One Direction in Vancouver - A 24 Hour Road Trip

Not all of our trips are well thought out and planned in advance. OK, actually none of our trips are like that, but some are even more scattered and disorganized than others. Two days ago I was spending a lazy Saturday at home with a long list of things that I was going to spend my weekend working on. Then around 3 pm some last minute tickets for One Direction in Vancouver that night came available. This was going to make my daughter's day (and ruin my son's) so we quickly bought some tickets, woke up the kids (yes at 3 pm...it's summer!), and within sixty minutes we were on our way to Vancouver.

Now I don't know a lot about One Direction. Sure I know the songs that are big hits on the radio, and they do those great Pepsi commercials with Drew Brees, but outside of that I've always considered them just another boy band. I've seen New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys and I assumed that it would be a show similar to that, but something was different this time. Something happened that turned me into a real 1D fan (That's how us true fans refer to the band....apparently) and while it's a little hard to explain, let me try to do it by telling you what I learned about the boys of One Direction during the show:

This is Liam: As you can tell, Liam probably spends a lot of time at the gym. To prove this, Liam's job is to take his shirt off in the video scenes that air between the songs of the concert. This causes the audience to scream A LOT! Actually everything Liam does causes the audience to scream. At one point he threw confetti in the air and the audience lost it's freaking mind. I tried throwing confetti in the air once. I got a dirty look from my wife and told to go get the broom.

This is Zayn: Zayn's job is to repeatedly mention the city that the band is in that night. This causes the audience to scream every time their city is mentioned, but it was especially cute on Saturday night as Zayn seems to have a problem properly pronouncing Vancouver. It kept coming out like "Van-cool-vah". It didn't matter. The audience screamed every time they heard a word starting with V, just to be safe.

This is Louis: Louis has a very simple job in One Direction. It's his job to tell the audience to "Scream!" Needless to say, this causes the audience to scream, but I'm not sure Louis should get all the credit for this. As my son put it, "If people can't hear you telling them to scream because of all the screaming then your job is probably redundant." I'm proud of my son, not only for his keen observational skills but also for remembering how to use the word redundant while off school for the summer.

This is Niall: Despite the fact that all of the members of One Direction claim publicly that they can't dance, Niall's job seems to be to dance. He busts out some crazy moves that look sort of bizarre to me, but they must be really good because every move he makes causes the audience to scream loudly. Of course at one point he stumbled a little and the audience screamed even louder, so I probably don't really understand these modern day dance moves as well as I think I do. 

This is Harry: Most people know who Harry is from his brief romance with Taylor Swift, but I'm here to tell you that Harry has a far more important job than just dating country superstars. Harry also seems to be in charge of the group's water supply. Seriously, every time Harry came over to our side of the stage he would stop and grab a couple of bottles of water, open them both, place them strategically around the stage, then run off because he was supposed to be on the other side of the stage by then. Every time Harry opened a bottle of water, the audience would scream. If Harry actually paused for a second to take a drink of water, the audience really screamed. If Harry accidentally spilled a little water while drinking the arena was thrown into chaos. They might want to get Harry a sippy cup before somebody gets hurt.

This is Neve: She is my daughter and was one of the 18,000 people who's job on Saturday night was to scream. Do you see the happy look on her face? That's why I'm a One Direction fan now. I may not understand the appeal of confetti throwing or water drinking, but I understand things that make my daughter happy. That smile made it worth the sixty minute notice for departure. It made it worth the hassle of waking my son up mid-afternoon (Actually that was kind of fun. "Wait...what? I have to go WHERE?"). It made it worth the four hour drive each way and the ridiculousness that is the Vancouver freeway system at the moment. In short, it was worth it. There's not that many moments in life when you get to make your child really, really happy so I'm very thankful that we got to take advantage of this one. Or at least I will be once I get my hearing back again. Seriously, they scream at everything.

A little taste of what the show was about, with the caveat that last minute tickets tend not to have very good sightlines...

Written by Steve Pratt

Selena Gomez in Vancouver

I did it! I'm the hero!  Well, I haven't officially been anointed as such, but I managed to get my girls to Vancouver tonight in time to see Selena Gomez, so I'm sure it's only a matter of time before I get the recognition.  I may have to share this honor with the couple thousand other Dads who were there last night, although most of them thoroughly embarrassed their daughters by just sitting there looking disinterested.  I, on the other hand, embarrassed my daughters by singing along to every song.  Far better!

Selena's show is good, if a little plain (and they should fire whoever put the lighting together - she was in the shadows through at least half of the show).  She's had three albums now, so there's plenty of songs that you've heard on the radio, and she's beginning to develop her stage charisma.  Give her a couple more years of seasoning and she should be doing just fine.  Oh, and somebody get her a stage.  Lori actually asked me after the show if Selena had brought that stage or if she was just using the stock stage for Rogers arena.  That's never a good sign.

My favorite part about Selena's show though, is how clean it is.  It's downright wholesome, and that pleases me to no end.  Why?  Because she's my daughter's favorite singer, and I really like using the words "my daughter" and "wholesome" in the same sentence.  There's nothing suggestive at all in the show, barring maybe a little tribute to Britney Spears, which is still probably perfectly clean, but my mind hears "Britney Spears" and it tends to shift in to a lower mindset.  Outside of that, it's a perfectly G rated show, suitable for the exact same audience that Disney draws to her TV show.

Last month we took our kids to see Taylor Swift, and it inspired me to write a bunch of dating advice for my son based on her show.   Selena's show doesn't create any similar kind of inspiration in me, and let's face it, that's probably a good thing.  Me writing dating advice for my girls just wouldn't be something that would go well.  Despite being an absolute stud in high school (which I can say because I'm pretty sure nobody I went to high school with actually reads this) I never really understood what girls were looking for in a date.  The words "spark" and "chemistry" present images of a bunsen burner to me, not passionate romance.  Of course, Selena probably isn't trying to inspire me.  Her audience consists almost exclusively of preteen girls (and their hero-status seeking fathers) and Selena was a perfect show for them.  Selena sings about how you can do anything you want to do, and that's a great message for that age group.  You still have to be careful what your daughter walks out of there with though.  If your girls leave with the message that "Dreams can come true!", then the show has been a success.  If they leave with the message that "They can date Justin Bieber!", then they may have missed the point.

Selena is getting there.  Her show is much more polished than it was last year at this time, and she's gradually building some stage presence.  If her plan is to concentrate solely on her music once Wizards of Waverly Place ends later this year, then next years show should be even better, which will give me another chance to be the hero.  A Dad can't have too many of those opportunities.

Earning My Daughters Love Via StubHub

My wife informed me yesterday that my girls would like to go to the Selena Gomez concert in Vancouver this weekend.  Now I probably should have seen this coming.  I know that my girls are huge fans of Selena's, and I knew that she was going to be in Vancouver this weekend.  A really good Dad would have been proactive and booked tickets when the pre-sale started back in August.  A really good Dad would have gotten great seats so that the girls could be as close to their favorite singer as possible.  A really good Dad would have already made arrangements for everybody to get off school/work early on Friday, so that we'd have time to drive to Vancouver for the show.

Yup, that's what he'd have done.

What I did, however, was let everything slide until somebody actually told me that I had to make this happen.  Typical for me, but not a problem. As a good Dad, I love my daughters and want to make them happy, and if there's one thing I'm good at it's last minute planning.  I'll just log on to Ticketmaster and we'll have ourselves some tickets in no....ummm....what do they mean SOLD OUT?  Since when do Wizards of Waverly Place stars sell out 15,000 seat arenas?  Who the heck bought all those tickets? (I made the mistake of asking my wife that question.  She pointed out that they were probably bought by Dad's who love their daughters and wanted to make them happy.  Ouch.)

Alright, this isn't a problem for me.  In my pre-married life I used to work for a ticket scalper (The stories of which would require an entire blog to themselves.  If you ever see a blog called "Twits Trying to Buy Tickets" you'll know I've branched out.) so I know the ins and outs of this secondary ticket market, although it's really not as tough as it used to be.  In the old days you had to carefully check the background of anyone who offered to sell you tickets to make sure they were legit.  Then after a while everybody started selling their tickets on E-bay, and all you had to do was check their rating.  Now, you just go to StubHub.

Arizona last year, when we didn't have to buy tickets.

StubHub is perfect for guys like me who never do anything until the last possible moment.  Essentially it's just a list of people who want to sell their tickets, but as long as you buy through StubHub, they guarantee that the tickets will be genuine.  I'm not really sure how they know that the tickets are real, but I'm a sucker for the term "guaranteed" and once I hear that word I'm full speed ahead.  It also helps that I've used the site several times before without even a hint of a problem.  You pick your concert, and there will be a list of all tickets available for sale, how many seats there are together, their location, and the price that the seller is asking for them.  Every bit of information that you could need to make a decision.

Except one.  StubHub can't help you with the most important decision that you have to make - "How much ticket do I have to buy?" Unfortunately no mathematical equation that you learned in Algebra 12 is going to help you to figure this out (Once again proving that you'll never need to know that stuff again once you graduate.)  Your job is to somehow walk the line between getting good enough seats, and not spending too much money.  It's not an easy balancing act to perform.  If you spend the night of the concert listening to "Dad these seats are amazing! I can almost touch her!" then you've overspent.  On the other hand, if you hear the words "We should have brought the binoculars!" then you went too low.  Helpful hint for you: If your kids look disappointed when you arrive at your chosen seats, tell them that you bought those seats because you know that the people in front of you are short and it will be easier for them to see.  It's a shot in the dark, but you've got a 50/50 chance of being right.

If you're in this area, you've screwed up.

I spent a little while this afternoon going over the available seats for Selena, which ran the range from "Are these seats even in the arena?" to "For that price Selena will bring us drinks and popcorn right?" until I found some decent tickets that were priced at 85 cents over face value.  I'm not sure who decided that 85 cents was their line in the sand for making a profit, but even with a small service charge from StubHub tacked on, I was pretty happy with the price. I've done this enough now to know what kind of seats are needed to earn my daughters love and admiration for the next little bit, so now I just hope that we can make it there on time, and I hope that it's a good show, but most of all, I hope that the people in front of us are short.

Taylor Swift in Vancouver

Last night I took my kids (+1) to the Taylor Swift concert in Vancouver.  She was playing the second of two sold out nights, and I'm sure you can credit her ability to fill arenas to her much improved stage presence since her early tours.  The music's always been fun, but now she looks like she's the one in charge and not just somebody who's been shoved into the spotlight.  Long review cut short, it's a great show.  Go see it if it comes to a city near you.

Now my son didn't want to go to the show.  He claimed that Taylor wasn't his kind of music, and that he didn't know any of her songs.  Unfortunately for him I've been known, on occasion, to drag my kids to things that I think they might enjoy, even if they are resistant.  There just might be some life lessons to be learned.  Taylor is getting older (she's 21 now) but most of her music seems to be about high school romance.  It's aimed at her target demographic, teenage girls, but watching last nights show, I couldn't help but think that there's some lessons in here for the boys too.  So for my son's sake, here are some of the tips that I hope he learned from last nights show.

Son, don't be distracted by the pretty package.  A little smoke and mirrors can make things look better than they are.  Sure, Taylor's a beautiful girl, but you're going to meet hundreds of beautiful girls over your lifetime.  Once the fun of hearing your friends say "You're with her?" wears off, you're going to want something a little more to build on.  It's OK to let the pretty girl turn your head, but sometimes that's as far as it needs to go.

A girl with a little confidence is an amazing thing.  I'm not talking the real cocky "I can get anybody I want, why should I be with you?" type, just a girl who doesn't need you to tell her how beautiful she is every 5 minutes.  Of course, you should still tell her (yeah, I know, it doesn't make sense, trust me on this one), you just don't want to be her sole source for self-esteem.

It's quite often the little quirks that make a girl stick out in your mind.  Things like koi fish on her guitar, or writing the number 13 on everything.  It's a uniqueness that comes from her set of life experiences and not something that she read in a fashion magazine.

Dude, your mother might argue this point, but believe me this is half based on my relationship with her.  A little bit of crazy is a good thing.  This is a tricky one, because you definitely don't want to go too far down that road, but prim and proper just isn't that exciting.  Your life will be a lot more fun if you find a girl with a little edge to her.

The bad news is that no matter how hard you try, you're never going to live up to that romantic ideal that teenage girls seem to have.  Do your best, and try to try to be her Romeo, but romance novels are filed under fiction for a reason.  Still, if you don't put in the effort for romance, you'll never get what you're really looking for....

Yeah the fireworks.  I know it seems like a lot of work, but when it all falls in to place, it really is incredible.  It's like no other feeling in the world, and yes, I'm including that time you got to level 65 on Call of Duty zombies.  Seriously, it's that good.

I don't know how much of this you got on your own from last night's show, but I wanted to make sure to pass on this fatherly wisdom to you.  Let's face it, after this all I've got to do is teach you how to play video poker and I'm pretty much out of knowledge anyways.  There is one thing bugging me about last night though.  You said you didn't know any of Taylor's songs.  I thought maybe I'd draw your attention to a photo from your award winning science project of two years ago.  Care to explain?

Why We'll Still Go To Concerts

As a frequent concert attender, I'm not too fond of seeing all the stage collapses that have been occurring lately.  I've spent way more than my share of time standing at the front of these stages, and to be honest the thought of something landing on top of me never really entered my mind.  I always figured that if I was going to be crushed to death at a concert, it would be from the people behind me and not the equipment above me.

I've had my share of incidents at concerts.  I had my shirt set on fire by a souped up spinning windmill at a Def Leppard concert (It was the Pyromania tour.  That should have been a hint.)  I was fairly close to a light that fell at a ZZ Top concert.  Somebody hit me
in the head with a bottle at an Echo and the Bunnymen show and I was at a Midnight Oil concert that was called off when lightning struck just outside the stadium.  The worst was at a Billy Idol/Platinum Blonde concert where the organizers decided to protect the gym floor by laying plywood across it.  It only took a couple of songs before the people on the outside of the floor realized that the plywood acted as a trampoline, and that by jumping up and down on the edges they could double bounce the people in the middle of the room.  It only lasted a short while until the plywood cracked, but for a brief moment there was some serious Cirque du Billy Idol going on down front.

The stage is usually the least of my concerns though.  I've been backstage at a few shows, and I've worked on the construction crew of a couple others.  There are some pretty strict rules when it comes to putting the stage together, and no matter how tight for time we were, I've never seen anybody cutting corners.  The stage is designed to have a little sway at the top, but it's pretty darn solid at the bottom, and I've never felt unsafe standing on one.  Of course I've never been on an outdoor stage in the middle of a storm either.

We've started taking our kids to concerts these days, and our safety concerns are reflected by our seat selection.  There will be no more purchasing of floor seats (actually my wife vetoed those after an unfortunate exhibit of seat destruction at a Motley Crue concert) and we usually grab those safe side seats on the lower level where the stage would literally have to leap across the arena to even land a glancing blow on us.  I've noticed though, that when you sit further back, the sway of the stage is much more noticeable.  We took our kids to a Lady Gaga concert earlier this year (Why yes, it did require some explaining afterwards.  Thank you for asking.) and up until the show started we spent our time watching the top of the stage move from side to side and wondering if those adventurous souls climbing up to the rafters to man the spotlights were really brave or really crazy.  After seeing the show, it turned out that the crazy people were on the stage, thus making the spotlight workers brave by default.

I started going to concerts when I was 13 (My first show was Triumph for $11.25.  That won't even get me a drink at a concert these days.) and by the end of high school I had been to almost 200 shows.  The beauty of being young, was that safety never really occurred to me.  The burden of being a parent, is that it has to.  I have way too many great memories of my concert going youth to not expose my kids to the excitement of live music.  We're just going to do it from a few rows further back.