Let's Cause a Scene

Jeff and I met slightly over three years ago, as many of you know, at a concert in Jacksonville.

The band was The Format and they were phenomenal, but other wise not relative to the story.

What is relative is that at this tiny venue in Little Five Points called Fuel Coffee House, the AC was broken, the concert was sold out and it was July in Florida.

As I balanced in the passage way between the back of the joint where The Format was playing and the front where the front door was open, gasping for fresh air, I met him. This quite man who reserves his words for the people he knows well approached me. Talked to me. Had to talk to me. Had to know me.

"Who was that person?" I would ask him later on, once I found out how shy he was to strangers. "Where did the guy who talked to me at the concert come from?"

"I'm not sure" he told me "but I had to know you"

We were never strangers.

Last year The Format broke up, sad, I know. But true.



And then our friend Shannon came to Charleston a few weeks ago.


Shannon was originally just Jeff's friend, but that's only because I didn't know her yet. Shannon introduced Jeff to The Format. Shannon told Jeff to get off his butt that hot night in July and stop moping over some girl and go have a good time. Shannon is a good friend, I tell you.

When she came to visit a few weeks ago she brought us our wedding present from her.

"I tried contacting the band, but I only got an e-mail back from the person who runs the website" she told us "I asked if she could get a hold of Nate and Sam (the 2 main members of the format) and have them write you guys a note, or something. She said she couldn't. But she said she had some old poster lying around that was signed by them. I aimed high and got pretty low. I hope you don't mind"


(the poster, in all of it's awesome, framed glory, signed, however generically, by Nate and Sam)

Just the act of attempting to contact the band and get something for us is going to be hard to beat by anyone. But the poster is great. We love it.

And it may not be personally signed for us...but it's more special then Shannon realized. It's the poster from the show we met at.

Music Appreciation 1101

Some bands I'm getting to know in a personal way and totally diggin' every minute of our blossoming love affairs-

Annuals

Parlour Steps

Cold War Kids

Some other bands that I'm still sweet on after all these years-

The Format

Damien Rice

Counting Crows

At the Maroon5/Counting Crows concert last month with one that makes all the songs in the world work harder to be unreal...even if he's making fun of my singing...

Our entire relationship has been intrinsically woven through music like a silky spider web. We met at The Format concert, he told me he loved me for the first time with the help of my favorite musical, we thrill ourselves with finding new music to share with each other. Lay in bed at night and fall asleep sharing our new joys. Endless IPod mixes, singing wrong lyrics, and oh the plans we have for our wedding! I have always been passionate about music, since I was a baby, almost obsessive. Of course now I know I was simply fine tuning my ability to construct the soundtrack for the life I had waiting for me. Searching for the right lyrics. Planning the ultimate play list.

Come what may...

Oh my god, oh my god you guys!

I love musicals. In the past few months I've seen 4. Two movie musicals, 2 theater musicals.

Two of the musicals (one movie, one theater) we're amazing. The other two were total shit.

The two awesome ones were Hairspray (the movie, turned musical, turned movie musical!) and Legally Blonde The Musical.

The two that blew so unbelievably bad were Across The Universe and Wedding Singer the Musical.

The thing that kills me is that on paper there is absolutley no logical reason why Legally Blonde The Musical is a Tony Award Winner and Across the Universe, a movie based on Beatles music, makes me want to yell at strangers on the street and poke them with things...peferably hot things...just to piss them off and get them to spread the anger.

But its true.

I can't explain it.
But it's true.

I can't say that I hated wedding singer the musical as much as I hated across the universe. It just wasn't very good. I mean, duh, its a movie based on an Adam Sandler movie who's entire premise is that he sings 80's songs...and they don't sing any of those 80's songs in the musical. But, this is my point. Based on this logic, Legally Blonde should be terrible too.
In Wedding Singer for some reason that is totally lost on me, include billy idol, tina turner, ronald and nancy regean, cindy lauper and a few other 80's icons that i didn't recognize.
For no reason.

Anyways, theres really isn't a point here, just that I love hairspray and legally blonde the musical.

And I wish bad musicals would stop waisting my time...cuz...seriously...you can't stop the beat.