I have a bunch of on-line buddies going to this show (and like the February Easton shows, there's 2 in one day) but I was waiting on my work schedule and whatnot, and was pretty sure I wasn't going to go. Until I jokingly mentioned hitting this concert to my future sister in law, Kathy. Kathy, probably equally joking said "Oh, Weird Al's gonna win *that* conflict." So, I asked if whe wanted to go too, and she said sure! And then, there I was buying tickets and making hotel reservations. After spending the money, Kathy and I realized that we were ALSO supposed to go to a bridal shower in CT that day, and after much discussion, decided to keep the tickets and just drive like fools.
And for those keeping score at home...this one marks my 11th show on the tour.
OK...I have the tickets, told Kathy where they are, and we made plans for the weekend. Kathy seems excited. I told her to "wear something bright!" and she was like "Oh yeah? Why?"
"Well, you see a lot of Hawaiian shirts at Weird Al concerts."
"Oh yeah? Don has a Hawaiian shirt, I'll wear THAT!" (Don's my brother. He's mildly amused by the entire thing. He told Kathy no Weird Al tattoos under any circumstance.)
So. Kathy and I left Beacon at 10 am, so we could drop her car off at my work (I had to work Sunday) and then we drove out to Manchester CT for the bridal shower. So we were pretty dressed up. Plans at that time were to find our hotel and change clothes before the concert. It was not to work out this way. We had lunch at the shower, played some games, and left during the whole gift thing. I decided to avoid I-95 again today, after getting lost the day before, but we made decent time to PA. Kathy and I jabbered the entire time, which was cool since I'm really just getting to know her.
Most amusing point of the trip: As we got on the PA Turnpike, we were trying to figure out what exit we needed to get off of. I had a route number, but the exits on the toll ticket just had town names. I finally saw a billboard for some hotel that had our route number and, happily, the exit number on it.
"There we go," I said. "We need exit 27."
Kathy yells "27!" I hadn't even realized it, but I had explained The 27 Thing a few weeks earlier.
We then managed to make a wrong turn off the turnpike and completely missed our hotel, though we arrived in plenty of time for check in and changing. Instead, we wandered along Easton Road for what felt like days and stumbled across the theater. We parked and decided to just ditch the fancy shoes, put on some sneakers and toss Hawaiian shirts over our dresses. As luck would have it, Kathy's shirt perfectly matched her dress so it looked like this was actually something she intended to do.
We did meet up with Lynn (snails), Angela, Sue K and her sister, Dave, Christina, Amanda, Adrian and Ann again.
Since we were kinda far back, and I was short on film, I didn't take a whole lot of pictures this time around. I had a pretty good time watch Kathy enjoy the show...she got right into the "Yabba dabba doos" and waving during Amish Paradise...and during the "Fat" video she turned to me and yelled "YO! DING DONG MAN!" She came out saying "Wow, that was great!" afterwards so Lynn and I had her doing the whole Cher interview routine before she realized what we were doing. Unfortuantely, the stage was small, so Like a Surgeon got cut, and Al's voice was rough so Fast Food, Free Delivery and Rabbi were dropped from the medley. Al was also not feeling well (and it was rumored that Bermuda was sick too) so after the show we just hung out with Lynn and talked a bit. Kathy is thinking about coming along on a 2 show road trip in October...
For the record, we did find our hotel eventually. It was full of these Navy guys who looked at us like we were nuts.