misadventures

Oh yeah, it's list time again.
Yes, 2008 was a ~busy year - it was superduperfulla great concerts, new albums from some of my favorite bands (and my most favorite band), great movies, and....iunno, a lot of weird shit. For me at least. haha. But at least it was fun!
So here's my breakdown of my top five personal favorite moments of this past year; the good old year of twothousandandnate. Ha, my wit.

5.) Batman: The Dark Knight & Twilight (movie releases)
The Dark Knight was easily the year's greatest movie and the talk of everyone's summer. Heath Ledger stole the show as The Joker and crazied his way into movie history on account of his outstanding performance. I went to see the movie with my best friend (it was her fifth time seeing it; holy geez) and was BLOWN AWAY. I'm still quoting random lines to this day, and I plan to religiously watch the DVD that my little brothers got for Christmas. Twilight, on the other hand, was not as easily the year's greatest movie - for everyone, that is. To the dedicated, drooling fans of the book series, it may as well have been a gift from the heavens; to those who grew easily tired of 13 year old girls screeching about sexy, pale-faced vampire men named Edward, the movie's release was a worst nightmare come true. I won't lie - I started the series a few years ago, when only Twilight and New Moon had been released. I instantly fell in love with the story and followed it to the very end. I was even at the midnight release party for Breaking Dawn. So it was only natural for me to go to the midnight showing of the Twilight movie...and damn, was I pleased. Plus, it was amusing - in an "I totally saw this coming" sort of way - to hear the theater erupt into girlish shrieks when the Cullens made their initial on-screen entrance. Oh, teenage hormones.


4.) Cobra Starship - The Really Really Ridiculously Good-Looking Tour
January 20, 2008. There I was, standing on a sidewalk under a dismally gray sky, the temperature barely crawling above 30 degrees, and the wind chill making matters worse. My friend and I were huddled together for a good four hours stuffing hand-warming packets into our shoes, up our sleeves, and into our hats. Finally, after an eternity of absolute hell, we got let into the nice, warm, tiny, basement-like venue, and the fun began. This show enlightened us in the ways of The Cab, Metro Station, and We the Kings - bands that my friend and I have come to love quite a lot over the eleven months that have passed. We ended up sitting on a bar counter for the duration of Cobra's set, and maaaaaan, was that set good. After the show, we hung around outside the tour bus for a while, scoring hugs and pictures with Victoria, Alex, Nate, and Ryland. Gabe didn't make an appearance while we were around, which was a bummer, but the good points of the day outweighed the bad so heavily that it didn't bother us too much.

3) Warped Tour 2008
July 23, 2008. There's nothing like starting your day at 5 AM! Two of my friends and I slept on the couch in my living room, my phone set to wake us up at the crack of dawn so we could be out the door and on our way to Warped Tour bright and early. By 6 AM, we were ready to go...and aside from my mom nodding off at the wheel once or twice, we made it safely through the hour-long trip to the venue and proceeded to sit around for a few hours and wait to be let inside. We met some really nice kids in line, chatted with some bands, bought about a zillion demo CDs, and got completely buried in stickers. We met Ludo, bought a ton of merch, briefly greeted Katy Perry, ate weird burritos, and...braved a lightning storm? Yup. That's right. Mere moments after Say Anything finished their set, the sky opened the hell up and dumped all the rain on Earth right on our unsuspecting heads. My friends and I sought shelter under an abandoned merch tent, along with about fifteen other people. It was rather crowded. The smart ones had gone to either the huge amphitheatre or their cars, completely shielded from the elements - and much safer than we, who were undoubtedly at a high risk of being struck by lighting (of which there was a lot). After about 30 minutes of downpours, shockingly loud thunder, and horrifyingly close calls with lightning bolts, my friends and I managed to scurry back to the stage - soaking wet - and ended up being on barricade for Story Of The Year and Cobra Starship. Sweet deal. We were also barricade for The Academy Is..., and snagged some chocolate milkshakes at McDonald's on our way home. It was a good day in every respect.


2) The Academy Is... - Bill & Trav's Bogus Journey Tour
November 12, 2008. My friend and I beat it out of school and trekked up into the city, several hours before doors. We hung out on the sidewalk, in the freezing cold, taking camera phone pictures of abandoned mixed beverages sitting on the windowsill of the convience store behind us. The wait was one of the shortest we've ever had, despite the venue running late, and we still ended up just one person back from the barricade. By the time The Academy Is... came on, we had earned ourselves a spot right on the stage - but were stuck inches away from the stacks of speakers. (Our ears rang for at least a week afterwards.) Nevertheless, we managed to have the times of our lives. Sisky's my favorite, and we were on his side of the stage. My friend knew I would really love for him to notice me, so she managed to direct his attention towards me as I waved and smiled, and I got a smile in return. At one point, Chizzy happened to look in our direction. I grinned at him and bust out with a super-excited wave; I must have looked pretty happy to see him, because he pulled a guitar pick out of his pocket, walked across the stage, leaned over the stack of speakers, and shoved the pick into my fist before any of the people around me could snatch it. William hopped up onto the speaker quite a few times, singing out to the crowd from directly above us, which was cool. Just after the set started, Jack came into the crowd to get some pictures, choosing to position himself behind my friend and I. Being the polite girls we are, we both ducked down and leaned to the sides, allowing him room to shoot some photos. We got squished pretty badly by the people dancing around us, but oh well. He had a sticker on his jacket that said "RAD"! That's my favorite word! We also made friends with the security guards, which helped in keeping our spots in the front row. They sort of created a little wall next to us so we couldn't get shoved out of the way, and they also helped me retrieve my friend from the sea of screaming girls when I accidentally lost my grip on her sleeve. See, manners do get you places!


And now, MY NUMBER ONE MOMENT OF 2008. Drumroll, please!

1) Cobra Starship - The Sassyback Tour
October 7, 2008. Ah, sweet sixteens- that once-in-a-lifetime chance for teenage girls to send their parents into bankrupcy due to their incessant demands for cars, ponies, expensive party dresses, and exotic animals in cages at their huge bashes. My sweet sixteen, though a bit of a stretch, was much less glitzy than those on MTV. As soon as I saw that Cobra Starship was kicking off their fall tour on my exact sixteenth birthday, I knew I had to be there. The fact that it was in Buffalo, New York - a whopping nine hours away from my front door - was the biggest obstacle. But my mom, being the wonderful person that she is, paid for airfare and a hotel room as her birthday gift to me. I helped a teeny bit. We flew out the day of the show, connecting to a new flight halfway through the trip, for a total travel time of 5 hours. (I should mention here that I have a pathological fear of planes and had an absolute meltdown during every takeoff and landing.) I got in line at the venue and so happened to be near a group of kids who were celebrating the birthday of one of their friends. The coincidence got us talking, and by the time we were let into the club, I had found myself some new out-of-state buddies. My mom also left for a while, returning with Hostess cupcakes, a single candle, and a balloon she found on the side of the road. Most of the line joined in singing "Happy Birthday" for me. We got let into the club, and I stuck with my new friends for the whole show. The crowd was intense and pretty out of control, but that made it fun. As we were leaving, I asked my mom if she had picked up the poster I was supposed to get for being one of the first 50 people to pre-order tickets. The merch guy overheard and directed me back towards the stage - evidently, the promise of posters had given way to a meet & greet. I nearly died with joy. Though my cab had already arrived and my mom had to pay the guy to wait for us, some nice girls in line pleaded my case to the people ahead of me and got me to the front of the line. When the meet & greet started, I scampered up to Gabe and was promptly pulled into a squeezy hug as he whispered "Are you Sammy?" into my ear. Shocked that he somehow knew my name, I nodded. He smiled and whispered "I'm sorry I forgot your shout-out. Happy birthday!" (This here, folks, was the highlight of my life. Forget just my year.) I was told later that my dad emailed their publicist and asked for the band to give me a shout-out during their set, but it slipped Gabe's mind. I met the rest of the band afterwards, all of them wishing me a happy sixteenth as well. The next day, I flew back home, filled with fabulous birthday memories that I'll remember for the rest of my life. (And here, I'd like to thank Cobra Starship for being amazing and nice and amazing.)


.......and there you have it, my five greatest moments of the year!
Here's to hoping 2009 can live up to the greatness that was 2008...or maybe even top it!
New Year's Resolution: Start playing the guitar again, so I can accomplish more than "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star".