my pittsburgh review

[carrie721]

first, a warning: don't read this if you don't want to know everything, yes, everything that happened tonight.

i left kent around 2 p.m. and traffic was pretty smooth. i missed the 76 ramp and ended up on 80 going towards NYC, but quickly fixed that. i found marissa's house without incident, which is pretty good for me. i made her the navigator and we made our way to kate's. then things got a tad dicey because my mapquest directions to the theater were wrong, so we drove around a bit before kate called her mom and told us how to get there. we found a parking garage and ate dinner at max and erma's and had a pretty creepy (and SLOW) waiter. my sandwich was pretty good, though - chicken, sundried tomatoes, and mozz on a ciabatta. yum. oh, and we had cookies, too, natch.

we walked over to the byham and picked up our tickets and met up with kate's mom. we found our seats and chilled for a bit. the byham is so beautiful! i can't wait to see patty griffin there next month. it's such a nice, intimate venue. really, i wouldn't have been disappointed in having any seat in the house.

lindsey was really on fire tonight. i loved the cleveland show, but this was so much better. the crowd was so pumped and so into it - lindsey even commented that he wanted to take the byham & everyone in it on the road with him. aw. the setlist was a little different this time from the cleveland show - no save me a place, and he did turn it on and shut us down. i don't think those were at the cleveland show.

the end of the show is where things got awesommmme. marissa (the goddess) got me and kate backstage, and we chilled (ok, sang and danced and freaked out) during holiday road and the two closers. freaking awesome! brett, that sleaze, saw us standing in the wings and kept motioning towards us and told us to stick around. yeah, okay. then, during the band intros, lindsey made his usual comments about brett the womanizer, and how there were some extra seats on the jet, blah blah, and brett motioned for us to join them on stage! kate, marissa, and i just looked at each other like w.t.f. so we go out there, we introduce ourselves to the audience (o.m.g.), and lindsey and brett make jokes about kate and marissa still being in high school. the crowd laughs, lollercoasters, etc. etc. funny ****. unreal.

i wanted lindsey to sign my tickets (oops, i stole your sharpie, kate! sorry!), but it was not to be, and as we walked back through the crowd to the front of the house, people kept stopping us and asking us how the hell we got on stage and who we were. we just kept saying "uhh, marissa knows a guy ..." and people liked that answer. whatev!

anywayyyy, we all went around to the back of the house to see if we could catch lindsey and the band on the way out. we didn't see lindsey, but we did run into davidmn - happy bday, david! we couldn't stay for long - marissa had to be home by 12 and i have the plague, and didn't want to be getting home too late. i took marissa home and called michelle to brag about my backstage experience. then once i got on the turnpike, i called sparky and talked his ear off all the way to my exit. i made friggin' record time, too - pittsburgh to kent in a little over and hour.

random thoughts:

-marissa, you are my friggin' hero for getting us backstage - that experience was unreal. you are so sweet and funny - i had a blast!

-kate, i don't think i've ever met any 16 year old with as much confidence and guts as you. you're so friggin' cool. i hope you and marissa can go to the neko and/or patty show with me!

-um, why does it cost so much $ to drive to PA? i mean, seriously, you have to pay $3 just to cross into the state, and then a separate turnpike fee. PA is not that great.

-kate, your mom's hot.

that's all i got. pictures to follow.