I did not die or get lost on a mysterious island with polar bears and smoke monsters on my way back from Australia. I probably should have mentioned that earlier... My main problem was flying out to LA on the worst possible day ever (when Michael Jackson died). Not only did this make me lose the pool on which celebrity would die next (I had my money on you, Stephen Hawking! You let the team down!), it made travel way more difficult. I have impeccable timing. So as always happens to me, I had a very odd time that day trying to get through LAX (the worst airport I have ever been to and now hate with a passion) battling weeping freaks who flew in from all over the world as soon as they heard the news, hoping to go to his funeral. Then on my other flight, a guy had a heart attack and we had to force a landing, causing me to miss the event which was the main reason I was going to Chicago in the first place. I wanted to punch everything, it was truly infuriating.
The reason I haven't updated is not because of a lack of interesting events (far from it), but I've been busy with an internship at a local music magazine. Well, I was until I was wrongfully fired. I won't go into it, because that's unprofessional and bitchy, but let's just say it's up there in crazy boss stories with the time I was fired from the cafe in Brisbane for being a Taurus and not owning a cell phone.
So now I have extra free time for updating blogs and doing freelance work, some links to which I will post here occasionally. One of the things I did for my former internship was photograph Thursday's concert at First Unitarian Church. I had photographed them previously on Warped Tour '06 and was excited to do so again, since they've long been one of my favourite bands and put on an amazing live show. The morning of the show, my boss called to inform me I'll be not only taking live shots, but a portrait of the band too. A few minutes after I got off the phone with him, I literally threw up from nervousness. Gross, yes, but I feel that needs to be part of the story to illustrate how incredibly excited/terrified I was.
We were supposed to do the photo shoot outside the church, but there were swarms of teenage boys waiting outside, so I started taking pictures of them sitting on the steps inside. It was too boring a setting, so I spur of the moment told them to go into the daycare center room. I then instructed them to sit in the tiny kiddie chairs. Yes, I told one of my favourite bands to sit in tiny plastic chairs in a room that spelled like Cheerios and pee. I'm still reeling from the absurdity of it. The resulting photo was fantastic though, and I despise that it was never used in the article. So for the first time ever, here it is, I guarantee there are no other photos of Thursday like this.
Among my other adventures, I traveled with my roommate Katie to Lancaster to interview a band I (at first) knew little about. I will be honest and admit that I originally wanted to interview them when they were on Warped Tour just so I could go to Warped again, but it fell through. When offered to interview them at another time, I decided to go with it since they seemed interesting. Hence the long voyage to downtown Lancaster, an area I had no idea contained any sort of concert venues. I'm very tempted to post the MP3 of our interview, since it's hilarious and the word 'bro!' comes up at least three times a minute. But I sound like a twelve-year-old boy, so I'd rather not put that out into the world, ha. Here's a link to the finished article (go to pages 12 and 13): http://www.origivation.com/issues/origiVation_2009.11.pdf
Due to a mix-up, Katie and I were unable to see that show, but they put us on the guest list for their next show in Philly, which was last week. It was mostly us and tween girls, but we had a blast and made all the teeny-boppers jealous when the guys saw us and ran over to give us hugs and ask how we were, haha. Katie also went up to their one tech (Colton, who I mention briefly in the article) and said, "Hello! I met you when you were sleeping!" She didn't mean it to sound super creepy, but it sort of did, and I died laughing. Katie, you're awesome.
Other highlights of the past few months include dressing up with my other roomie Sean as Bill & Ted from 'Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure/Bogus Journey.' It was most excellent. Don't have any photos of that yet, but I'll put them up when I do. I had people tell them I was a convincing Keanu Reeves, not sure if I should take that as a compliment or not. Another fun dress-up opportunity was Zombie Prom, which I went to with my fellow zombie obsessed friends Paige and Anne. My favourite part was doing the zombie shuffle into a Wawa afterwards and having a horrified cashier give us weird looks as we demanded "brains! Or pretzellllllllls? Raughhhhh, if you have themmmmm. Thanksssss, aughrawrgahhhhhhhhhh!"
(Anne, me, and Paige)
Apologies again that I haven't been updating. The Awkward American is far from being over, despite the fact I'm no longer abroad. Because even in America, I'm still awkward and American, so the title will always apply. More updates soon! <3
