Without love, life is like my mother on a diet
Happy Birthday Gabs!
So we got there really early and I immediately felt out of place since I was not a middle school girl in a cheesy High School Musical shirt. Though I then realized that was not the line to get in, that was just the gawker line. We found the right line and waited for like an hour for the theater to open. I thought we would get to walk in on the red carpet, but I was wrong. The line was on the left and the red carpet was on the right. Though I managed to step onto red carpet as we were walking in. When we walked in, we realized they were showing it in 5 different theaters. We picked up our (stale) free popcorn and waters, then made the long journey to our theater, theater 5, the furthest one away. We were one of the first in the theater so we got great seats. I had to save some for my friend, J and her sister, E, who luckily enough were in the same theater as us, so my sister and I just hung out there and talked. My dad called me to say that they were watching it on the news and that Zac Efron and Amanda Bynes had just arrived. I really wanted to go outside and see them (okay, just Amanda), but I had to save seats and I didn't want to leave my sister since it was her b-day. Therefore, I told her to go and try to get their picture and to tell me everything. She didn't care enough to get up since she had already had an experience like that in London at the Spiderman 3 Premiere so she told me I should go and get the experience. I told her I would stay with her since it was her b-day but a minute later she mentioned she wanted more soda, so I quickly volunteered to get it. I ran back to the lobby to see John Waters walking in. I recognized him right away. The man is quite creepy. He was wearing a very normal, nice looking shirt and jacket, with lime green pants. A security guard was telling all the gawkers in the lobby to get a move on, so I grabbed a soda, then stepped to the side against a wall, out of his peripheral vision. There was a very short, well dressed guy next to me standing by himself. He totally noticed what I was doing too, and he just kind of laughed. I stood there for like 5 minutes, when J (the friend who I was saving seats) for walked in. She looked really excited so I walked over to the doorway and she pointed outside and I saw the back of a really tall, skinny girl. I realized right away that it was Amanda Bynes. She had her back to me because she was giving an interview. She was saying some generic line about how excited she was to be in the home of the movie, blah blah, blah. I took a picture of her back and waited a couple minutes for her to finish the interview, to no avail. I felt bad about leaving me sister for so long so I turned to go back to the theater. On the way there I saw John Waters just standing by himself in the lobby so I whipped out my camera phone and asked if I could take his picture.He said sure and smiled, and I literally took a pic a foot away from his face. I then said, "It was so nice meeting you!" And I held out my hand. He looked really resistant but then he shook it (for as short as possible) and walked away. In my haste to call my dad and tell him I accidentally deleted the close up of John Waters' face.
I went back to the theater to wait for the movie to begin. Right before it began, the man in charge of AIDS Action Baltimore (this whole thing was a fundraiser for them) went in front of the theater to say a few words. He then said that he couldn't possibly give this movie the introduction it deserves so he introduced John Waters. John came into the theater and said a couple words, before introducing Mark O'Donnell, who wrote the musical. Mark then introduced director/choreographer Adam Shankman and two producers whose names are escaping me. Adam said a couple words then mentioned that there were some people here who were also really excited to see what our fair city thought of the movie. He introduced James Marsden (who was a surprise guest! My sis totally loves him so I was excited since she was excited), Elijah Kelley who plays Seaweed (And who also happened to be the guy I was standing next to in the lobby for five minutes without saying a word to), Amanda Bynes (I stood up and started cheering since the girl is kind of a hero to me), Zac Efron (the middle schoolers in the theater died), and Nikki Bonsky (everyone stood up and cheered for her). After a couple minutes of standing in the front of the theater waving they left so we could start the movie. I'll save any comments on the actual movie for the end in case anyone doesn't want to be spoiled.
After the movie was over there was a gala at a hotel a couple blocks down the road. Also, there were goodie bags as we walked out of the theater that included a small poster, a cast members face on a stick, mascara, lip gloss, some Baltimore coupons and magnets, a CD with the track "Ladies Choice" from the movie, and a couple other things. My sister and I drove to the gala and valet parked (which was supposed to be free but was in actuality $25. We would have parked ourselves but it was Baltimore City at night time so we decided to play it safe). We walked in and saw there were like four rooms for the party. My sister and I (after a bathroom pitstop) went into the one straight ahead. J called and said she was at the upstairs party, so my sis and I decided to head up there. However my sister spotted a drinks table, and as it was her first legal open bar, she stopped to wait in line for a drink. By the time we got upstairs, J showed me her camera, which had a pic of her and her sister (fake)kissing Zac Efron's cheeks (he told them they couldn't kiss him for real since he didn't want to get lipstick on his face). When we got up there him and all the other celebs were in a roped off section. There was a huge crowd around the front of the roped off section, so I grabbed my sister's hand and went on the other side of a food table, and walked down to the back of the roped off section, which was empty. Amanda Bynes was sitting right in front of me, talking to one of the producers. I didn't want to be rude and interrupt her conversation, so I looked around at everyone else in the VIP area. (By this time a million people saw what I had done and started to approach the area I was in). I made eye contact at James Marsden who was standing at the opposite end of the section from me and I kind of waved my camera at him. I expected him just to smile, but he actually walked over to me. I was like, "James, my sister totally loves you, can I get a picture with you two?" He nodded, and put his spare arm around my sister (the other arm was holding his beer), but then he was like, "don't you want to be in the picture too?!" A girl who I knew from high school was right behind me and offered to take it, so I handed off the camera and jumped in. After the picture, he stayed there and started talking to us. He asked how we liked the movie, and my sis was too nervous to talk so I let my verbal diarrhea go. Here is our convo...
Me: We loved the movie! You were so awesome. We love you.
Him: Wasn't the movie cool! And it was all filmed just how it turned out in the movie. (I have no idea what he meant by this but I nodded and smiled)
Me: So do you like Baltimore? Did you get to see the sights?
Him: I've been here for about four hours. I think we are going around tomorrow.
Me: You should get crabs! (Okay, this sounded brilliant in my head. I did not realize it would come out like I was saying he should get an STD)
Me: The seafood!
Him: Oh yeah, crabcakes and, uh, that's Maryland. (This was him misquoting Wedding Crashers)
Me: Football! Crabcakes and football, that's what Maryland does.
Him: Right!
Me: We loved you in the movie! And we totally love you in The Notebook! (This is a lie since I hate that movie but my sister loves it so...)
Sister: Yeah, we love you in the Notebook.
Him: Oh, you saw that! Yeah, that was a fun movie. (I don't know if he has ever seen it if he is describing it as fun...)
He was still talking to us but he got pulled away. After walking away to freak out to J and E about James Marsden, I managed to slip back to my spot where Amanda Bynes was still having a conversation. She had also kind of swept her hair so it was covering the side of her face closest to where the fans where. She looked up a couple times, but always looked quickly back down. I started to realize maybe she wasn't the nicest celeb in the world when the girl next to me in a wheelchair asked Amanda for an autograph and she ignored her. She finally got up since they were gathering all the celebs to do some sort of intro. As soon as she stood up, I screamed, "Amanda, can I get a picture!" She looked at me and said, "Yeah, um, I'll be over there" and pointed to where Zac Efron was surrounded by a throng of people. This is where I got really mad because it would have taken a second and it wasn't like she was getting pulled away as all the other celebs were busy signing autographs and posing for pictures and she was a step away from me and it would have been easy whereas in order to get a picture later I would have had to of had a machete to slice through crowds of people. And when she got where she was going she kind of hid behind Zac Efron. I was about to move to chase her down when I noticed a security guard right next to me pulling back the velvet rope. Right behind him was the star of the movie, Nikki Blonsky. As soon as she stepped into the VIP area, I said, "Nikki you were so awesome in the movie can I get a picture?" (And yes, I said it all on one breath). She was like "of course!" So this time I asked a random lady to take a picture as my sister and I posed. I told her that I remembered seeing her on the news a year ago working in Coldstone! She laughed and said thank you, but then she had to go.
We realized they were doing some sort of thing on the dance floor with the celebs, as the security was pushing everyone off and kind of setting up a man wall. So they announced all the celebs who came out on the dance floor and started dancing, and pulled some people out to dance with them. Amanda Bynes's face had distinctively changed back into her onscreen persona at that point, which was another straw in the "Amanda Bynes is kind of snobby in real life and turns her TV personality on and off" case. Oh, and is this not the bitchiest sister story ever? This one girl out on the dance floor was walking back towards the crowd, and it looked like she was reaching into the crowd to pull in the girl standing next to her, but she ended up throwing her purse at her and screaming, "hold my purse so I can dance with zac efron." The girl she threw the purse at turns to us and was like, "Isn't my sister the best? We came here for my birthday and I get to hold her purse while she dances with Zac Efron..." I felt so bad for her. My sister and I turned to each other like, "omg" and that became our inside joke of the night. Oh, so after playing a couple normal songs, they played You Can't Stop the Beat, and all the celebs kind of danced in the front of the circle and sang along when it was their turn. Then the director/choreographer came on during John Travolta's part and was getting really into it. It was fun to watch. After a while the celebs all left the dance floor. The guys went back to the VIP section while the girls went to a door on the other side of the room. I ran to the door and beat the crowds there, but a security guard was blocking my view. I stood by the door for a couple of minutes thinking they might come back, and I saw Elijah Kelley approaching the door. I screamed out "Seaweed!" by accident instead of his actual name, but he looked up and waved. My sister, E, and J all started dancing but I was getting kind of tired and I'm not much of a dancer anyway. I left that room to call a friend, but then I noticed a man in bright green pants walk into a hallway right outside the doors of the party. I followed him and discovered a whole nother party room (where I also saw Food Networks Ace of Cakes). I went back into the main room and told them if they wanted to see John Waters to follow me. They did, so we went back into the other room. I stood right next John, who was talking to some people (I overheard him introduce one to the woman on his left, who was actually his mother). I was kind of shy in front of him since I already made a fool of myself, and no one else would speak up and ask for a picture, so he didn't even register we were there. One of the people he was talking to mentioned long legs running in the Waters family, and we realized the tall woman standing between us and John was his sister. She was kind of not in their convo, so we started talking to her. She was so nice, we talked for like 10 minutes. She was telling us how she got to meet Johnny Depp on the set of crybaby before he was strange. And we talked about growing up in Baltimore, and how we could see touches of John's movie in the new one. We didn't even notice John walk right by us. Then she had to go so we decided to look what was going on at the downstairs party. Nothing was really going on down there, so we came back up. I noticed a throng of girls around the VIP section so I squeezed through and Zac Efron was there signing autographs. I got right next to him and was about to ask him to take a pic with me, but there was a 10 year old right next to me sobbing, wearing the cheesiest HSM shirt I have ever seen. I let her slide past me and get the autograph, since I didn't really care that much about the guy anyway. I did call out though as he was signing, "I loved you in Summerland!" He looked up and laughed, and I got a pic of him smiling (though it turned out horrible). I was talking to the security guard next to Zac as he started going down the other way for autographs, and the guard told me Amanda Bynes had left like 45 minutes ago. I was crushed since my whole goal for the night was to meet Amanda Bynes, and at that point I decided I was ready to go myself since all the celebs had left and I was tired, and had to wake up at 6:30 the next morning for work. My sister was dancing and wanted one more glass of wine before we left, so I begrudgingly was like okay.
We went downstairs and someone called out our names. It was a girl we used to babysit, who I haven't seen for at least 5 years. She was so funny. It was weird to see her all old and shit! She had actually run into Amanda Bynes in the bathroom, and gotten a picture with her! (But she did say that Amanda only took the one with her, and walked away quickly before more people could ask, and barely said a word to her the whole time. We talked a bit longer and found out that a hot guy from the show Wild N' Out was at the party, before we said goodbye and left. There were a couple people outside the hotel with cameras waiting for celebs to leave. They asked for our tickets, but they had collected them when we walked in so we didn't have anything to give them. We told them everyone was gone, but they said that only James Marsden and Amanda Bynes had come out so far. Someone else was like, "There is another entrance." So they figured out they had missed the rest. But they did say that while James stopped for autographs and pictures as he was leaving, Amanda just walked straight past. This was the nail in the coffin. I regret to inform you all, but Amanda Bynes is a bitch.
Our car finally got brought around and just when I was about to drive off we saw John Waters's sister next to our car. She waved bye and we waved back and with that we went home.
Okay, I lied, now I don't even feel like talking about the movie since this entry is already 600 pages. But John Waters had an incredibly funny cameo, they didn't play my favorite song, Queen Latifah was incredible, and overall if you enjoy musicals you will like it, but it is nowhere near as good as the show.
So we got there really early and I immediately felt out of place since I was not a middle school girl in a cheesy High School Musical shirt. Though I then realized that was not the line to get in, that was just the gawker line. We found the right line and waited for like an hour for the theater to open. I thought we would get to walk in on the red carpet, but I was wrong. The line was on the left and the red carpet was on the right. Though I managed to step onto red carpet as we were walking in. When we walked in, we realized they were showing it in 5 different theaters. We picked up our (stale) free popcorn and waters, then made the long journey to our theater, theater 5, the furthest one away. We were one of the first in the theater so we got great seats. I had to save some for my friend, J and her sister, E, who luckily enough were in the same theater as us, so my sister and I just hung out there and talked. My dad called me to say that they were watching it on the news and that Zac Efron and Amanda Bynes had just arrived. I really wanted to go outside and see them (okay, just Amanda), but I had to save seats and I didn't want to leave my sister since it was her b-day. Therefore, I told her to go and try to get their picture and to tell me everything. She didn't care enough to get up since she had already had an experience like that in London at the Spiderman 3 Premiere so she told me I should go and get the experience. I told her I would stay with her since it was her b-day but a minute later she mentioned she wanted more soda, so I quickly volunteered to get it. I ran back to the lobby to see John Waters walking in. I recognized him right away. The man is quite creepy. He was wearing a very normal, nice looking shirt and jacket, with lime green pants. A security guard was telling all the gawkers in the lobby to get a move on, so I grabbed a soda, then stepped to the side against a wall, out of his peripheral vision. There was a very short, well dressed guy next to me standing by himself. He totally noticed what I was doing too, and he just kind of laughed. I stood there for like 5 minutes, when J (the friend who I was saving seats) for walked in. She looked really excited so I walked over to the doorway and she pointed outside and I saw the back of a really tall, skinny girl. I realized right away that it was Amanda Bynes. She had her back to me because she was giving an interview. She was saying some generic line about how excited she was to be in the home of the movie, blah blah, blah. I took a picture of her back and waited a couple minutes for her to finish the interview, to no avail. I felt bad about leaving me sister for so long so I turned to go back to the theater. On the way there I saw John Waters just standing by himself in the lobby so I whipped out my camera phone and asked if I could take his picture.He said sure and smiled, and I literally took a pic a foot away from his face. I then said, "It was so nice meeting you!" And I held out my hand. He looked really resistant but then he shook it (for as short as possible) and walked away. In my haste to call my dad and tell him I accidentally deleted the close up of John Waters' face.
I went back to the theater to wait for the movie to begin. Right before it began, the man in charge of AIDS Action Baltimore (this whole thing was a fundraiser for them) went in front of the theater to say a few words. He then said that he couldn't possibly give this movie the introduction it deserves so he introduced John Waters. John came into the theater and said a couple words, before introducing Mark O'Donnell, who wrote the musical. Mark then introduced director/choreographer Adam Shankman and two producers whose names are escaping me. Adam said a couple words then mentioned that there were some people here who were also really excited to see what our fair city thought of the movie. He introduced James Marsden (who was a surprise guest! My sis totally loves him so I was excited since she was excited), Elijah Kelley who plays Seaweed (And who also happened to be the guy I was standing next to in the lobby for five minutes without saying a word to), Amanda Bynes (I stood up and started cheering since the girl is kind of a hero to me), Zac Efron (the middle schoolers in the theater died), and Nikki Bonsky (everyone stood up and cheered for her). After a couple minutes of standing in the front of the theater waving they left so we could start the movie. I'll save any comments on the actual movie for the end in case anyone doesn't want to be spoiled.
After the movie was over there was a gala at a hotel a couple blocks down the road. Also, there were goodie bags as we walked out of the theater that included a small poster, a cast members face on a stick, mascara, lip gloss, some Baltimore coupons and magnets, a CD with the track "Ladies Choice" from the movie, and a couple other things. My sister and I drove to the gala and valet parked (which was supposed to be free but was in actuality $25. We would have parked ourselves but it was Baltimore City at night time so we decided to play it safe). We walked in and saw there were like four rooms for the party. My sister and I (after a bathroom pitstop) went into the one straight ahead. J called and said she was at the upstairs party, so my sis and I decided to head up there. However my sister spotted a drinks table, and as it was her first legal open bar, she stopped to wait in line for a drink. By the time we got upstairs, J showed me her camera, which had a pic of her and her sister (fake)kissing Zac Efron's cheeks (he told them they couldn't kiss him for real since he didn't want to get lipstick on his face). When we got up there him and all the other celebs were in a roped off section. There was a huge crowd around the front of the roped off section, so I grabbed my sister's hand and went on the other side of a food table, and walked down to the back of the roped off section, which was empty. Amanda Bynes was sitting right in front of me, talking to one of the producers. I didn't want to be rude and interrupt her conversation, so I looked around at everyone else in the VIP area. (By this time a million people saw what I had done and started to approach the area I was in). I made eye contact at James Marsden who was standing at the opposite end of the section from me and I kind of waved my camera at him. I expected him just to smile, but he actually walked over to me. I was like, "James, my sister totally loves you, can I get a picture with you two?" He nodded, and put his spare arm around my sister (the other arm was holding his beer), but then he was like, "don't you want to be in the picture too?!" A girl who I knew from high school was right behind me and offered to take it, so I handed off the camera and jumped in. After the picture, he stayed there and started talking to us. He asked how we liked the movie, and my sis was too nervous to talk so I let my verbal diarrhea go. Here is our convo...
Me: We loved the movie! You were so awesome. We love you.
Him: Wasn't the movie cool! And it was all filmed just how it turned out in the movie. (I have no idea what he meant by this but I nodded and smiled)
Me: So do you like Baltimore? Did you get to see the sights?
Him: I've been here for about four hours. I think we are going around tomorrow.
Me: You should get crabs! (Okay, this sounded brilliant in my head. I did not realize it would come out like I was saying he should get an STD)
Me: The seafood!
Him: Oh yeah, crabcakes and, uh, that's Maryland. (This was him misquoting Wedding Crashers)
Me: Football! Crabcakes and football, that's what Maryland does.
Him: Right!
Me: We loved you in the movie! And we totally love you in The Notebook! (This is a lie since I hate that movie but my sister loves it so...)
Sister: Yeah, we love you in the Notebook.
Him: Oh, you saw that! Yeah, that was a fun movie. (I don't know if he has ever seen it if he is describing it as fun...)
He was still talking to us but he got pulled away. After walking away to freak out to J and E about James Marsden, I managed to slip back to my spot where Amanda Bynes was still having a conversation. She had also kind of swept her hair so it was covering the side of her face closest to where the fans where. She looked up a couple times, but always looked quickly back down. I started to realize maybe she wasn't the nicest celeb in the world when the girl next to me in a wheelchair asked Amanda for an autograph and she ignored her. She finally got up since they were gathering all the celebs to do some sort of intro. As soon as she stood up, I screamed, "Amanda, can I get a picture!" She looked at me and said, "Yeah, um, I'll be over there" and pointed to where Zac Efron was surrounded by a throng of people. This is where I got really mad because it would have taken a second and it wasn't like she was getting pulled away as all the other celebs were busy signing autographs and posing for pictures and she was a step away from me and it would have been easy whereas in order to get a picture later I would have had to of had a machete to slice through crowds of people. And when she got where she was going she kind of hid behind Zac Efron. I was about to move to chase her down when I noticed a security guard right next to me pulling back the velvet rope. Right behind him was the star of the movie, Nikki Blonsky. As soon as she stepped into the VIP area, I said, "Nikki you were so awesome in the movie can I get a picture?" (And yes, I said it all on one breath). She was like "of course!" So this time I asked a random lady to take a picture as my sister and I posed. I told her that I remembered seeing her on the news a year ago working in Coldstone! She laughed and said thank you, but then she had to go.
We realized they were doing some sort of thing on the dance floor with the celebs, as the security was pushing everyone off and kind of setting up a man wall. So they announced all the celebs who came out on the dance floor and started dancing, and pulled some people out to dance with them. Amanda Bynes's face had distinctively changed back into her onscreen persona at that point, which was another straw in the "Amanda Bynes is kind of snobby in real life and turns her TV personality on and off" case. Oh, and is this not the bitchiest sister story ever? This one girl out on the dance floor was walking back towards the crowd, and it looked like she was reaching into the crowd to pull in the girl standing next to her, but she ended up throwing her purse at her and screaming, "hold my purse so I can dance with zac efron." The girl she threw the purse at turns to us and was like, "Isn't my sister the best? We came here for my birthday and I get to hold her purse while she dances with Zac Efron..." I felt so bad for her. My sister and I turned to each other like, "omg" and that became our inside joke of the night. Oh, so after playing a couple normal songs, they played You Can't Stop the Beat, and all the celebs kind of danced in the front of the circle and sang along when it was their turn. Then the director/choreographer came on during John Travolta's part and was getting really into it. It was fun to watch. After a while the celebs all left the dance floor. The guys went back to the VIP section while the girls went to a door on the other side of the room. I ran to the door and beat the crowds there, but a security guard was blocking my view. I stood by the door for a couple of minutes thinking they might come back, and I saw Elijah Kelley approaching the door. I screamed out "Seaweed!" by accident instead of his actual name, but he looked up and waved. My sister, E, and J all started dancing but I was getting kind of tired and I'm not much of a dancer anyway. I left that room to call a friend, but then I noticed a man in bright green pants walk into a hallway right outside the doors of the party. I followed him and discovered a whole nother party room (where I also saw Food Networks Ace of Cakes). I went back into the main room and told them if they wanted to see John Waters to follow me. They did, so we went back into the other room. I stood right next John, who was talking to some people (I overheard him introduce one to the woman on his left, who was actually his mother). I was kind of shy in front of him since I already made a fool of myself, and no one else would speak up and ask for a picture, so he didn't even register we were there. One of the people he was talking to mentioned long legs running in the Waters family, and we realized the tall woman standing between us and John was his sister. She was kind of not in their convo, so we started talking to her. She was so nice, we talked for like 10 minutes. She was telling us how she got to meet Johnny Depp on the set of crybaby before he was strange. And we talked about growing up in Baltimore, and how we could see touches of John's movie in the new one. We didn't even notice John walk right by us. Then she had to go so we decided to look what was going on at the downstairs party. Nothing was really going on down there, so we came back up. I noticed a throng of girls around the VIP section so I squeezed through and Zac Efron was there signing autographs. I got right next to him and was about to ask him to take a pic with me, but there was a 10 year old right next to me sobbing, wearing the cheesiest HSM shirt I have ever seen. I let her slide past me and get the autograph, since I didn't really care that much about the guy anyway. I did call out though as he was signing, "I loved you in Summerland!" He looked up and laughed, and I got a pic of him smiling (though it turned out horrible). I was talking to the security guard next to Zac as he started going down the other way for autographs, and the guard told me Amanda Bynes had left like 45 minutes ago. I was crushed since my whole goal for the night was to meet Amanda Bynes, and at that point I decided I was ready to go myself since all the celebs had left and I was tired, and had to wake up at 6:30 the next morning for work. My sister was dancing and wanted one more glass of wine before we left, so I begrudgingly was like okay.
We went downstairs and someone called out our names. It was a girl we used to babysit, who I haven't seen for at least 5 years. She was so funny. It was weird to see her all old and shit! She had actually run into Amanda Bynes in the bathroom, and gotten a picture with her! (But she did say that Amanda only took the one with her, and walked away quickly before more people could ask, and barely said a word to her the whole time. We talked a bit longer and found out that a hot guy from the show Wild N' Out was at the party, before we said goodbye and left. There were a couple people outside the hotel with cameras waiting for celebs to leave. They asked for our tickets, but they had collected them when we walked in so we didn't have anything to give them. We told them everyone was gone, but they said that only James Marsden and Amanda Bynes had come out so far. Someone else was like, "There is another entrance." So they figured out they had missed the rest. But they did say that while James stopped for autographs and pictures as he was leaving, Amanda just walked straight past. This was the nail in the coffin. I regret to inform you all, but Amanda Bynes is a bitch.
Our car finally got brought around and just when I was about to drive off we saw John Waters's sister next to our car. She waved bye and we waved back and with that we went home.
Okay, I lied, now I don't even feel like talking about the movie since this entry is already 600 pages. But John Waters had an incredibly funny cameo, they didn't play my favorite song, Queen Latifah was incredible, and overall if you enjoy musicals you will like it, but it is nowhere near as good as the show.