oh, medusa

* omg I need a Halloween costume, guys, what am I going to do? Ideas, give them to me!

* The concert was amazing and epic and beautiful and everything I hoped it would be. It wasn't the best performance I've seen from him, but I think that's a slightly less than fair thing to say, as a slightly less than perfect Andrew Bird performance is still something above and beyond pretty much any other show I've ever been to.

* My review of the show is here, at my blog. Photos are here, at Flickr.

* Concert Buddy and I got there extra early around 5:15ish, but we couldn't get in until 6, so we sat around and freaked out/screwed around on Twitter/mocked the hipster kids and the people trying to get into the locked museum doors. The whole thing was making us both a little anxious though, because there was no order, no instructions, no one there who knew what was going on. So there was no line, just this massive blob, and we were both like ORDER. LINE. MUST HAVE. Eventually, as it neared 6, we started edging up next to the doors that the security guard was standing at. We wound up being probably in the first group of 10-15 to get in. En route to finding seats, we walk right past Andrew Bird himself, who is wandering around kind of aimlessly. We waited until we were appropriately far away to freak out properly. We managed to waltz our way up to a table right front and center, which we sure weren't going to complain about.

* Much waiting ensued, and then more waiting, and more waiting. Which was followed by more waiting, while a woman from the art museum and a guy from the radio station had a little discussion about art and music. Nice, kind of funny, but the crowd was impatient for Andrew Bird. I ran to the restroom as soon as they were finished, hoping that the break would be long enough for me to get back in time, but unfortunately, the restroom might as well have been in another freaking state, it was so far away. :( As I exited the restroom, I could hear the opening notes of his first song -- the acoustics in the place were absolutely crazy -- and shuffled a little faster to get back.

* Once the show was over, guests were allowed to walk around some of the exhibits in the modern wing, which was pretty awesome. I hadn't been over there yet, other than just a quick walk through to find the restaurant my boss took me to the other week, so it was really great to have that chance. And also really great to have that chance surrounded by other people who were the kinds of people to think critically about art. Very awesome. There's some deep stuff in there.

* Concert Buddy and I walked around for about half an hour until we realized we had finally exhausted all of the areas of museum that we were allowed to go into. "I guess that's it. The only thing left for us to do," I said as we turned the corner from the staircase and began walking towards the doors, "is to hunt down Andrew Bird whoisstandingrightinfrontofus." Yeah, he was just a little bit in front of us, taking a picture with some people. (Apologies to those people, who probably have me and Concert Buddy in the background being alll :O) And cue fangirl freakout. It wasn't so much that he was standing there, but that he was a) still at the museum at all, and b) talking to people and c) taking photos with people who are obviously fans, because it's not like real friends would be all Hai let's pose for photos! After shuffling further away to observe and freak out without being seen as total psychos, it became pretty clear that if Concert Buddy went up to talk to him, that she would have either thrown up on his shoes or had a panic attack or something awful, and I was like, well, I'm not letting this opportunity pass me by, and just sort of marched up to him and, idk, spewed some word vomit at him. Something lame about how I love his music and am just amazed every time I see his live show and omghugefan. He asked my name and shook my hand and was all, wow, thanks, that's really nice, sure you can have a photo. While I was wrangling someone to take the pic, Concert Buddy said hello to him and got in the shot. (The woman I asked to take the pic, for the record, was really snippy with me. I'll feel bad if I'm badmouthing his mom or something, but she was like "Yes, I'll take it, just don't take up too much of Andrew's time" or something like that. Bitch plz. He could have said no if he didn't want to take the time to have picture with us; he's notorious for politely declining to take photos with people. The last time Concert Buddy had the opportunity to talk to him, she asked for a photo and he said no and she was kind of crushed. It wasn't like I was expecting to have an indepth conversation with him. The whole encounter took, like, 3 minutes tops.) So we got our photo (which is yet another atrocious photo of me - though not quite so bad as the one with Loudon Wainwright) and said thank you and then scurried outside and promptly made a big pile of SQUEE in the doorway. Epic.

* He is so tiny omg I just want to put him in my pocket. When I talked with him, he was just a hair taller than me, and I was in ~4" heels, putting him at probably 5'9" or 5'10" or so. But physically he's just so... angular. Lanky. Wiry. Something like that. I wouldn't be shocked if I weighed more than he did. Very kind and gracious and patient when presented with one fangirl who makes a giant run-on sentence all in one breath, and another who could barely get out her name. And also pretty.

* So we sat around outside the museum while Concert Buddy smoked a POST-ANDREW BIRD-FREAKOUT cigarette, and we both sent obnoxious tweets out to the internet. She finished her cigarette and was like, well, I guess that's it, there's not much else to do. Cue Andrew Bird walking out of museum, violin case strapped to his back. "Not much else to do except see where he's going," we said. We followed from a decent distance (this wasn't creepy stalker following; regardless we had been heading in the same direction down Monroe anyway), wondering if he was just going to go take the train home or something, because that would not be surprising at all. He went and got in a car with someone, though, and thus ended any ideas of getting in the same train car and staring wistfully at the back of his head.

* Poking around in my blog stats, I found out that a link to my entry was tweeted first by this guy, Don Van Natta, Jr., who is apparently an investigative reporter for the New York Times, and then that one was retweeted by this guy, Matthew Cooper, who was a reporter at Time magazine and who was one of the journalists held in contempt of court for not naming sources during the Valerie Plame thing. CUE INTERNET FREAKOUT, OMG. Like, OMG, WOW. I tweeted at both of them thanking them for linking, and then continued freaking out. In the grand scheme of things, a link on twitter from some noteworthy people doesn't really mean a whole lot, but, wow, it excites me.

* I also went out on a limb and wrote to Gapers Block, a local news site, offering them my review for their music section. They had covered the announcement of the show, but I didn't know if they had anyone at the show to do a writeup. Anyhow, the editor of the music section said she'd love to have the post, and she put it up and linked to some of my photos on Flickr. I was kind of hoping she would link to my website, but whatever, awesome. The post on Gapers Block is here, and now it comes up whenever you Google my name, so there's something in the search results other than stuff about the big gay inaugural parade.

* VERDICT = AWESOME.