AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Today I indulged my inner 13 year old by driving up to USC to see Hanson give a semi-exclusive talk (and screen their new documentary about starting up their own record label) to a bunch of music industry majors. Really I just wanted to relive my screaming fan-girl youth. For those of you who don't know (actually, that would be everybody unless I've explicitly told you, since no one reading this knew me before college), I was (and still am) a huge Hanson groupie. I have a foot-tall stack of paraphernalia in my closet. I have almost every teenybopper magazine they ever appeared in, even though I never read the articles because I hated those publications. I considered myself a "cool" fan because unlike those stupid girls who screamed and cried and fainted over them I just silently reveled in their glorious sound. I even started to write a "Dear Taylor, I'm sure you hear this from every girl who writes to you, but I'm _different_, and I mean it: I think you are amazing, and if you only had a chance to meet me, I'm positive you'd realize that we were meant to be..." letter to him but thought better of it (ha! I thought that was original, too!). I actually drafted one like that to David Duchovny, too, but I was too chicken to flesh it out and send it. (phew.) So when given the opportunity to go see them from twenty feet away (they did it at a café on campus), of course I jumped at it. Kina knows a girl who's been friends with them since childhood, which is totally unfair but that's beside the point, so she got an invite even though she's not in the major, and I was invited to come with. First they screened their new documentary, and towards the end I looked in the back and saw Taylor and Zac and gave kina a charlie horse pointing them out. (see above image) Afterwards they did a Q&A about the music industry, while I looked on happily. Poor Isaac kept making bad jokes about things that were completely unrelated, like coffee
enemas, so I felt bad for him. (I was always a supporter of Ike, even though nobody ever liked him. I suppose I felt a bond to his first-child-ness.)

At the end we all got a free copy of their new CD and the chance to go see them at the Jimmy Kimmel show (grr), and since I didn't want to be one of the girls saying "can I take a picture with you?" and making them go "uh, ok, real quick" because they obviously wanted to get out the door, I instead did the next best thing and took those pictures for those girls with their own cameras. Sigh. At least I got my cd signed by Taylor. Then kina was a giant idiot and didn't go talk to them when her friend told her to come with to do so. Oh well.

Here's the (tiny) photoset.

Next on the agenda was lunch, and the universe certainly wanted to make sure I didn't get too lucky today, so it made sure that it evened the score.

I couldn't find on-campus parking when I got there, so I parked in the lot of a shopping center across the street from campus. When I got back...MY CAR WAS MISSING! What a horrible feeling that is. I can't quite articulate it now because the shock has worn off, but believe me, it was something. I had been in the lot for just over three hours (3 is the limit), so I thought it had probably been yoinked by the city. We had just been joking about that on the way over, too, so...heh. I gathered up all my courage and *called* (gasp!) the number on the sign, and the lady told me that since I "crossed the street" I broke the rules of the lot and had been towed. Even though I had come back there to eat with Kina, it didn't matter, because apparently you're not allowed to leave the boundaries of the lot once you park there. Hrm. Oh well. I'd rather have my car towed than stolen. Kina gave me a ride (after doing a few errands--I had a good time sitting in the sun on a concrete bench next to a big, silent, wall-like fountain, listening to Nyana Indoors and Dishwalla and feeling peaceful) and 2.5 hours and $130 later, I have my car back and I'm back in Orange County. Good times.

ps--pc techies: what is different about how Windows IE reads Javascript that makes it say "error on page" when I try to open the videos in the mediaplayer on kina's website?