Josh Josh Josh Josh Josh Josh Josh: Part 1

The 'Straight to You' Concert, July 29, 2011, 8pm
Wells Fargo Center (formerly the Wachovia Center), Philadelphia

As I have gotten older and had more stress in my life, I have unfortunately had less and less time to obsess over Josh Groban. But when I discovered myself separated from seeing him live by only a matter of hours, I found myself in a frenzy of excitement. But after all, what else would you expect?

In preparation, in the morning, knowing that I would be leaving essentially straight from work I opted to wear my black liquid eyeliner because 1) it would look classy and 2) it would last all day and night without much smearing. I would not have time for touch-ups, and I couldn't go to see Josh with creased eyeliner! No sir!

I also had to wear something cute, hip-concert-goer-y-but-not-going-to-the-opera-fancy-or-t-shirt-slobbish, and most importantly work appropriate. I opted for a short skirt, tank-top, and blue sweater. The sweater saved me from raised eyebrows at work and could be discarded later for more concert-appropriate fashionableness. I also pocketed my bright red lipstick for the final touch to be added before departure.

But enough about the wardrobe, I also made sure I was up to date on all Josh's video blog posts. (I wasn't, I'd missed one) and read some reviews of the concert as apparently it was getting glowing reviews. I also spent some time daydreaming about what songs I wanted him to sing. I read a few interviews in which he was most hilariously amusing. Which was of course to be expected . . . Technically I was leaving work an hour early, but I am afraid I might have checked out a little earlier.

I was also extremely worried about getting to the arena on-time as I would be driving to Philadelphia essentially during rushhour and not only with a thousand Josh-fans but also anyone going to the Philles game. So I decided to leave three hours early, even though it only takes one hour, according to mapquest.

Luckily, traffic was really not that bad at all until the last 20 miles, in which we saw a white stretch limousine and listened to Mumford & Sons, Florence + the Machine, and Laura Marling. Because my car is super-cool and doesn't have a radio that works, we tested out my battery-powered speakers. Happily, they worked.

Parking, which I had expected to be hell, was super easy, and since I had pre-paid for reserved parking the nice man at the parking booth said we could park anywhere we wanted!!! So we parked three rows from the arena. Yay! Mega-convenient! We were an hour early. But there were also lots of other people around, and we took a moment to eat brownies in the parking lot and smile bemusedly at people in their Josh Groban t-shirts.

We were super afraid of security, so we left our cameras in the car. We were surprised to find security was very lax. We could have brought in our cameras no problem. They did not search our bags at all which meant I succeed in sneaking in Swedish Fish and could have smuggled in my massive bottle of Coke that was probably coming to a slow boil in the car. My companion did get stopped and questioned about her suspicious-looking "water bottle" which the gent suspected was really a "can" and if so that was apparently going to be a problem. I distracted him by asking where the bathrooms were, and she got off with an instruction to "drink it before you enter" which she totally did not do at all. In rebellion, she filled it up at the water fountain. It was pretty exciting.

We strolled around, bought an overpriced hot dog and pretzel, tried out both entrances to our section, considered getting ice cream, sat down, counted the heterosexual men under the age of 50 we could spot, made fun of the flashing advertisements--- one of which was a massive close-up of Enrique Iglesias' eye, ate Swedish Fish and merrily waited for Josh to come sing to us.