Tour blog #3

This begins the Southern California/VidCon portion of my tour blog. Can't even begin to explain how much fun I had this whole weekend.

Santa Monica, CA - This show was so awesome. We got to the library, and we had this sweet stage and a long room of seating, and lots and lots of awesome people. The highlight of this show for me was meeting Tyler Oakley, who is one of my favorite YouTubers of all time. We had such a fun night hanging out with him; he was pretty much exactly the same in person as he is in his videos and I love it when you meet people and they're like that. I also got to meet Kaleb Nation, another YouTuber I like (though I discovered him more recently) and he took a lot of footage of our show. I want to take a moment to point out the awesomeness of my friends on YouTube - neither of these boys have read any Harry Potter whatsoever, but they both came to see me and support all of our music. I am so thankful to have amazing people like that in my life.

I think the show went really well, and we met some cool fans that were going to be at VidCon that weekend, which was fun. After the show we went out to TGIFridays (the one I always went to with Luke and Jason when I came down to LA to visit) and had a really great time hanging out with Tyler. Also, the boys were all ordering beers and making fun of me for getting a girly drink (a pomegranate margarita shaker or something) and I finally shut them up by drinking it directly from the shaker. Mostly because I couldn't get the lid off to pour anymore in my cup, but also because it made me look like a badass. Hahaa.

DAY OFF - I will admit, this day was a seriously lazy day. We had stayed the night at Echo Base (Jason and Alex's house in LA, the one Luke used to live in with them) and this was the point at which ROFLCOPTOUR continued on through the southwest and Luke and I stayed behind for VidCon. I think everyone left the house around 9, whereas Luke and I didn't even get out of bed until about noon. It was so nice, after nearly two weeks of incredibly early mornings. Continuing with laziness, we had a pizza delivered to the house and then waited for Kaleb to come pick us up to take us to the pre-VidCon partners meeting.

We didn't really know what to expect at the meeting, and when we got there, it really wasn't much. Basically we got nametags, and free YouTube shirts (awesome!) and got to hang out and mingle and meet friends and YouTubers before EVERYONE showed up to the hotel the next day. It was nice; we found Kayley, and Tyler again, and Adam (whataboutadam) and Stephen (3sixty5days) and Johnny (johnnydurham19) and Paige (hopeonatenspeed) and loads and loads of other people I was excited to see. I also got to finally meet Tessa (meekakitty) and had a surreal moment when William (theWillofDC) came up to me and said "You probably don't know who I am, but I watch your videos". What.

We hung out a bit longer, but didn't have a hotel that night so we had to leave kind of early. Kaleb drove us back home (with another new friend, Robyn Schneider) which, for a car ride, was actually very eventful. First we couldn't get out of the parking garage and Robyn almost got arrested or something for trying to jump out of the car and steal one from the incoming traffic machine. Then we finally found the old ticket, high-tailed it out of there, and then had a close call where Kaleb thought it would be a good idea to ignore a red light - which I wont get into because I don't want to embarrass him (Kaleb, haha) but decided to include it because it became a joke that he was trying to sabotage tour and kill ALL CAPS.

That night, Luke and I got Panda Express and spent the evening watching other humans makes fools of themselves in the gameshow Wipeout. Pretty romantic date night for ALL CAPS, if you ask me.

VIDCON, Day 1 - Luke and I had the love Quinn Rossi drive us to the Hyatt this morning (how we managed to get back and forth from Echo Base and the Hyatt 3 times without getting a cab is beyond me) and we got to the hotel at about 9. First we checked into our awesome room, and then Monica Carr (who is amazing) got us our registration materials so we didn't have to wait in the long iine.

I'm really trying hard to remember everything we did this first day in what order, but it's all blending together so I think I may just switch gears and list highlights.

- Meeting/getting to spend time with so many great people like Rhett and Link, WheezyWaiter, Caitlin and Todd and Kris at the DFTBA booth, Tyler and Adam and Johnny and Paige and Kayley and Tom and Caitlin Hill and Olga and SupaDupaFlyGirl and Strawburry17 and WhatTheBuck and WinterSpringPro and Mitchell Davis and Woody Tondorf of Elevator Show and Shane Dawson and iJustine and mememolly and MysteryGuitarMan and so, so many more people.

- Meeting ShayCarl and having him tell me I looked just like this girl he knew in high school - when I asked if she was nice, he said "No, a total bitch." Thanks Shay. Haha.

- The Dailybooth photobooth. They had this booth set up with costumes and props and you could get pictures taken and printed out instantly for free and I think EVERYONE abused this privilege this weekend.

- Seeing John and Hank speak on stage and feeling overwhelming proud of them for everything they've accomplished in the last 3 years.

- Being interviewed by Molly for Rocketboom.

- Knowing it was totally socially acceptable to have your phone out to tweet no matter what was happening.

- Seeing everyone from the UK that I hadn't seen since last summer.

- The show. Holy crap, the show the first night at VidCon was awesome. It went Molly Lewis, Tom Milsom, Alex Day, Hank, Rhett and Link, and then ALL CAPS, and I think everyone performed really, really well. Highlights were Tom rocking his entire set even though he lost his voice, Alex throwing glitter confetti into the audience, Molly's cover of Bad Romance for her sound check song, and the very best part of the entire weekend for me personally (and probably Luke too) was during our very last song (Don't Unplug Me) we had pretty much every single one of our friends run on stage and dance behind us for the entirety of the song.

There were probably 30+ people behind us on stage, and 600-700 people in the audience, and I'm really glad we got to share that moment with so many of our friends. Being in a wizard rock band, I have played a ton of shows in my life, but I am not sure anything quite compares to the show we played at VidCon.

- Disappointingly short dance party after the show that was still fun anyway.

- We went up to the Penthouse toward the end of the night (which was a room that didn't really belong to anybody in particular, as the Hyatt gifted it ambiguously to "VidCon", so you were bound to find people up there but were never quite sure who) and got to chat with a bunch of different people before finally calling it a night and going to bed.

Okay, this has gotten long enough. VidCon Day 2 to follow shortly.

Random road sign right now: Millard, 1 Mile (Exit 19)
Chipotle burritos: 14