Cabaret!

Cabaret time!

Not the musical, mind you. People keep getting confused when we talk about cabarets. 

Let’s clarify. 

There’s Cabaret, which according to Wikipedia “is a musical with a book by Joe Masteroff, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and music by John Kander. The 1966 Broadway production became a hit and spawned a 1972 film as well as numerous subsequent productions.”

Then there’s the type of cabaret we went to on Monday night: “a form of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue—a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables (often dining or drinking) watching the performance.”

If I understand correctly, there are cabarets in Cabaret. Hence the name.

The cast of Spring Awakening has been doing cabarets for their charity (Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids) in the past year and a half they’ve been on tour. Ryan and I have depended on the people who’ve gone to past cabarets to video tape and youtube the experience. Our favorites can be seen here, here, and here. 

And finally we got to actually go to a Cabaret ourselves.

On Monday night, the cast performed a cabaret called Girls will be Boys will be Girls will be Boys at a popular venue in Hollywood for Upright Cabarets. Ryan got us dinner tickets and we were set to go.

Even leaving at 3:30pm didn’t get us there in time for our 7pm reservation, dang L.A. traffic. But we made it early enough to get center seats at the third from closest table, so not too shabby. We ordered drinks, dinner, and set in to wait for the show.

Since the show was all about boys singing girls’ songs and vice versa, our first taste was Chase Davidson, singing Wendla’s role in Mama Who Bore Me… complete with confused facial expressions and gestures. It was made of awesome.

More of the boys- this time singing My Junk.

The girls followed it up with the traditional boys’ pieces in Touch Me.

Then it was time for the individual pieces. Steffi D did a very… unique medley of patriotic sounding songs. That’s all I’ll say.

Christy Altomare sang a song she wrote for a friend to sing to his girlfriend. Apparently she’s always wanted to be able to sing it herself, so ‘girls sing boy songs’ night worked out perfectly for her to sing “Alessa.” Loved it. Christy Altomare is going to be a household name someday. And we’ll be able to say we knew her as little ol’ Wendla Bergman. 🙂

Krystina Alabado sang a fierce version of “Lost in the Wilderness” from Children of Eden.

Kimiko (she’s so cute!) Glenn sang a song called “You and I,” which I’d never heard before.

There were much more, of course, but the blogger uploader’s being slow, so I’m skipping right ahead to the end of the night. Here’s Shingledecker singing one of the encore songs.

The girls hugging after a little Mama Who Bore Me (Reprise).

And the finale song, led by newbie swing Kayla Foster, “Let the Sunshine in.”

After we left the cabaret, Ryan and I decided to re-enact our TGO friend date of six months ago; so off we went in search of a Little Caesar’s. We found two. Neither were open. Don’t they know we were trying to have a moment! Eventually we had to settle on a Wendy’s for drinks and fries. It was meh. 

Awakening: San Jose

So I’m finally getting around to posting about our San Jose Spring Awakening experience.

We started out early: Ryan, Brittany, and Ryan’s friends Michelle and Jess in one car, Chris and I in the other. We traveled for hours and hours, stopping only for lunch at Quiznos, Subway, Jack in the Box. (The Quiznos, we discovered when we pulled in, had not yet opened: “Maybe tomorrow!” the guy yelled to us. Um, what? You don’t have a set opening day, and yet you look like you’re open… Then the Subway across the street was closed too. And finally when we started wondering if anything in God forsaken Bakersfield was open, we found the others at the Jack in the Box, again across the street. Also, this Jack in the Box offered showers. I’m a little worried about Bakersfield as a whole.)

After driving way out in the country for more hours and hours (including a pass through Gilroy, California, the garlic capital of the world), we made it to our San Jose home. We actually made very good time, so we had a couple of hours to relax and get ready for the night’s festivities.

In the boys’ room, we discussed the options for dinner. Ry, the Yelp fiend that he is, discovered the Firehouse Grill, just blocks from the theater, so we headed there for a quick meal. The Grill turned out to be a bar and grill fashioned after a firehouse, with fire/burning related names for all their entrees. Good food, good service.

Please forgive these pictures. I didn’t bother to photo correct them, and the lighting in the Firehouse was very dim and very yellow. 😦

We opted to walk to the theater, rather than deal with parking closer by, and we set out through the beautiful streets of San Jose.

Let me tell you: I would not mind living in San Jose someday. It’s super clean and super safe looking.

The show was, of course, amazing. This was mine and Ryan’s first time this season (fourth overall!), so there were a few new cast members and swings to watch for. Of course, we were way up in the back, so we couldn’t see the swings well anyway.

But.

During intermission, I was feeling a little mischievous. So I grabbed Chris and our stuff and headed down to the orchestra level, where I’d been watching two empty seats in the fifth row.

I’d heard of people moving to better seats at intermission, but I’d never attempted it myself. It’s unnerving trying to pull one past the the ushers.

Sadly, someone else had snaked my two empty seats by the time we got down there. 😦

There were tons of available seats in the back half of the orchestra, which all would have been perfectly fine seats, but for some reason I had my heart set on up close and personal.

Ryan and Brittany joined us soon after, and we had our sights on this one row which appeared to be completely empty in the middle. No purses, programs, or husbands left behind to watch the seats. I finally got up the nerve to ask the family sitting right behind those seats if they had seen anyone sitting there. And the super nice dad tells us, “Nope, there’s six empty seats, starting right here. Feel free?”

Thank you, super nice dad. Thank you. Because of you I was able to score this picture with my 50 mm lens:

I figure it’s okay to sneak pictures if it’s not technically of the performance, right? Right? Oh, well, I didn’t get caught.

Then it was out to stage door for us, to get signatures for our Spring Awakening books. I’ve been waiting since last Christmas, when Ryan got the book for me, for the cast to come back.

First up, Taylor Trensch, the new Moritz, and a total sweetie! You can just tell how excited he is to be touring right now with such an amazing show. 

In this picture we’ve got Kayla Foster, one of the new chairs, and Gabby Garza who plays Anna.

Steffi D.!

Shingledecker and Krystina!

And then, just when we thought the night couldn’t get better, guess who ended up being at the show? Skylar Astin, the original Broadway cast Georg. We’re talking from the days of Lea Michele and John Gallagher, Jr. here, people. And he was soooo nice, chatting with us about Glee and flipping through our books, asking how we’d managed to score Lea’s signature. He ended up being our third original cast member to sign, a total fluke right before our planned visit to get two more. 

So once again, it was a great Spring Awakening experience. And special thanks to the OSF for following us around as our own personal photographer! 

John Gallagher, Jr. in American Idiot (the musical!)

After the matinee for American Idiot on Saturday, we waited around the stage door-ish area to get our books signed by the Spring Awakening alum. Michelle and Ryan got a picture with Brian Charles Johnson (original Otto) and we got autographs and talked a bit with Gerard Canonico (original ensemble), but I’ve got to admit, my favorite was John Gallagher, Jr. He seems very sweet and authentic and he was talking the show UP to the older couple who were speaking with him before us. 🙂 


So we’ve got two out of three of the original Spring Awakening leads now. Oh, Jonathon Groff, why are you so elusive? And why in the world were you at American Idiot exactly one week before we were?

Do you know the way to San Jose?

Because we do! In fact, that’s where we are right now!

Road Trip 2009 has begun. Faithful readers may remember a brief mention awhile back about Ryan’s brilliant idea to travel north for a viewing of Spring Awakening (which we all know is our favorite) and a new musical based on Green Day’s American Idiot songs (which just so happens to feature three actors from the New York Broadway cast).

Well, the weekend has finally come. The others began their day by meeting us in Anaheim at seven this morning, but Chris and I came up a day early to celebrate his birthday at Disneyland (and collect $72 in Disney money since he’s got a pass). We both had to work the first part of the day, so making it up for our 3:30 Blue Bayou reservation was a little stressful… but luckily we made it with ten minutes to spare! (Unluckily we chose not to use those spare ten minutes to run to Space Mountain for fast passes, but that’s a different story.)

The Blue Bayou was pretty fantastic. Expensive. But fantastic. It’s a nice break from the hustle of the park, and any place that keeps bringing me rolls and butter is a happy place for me. Because of the price, we split a main meal- the jambalaya dish- which was excellent, and came with one of my new favorite restaurant salads (even rivaling Olive Garden’s!). Chris got a chocolate mousse automatically for being born on that day, so I ordered tiramisu (which is what he really wanted), and we switched. Well, the waitress knew what our plan was, I think, and she switched them when she came back to the table, and put the birthday candle in Chris’ tiramisu (which came in an adorable ceramic Mickey Halloween cup that Chris then had to carry around the rest of the day).

Sadly, when we had finished and made it back to Tomorrowland, the fast passes were all gone. Dang it. So we had to wait in line for an hour and a half to go on the new and improved Halloween style Space Mountain. Which really wasn’t that great, and actually kind of demonic feeling for Disneyland.

We hit up Haunted Mansion next, and we saw the cutest Halloween costume ever on a little kid in the elevator. He was dressed like Boo from Monsters Inc., and all you could see was his little face peeking out from the blue monster outfit. He. Was. Adorable. That is totally going to be my kid’s first costume. (Yes, Jedi got bumped to second.)

So that was our first day of vacation. This morning we met the others at Disneyland and headed up to San Jose. Got here in record time, and now we’re all just chilling and starting to get ready for dinner and then the amazing Spring Awakening tour cast. We’ve got our cute theater clothes, our Spring Awakening books, multi-colored Sharpies, and the hopes to get upgraded to better, closer, and maybe even onstage, seats!

A Tale of Two TGO’s: Second Edition

Ryan and I took Monday off of work to make a day out of traveling up to Santa Monica for the Glee screening. We left early enough to give us a few hours to hang out at Disneyland on a quiet Monday afternoon. We rode some rides, tried some photography stuff in front of the castle, and had an overall nice time. Oh! And we found baby ducks in the pond by Frontier Land? Lots of time spent taking pictures of Mama Duck and her three little ducklings.

Then we headed north for Santa Monica High School. We found the place easily enough, and luckily found a Subway right down the street, too. Made it back to the school around 5:30 and wandered around while things were being set up.

At 6:30 they let everyone into the outdoor amphitheater and Ryan and I snagged front row seats, and two medium-sized Glee T-shirts (no smalls, sadly), then took turns running back up the stairs to the main area which was set up with tons of carts giving out popcorn, cotton candy, slushies and stuff. On my turn running up for more popcorn, the stars of the show began to arrive for the makeshift “red carpet” interviews. First up were Jayma Mays and Jessalyn Gilsig, who’ve both been on Heroes, so that was kind of cool to see some first season Heroes show up.

But we all know we were only there for Lea Michele.

So Lea Michele showed up about twenty minutes later, and Ryan and I strategically placed ourselves to where we could hopefully get to meet her before the show started, since we weren’t sure if they’d do a meet and greet kind of thing, like they usually do with theatrical shows. Sadly, the interviews were taking forever, and Ryan went back to the front to watch our stuff when the program started off with the Santa Monica cheerleading squad and band performing to some of the Glee songs.

But I stuck it out in the bitter cold, and finally, finally, she finished her last interview. Someone handed her a bag of popcorn and she started to come into the amphitheater to watch the show from the top, where I just so happened to be waiting with mine and Ryan’s Spring Awakening books. She was definitely in a hurry, and her people were trying to keep her moving, but she graciously stopped to sign both of our books. The only bummer was that I couldn’t get Ryan’s book open to the appropriate page fast enough, so she ended up signing in the front, where there’s a red pattern that makes autographs hard to see. But- hopefully it was made up for by the fact that she used her teeth to pull off the pen cap (she laughed when she handed it back to me, saying sorry her spit was all over it now), and so Ryan’s lucky Jeopardy pen just so happens to have Lea Michele’s DNA on it now. 🙂 He likes it.

The screening was fun, although the show wasn’t quite as funny as I was expecting. Ryan really enjoyed it though, and when we watched it later with the OSF, he seemed to like it too, so I figure it’ll grow on me soon enough. After the screening, the entire cast came out on stage for a Q & A, where they told us about some of their audition ordeals (car accidents on the way, bitten by a spider and covered in hives), working with Kristen Chenoweth when she guest starred, and how the songs each week will be available for download on itunes, which Ryan and I are definitely happy about.

It turned out to be a good thing I stuck it out waiting for Lea Michele earlier, because once the Q & A was over, a bunch of security guards stationed themselves around the actors, as if we were all going to rush them onstage. So ridiculous. I think it’s funny that people seem to think TV actors are so much more special than theater actors. In theater, the stars come right outside and talk to people on the street, take pictures, etc., with no one around to really protect them; But here the security guards kept them all away from the crowd, even though most of the actors are either no-names yet, or are known by a select few (like Ryan and I and a few other SA fans) for their theater credits.

So it was pretty ridiculous, but we waited it out anyway. Unfortunately Lea Michele left before any of the actors broke the security guard line to come talk to people, but we were able to talk with Jenna Ushkowitz for a bit. She was a replacement swing in the New York company of Spring Awakening until it closed in January, and she was definitely fun to talk with about it. She said she’s played all of the girl characters but Wendla, and Ilse was her favorite to portray. Then she signed our books, took a picture with Ryan, and then, ignoring the security guard’s warning that that would be the last picture, asked if I wanted one too. So sweet!

By the time all the hoopla was over, we were pretty much frozen for life, so we headed back to Ryan’s truck and cranked up the heater and Spring Awakening tunes. Just out of L.A., we started looking for a McDonald’s to recharge with 79 cent caffeination, and Ryan decided we also needed a $5 pizza. So at 11:30pm, we sat in the McDonald’s parking lot, macking down on Little Caesar’s and giant cokes. It was pretty fantastic.

Thanks, TGO, for a great friend date day! Hope there are more to come, and I just know you’ll meet Lea Michele sooner or later! 🙂

Adventures of Two TGO’s: Coming Soon!

Well we’re off now to meet Lea Michele! (Hopefully.) We’ve planned a few hours to hang out at Disneyland on a quiet Monday, perfect for trying out fun photos, and then on to Santa Monica for the Glee screening. Our Spring Awakening books are packed. Our rebels are packed. And I’ve packed some extra cough drops, because despite what Sonia says, I think I am getting sick. No bueno before her wedding… especially because she’s staying with us starting tonight!

Peace out, girl scout.

Glee!

Ryan and I just found out today that there will be a special pre-screening of the first episode of Glee next Monday in Santa Monica. I don’t think I’ve mentioned Glee here on the ol’ blog yet, but it’s a new show airing on Fox, and it stars one of our favorite original Spring Awakening cast members, Lea Michele! Ry and I are super excited to possibly meet Lea Michele, and plan to take our SA books up for our first original lead autograph. Word is now that it’s first come first serve, so there is a very real possibility we may get up there early to wait in line all day. Hmmmm… I need to go find a really thick book if that’s the case….

Of television and coffee shops

My Monday on set went well. Got there early enough to go through the line quickly, had some yummy breakfast, and got quite a bit of reading done before we even started working. Things got interesting when we were lined up in groups of 16 and assigned a “counselor.” And then the A.D. just had a blast making as many references to summer camp as he could come up with.

My team was the Bravo squad, in case anyone was wondering. And we were the best team.

So the whole scenario yesterday was that a pilot currently filming in L.A. needed footage of a full stadium, hence our meeting at Petco Park. For about four hours we basically ran from section to section, filling the place up slowly but surely. Somehow the cameras will be able to piece it all together to show a full stadum, which absolutely amazes me, because there were a total of only 150 background used.

It may sound boring (and tiring), but it was actually pretty amusing. The A.D.’s and assistant A.D.’s kept reminding us to mingle with different people, don’t sit with the same person from the last shot, etc. They yelled at us to think of it as speed dating, to get out there and make new friends, occasionally shouting, “Hey, this guy’s got no friends! Who’s going to befriend this guy!”

I met some new people, sat with some kids I remember from the Ex List, ran into a guy named Paul who’d apparently been on set a lot with me, but we’d never run into each other. Then I sat next to this one guy who happened to catch me discreetly trying to get a picture of myself with the rest of the stadium and people behind me (to send to Andy with a “Wish you were here!” sentiment). We struck up a conversation about Rent since it was just here, and we eventually ran out of conversation, and I went back to my book.

I could see he wanted to keep the conversation going, but he wasn’t saying anything, so I kept reading.

Then he spoke up.

“Have you ever heard of Spring Awakening?”

Bam! That was my book hitting the concrete and sliding down to the next row. Conversation on! Sadly, we had only a minute and a half to discuss the amazingness that is Spring Awakening, before we were on to our next “speed dates.”

Four hours, 65 pages, and hundreds of steps later, the first A.D. yelled “Wrapped!” Everyone cheered and booked it for the exit. With 150 people working that day, check out could take up to an hour and a half. 

Luckily (and possibly selfishly), I’m okay with speed walking to the front of the group, and New Friend Paul and I made it out of there as number 3 and number 4 to exit. Then we slapped high five and headed to our respective cars. It was a good day.

I didn’t realize how exhausted, hungry, and, apparently, dehydrated I was until halfway to Andy and Ryan’s apartment. Stopped and got a Subway sandwich and some water, crashed on their couch with more water, and contentedly watched Jeapordy and NCIS for three hours with Andy, while intermittently falling in and out of a nap. What a great afternoon.

After that we went to Andy’s going-away-for-a-month party at Chevy’s ($3 margaritas at happy hour!), then back to the guys’ place to meet Chris for How I Met Your Mother. Then a couple episodes of Lost which they want to hook me on, and I’m finally succumbing to since everyone and their mother watches it.

And now it’s Tuesday night and the OSF and I are at the usual Starbucks haunt. I got my 1,000 words done early enough to mess around on facebook and Word Challenge it up. Don’t know what he’s doing, but I’m sure he’s being equally productive. 🙂

Five on Friday: Confessions Edition

Because I have quite a few things to confess this week. And I haven’t confessed in awhile. And there’s just some things that you can’t hide forever.

Here we go:

1) Sometimes I wonder if perhaps I love Spring Awakening too much. But almost immediately after I wonder if it is even possible to love something that is the definition of awesome too much. And the answer is definitely NO.

2) Matt Shingledecker is still my favorite SA person. Duncan Sheik was cool, but we were standing right in front of him, staring him down with hopeful eyes and pen and book ready, and he skipped over us to talk with some more important looking guys first. (Understandable, I guess, but we were next.) Lauren Pritchard was nice and polite, but she seemed to be in a hurry. (Again, understandable, it was like 11pm.)

But when we were waiting for Shingledecker at stage door, he came right over to us after just a glance. And that is why he’s my favorite.

(Matt Shingledecker: If you ever google yourself and come across this here blog, just know that you’re awesome, ‘kay?)

3) When I told Duncan Sheik on Wednesday night that I’ve listened to at least something off the Spring Awakening soundtrack every day since I discovered it in July, I most definitely was not lying. I’ve never been so infatuated with lyrics before in my life. 

4) Believe it or not, it’s really hard for me to make friends. Stresses me out like no other trying to get people to like me. 

Sometimes I have to give up on people because it’s just too hard. 

I had to give up on a few people this last month. 

5) Now that my wireless internet is working again, I’ve been watching movies on Netflix at night while I fall asleep. Netflix just put up a whole bunch of television shows in the Watch Instantly section. And, being bored watching The Office and Heroes episodes over again, I’ve turned to… Hannah Montana reruns. 

I KNOW.

But it’s like an addiction! They’re such cute little kids, with such quirky little acting habits. I love it. Can’t get enough of it. Almost done with season two, about to start up season three. 

So if anyone has any non-Disney channel shows or movies to recommend, please leave your suggestions in the comments section.

6) I am normal. Got it reaffirmed yesterday. Technically not a confession, I suppose, but just wanted to share with you all (especially after those other five revelations). 

And besides, it’s Five on Friday, and I gave you my five already.

A Tale of Two TGO’s

The setting:

The characters:

Ryan Prades

Jordan Peck

The story:

So about three weeks ago Ryan discovered something fantastic: Duncan Sheik, who just so happened to write the music to each and every Spring Awakening song, would be performing at Anthology in Little Italy, along with Lauren Pritchard, who just so happens to be one of the original Broadway cast members. 

We were excited to hear this news.

And I almost didn’t go. 😦

Because of that money thing. Darn money. It ruins everything. So I was going to tell myself no, that I needed to save up every little $20 just in case something terrible happens in the next few months or the economy really takes a nose dive. And saying no is no fun.

But then I remembered my goal this year is to have fun. And this would most definitely be fun. So, HA, economy. I get to go see some of our Spring Awakening idols.

Originally, the plan was to get the cheap $15, standing only, limited view tickets, but they were sold out online the day of. So we went ahead and splurged the extra $7 each to get a real table in the upper, upper level.

It turned out to be totally and completely worth it. We got their early enough to have our pick of the seats, and even if we’d arrived late there was still plenty of room. (Also plenty of room in the $15 section so I don’t know why they weren’t selling those tickets anymore, but I like the way it worked out anyway.) We ended up in seats right along the edge of the balcony, pretty much looking right down at the stage, with a spectacular view of the amazing Duncan Sheik, Lauren Pritchard, and their band.

Yeah. It was awesome.

We had a bit of a wait, so we played around with the camera a bit and took some practice pictures of the snazzy restaurant. I highly recommend going to a performance at Anthology, by the way. It’s super nice, great ambiance, not at all crowded; just a really mellow place to see a show. I was actually pretty surprised it wasn’t more packed for these two.

Some waiting-around-pictures:

The menus

Ryan, modeling the drinks menu

And then Ryan decided he was going to get food.

Darn him. Because then I really wanted food. And I am morally opposed to buying expensive food. Especially when I’ve already paid $20 to go to an event. 

But, buffalo wings…

… they are my weakness. 

And, as it turns out, Anthology makes really great buffalo wings. So I was a very happy camper by the time the band came out, followed by…

… the amazing Duncan Sheik.

(Stage pictures are pretty bad due to the lighting issues and our distance. We were close, but not close enough for pretty pictures in the dark. I mostly ended up with a lot of video of the songs, which I’ll probably post sometime later.)

Duncan Sheik

Lauren Pritchard

They sang four Spring Awakening songs, and before each, Duncan tried to give a little synopsis of what was happening onstage, but, as I think we all know from personal experience, Spring Awakening is a difficult plot to explain. At one point he was just laughing at himself because it was all just coming out sounding weird. Luckily, it seems like most of the cool audience peeps had seen the musical, so no harm.

After the performance Ryan and I started wondering if they would be out and about somewhere to sign and take pictures. I’d had the brilliant idea to bring some really cool pieces of Spring Awakening memorabilia for them to sign, but was at a loss of what to bring. Ryan had the brilliant (and immediate and obvious) idea to take our Spring Awakening official companion books. Genius, that boy. 

Our first turn of fate for the night happened at the upper floor elevators, where the cellist from the band was waiting to head down. He told us that Duncan and Lauren would most likely be down at the merchandise table at some point. Awesome.

We rushed down the stairs, with books in hand, realized we’d forgotten the pen in the car, freaked momentarily, and then Ryan stole the pen from the newsletter signup on the merchandise table. Desperate times, and all.

So while Ryan browsed the T-shirts, I stayed at the foot of the stairs, ready to intercept anyone coming down or trying to head out the door. We didn’t have to wait long, because one minute I was searching down the hall, and the next Duncan Sheik was standing on the second stair looking down at everyone. I beckoned Ryan back over and we were basically second in the now quickly forming line. Excellent.

It was amazing.

We gushed about how much we loved the soundtrack, and he signed our books on a page we’d picked, which had one of the songs written out in its original form. A perfect signature spot. 

XXOO’s for me, peace for Ryan (in case you were wondering)

One down. One to go.

We had to wait a bit longer for Lauren to make it down. Ryan went shopping again, and I resumed the post near the stairs. After a few minutes it began getting a lot more crowded, and I could see Ryan trying to find me over all the heads. So I waved at him. And he looked like he was trying to tell me something important. So I made a face at him that meant, “I’m standing guard here so we don’t miss her, ya big silly.” I’m not sure how well that look translated.

A minute or so later I headed over to him, and Lauren Pritchard was standing right in front of him. (What I really want to know is how she got down those stairs without me seeing?) Turns out that’s what Ryan was trying to tell me, and he’d already gotten her to sign his book, on the pre-designated page, which is a picture of the whole original cast with lots of white space for signatures. 

Lauren Pritchard is our very first original cast member signature (in case you were wondering).

And then we ran into the cellist again, and guess what? It just so happens that he played the cello in the Spring Awakening band, not only when they were on Broadway, but when they were just starting out off-Broadway, and all the way up to the closing performance on January 18. Dude.

So he got to sign the book too.

Because that’s just freaking cool (in case you were wondering).

Ben Kalb? You’re cool.

After that, we stood off to the side of the table just smiling goofily and declared it a good night. “We didn’t get pictures,” I said, “but I’m okay with it.”

Pssh. I always say that. And I always know after that I really do want the pictures. Yet somehow in the moment it just doesn’t seem that important.

The line for Duncan was dying down by that point, and Ryan pointed out we could get a picture now. We took awhile to decide to re-jump back into line, but finally Ryan decided he wanted the picture enough. So we became those silly fans who come back for more at the very end.

So then we were really pleased with ourselves, and as we walked to the main door (camera still in hand), ready to be officially done with the evening, who should walk right back in, but Lauren Pritchard.

As Ryan later figured out, the timing was perfect only because we decided to wait for a picture with Duncan, and because it took us so long to make that decision in the first place. Which is what made me realize that God must really like Spring Awakening, too, because I don’t believe in coincidences. 🙂

So we also got our pictures with Lauren. 

After that we became very excitable and spent time crouching in the middle of the street trying to take pictures with the Anthology sign behind us. And then we finally got back to the car and sang along to the soundtrack all the way back to Ry and Andy’s apartment. And while the rest of the household watched Lost, we sat at the dining room table downloading our pictures and video.

It was a good night.