and if I should die, bury my body on ol' highway 51

Friday I had a rough day and broke down sobbing in front of Margaux and then in the English office and Diane Moroff held me like a mother and although I felt miserable at the time, the more permenant feelings that emerged were that Blake Sills is evil and pretty much everyone else is just wonderful.

I really like most of our teachers. There are exceptions, of course, but on the whole they're a good lot.

Anyway, I ran out of school last period and subwayed down to Harry's house as fast as I could, backpack loaded with books, tearstreaks on my face, hair rumpled, throat aching, and generally miserable, and as soon as I got out of the elevator I was met with the sweetest, most soothing kiss... I completely forgot to mention the whole miserable incident for hours.

And Elena SCARED THE SHIT OUT OF ME, though it wasn't her fault at all... just glad everything's okay.

And Renata made pie.

In the end, Friday was an emotional and insane day. One minute I felt choked and stifled and alone, the next I was safe and comfortable and confident; then, out of nowhere, panicked and terrified; then safe again. I fell asleep at two with a last sweet kiss and some pie crumbs on my lips.

Saturday was similar. First I was fighting with my parents, then I was happily shopping for one-dollar antique necklaces (I bought nine) and bike baskets. When I got home, my parents had completely shifted gears and wanted to reach agreements. They negotiated a bit and then let me go see Harry.

Unfortunately, Harry's alarm hadn't gone off. I waited for ten minutes in the cold, shouting into the buzzer and answering machine, before he woke up and let me in. I was so happy to be there that it just seemed funny. We went back to my house, to a software store, and to Pratt, and I left just after seven to catch a party in the city.

It was a costume party, and I didn't want to go in my real costume, so I threw on a stringy dress and some beads and character shoes and called myself a flapper. "You won't think I'm a whore, will you?" I asked Matt. "Of course not," he said. When I got to Chipotle I found Matt, George, Clark and Chloe prepared to ambush me with swords and Mexican cookies and, of course, to insinuate that my costume was really a 1930's whore. We stopped at a costume shop and headed to Dan Katz's, but when we got there we realized that we didn't know anyone, so we went uptown to a different party.

It was lame. There must have been two hundred kids, and every kind of vodka, but I didn't know any of them and wasn't interested in getting smashed or hooking up with people, so I just ended up being bored. I stayed for a bit to talk about webcomics to a guy named Ted but ultimately left and froze for ten minutes in my flapper dress before realizing that no cabs were free on the Saturday before halloween at ten-thirty. I ran into Lottie and had to explain that I had left the party to go home and watch Hitchcock movies with my little sister and Abbey, and later to George, who I met on the subway.

I'm sorry this was a dull post. I promised Harry I'd post about what I'd done since I saw him, so here it is. I saw him four hours ago and I already miss him terribly. Love is wonderful. Except when it's painful.

baby, baby, can't you hear my heartbeat?

dum ba dum, duh dum ba dum ba dum dum...
I love that song.
I think I already used this title. Or something like it. Whatever.

This is the story of a pretentious high school kid who had a dull day.

I talked to Matt for two or three hours last night, during which I made a hat.

.

I stayed for three hours doing layout yesterday only to find out that none of it worked and I have to go in at nine Sunday morning to redo the whole thing with Matt and Jake and Donovan. It might be fun, actually. It was fun last time.

I spent two hours making three boxes of cupcakes for the Katrina benefit thing, because I feel guilty for not feeling moved and for not even going to the event. Am I a bad person?





I bruised my ankle biking home. While standing still.

More mixed signals from an old friend.

Everything was cold and I hid in my velvet coat that's falling apart and wished it were Friday, so I could look forward to seeing Harry, who I miss terribly. I fell asleep with a physical ache in my chest last night. Love is unhealthy.

I wanna go back to being a vegitarian, but I had a BLT with Clark and Matt today and realized that it will be really, really hard to go back. I'm contemplating whether I have enough energy to deny myself things right now. I know I can do it because I've already done it for four years, but it wasn't all that enjoyable, and I didn't really do it right. So I don't know.

I kept lauging at the Darwin movie in Bio in the most terrible parts, like when they were debating, or when his kid was dying. Blake noticed but didn't shush me. I think he knew how lame the movie was.

I'm a bad daughter.


It's winter.

I knew I had to say something to strike him very wierd / So I yelled "I like Fidel Castro and his funny beard"

Some pictures I took with Alecia, Elena and DaSilva last summer. It was my first roll of film, so don't be critical!















Amanda came today and the old gang reunited and I felt alone.
Then DaSilva came over and gave me a little sunlight.

Swlabr

Yesterday I made cookies, biked just about everywhere on the island, made cookies and saw Cream. I even got a pick from the stage manager afterwards. On one side it says CREAM and on the other it says GOODBYE!

It makes me want to cry.

We got home around midnight, but I couldn't sleep at all. I called Harry for five minutes before Renata made me hang up. Finally, around four in the morning, I fell into this wierd state of consciousness where I was awake but highly delusional. My eyes were open, and I kept checking the clock and hoping I'd fall asleep soon, but insane notions seemed real and pheasable. It was also very coherent delusion.

I thought my parents had told me at some earlier point that I wasn't human at all but in fact a robot. They had given birth to Renata and decided that they would make a robot maid to take care of her and accomodate their busy schedules. Halfway through, they realized that the robot would be kind of suspicious-looking and decided to make it another kid. I was bigger so they made me older. I still had robot-like qualities and an irrepressable devotion to my sister, no matter what she did to me.

It made a lot of sense, really. I kept asking very rational questions--"How did you make me look like this?" "Do I have DNA?" "Why didn't you make me work better?"--and was skeptical. But in a strange way, it all made sense. No wonder I'm so uncoordinated. No wonder I don't know how to talk to people. No wonder I'm so attached to Renata. They explained that they had created my DNA by combining theirs and grown skin and facial features in a lab and had it grafted on. They even explained why my hair keeps breaking. The only thing I had going for me was brains, they said, and my intelligence was thwarted by my them, because they had a computer that could control me against my will.

(I don't know what this dream says about me, except "inferiority/intelligence complex" and "opression by parents," but feel free to shrink it.)

I also kept thinking about Harry. First I was just thinking about how much I love him and feeling cozy, but when the robot thing started I began to wonder what he'd think of me if he knew I was a robot, and if he'd still think I was a valid person, or believe in my emotions and my validity as a person. I was pretty upset by the end of it, but my state of consciousness was such that I couldn't recognize that I was upset or sort the rational from the impossible.

This went on for another two hours, leaving me with one hour of sleep, which was cut short when Renata woke up early for StuFac and my mom came over to bug me about my school stuff and bike and the towel hanging on my door and everything else.

I told DaSilva about the conscious-dream while walking up the stairs (although he seemed more interested in my Home Alone t-shirt) and he just laughed and said, "You've gotta stay off of the psychedellics, man," and went to class.

Footnote: Maria Fahey talked about Bob Dylan and the Scorcese documentary in meeting this morning. I LOVE her. It was brilliant and intelligent and insightful and everything.

The other thing I've been thinking about lately is the fact that while I feel rejected by people often, I myself reject people. I've come to believe in a hierarchy that I used to hate and see as false. I don't know why this is. I don't think I'm a very nice person any more. I'm nice to everyone who comes up to me, but I don't reach out to people or smile without provocation or even feel close to almost anyone any more. I piss my teachers off and get irritated and annoyed easily. I used to feel close to a lot of people. I used to smile for no reason. I think I even used to reach out to people.

I miss last year.

pictures of lily

Okay, so here's some stuff from my trip last summer. I just picked a few favorites; I have ten rolls of film here, so I had to limit it a bit. (I think there are sixteen.) They're from all over the place, mostly Strausburg, Ribeauville, Zurich, the Alps and parts of Austria and Germany.

And I wasn't trying to be artsy by tilting the pictures; I'm just not very good with a scanner.

Because I like whining: being grounded made me miss a Calhoun party and a concert and a "chill" and Harry, and I'm sad about it. My parents were talking about H.'s "future" over breakfast, which was depressing. Even the thrift market was closed yesterday, leaving me with a rather dull weekend, aside from Elena's play, which was amazing and ethereal and everything. Everyone read Christopher Durang.

To elaborate: Matt and I tried to buy clothes and failed, and we stopped by at Elena's place, and there was that awkward "remember when I crashed your birthday party?" conversation, and Elena had just woken up, so she just went "dude... yeah. Dude." and Nick was sick and I had to wash dishes so the whole thing just fell apart.

I woke up this morning under three blankets in nothing but a plaid shirt in a sixty-degree house with nothing but beans to warm me up.

They were, however, very good beans.

I hate MySpace. I wish I knew how to close my account.

And the title... I was listening to it last night, and... well, Lily sounds like a French name, I guess. Use your imagination!

tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun

Today I accidentally told Matt and Clark that Travis was cooler than them. They didn't mind, I don't think, but it was awkward for half a minute before it was normal again. I ran an editor's meeting by myself and interrupted one of Donovan's classes to tell him that I couldn't make the meeting and to ask the kids where Renata was. I think he was a little pissed, honestly, and it made me sad, because I love him. Karma came full circle, though; I had a conversation with Bram right afterwards that made me realize that he doesn't really hate me, and that he doesn't think I hate him, either. It doesn't hurt that there's an article in this issue about how well the soccer team that he now coaches has done this season.

I got ungrounded for tonight, so I can see Harry! He's still going to be gone this weekend, and the Cream tickets are preventing me from seeing him on Monday, though, which is making me upset.

And guess what?
My friends DID come to my rescue that night. I just didn't know it.
I can't explain how good it made me feel to know that when people are seriously ganging up on me, I have friends who'll support me.

I owe you guys a huge thank-you. This means Clark and Lucas and Matt and Harry. I love you all. SO much.

And tap class with Lucas and Danny Landau and RCP and a few more is awesome.

I'll post some pictures of France and Austria and Germany later. I realized the other day that I never so much as put them on my wall. I need to sort through them and pick favorites and such.

I am feeling cheerful, probably as a result of the aforementioned ^.

(PS and maybe because I ate two cupcakes. Don't tell.)

The Original First Recording of America's Most Exciting Folk Singer

I couldn't think of an appropriate song name, so I looked at the title of the first vinyl I saw. It was a Joan Baez album.

Rachel would laugh. If she still read this.
I think Joan is a goddess.

So I went to my site and realized that the last few posts have all been recaps of my school day and general business. This is partially because I'm grounded this week and thus have no life. It's also because I hate junior year.

Classes are boring. The people with whom I once planned to wear a pink jacket and pose on the hood of a cadillac don't like me and don't even read this. The people I really liked hanging out with dissappeared and I don't know where rest of the people I like hang out. I go to class and draw or read and then get out of class to work. Sometimes I bike around and do errands. Homework just piled up on me tonight, which is fine, because I'm not doing anything anyway, because I'm grounded. I'm making cupcakes for my sister and her friends.

Life isn't bad, though. I find myself relaxing a bit, if only out of boredom. I read a lot and wander around the village (when I'm not grounded).

I spent all my energy writing a killer Letter from the Editor. Unfortunately, it clocked in at 995 words. I usually limit myself to six or seven hundred.

Here I go talking about school again! What I really want to talk about are the tiny moments when everything seems wonderful, when I'm biking down the street with grocery bags over my shoulder and a knit rasta-cap over my hair and my beat-up velvet coat and whistling Elvis riffs. Today a man shouted "Girl, you beautiful... not you, the girl on the bike!" I smiled. I felt beautiful.

Then he got rude, of course ("Come back, yo! Come back, bitch!") and I sped off around the corner, making a graceful arc and leaning inwards to better enjoy it. It's New York, I told myself. Don't expect too much.

Oh, and everyone look at Harry's new sketch blog! He insists on putting his roughest work up first so that he can hold up the appearance of improving for a while. I love it. I love him. But because I'm grounded, I have to wait until Monday to see him. Fucker.

I'm about to knock a really good post off of the page. This post isn't anywhere near as good. I feel kind of lame. Lately my blog has been kind of bad.

I keep getting this refreshing feeling where I remember suddenly that I'm my own person with my own life and choices and everything. It's awesome.

Ooh, and my halloween costume is going to be cool. It's simple but it holds meaning for me, and I like it.

And some photos I took with R so she could give them to her pen pal in Kenya:











I'm listening to Elizabeth Cotton and it's amazing.



Edit: I burned my fingers on the cookie tray. It doesn't really hurt, though.

Edit much later:

I didn't shower this morning because I was late for detention, so I wore a hat to cover my hair. And Harper's in some of these because she's sleeping over. And she made my MySpace friend her, which I didn't really want to do, but whatever. I've given up on my MySpace anyway.









...and that's why I wore a hat.

Buy me a flute and a gun that shootsTail-gates and substitutes...

Saturday I went to Yale for the multicultural open house. It was all stereotypes and huge affinity groups and speeches about how not to be heartbroken if you aren't accepted, and when I ate lunch in one of the dining halls it was like sitting in a crowd of two dozen male and female David Newmans. Except worse, because they were really condescending, too. And I hated the whole obsessively-multicultural thing. My mom understood, and she bought me a tiramisu and we left early. My parents picked up Renata and we all went to Pratt, because they were curious as to how it compared to Yale, and I had a lovely night with Harry that included Mexican-Chinese cuisine and extremely cheap art supplies.

Sunday I said "fuck you" to my dad when he tried to make me write a pamphlet for an organization that teaches kids about God in order to get into college. He didn't take it well. I was grounded for the next week.

I finally managed to convince my dad to let me out at night and I brought Jaya to Lauren's GORGEOUS apartment, where we ate from a communal bowl of lo mein-fried rice-orange chicken salad and talked about love on Lauren's huge, amazingly fluffy bed. Harry and David Tay and Elena showed up. I found the harmonica and Harry found the computer and the whole thing was wonderful and cheerful and sweet and everything else.

I can't explain the sense of affirmation I had that night. It struck me at one point that I was the only person there who wasn't in college; but the whole night I remembered that I loved these people dearly, that they were never derogatory or condescending or judgemental of me or of each other, and that I have a place amongst them. I AM a cool person, I told myself. (Italics don't work on the school computers. I'm not sure why.) I hang out with people that criticize me at the drop of a hat--why? There are people that I love here, people that don't leave me with such wierd, mixed feelings and so much self-doubt.

I worked at Used Book Cafe monday night. My bike got a flat tire when I was halfway there, and I worried about it for hte rest of the ride over. The people at the cafe were nice to me, but my friends there didn't show up, so it was a little awkward. They're all professionals with jobs and families. I probably remind them of their kids. On the bright side, though, they've stopped giving me shitty jobs; I work cash register and bag check most of the time, which means that I have time to read two Ibsen plays a shift, if I'm lucky.

Lauren stopped by to see me and we talked over the bag check counter about writers, men, self-confidence and psychology, occasionally including the people who were checking their bags in the conversation. Since she lives within spitting distance from me now, we walked home together, me in my mismatched clothes, wheeling my bike like a clumsy, short-legged New Yorker, her in her California-casual style, long legs and Grace Slick hair, carrying the teal bike helmet like a fashionable clutch. I wrote my name in wet cement. It's my city now.

So while I'm technically grounded, I don't have any significant plans to cancel this week anyway, except for Elena's play, which my dad is going to drive Jaya and I to next weekend. Elena has to seduce a guy who looks like a middle-schooler. I can't wait.

I'm going to be a dork and talk about school now, because I had a good day. I think.

I totally owned Bartleby the Scrivener in English today. (I already said that I was a dork and therefore I can use the word "owned" without making Harry laugh. I hope.) It was glorious. Ability to affect change. Control. Validity of one's feelings. I say these words confidently because I know my analysis is right; Sarah nods, smiles, writes on the board sometimes. Inside, though, I'm terrified to understand it so well, because I see myself in every other sentence, and it's frightening.

My best point, though, was that it is an essentially utopian novel in terms of the relationship between a master and a hired hand; yet Bartleby manages to control the narrator by taking his disagreement from a physical level--"I won't"--to an emotional one--"I prefer not to"--and establishing dominion in the later realm, where the narrator is weakest, and where he is forced to confront his own hypocrisy. However, Bartleby's discontent and ultimate death makes it instead a rather distopian story for the working class to whom the story was inadvertently dedicated. I think the point of this conundrum is to demonstrate to the reader that power over others does not guarantee happiness so much as power in the third realm--within one's self. Power over the emotions within one's self. This is where I am lacking.

And I managed to shut up for an entire debate in History, which, for me, is a historical event in itself, and to scat a while in Jazz Vocal. Bob noticed that I started on an up-beat and made the whole class try it. I can't decide whether I love or hate that class.

And in the middle of the library in the middle of a conversation in the middle of a sentence I started laughing hysterically because I realized that it has always been consistently true that I associate the predominant male figure in my life with Kermit the Frog. I didn't explain that, though, and everyone looked at me funny and stopped talking for a bit.

I keep thinking that I'm going to see Harry soon, even though I won't see him all week and probably not even next weekend.

One more self-indulgent post. I don't even care. This is my page. I'm allowed to bore you, be pretentious, like myself, brag, name names and tell tangential stories. I'm allowed to reassure myself and pity myself and write sloppily and feel better when I'm done.

"Tie yourself to the tree with roots
But you still ain't going no where."

Because tomorrow's a new day, and everything I write gets washed off the page eventually anyway. I'll hold a mirror up to the moment and take polaroids, like the ones Lauren still has of Jaya, David, Harry and I in a line, and of H. and I kissing, and stick them in a perfectly-manicured journal in my head where someday I'll turn back the pages and show them to someone and remember everything.

junk

I can't afford to keep being so sensitive. Especially when it hurts the people I care about.

I hate that I'm already condemned to spend the rest of my life trying to unlearn what my parents have taught me, and that I have little hope of success.

On a more mundane note, I've gotta figure out how to get un-grounded and make this thing work tonight.

And I'm SO BAD at talking on the phone. Harry and Elena are two of the only people I can really pull it off with. Beyond that I'm unreliable.

I don't know, I just don't knowwhen they're coming back again

How many Jewish holidays can they make us go to school for? Today was a mess of videos and cancelled classes and general starvation.

Barely any of my friends were still there. Barely anyone was still there. I drifted between aquaintances and drew morbid pictures and shivered and felt bored. I stole a sandwich from the cafeteria and ate with Alex DaSilva and Tom O'Connor, who is awesome, and talked about how sound works. I still have no idea what kind of sandwich it was. I went to the library and finished another Seventh Son book and a whole weekend's worth of homework.

Blake Sills made me realize that I miss Legos; Ms. Reyes showed us a movie about the history of New York, and eventually broke out with "Is anyone but me incredibly bored?" and gave us gossip (or Bochinche, as she calls it) on Alexander Hamilton; Zippy saw me drawing while he graphed things and yelled "SHAME!" at the top of his voice. I jumped.

Oh, and I wrote a killer English paper that might morph into my Letter from the Editor during Jazz Vocal, which I cut. It was especially relieving because I killed two birds with one stone, so to speak. One paper for two requirements.

I want a tattoo. Behind my ear, where no one who doesn't know it's there can see it. A beautiful one.

I also want to cut my hair. Maybe not for a while. Maybe not until next year. But eventually.

I have a myspace now (clicky here). This makes me sad. I miss Friendster and last year and knowing what my friends thought about me.

I'm thinking of writing a play for the Youth Playwriting Competition. I need to enlist help. I'm not sure who to ask. Jennifer offered a while ago; I might take her up on it.

I spent a surprising amount of time today wishing that it were Friday, so I could see Harry. I sometimes worry that I'll go to college one day and realize that men as loving as him just aren't to be found. I still wonder where he came from. I didn't know he existed, and then boom!--there he was. Three weeks later we were dating.

Oops, getting nostalgic. Better stop now.

Have a picture. Or six.


yeah... Harry photographs well. I don't.









And yes, that was a miniature Houdini in a straitjacket. It's Renata's. Because she's cooler than me.



Edited in: I just went and had dinner at Otafuku with Lauren Taylor, the only other person who doesn't think I'm crazy for wanting to walk in the rain. Everyone could use a friend like Lauren--someone open and accepting who's genuinely interested in people and looks for their good parts, overlooking the bad ones. I forgot how much I missed her until I saw her again. I don't have much time to blog right now, but I know I'm definately not going to many thrift markets alone from now on.

I ain't superstitiousbut a black cat crossed my path

This morning I woke up and thought, Gee, I ought to wear a skirt today. A short one. And a white blouse. I took a shower and tried to check weather.com. The internet was taking too long, so I quit out, dressed myself as planned, and pulled on a pair of Converse high-tops with holes in the toes. I couldn't find socks anywhere, so I went without.

I know. I'm a genius, right?

I was drenched and virtually hyperventilating by the time I got to school. I ran up the stairs to Bio.

Mr. Sills spends twenty minutes telling us about how he graded our tests without handing them back. I start reading Seventh Son IV on my lap.

"Veronica, can you please put that away and not take it out again, ever?" I stuck it in my backpack without a word and resorted to drawing dying birds along the margins of the syllabus.
"What is that?" asked Maya.
"It's from an Oscar Wilde children's story," I said.
"It looks like a dead bird."

Mr. Sills scared me by giving me back my test with a 79 on the top. I check it and find out that I actually got an 89.

I spend my frees doing Spanish homework and forget to eat lunch.

Spanish comes. Oona's and my tape gets played. Quinones rewinds it to the beginning and everyone hears Renata's jam to "Let it Be" for a few minutes and cracks up. My ads were boring, but I got a good grade, so it didn't really matter.

Jazz vocal rolls around. Bob humiliates me by making me count up and down beats for twenty minutes in front of everyone. "Up, down, up, down, up, down... come on, Veronica!" I tried to protest-- "I'm tired! I couldn't sleep last night! I get it, I swear! I have a really bad sense of beat!" --but Bob just kept going "uh one uh two uh three uh four, sing with me now, uh three, uh four..." and making me say things to the beat, like "Because I love my baby, uh" and "wigg-le jigg-le wigg-le jigg-le" and "doo bee doo dum-ba dum." I couldn't get one word in edgewise, so I gave in and bowed my head, hoping it would end soon. I don't blush, but if I did, I would have been tomato-red. It went on until one freshman (Dylan Wilder) said "wow, that's interesting... I can really hear the Dylan in her voice."

"What'd'you mean, 'the Dylan in her voice?'" asked Bob, still tapping.
"She sounds like Bob Dylan when she talks. Not like him, exactly, but... well, you can hear it."
"Oh, that's what that off-beat thing is!" said Bob. And the entire chorus started saying, "I like Dylan, but I don't like his voice," and I pointed out that class was over and ran out.

Dylan Wilder gets it, though. I think I owe him one.

So I skipped Affinity Groups to work on layout and had to use dummy-text, because we haven't started copy-editing yet, and ended up staying late, and I went to the bathroom and this teacher was brushing her teeth. Without toothpaste. It was wierd.

I also wrote an essay about Thoreau and Cinderella for a test. It was stupid.

And I ended up on the subway with Clark. "Next time you record something for a class, use a blank tape," he said, but he was nice to me.

I remembered that I hadn't had lunch and bought sugar-stick things from the Mexican woman.

And now I'm sneezing and my feet have blisters and I haven't even started my homework.

It was actually even more dull than it sounds, if you can believe it.

PS I hate watching my tenses. I've decided to screw the whole thing.

don't expect me to lie to you

I quote: "The power men [or women] possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act."

In other news, we hit deadline today. I was afraid for a moment that we wouldn't be able to make the issue, but everyone came through, even Burke, and we're ready to hit layout. The only thing standing in my way now is the muddled mess of next week--skipping half of Wednesday and finishing all my work on Friday--and my unfamiliarity with InDesign. I think I can make it.

Blogger works differently here.

Our history teacher bought us all Starbucks this morning. I couldn't believe it. It goes unsaid that when Rachel says "I vote we take a class trip to Starbucks," she's joking, but Ms. Reyes in her awesomeness just set the date and took us.

I don't care what they say. Junior year is pretty easy. The only class that's hard for me, ironically, is Spanish. And Zippy's math class, but that's a given. I end up with all this free time, and it makes my parents nervous. They're convinced I'm failing while in reality I just got lucky.

I'm too bored to give descriptions of everything. I talked to Lauren and went to Vermont and worked at UBC (so relaxing!) and saw "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Elena and Amanda, briefly, and generally had a good weekend, and even found someone who talked about Dostoevsky with me when cashiering was slow and helped me feel a little more sane. I'm really starting to love it. I'll get around to posting some quotes when I get further in. Anyway, the bell's about to ring.

we'd like to know a little 'bout you for our files

Aside from being a little bored and becoming even dorkier than ever, I'm doing okay. I'll post some Dostoevsky quotes later that explain me far better than I can. Until then, here's some pictures, because I don't think I'll have time to post this weekend. Renata took the Macca shots; she had a better seat than I did by far.





here's where he changed his shirt for the encore: