Summerfest Part 2

So I know I haven't really blogged in a while, but consistency isn't really my strong suit when it comes to this sort of thing. Without further ado, here is the rest of my Summerfest experience.

Wiz Khalifa

Fail fail fail fail fail mcfaily fail. As soon as we got to the Summerfest grounds, we realized we had made a terrible mistake in trying to attend the concert. People were packed shoulder to shoulder OUTSIDE the Summerfest gates. It took us an hour and fifteen minutes to get general admission tickets. There were no lines, there was just a mob. Luckily, we met three charming gentlemen in the mob. One of them was really cute and sweet, one of them was tall and didn't say much, and the third one was drunk. Guess which one took an instant liking to me? I wish I could say that the cute, sweet one and I hit it off, but it was not fated to be that way. The drunk one immediately started chatting with me and shaking my hand repeatedly. Then the conversation turned to marriage. Who says guys are afraid of commitment? Anyways, drunk guy asked me if we could be engaged, and I jokingly agreed thinking if I agreed that he would let it go. I was wrong. Because my friends are so hilarious, they told him that our engagement wasn't official until he proposed to me right there in the middle of the mob and gave me a ring. So that's how I received my first marriage proposal. It was hot, sweaty, and we were in the middle of a mob of college students of varying levels of intoxication. My ring was a hair tie that he stole off my friend's wrist.

He then started holding me around the waist and asking when we could be married. Woah buddy. The cute, sweet one stepped in and rescued me much to drunk guy's dismay. We got our tickets, said our goodbyes to the three guys and headed over to Wiz Khalifa. People. Were. Everywhere. Even though we tried to push our way through the crowd, there wasn't room to move in any direction except out of the crowd. We stayed and heard three of his radio hits and then left because it just wasn't worth the uncomfortable proximity to total strangers and lack of fresh air. Despite the less than ideal crowd, I still enjoyed the songs that we heard, and from what I could see on the video screen, he was a decent performer.

Katy Perry

Marina and the Diamonds opened for Katy Perry. They had a sound that was very similar to Katy Perry's in that it was cheeky pop/rock music. Katy Perry is an awesome performer. She made several costume changes, and in one song made at least seven costume changes on stage. Figure that one out folks. I enjoyed this concert because there was a story that dictated the order that the songs were performed in. Apparently, Katy had just gotten food poisoning and was advised to cancel the concert but she decided to carry on. If that isn't the mark of a devoted artist, I don't know what is. It was a high energy show with lots of movement and dancing, and I was so impressed that she kept on going. I'd heard a couple of people say that Katy Perry wasn't that good live, but I thought her live singing sounded very similar to her recorded singing. Overall, I was very impressed with this show. Success.

Summerfest. One of the only cool things that Wisconsin has to offer. I highly recommend it.

Summerfest (Part 1)

Summerfest. A whole lot of awesome, some disappointment, and a little bit of romance.  

So this is Summerfest.

Thursday- Kanye West/ Kid Cudi concert
Okay so here's the deal. I. Love. Kid. Cudi. So as you can imagine, I was majorly pumped for this concert. Unfortunately, he only sang five songs to open and then came back to sing two or three with Kanye West. After I got over the initial disappointment of Cudi's short opening act, I had an awesome time listening to Kanye West. Sure the dude can be a douchebag and tends to speak before he thoroughly thinks things through. Honestly though, he is a talented performer and puts on an impressive show. The energy in the ampitheater was like nothing I've ever witnessed or felt. I don't know whether it had to do with Kanye's charisma or the heart arrhythmia producing speakers blaring Kanye's music, but it definitely left an impact and is one of my favorite concerts that I've been to to date. Success.

Kid Cudi/ Kanye West. BAM.

Saturday- Jason Mraz/ Maroon 5

Look at this park.

So entertaining for the easily amused, such as myself

Please note...

1. The tall shimmery things. They shimmer with the wind and you can turn them with giant wheels to face different directions
2. The benches. The planks are different lengths and produce different tones when they are hit by the attached wooden mallets
3. The folded metal thing in the background. When you throw rocks at it, it makes cool noises

So basically this park kept me amused for quite a while. We had a long wait between getting tickets for Jason Mraz and actually attending the concert, so we went out and explored Milwaukee. I don't really listen to a ton of Jason Mraz, but I was thoroughly impressed by his improvisational talent and charm onstage. His songs put me in a mellow mood. However, that mood was totally ruined by my Maroon 5 experience. I've attended a Maroon 5 concert before, and I loved it. Maroon 5 is a relatively big name in pop culture and they were playing at a free stage, so the place was PACKED. My friends and I tried to squeeze and awkwardly shimmy our way closer to the stage, but the only things we succeeded in doing were becoming extremely sweaty, awkwardly brushing up against randos, and making our way around the outskirts of the mob. At one point, a Summerfest employee barreled through the mob shouting, "MAKE WAY, WE HAVE A PERSON IN A WHEELCHAIR COMING THROUGH!" What the flip? I was curious as to how the wheelchair got through the crowd in the first place and at what point the person in the wheelchair realized that perhaps a wheelchair in a crowd wasn't the best idea. Now I'm all for the wheelchair bound getting equal opportunities at enjoying entertainment but COME ON.

Aw yeah. Wheelchair crowd surfing.

This is what I like to imagine that the wheelchair person was doing before they peaced out of the concert. This obviously isn't the Maroon 5 concert, but it was packed and everyone was schwasted, so it wouldn't lie entirely outside the realm of possibility. After a while of trying to catch a glimpse of Adam Levine, my friends and I left because it just wasn't worth it. Part success, but also part disappointment. C'est la vie, non?

Adam Levine. So hot.

So I know that I tend to be very long winded in my posts, so I'm going to keep this short and sweet (at least by my standards) and end this post here. In part two, you can expect crowds of epic proportions, a love story for the ages, and sugary confections. 

P.S. Sometimes I hate computers because somehow the font magically changed size in my last two paragraphs. I honestly tried tons of different things to try and fix it but that kind of failed. I even looked at the HTML which was like reading alien language. So, sorry for the visual inconsistency, but due to my lack of knowledge I can't fix the problem. Deal with it. Sorry, that was kind of harsh. It bothers me though so I just thought I'd be upfront about my frustrating blog issue. You probably don't care about it as much about it as I do, so I'll stop talking about it now. Goodnight!

Life lessons part two

The second life lesson that I'll be focusing on today is that if you never try, then you'll never know. This is a slightly more traditional life lesson, but we'll roll with it. Why not?

I learned this life lesson when I was in elementary school. We had just moved to Europe and I was finishing out my school year at an English-speaking school in the area. I don't really have many memories about this school, but for some reason I remember that our teacher made us read Romeo and Juliet as a class. I also remember that at the end, when we found out that both Romeo and Juliet died, everyone started crying. And when I say crying, I don't mean just a tear or two, but actual bawling. Anyways, back to the life lesson. At recess, the boys and a good amount of the girls would play some game, acting like they were characters in Dragon Ball Z. I didn't know anything about Dragon Ball Z and I reluctantly admitted this to the other kids hoping they would show me the ropes and let me do whatever the heck it is DragonBall Z-ers do with them. I hoped that they would let me be some awesome female character that ran around and kicked some major bad guy butt. Instead, they decided to make me the mom of one of the Dragon Ball Z characters. I just sat on the grass and did random mom things like making "dinner". I didn't really care that I was given the lamest role ever at the time though because I was included and that's all that mattered. Since I was the Dragon Ball Z mom, I got to know some of the other kids and I developed a huuuuuge crush on this one boy. I thought he was gorgeous and it didn't hurt that he was excellent at being a Dragon Ball Z character. I told my best friend that I "like liked" him in confidence and continued to admire him from afar. On the last day of school, my friend told him that I liked him.  Eight year old me didn't know how to properly deal with the mortifying realization that he knew how I felt about him. Naturally, I ran into the nearest set of bushes and hid there for the rest of the day. Yep. Because that's clearly the logical and sane thing to do in any situation. My friend even walked by with him at one point and tried to coax me out of the bushes. I stubbornly stayed hidden in the sparse foliage of the bush though. I honestly crawled around in the bushes for a good half hour to avoid talking to this boy. At the end of the day I ran out of the bushes, gathered my stuff as quickly as I could, and sprinted out of there. I was grateful because I knew I was going to a new school the next year and that I wouldn't have to face him ever again. However, soon after, part of me wondered what he would have said to me had I come out of the bushes and talked to him. He might have confessed that he had had a crush on me too, or he might have broken my heart (in 8 year old terms anyways), but I'll never know because I never gave him a chance to talk to me about it. Although if he did feel the same way, I'm not so sure his feelings stayed that way after he witnessed me crawling around in the bushes like a madwoman. So basically, the moral of this story is that you shouldn't  automatically run and hide in a bush when faced with an uncertain or unsettling situation. After all, some of the best things can come from taking risks. :) Goodnight!

Yet another random YouTube video I found...

So I feel like a terrible human being, but after watching this YouTube video I seriously laughed for five minutes straight. People falling is just one of things that never fails to make me laugh. Check it out.

Another thing you should check out: http://madisonalisajohnson.blogspot.com/
Do it. She's my ex-roomate and she's HILARIOUS. I love her to pieces and it would be fabulous if you would take a gander at her blog. Goodnight for now!

Life lessons part one

I'm not really sure what prompted me to write on this topic, but I realized that I've been slacking a bit with this blog and felt like I should keep up with my writing . Anyways, I've learned lots of generic life lessons, but that's not what this series of posts is about. Instead I'm going to share with you the stranger, yet still very practical life lessons I've learned so far. Because I'm bored and have some time to kill, I also illustrated this life lesson so it sticks longer. Warning: I am not, by any means, an artist or an illustrator.

1. Feather boas and treadmills don't mix.
Okay, so most people probably already know that this is a bad idea, but I had to learn this life lesson the hard way. I was over at my friend's house and we were playing in her basement. We were in fifth grade, so we liked to play dress-up and just be spazzes in general. I was wearing a long purple feather boa knotted around my neck and decided that I wanted to run on the treadmill. Before I knew it, I was being yanked backwards. Due to the fact that I had knotted the boa around my neck instead of draping it like a normal person would have, I went down. Hard. Thankfully, the boa was long enough that it got wrapped up in the treadmill and eventually made it stop running. One would think that my friend would be concerned that I had almost died in a freak treadmill-feather boa accident, but instead she ran over and the first thing out of her mouth was "YOU BROKE MY TREADMILL!" No its cool. I'm okay, really. No biggie. To add insult to injury, she handed me a pair of scissors and made me cut the gaudy purple boa out of the spokes of the treadmill. What I gathered from this experience was that I needed to find more empathetic friends (not to worry, the friend mentioned became much more empathetic, and she's actually one of my oldest and closest friends today) and when accessorizing to run on the treadmill, one should stick to gloves, jewelry that doesn't dangle, or fancy hats. Life lesson learned.

Again, I apologize for the terrible illustration. I was bored though, so whatever. Bonne nuit mes amis!

SLOTH!

So in my late night internet adventures, I came upon this video of a sloth.  Enjoy!

This video is never going to get old to me. Sloth+R. Kelly= Comic gold

It's raining and I'm terrified

True story. I'm writing this post as a way to take my mind off the monsoon that is occurring outside my window. Minus this moment of terror, I'd definitely say this was a good weekend. I got to read outside, hang out with some friends, and oh yeah, the world didn't end. It's the small things in life, am I right? Anyways, I'm kind of curious as to how the guy that prophesied "The Rapture" will explain this one. It doesn't really seem like something you can shrug off with a "Sorry, my bad guys! LOL!" Plus, I heard he already falsely predicted the end of the world seventeen years ago. Maybe if he just keeps making predictions, he'll fall into some luck one day and be right. For now he's 0 for 2, so his odds aren't looking very good. You never know I guess. Besides the whole world-not-ending thing, I went on a Friday night adventure with two of my friends. Let me tell you something about Wisconsin. If you don't live in either Milwaukee or Madison, you're kind of out of luck. The city that I'm from has a downtown but instead of having cool places to hang out, it has shops that sell random lawn ornaments, tacky pieces of art, 'clever' cocktail napkins with housewives saying quirky things and popcorn shirts. Sorry if you have a strange affinity for those wrinkly pieces of silky fabric, but I think that popcorn shirts are atrocious. Whenever I see one, it brings to mind a small sea creature. I think that shirts with actual popcorn sewn onto them would be more attractive and more practical (Popcorn right within your reach. Think about it.) So basically nothing that a young adult would be even remotely interested in. Back to the point... My friends and I decided to drive into Milwaukee and see where that led us. However, we overestimated our navigational abilities and ended up in a not-so-safe neighborhood. After several random turns and some lucky guesses, we ended up in an area where we kind of knew where we were. There was nothing interesting there (except for a porch of cute boys, oh HAY) so we drove on to a different part of Mil-town. Luckily for me, the driver, there was a ton of fog by the lake. YES. I love not being able to not see where I'm going in a part of town I'm not entirely familiar with. So much adventure, so much surprise. Eventually we arrived at our destination and hung out for a little bit. I remember we thought it was hilarious because there was some graffiti on the wall of the establishment that read something like "Jon and Tina, it's our first date, wish us luck!" Although I admire their optimism, I can't imagine feeling comfortable enough with another person on a first date to create some graffiti chronicling the progress of the relationship. I mean, what if they stopped hanging out after that one date? Talk about an annoying reminder of a relationship that didn't quite work out. Other than that, my weekend was pretty low key and laid back. Please, contain your excitement. I'm flattered, but I'm just a normal person like the rest of you, really. That's all for now folks!

Quote of the day:
When my mother removed her new calculator from its package-
"Cool, a new calculator. Should I spell boobies on it?"
I love my mom.