Stumbled into work this morning with very little sleep, purple fingernails, and a completely blissed-out attitutde toward life in general. Call it ridiculous, call it shallow -- but spending two hours within spittle distance of Bono will do wonders for one's general outlook on life. Especially if one is a red-headed midget with OCD tendencies exponentially larger than her own little self.
We had general admission tickets to last night's U2 show at the Wachovia Center in Philly.
Possessing such coveted tickets comes with certain obligations -- mainly getting to the venue wicked early to line up with other yahoos in hopes of getting prime standing location. We arrived at 3:00 for a doors open time of 6:00. We were conveniently in direct sunlight the whole time, had to bolt down some Wawa hoagies to sustain ourselves for the rest of the evening, and once inside, had five more hours of standing in a fixed spot to look forward to before the concert would be over. All the while we made friends with the other people who, while all very nice, insisted there was nothing abnormal about this behavior.
While I cannot vouch for the sanity of such an assessment, I will say that we did indeed score a great position three people deep from the right side of the ellipse (if the preceding sentence made no sense to you -- congratulations on having a life. To translate -- we done saw Bono right close, we did). The crowd at that proximity is delightfully wacko. Oh, they're polite, mind you. No slam dancing at a U2 show thankyouverymuch. But there is an extraordinary amount of hopping. After awhile the hopping becomes second nature, and before I knew it I realized I'd spent the bulk of the evening jumping straight up and down like a coked-up kangaroo. Slow songs offer little respite, as we were usually compelled to keep both arms suspended aloft in a manner not entirely unlike some strange Christian evangelist revival. I was strangely okay with this.
I shan't bore you with any more details of the show (though if I knew for certain that we were of like minds, oh how I could bore you with details). When we jumped in the car at 11:30pm to drive back to DC, my legs, arms, voice and head were decidedly on strike. I was stariving, dehydrated, soaked with sweat, and my contacts felt like sandpaper. Physically, I felt miserable. I resolved to do things differently for the next general admission show, for which we have tickets in October.
I will line up even earlier, I will. I will stand even longer, I shall. If arriving at the venue six hours before the band takes the stage only gets you in the third row, then clearly I must step up my game.
Robyn
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