Got a good night's sleep considering in that bed i found the night before. About 8 hours or so. Got up and took the last shower, had some lucky charms for breakfast, and then headed into the van to go to our first performance of the day at the Elks Lodge Kiwanis Club lunch. It was silly. These old dudes are so not funny but think they are, it's great. I'd love to be a member and hang out at these lunches and make jokes and have them made about me, except i'd have to be me at my age hanging out with these 40+ers. We sang two songs to a poorly receiving crowd, sold some cds and ate lunch. During the lunch, we got to the segment of the lunch where people stand up, go to the microphone, and buy acceptance of the Kiwanis in the form of donations. "In honor of my anniversary to my wife, i'm donating $100" <cheers and applause> I mean, it is a charity organization, but it's just funny that these people go up and throw money at the club and get coolness points. Then we sang two more songs and kicked it home.
It was, of course, a beautiful day out, and the liquor cabinet was all ours, and we made drinks and hung out poolside. Lots of chilling and mixed drink experimenting. Brandon and dimitrios and sean all got pushed into the pool at some point. Then mike for some reason decided he'd dive in. The water was absolutely freezing. Adam made took some elaborate footage of mike preparing to dive, and then when mike was ready to jump in i took over the camera for the actual water contact. He dove in, and i started walking along the pool tracking mike's voyage through the water, and of course, out of nowhere, i lost my footing and fell in, making sure to put the camera's life above my own. It was goddam cold in there. I got out, and luckily the camera had not stopped filming, i peeled off my shirt and grabbed my drink. Then, for no fucking reason at all dimitrios pushed me in AGAIN. This time, i was able enough to put my drink's life above my own. The second push didn't affect me at all, it was just dumb. A little later i tried to have a cigarette from the pack that was in my pockets, and as i inhaled i breathed in water... so much for that pack.
We had a heated discussion about whether or not we'd be doing up the disney experience on sunday. Despite it being the only solid thing on this trip that had been planned since day one, and the only reason i really wanted to go to california, certain people were very angry at the prospect of spending a day in the happiest place on earth. Luckily, after much arm twisting and "whatevers," disney was written back in. Good thing too, because mike had never ever been, and he needed to. Threw the clothes in the dryer and changed into blacks for the concert tonight. Watched some tv and had another beer or two, then into the van to drive out to Claremont to sing as entertainment at the big a cappella competition doodad that night.
We got there with some time to kill, we had been shooting for sound check, but missed it, and some of us then went out looking for food. Eventually we got to the In 'n Out burger place. I was excited as i've heard nothing but amazing things about this place. I got a double double and fries. The fries blew, they were leathery and way too potato-y. The burger wasn't great, but i could see that so long as i got a fluke burger, that generally these burgers were excellent. Overall, not thrilled about the experience and i think portillo's does the same type of thing way way better.
I had a mad headache by this point, MAD headache, probably due in no small part to the alcohol i had been drinking previously. Sat down, enjoyed the show. As things were drawing to a close, it was time for us to go warmup and shit. Our job was to sing while the judges decided who won. About 15-20 minutes or so. As we were waiting in the wings, the judges came in and as they headed to their room, one of them said "you guys are the best, i really wish i was able to see you perform." That majorly psyched us all up. We went out there and sang. And the crowd loved us. LOVED us. It was absolutely amazing. We sang our three songs, looked to the wings, saw that we were being told to do more, and we did, finishing up our pre-selected block of five. They needed more time. We sang more. More time. More time. We were exhausted, but having a great time because the crowd was going absolutely crazy for us. We got to our 9th song, it was that's life, i hammed up the exhaustion thing big time, ended the song lying on the floor, the crowd went bezerk as they had been all night, and after 40+ minutes, we finally got called off. We all left with the biggest rush in the world. Except for steph and laura, who were really sour and looked like we had been killing puppies up there or something. But it didn't get to the rest of us, who were congratulating each other and beaming and declaring ourselves the real winners of this competition. It was seriously one of, if not the best performance i've been a part of. A lot has to do with us just being damn good, and a lot also has to do with the fact that the crowd knew that we were just there because we had to be, we were entertaining until the judges decided, if we stopped singing there'd be nothing, so they just decided 'fuck it' this is better than the alternative, let's enjoy ourselves. Sold a shitload of CDs, i got more complements than ever, it was unreal. Being a rock star is wicked fun. High on life, we got back into the van and drove us home.
Right before we got there, brandon pulled over and showed us this beautiful view of LA, i think we sang true colors which is totally hokey. Then back to the ranch. We listened to the new boca which we're featured on, and i ate chicken soup. And we hung around for the rest of the night, some of us drank, there was a lot of boring footage taken, there was a lot of fun with the giant inflatable novelty microphone, and uhh, yeah. Can't remember if anythign particularly notable happened this night. I'll tell you this much, it ended up with me, the last one awake, going outside and jumping around like an idiot listening to "olsen olsen." Then i picked a spot on the floor over in the next room and kicked it to sleep.
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