Super amazing fun times

The Lady in the Moon granted my solstice wish and gave me a weekend bursting at the seams of fun times. It was so much goodness that my brain is already shutting down. Overlook the typos and expletives. I know not what I do.

Saturday I had tickets to Save the New Wave concert that were some comps that I got from Live Nation as a make-good for the Piestasters being booted off a concert lineup that we went to a few months ago. The tickets were at will call, so I figured that they'd be nosebleed seats up at the top of the balcony. Dead Man's Party was playing (I am a huge Oingo Boingo fan and as I've said a bajillion times, Dead Man's Party is the best tribute band ever!) and so I dragged Ryan and Kate and Adam to come with me. They are super awesome and agreed to go.

We met Kate and Adam up at the City Walk where everyone was glowing. And not just radiating happiness but heat as well. Hot day. HOT day. HAWT day. So we headed over toward the ampitheater, which is actually inside Universal Studios. So we go in and the boys get sidetracked by a Dippin Dots kiosk (which is technically inside the theme park and thereby off-limits to us concert goers) and come back. Nobody seems to notice/care. So we make a mental note.

DMP put on a FANTASTIC show. It was awesome to see them in a great venue with a grand stage and a good sound tech! Yay! And Richard Elfman played with them! AND Steve Bartek!* Oh, and our tickets? Row H in the orchestra section, right in the center. UNBELIEVABLY GOOD. [pictures]

After the DMP set, we decided that we didn't need to see the rest of the show. It was cool, but Adam and Kate aren't all that in to New Wave (what?!) and were struggling to name a Morrissey song - any Morrissey song! WHAT?! And it was so so so hot. But Adam had his towel (good little hitchhiker that he is!).

We're all game for anything, so we said 'hey, let's see if we can get into Universal Studios and check out the new Simpsons Ride!' so we ventured back down the hill and again - no guards, no gates, no security, no worries! So we walked right in, saw the short line for The Simpsons and jumped in the queue. The waiting area is ADD-inducing. Video screens, episodes of the show playing, loud music... it's hectic. But the theming is fantastic. And there is no hint at all about what the ride is. I wasn't sure if we were waiting for a roller coaster or a dark ride or...? We of course took pictures - even simultaneously!




If you are a Simpsons fan, you will like this ride. If you're a Simpsons freak you will love this ride. Krustyland is full of Disneyland mockery (Captain Dinosaur's Pirate Rip-Off is my favorite) and every Simpsons character - plus a trip through Springfield. It was so much fun!**

We were hooting and hollering and rolling down the walkways afterward. It was great. The park was closing, so we snuck in to the Kwik E Mart to browse.



We were immediately up to about 300 degrees internal temperature, so we headed over to grab some dinner and 85 glasses of ice water - so refreshing! After dinner, we headed home so we could rest up for...

Sunday. It was the Tiki Room 45th anniversary merchandise event and it started at 8am. Kate and I made a plan to meet at the gates at 7:45am. But I slept directly through my alarm and also Kate's phone calls and so I didn't get to the park until almost 9am. I am such a jerk. Seriously. And you know what she did when I got there? She bought me a Dole Whip. I am so unworthy.

So we stood in line - which was an incredible line, by the way. Check out Mini_Jen's shot of the line which wrapped from the Gallery on Main Street to Tomorrowland. It took us over six hours to get to the Gallery. It was a comedy of errors and terribly organized. Some of the merchandise didn't make it from China (understandable) but then about 1/2 way through the day they realized that some of the merchandise wasn't delivered to the shop (!) so they sent trucks out to the warehouse to get it. Which was great - it meant that we actually had a shot at getting some of the stuff on our wish list - but it also meant that hordes of angry people were coming back to the front of the line, people who had been there earlier and didn't get what they wanted and then heard about new shipments, and they refused to be sent to the back of the line. And the Disney staff wasn't sure how to handle them, especially since they'd been getting yelled at all day for the hundreds of people who had cut the line (some inadvertantly, I suppose) during the day. So they let all these people jump ahead, which was a bummer. Especially when one of the ladies who insisted on coming in ahead of us was showing her receipt for her earlier purchase and it was three thousand dollars worth of stuff. Obviously, not a collector, but an eBayer. Which is cool, but we've been here for six hours why should she get to buy more when we haven't had a chance to buy any?

But whatever. I got to wear my kick-ass ukulele earrings (get yours here!) and I got my fancy schmancy new bracelet (yay!). And I sweated out like a billion calories. So all the dole whips and sodas don't count. Yay!



Unfortunately, we missed out on the Dodgers game. The plan had been to be done with Disneyland by noon-ish then head up to LA to take advantage of Kate's sweet ass VIP tickets. But we had invested too much time in line (I have the nose sunburn to prove it!) to leave and by the time we got our merchandise, the game was halfway over. So we had lunch at Storyteller Cafe and cooled down a bit and then hit up California Adventure to scope out the new Toy Story ride. The line was almost 2 hours long - most of the wait in direct sun, no less - so we skipped it for another day. Instead we made a GENIUS decision to buy some Disney Princess washcloths to soak in cold water and wear around our necks. Why did it take us all day to think of this?! I will never go to Disneyland without a towel again (like a good hitchhiker). After some refreshing toweled coolness, we hit up Muppets 3D for some air conditioning and then we realized how exhausted we were. So we wrapped it up and headed home.

I am hardly functioning. Sun drain. 3 hours of sleep. Super amazing fun times. But I have to stay awake a little bit longer... new Venture Brothers tonight!

*guitar player from Oingo Boingo! His last show was Boingo's Farewell show at the same theater!
** for the record, it's a flight-simulator-type ride in front of a giant Imax screen