Saturday, March 17, 2012

PMA, pliers, and ghetto dancing the night away.

have you ever zipped your prom dress with a pair of pliers?

that depends on if you've ever had a prom dress.

i happen to have one prom dress at school, and one at home. luckily, my freshman year of high school when i got asked to go to prom three days before prom, i was still short enough to fit into my cousin rachel's dress.

and then suddenly i was six inches taller than any woman had ever been in my family and i had to go out and buy my own prom dresses.

but i get back to my original question: have you ever zipped up your prom dress with a pair of pliers?

i hope to goodness that your answer is no.

so my tale starts out with me lying in the middle of the quad with my friend lisa on a towel listening to awkward nineties music. i'm not sure why, but it does. i just feel like this story starts there. and it's just kind of fun to say that i spent yesterday afternoon laying out in shorts and a tank top.

the REAL story starts when jacob (the boyfriend not the best friend) joined phi mu alpha, better known as PMA, the music fraternity on campus. here are some things about the fraternity that my brother is in, and PMA, so you can understand a little bit about how PMA works.

ZETA, THE FRATERNITY OF MY BROTHER.

1. yes. after a party, they did wake up to find a pine tree in their shower. and it was on texts from last night.
2. pledging is hazing. they say that it's not. but it is.
3. my car is in serious danger of being parked in their parking lot.
4. their lawn popped my tire. too much broken glass. refer to number three on this handy dandy list.
5. they have a balloon party. a balloon party. (and yes, i've been to one of them.)

PMA, THE FRATERNITY OF MY BOYFRIEND.

1. they don't have parties.
2. nearly every brother plays some sort of instrument and almost all of them grow up to be teachers. music teachers.
3. there is a piano in their kitchen. my friend brendan keeps it in tune.
4. they do not wake up to pine trees in their showers. they do not haze.
5. mr. rogers was in PMA. you know, like mr. roger's neighborhood. he's pretty cool.

PMA is not your average fraternity, stereotypical or otherwise.

last night was their formal.

so naturally, jacob put on his salvation army tuxedo pants, a black shirt and a red tie, and then we went back to my room, where i commenced to shower and put on my make up in a tank top and my cross country shorts from sixth grade that i can still squeeze into. i do not wear make up. it took me a decent amount of time to get dolled up for this event that was in mt. pleasant. we would realize later that we left the directions to the venue in jacob's room.

to make sure that i absolutely had to wear my floor length prom gown, i didn't shave my legs. this later might've turned out to have been a bad idea.

when my make up was on and my hurrs wuz did, it was now time for me to put on my plum colored mermaid style ball gown that i had worn to senior prom. it was a good deal; it was two seasons too late, had a jank zipper, and was only forty-five dollars. i also happened to look good in it, which was a plus.

so i wiggle into the dress, zip it up as far as i can, and call jacob over so he can finish zipping me.

damn zipper gets stuck.

scroll back to the front of this blog post and pertinent question: have YOU zipped your prom dress with a pair of pliers?

oh, i have. and so has jacob.

that damn zipper was stuck about two inches from maximum zipping capacity (i mean the top of my dress, ahem) and then it would not budge. jacob yanked and yanked and i stood in front of my mirror, self-consciously holding up my boobs even though the dress was sufficently holding them up anyway, and i looked at my reflection and thought about how maybe i should wear make up every day like normal girls. then i remembered that i'm not like normal girls, and i forgot the idea as jacob yanked and yanked and nearly made me fall over.

jacob: i need pliers.
me: i swear to god if you rip my dress--
jacob: you have a back up dress!
me: no. i didn't shave. i need a long dress.
jacob: of course you didn't shave.

ladies. shaving. you understand.

so jacob yanked on my dress with pliers. it did not budge.

(i would like to point out at this moment that the usage of pliers and fingers in trying to get my zipper unstuck has given jacob three blisters on his hands.)

so i kicked him out of my closet, turned my dress completely around, and struggled with the zippper while wearing it backwards. no luck. there was something going on with the fabric in this teeny tiny part of the zipper track. and i couldn't get it while wearing the dress.

and this, ladies and gentleman, is where i felt like a superhero. i got OUT of the dress, spent ten minutes wiggling the zipper, got it to FINALLY zip up all the way, and managed to squeeze into my prom dress with it zipped. it did not rip going over my hips. and i made a serious of high-pitched wheezing noises while jumping up and down to accomplish this earth-shattering feat.

time elapsed since first putting on the dress: thirty minutes.

now skipping to the part where we actually get to formal after taking awkward pictures...

the food was excellent. i was disappointed that the manicotti had chicken, but a vegetarian can't have everything in life. i was very excited to see my former roommate mariah invited by ryan. i realized i didn't know half of the brothers there, or their dates, but hey, i knew a few of them, and of course, i was with jacob.

after dinner, the dancing starting.

first song of choice: backstreet boys, backstreet's back (all right!).

no, PMA is not a normal fraternity.

let me remind you that i am a twenty year old white girl that is five foot nine and reasonably lanky. i cannot walk in high heels, and i break a bone almost every year.

let me assure you of this: i can ghetto dance.

and last night, i ghetto danced.

of coures, i also awkwardly slow danced in which jacob and i traded gender roles and he put his arms around my neck and i had a fun time with my hands on his hips, and i spent a decent amount of time jumping around excitedly and just generally being an awkward hispter dancer. upon rereading this paragraph, i have used awkward a decent amount, and i realize that that's the best word.

i. am. awkward.

to make this decently long story short, i had a blast dancing with my friends and just letting loose. jacob's brothers are absolutely amazing, and everybody was looking extra snazzy. it was like a small concentrated prom with only people that i liked. and because it's PMA, not a single person had anything hanging out that shouldn't have been hanging out. (i cannot say the same thing for zeta's formal, which i attended last year. it was basically the brothers and their girlfriends wearing pretty dresses and getting wasted in the basement of the house.)

we'll see how my sorority formal goes in two weeks.

and yes, i will be wearing the same dress, unless my mother can mail me the white monstrosity of a prom dress that i wore my junior year of high school. pretty sure that dress is ten pounds.

and now, some pictures for your general entertainment. and no, there are no pictures of the pliers that were used to help zip up my dress. i apologize.

feelin' snazzy. :)
it's not an event unless we take
a picture like this.

former roommates. :)

Monday, March 12, 2012

the day we went to see the head and the heart.

i am going to start this out by saying a few things.

1. i have many, many things to do. blogging is not one of them.
2. this cannot wait. this blog post cannot wait.
3. i cannot believe i am writing this blog post. i truly cannot. because this makes it real.

that being said, yesterday, jacob (the boyfriend not the best friend) and i went to see the band the head and the heart.

they are so beautiful.


i don't know if you've heard of them. you probably haven't. that's okay. they're not widely known. none of the bands i listen to are. they are indie folk rock. their only girl sings harmony and plays the violin. they have two male lead singers, and the blond one likes to wear ugly sweaters.

jacob and i went to go see them live last night in pontiac michigan.

i got the tickets for fifteen dollars each online way back in some random month like november, and they finally came mailed to my dorm room around christmas. i did not open the envelope. i tucked it away in a secret special place. while i waited anxiously for last night to arrive, i felt even more obnoxiously in love with the head and the heart, and by the time that last night rolled around, "rivers and roads" wound up in my top 25 most played songs on my ipod, which is saying something.

all through the morning i could not contain my excitement. i sat in the library yesterday afternoon practically peeing my pants. then jacob and i grabbed our to-go lunches to eat in the car on the two hour drive to pontiac, i grabbed the tickets, and we set off into the glorious sunshine to the sketchy city of pontiac.

tickets! excitement!
after being parked in by my brother's fraternity brothers, we set off on the two hour drive to pontiac. my CD player broke over spring break, so we hooked up my ipod to jacob's awkward portable speakers, and we listened to the head and the heart's only album while i tried to eat a sandwich on drive. the chocolate milk we had got warm a little bit too fast, and i was very happy with the vitamin water that i had brought, even if i almost impaled my throat on the straw. jacob took awkward pictures of scenery, and the music changed to bon iver. we anticipated a "sharp right turn" for nearly ten miles before it actually presented itself, and no, it wasn't that sharp of a turn.

outside the venue!
pontiac, my dear reader, is decently sketchy. the venue that we were at, the crofoot, was perfectly acceptable, but we were next to a rather large night club called "elektric" and there was an emery concert there at the same time. two lines awaited us. we picked the line of college aged hipsters and avoided the line of gothic punks with pink hair. we stood behind a couple that looked about our age that introduced themselves as dan and staci. they were a big part of the concert scene, from MSU, and had actually heard of alma. we spent a good hour talking to them about bands, concerts, food, and other interesting things. jacob then pointed out two hipster looking guys with matching shoes walking across the street to a cafe. one took a picture of the line with his ipad. they're important. remember them.

(it's also important to note that nearly everybody talked about after this point is a hipster. the concert was a congregation of three hundred hipster college students, except the couple in their fifties that shouted "yeah! we love these concerts like we're young!" i've decided i want to be them when i have children.)

our concert tickets said that the show started at seven. i had to pee. really badly. so i danced the pee dance up and down and took scenic pictures of downtown. at seven we were finally let into the crofoot, and i promptly went to the bathroom after buying a purple head and the heart shirt for twenty bucks. i almost broke a girl's nose opening the bathroom door, and as soon as i was done doing my business, the line of ladies with full bladders was curling out of the bathroom. i got there at a good time. we then made our way to the very front of the venue and stood directly at the edge of the stage and... waited until eight. but the background music was billy joel, and dan and i sang along. it was then that we met the old hipster couple with gray hair.

the opening band was a band from west virginia called the black girls. the lead guitarist looked like a cross between a kid i knew in middle school and daniel radcliffe. the lead singer had uncommonly tight pants, awkward glasses, and danced with his feet together. he screeched more than he sang, and halfway through their first song, jacob shouted, "THEY'RE THE MATCHING SHOE GUYS!" and so they were. the bassist stood about three feet away from me, was wearing awkward sweatpants, had long hair and a baseball cap, and simply stood there bumping up and down and pouting. he thought it was pretty cool. i thought he was rather grody. i decided that if he cut his hair, showered, and put on a sweater vest, he would look pretty fine.

a note before i continue. this was my first time at a real concert, and here i was, standing three feet away from the introduction band and two feet away from their speakers. i did not realize that a thumping bass and drum could be felt in your shins and in your throat. it was a good half hour before i could talk, and when i could, i couldn't hear my own voice.

the second intro band was from portland, oregon (surprise surprise to a crowd of three hundred hipster kids) and they had a chick bassist who played the upright like a fiend. the lead guitarist, who was once again right in front of me, was a sketchy looking dude with some weird earrings, tattooes, and played the slide guitar with really loud effects. the lead singer looked quaint enough, but when he started singing, he absolutely wailed. the sound balance wasn't that great, and i could mostly hear the awful guitar effects and the guy practically screaming into the microphone. during their last song, which was about ten minutes long, he became extremely distressed, threw down his acoustic guitar on the stage, ripped a cymbal of the drum set, threw that on his guitar, picked up another guitar, and then played that guitar so violently he broke three of the six strings.

awkward waiting photos at the crofoot!
photobombed by other hipster girl in the
background.
they then came to the front of the stage and stood literally five inches away from my face and sang an acoustic song with only an acoustic guitar. no mics, no anything, and they were beautiful now that i could actually hear them. the drummer danced, stepped on my hand, and then showered me in his sweat. the lead singer swung his guitar violently and almost whacked me in the face. when they left the stage, all we had to do was wait for the head and the heart and take awkwardly excited pictures while they did sound checks and set up their instruments. i was seriously about to have a seizure from sheer excitement.


and then they got on stage. the head and the heart.

i don't think i can adequately put their performance into words. their album is flawless, and it is the only album where i have enjoyed every single song. their harmonies are to die for. they are incredibly talented. and they were better live than they were recorded.

the next hour and a half was a blur of screaming, trying to take pictures without a flash, and singing along to every single song. they played new songs from their upcoming album. they sang and sang and played and played and danced around the stage. they joked about how after the show they were down for partying it up at elektric next door with anybody who wanted to join them. they were flawless. they were beautiful.

he fist bumped me. it was so awesome.
they were literally five feet away from me.

when they played rivers and roads, i was crying and singing so badly i couldn't almost do either of them effectively. when they left after rivers and roads, we cheered and screamed until they came back and played three more songs. during lost in my mind, the other two bands came on stage and danced around and it was a huge dance party. i just kept pressing myself closer and closer to the stage until i was practically on it.

at the very end of the concert, the blond lead singer bent down to give fist bumps. we fist bumped. i was so excited i got dizzy. and almost wet myself.

when the concert was over and i had regained a bit of my hearing, i sat up on stage and we attempted to get a set list that was taped to the stage. some other hipster snatched the one that jacob was trying to get, but dan and staci managed to get one. stacitook a good picture of it and then she kindly gave it to us. i folded it up, took it home, and taped it to my desk in my dorm. the girls next to us stole the lead singer's beer. so much creepier than stealing a set list.

it took a long time to get out of the pot-holed broken-beer-bottled parking lot, and it was a long, tiring drive home. it was blasphemy to listen to the head and the heart on the way back, so we shouted at each other in our deafness and listened to band of horses and yawned and talked about how it had been the most awesome experience ever. we had their set list. we had been fist bumped by the lead singer. we had seen the head and the heart live for only fifteen bucks. and we had shirts to take home. staci and dan from MSU were now our facebook friends.

campus arrival: approximately two am.

monday morning class wake-up call: approximately eight twenty-four am.

back to the real world.

but yesterday, sunday march eleventh, 2012, was the day that we saw the head and the heart live in pontiac, michigan, and it was truly an experience that changed my life.

now here are some pictures for your general entertainment.

driving to pontiac!

lovely downtown pontiac.
we were literally this close! ah!

i tried to post the videos that i took. i took one of their opening set, "cats and dogs" (which of course, was terrifically fabulous).

the other video is "lost in my mind", in which the other bands came on stage and started to dance around awkwardly. you can hear me singing obnoxiously, and i was so deaf by that point i'm not sure what key i'm singing it. the rest of the crowd couldn't sing either, but really, me screaming "HOW'S THAT BRICK LAYIN' COMIN', HOW YOUR ENGINE RUNNIN'" in a very scary toneless key is rather terrifying.

here is a video of rivers and roads. so you can listen to the head and the heart. :)