because we kept seeing his dad walking around everywhere.

Then the concert started. Here's what I thought:

• Leanna won't like hearing this but...All of the Idols, INCLUDING Sanjaya, are way better in person than they are on TV. Yes, even Sanjaya was a really strong singer.
• "You give love a bad name" by Blake is freaking awesome live and the crowd went nuts: Hands down best performance by a long shot
• The best preformance of the night
  

To be continued.......