Part two (yes, there’s yet more):
It turns out the walk to the venue (Nokia Center, across from the Sraples Center) is a whole 6 blocks or so away. NICE! We have dinner at the ESPN Zone because…it’s there? Also, it’s starting to drizzle. Eerily enough, the guy sitting next to us at the bar looks like Justin’s manager - except pudgy. We go out and start wandering around. Here is the point where I go completely batshit. We’re walking around after and I DON’T SEE SCOOTER OR RYAN OR BUTSY OR CHAZ OR KANTER OR RY GOOD AND WTF!!! We walk around jovially taking pictures of ice skaters and decorations and what all and we still have an hour and a half to kill before the show.
Well, we’ve circled the actual “center” and noticed a group hungrily hanging about the back door. Chris very VERY generously says “Well, do you want to go hang around the back door?” I’m like ‘you never know’ so sure!’
So here we are waiting for Justin Bieber …lol.
There’s only like a couple dozen people, which is odd in itself, and the highlight (for me) was a woman who said “Can I ask where you got your
jacket? My daughter is nearly crying because she wants one so bad.” Sure enough there’s a maybe 10 -year-old girl with her fists in her mouth trying to not sob over my jacket. When I tell her it was custom made her mom said “You’re not getting one.” I said “Christmas is coming?” and her mom said “YOU’RE NOT GETTING ONE!” AWKWARD!
So people keep walking up to us going “What are you waiting for?” and we go “Dunno…it’s something to do?” At some point some guy drove by in one of those super-scarey child-raper panel vans and said “Who are you waiting for?” We said “Justin Bieber” and he said “Oh, I know him.: Good guy!” LOLOL
The later and later it gets the guy letting VIPs in finally blurts: “He’s been here for hours and hours! He’s done his sound checks and everything!” Well, that doesn’t mean he won’t come out and say “hi” to people. I say “I’mma tweet him.” and proceed to tweet something along the lines of “Come out and say “Hi” to us, lol.” ( I proceed to check up on HIS tweets. Apparently he had another show earlier in the day with (I think) Cody Simpson elsewhere in the city. So he obviously HADN’T been there for hours and hours. Jerk.)
That was the last thing he tweeted about several hours earlier.
So we’re hanging around and little by little people start to get bored or discouraged and eventually I’m right up next to the barrier. The show starts at 8 and I keep checking my watch. I decide I’ll give him until 7:15, then bail. 7:15 arrives and no Justin, so I say “ok, let’s go in.” (I do think I spotted Justin’s guitarist, Dan Kanter, sneaking in through the loading dock down the street. I definitely saw a girl run up and take a picture with him, and he was wearing the same hat he wore during the show, so I’m going to call that our brush with greatness for the evening.) We go around front and I stupidly pick the door all the professional photographers are going in. The have a million pieces of equipment they have to take off in order to get through the metal detector. “Beeep!” “Oh wait, my light meter, I forgot…” “Beeep!” “Oh gosh, my spare batteries…” “Beeep!” SIIIIGH! Chris at the last second realised he was carrying a pocketknife and surreptitiously chucked it in the trash can. Drag. The dumb thing is they didn’t check my purse (that I noticed) just took it from me and handed it to me on the other side. I probably could’ve put it in there. (Too risky to chance it though, probably.)
First order of business: find the bar. Line isn’t too long, and prices aren’t atrocious. They let you buy two drinks at a time, which is ok since that’s all the hands I have, lolol. We take about 50 escalators up to where are craptastic seats are, and then more stairs up when we get into the auditorium. At least we’re pretty much dead center, so we can see all of the stage - which looks like an area rug from that distance. It’s around quarter to 8 and I’ve finished one drink, which was pathetically weak, and the hotdog I bought, which was abysmally tasteless. I decide to tweet my displeasure, and after doing so check back through the more recent tweets out of boredom. “Oh my god - Justin’s manager just tweeted that they’re on the way to the next venue to perform with Stevie Wonder.” Chris: “When did he tweet it?” Me: “30 minutes ago.” Chris: “So, right when we left.” Me: “GROOOOOOAN!!!” I notice my battery is getting low, so I put my phone away.
So finally about 20 minutes late or so Steve Goddamn Harvey comes out and starts muttering incomprehensibly about something then: “Stevie Wonder!” Yaay! I think Stevie was out about 5 seconds before he started yakking again. I forgot if Stevie sang a song first or not. (I should’ve gotten all this down right when I got back.) The first people to sing were a kids choir or something, then I think a gospel-y singer who sang Silent Night and I forget what else. (Everybody got two songs, except Justin [who had 4] and Stevie, obviously.) So I think “well ok, Justin won’t be doing his Silent Night I guess.” Then a gal who came out and sang (very well) I Believe I Can Fly, and Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Xmas Is You. So I think “Well then Justin won’t be doing his All I Want for Xmas…” Then Stevie was led back on and after horrible banter and stalling with Harvey he sang a song, then the first of about a million female R&B singers is brought out, each of whom were introduced as legendary and insanely popular and which I’d never heard of. Then I think another, then Stevie again, then like, Little Anthony and the Imperials, who were awesome. (Would’ve like to have heard more than two songs from them.) Then the world’s most unbearable Jazz pianist, who only played two songs – that were about 20 minutes long and consisted of randomly banging his hands repeatedly on the keyboard!!! I tried to find a setlist for the show online but can’t come up with a full one, but let me tell you this: I think they grossly underestimated how significant the Bieber turnout was going to be. I’d guess it was half the audience. The entire line up, (aside from Bieber, Michael Macdonald, the gal who sang Silent Night, and I think the pianist) was comprised of middle-aged black R&B singers. The screamie meemie Bieber fans would politely clap for each act, then scream “Justin!!” between the songs, which did NOT please Steve Harvey one bit. He kept telling them to be quiet and at some point went off on a rambling, Grandpa Simpson-esque tirade about the Jonas Brothers out of nowhere for some reason. Then the next song would start, and the Beliebers would sit and yak to each other and take about a million cellphone pictures of each other. Very very annoying. So the night continued with Steve Harvey sucking the air out of the room, making obnoxious blind jokes at Stevie’s expense, and talking FOREVER between each song, and dragging out more unrecognizable artists while lauding them with accolades. Finally about 2/3s of the way through the girls start ominously chanting “JUS-TIN! JUS-TIN! JUS-TIN! JUS-TIN!” Well, Steve Harvey completely lost his shit at that point and started screaming “SHUT UP!!! SHUT UP!!! HE’S NOT EVEN HERE YET!!” then as he’s introducing the latest middle-aged female R&B singer Stevie was hustled onstage and whispered something in his ear. Harvey says something like: “Fine, but you tell 'em” and Stevie goes “JUUUUSTIN BIEEBER!” I was starting to think they were saving him for the end, right before Stevie, but I’m pretty sure they decided to put him out before there was a riot.
So Justin comes out in a fugly sweater (and is having a “hair-down” day. I like it better up, so I’m disappoint.) He sings “Someday At Xmas” with Stevie…
(This is obviously taken by someone with good seats…here’s one from OUR seats taken by Chris: LOL!)
then “Mistletoe”, “Christmas Eve” (which is by Chris Brown, and therefore creepy). They were all really good (The start of “Someday…” was a little shaky, I think probably because they hadn’t had a lot of time to rehearse together. His voice sounded good, and he made lots of hilarious “nnnnnggg! I’m singing SO HARD” faces.)
And then he was like “Who wants to hear one more song? What do you want to hear?” and I mentally groaned because he always does this and regardless of what people yell out, he always sings “Baby.” He got up off the stool for this one and went down and held a bunch of hands of the girls in the front row while he was singing, which is so sweet! Like he didn’t cruise past and run his fingers along theirs like most singers do, he took the time to go along the row and let girls HOLD his hand. Naturally, while I was filming it with my cell the battery crapped out. When I got back to the hotel to see how much footage I’d gotten, it hadn’t saved ANY of it. There’s nothing to account for the fact I was even in the same building with Justin Bieber - d’oh! Then he left the stage and Fuckin’ Steve Harvey comes back on and all the girls start screaming “Drake! Drake!” lolol. I think there was another crap R&B singer before they brought Drake on. Now, I wasn’t familiar with the music of Drake but I know he’s very popular so I was curious to hear him. UGH UGH UGH! HORRIBLE! Chris said he was appalled he decided to do a raunchy sex rap during a christmas show but I honestly was focusing so hard on not HEARING it I didn’t even notice. So he did his two songs and all the girls got up and left. Daymn! (Though to be fair, they might’ve had a cerfew, lol…it was well past 11 at this point.)
More Steve Harvey and R&B singers, all of whom are starting to sound exactly the same at this point. (One was so bad people actually took out their phones and started checking their mail and stuff.) Harvey comes out and says “How y’all doin’?” Chris and I look at each other and both say “BOOOORED!” LOL They finally bring out the Gap Band and we’re like “Finally!” Hey Gap Band guess what? People don’t want to hear you play two songs nobody’s ever heard, they want to hear “You Dropped A Bomb On Me!” Lame. Stevie comes out and sings a song with the lead singer. Steve rambles on for a while and starts to announce Michael MacDonald, only to be told his keyboard isn’t set up yet, so he rambles on even more. At this point the show is getting excruciating. MacDonald comes on and does “Takin’ it to the Streets” and another one I forget, but it was recognizable at least. His voice sounded terrible and he looked pissed as hell - probably because he had to follow a bunch of talentless hacks (not to mention Justin Bieber, lol) and play to a half-empty auditorium.
Finally at like midnight Stevie comes out to do his set. I forget how many songs he did but I can tell you this: not one of them was “Superstitious” and the last one, a ridiculously long and unbearable “We Are The World"ish monstrosity, including a choir, a drum line and little girls doing a choreographed dance in the aisles, was the perfectly appropriate end to a torturous evening. Probably even more so for Chris, because he had to see Justin Bieber, and listen to me Bieber-bomb him all night. (At one point I remember blurting “Justin’s mom is only 4’ 8”!” for some inexplicable reason. WTF?)
We stagger out around 12:40 or something ridiculous. I was thinking going in that I would be going nuts when Justin came out and would probably embarrass myself by crying hysterically or something. I was saying to Chris "It’s so strange. We were so far away, and since I could only see him using the binoculars and looking at the projection - " -we both said at the same time: “It was pretty much just like watching him on TV!” So strange! Chris mentions he was surprised Justin did an acoustic set (it was just him and his guitar player - though Justin plays guitar so I’m not sure why he didn’t just do it.) “That’s strange.” he said. I said “Not really, he has a whole acoustic album.” Chris: “That’s strange…doesn’t he usually have dancers and stuff?” I said yeah, and they’re really good, as is Justin. After giving it a little thought (remember I had a 7 hour drive home in which I had ample time for my mind to wander, haha) I’m assuming he didn’t because 1) the stage was too small (and had too much crap on it: drumsets/keyboards, etc) - he usually has six guys, and for the Disney Xmas parade he just did he had the six regular guys, and another huge dance troupe behind them. 2) It wasn’t technically a Justin Bieber show, it was show where the focus wasn’t on him so he probably didn’t want to be all splashy about it. 3) I think he also assumed the crowd would be more primarily older and an acoustic set would’ve been more appropriate.
Chris walks me back to the hotel and we part ways. I head upstairs, plug in my dead phone, set the alarm, and collapse into bed. Guess what my room’s right next to apparently? The dumpster, hooray! For the next couple hours I get to hear drunken people wander past and loudly fling their empties into it. After that, bum guy comes along in his loud, rickety shopping cart and starts fishing them all out, somehow managing to rattle every single one against the others. Then someone’s car alarm starts going off. It’s the strangest alarm I’ve ever heard. It sounds like the part of the Rolling Stones song that goes “who who WHOHOO who hoo hoo” followed by the sound a police car siren makes when they just bloop it at you. And unlike a normal alarm, it doesn’t shut off after about 30 seconds, it went on for like 5 minutes at a time, so long that after it finally shut off you’d continue to hear it repeating in your mind for another minute or so. This would happen about 15 more times throughout the night. Oh, and don’t forget the garbage truck coming to empty the dumpster! “BEEP…BEEP…BEEEP…BEEEP!” followed by the crash of the trash being emptied into it. I got approximately 2 hours of sleep the entire night.
In the morning I consider for two seconds taking a shower then thought “Why? To sit in a car for 7 hours?” so I rub a little water over my bristles to perk them up a little and drag myself downstairs to check out. The desk guy points me to the continental breakfast. Remember how I said you get what you pay for? What a joke. Everything looked pathetic. I ended up having a bowl of Crispix crumbs and a glass of orange juice. I went to the garage and inserted my ticket in the machine at the exit: $11, so that went according to plan. I take out my credit card and look for somewhere to swipe it - there is none, then I notice a spot on the front that says “Hold card here.” So I do. Nothing. I rub it back and forth and flip it all around. Nothing. I try sticking it in the slot I put the ticket in and it spits it back out and says “reinsert ticket.” Huh. I press the help button and get a person. “It’s not taking my card.” He tells me to wait, and suddenly the screen now reads something like “Free parking” and the gate opens and I bewilderedly drive out. (Chris, how the hell did you pay???)
I make my way back to the freeway and everything is going fine until I stop for lunch. I decide nothing but a Pizza Hut personal pizza will do and have to wait forever for them to have a pepperoni done. I figure, no big deal. Making excellent time. I inhale half of it and take the other half with me. I notice that my legs are feeling fine for some reason and it dawns on me that the day before I’d been wearing knee-high boots which must’ve been cutting off my circulation or something. Interesting. So I head off down the road and I don’t know if it was the carbs kicking in or what, but suddenly it’s nearly impossible for me to keep my eyes open. I felt like Tom did in that Tom & Jerry where he decides to stay up all night watching Jerry’s mouse hole and props his eyelids open with toothpicks, but they’re so heavy they snap them in half. (How’s THAT for a tortured simile?) I realize I need to pull over and take a nap and barely make it to the next exit. I blearily pull into the back of a restaurant parking lot, turn off the car, throw my seat back and proceed to immediately conk out. I guess I was out for like an hour and upon wakening felt absolutely fine, thank heavens, but so much for making good time!
The rest of the trip home was thankfully uneventful and I made it safe and sound. Before dark. (HATE driving in the dark on highways, especially city traffic!) The next day at work everyone was “HOW WAS THE CONCERT?!” and they were all cracking up at me describing it. Glad I went though; it was a unique experience. I can legitimately say I saw Justin Bieber (and Stevie Wonder, of course) but not gonna lie, really disappointed at the fact that I potentially could’ve met him if only we’d stuck it out a little longer.
