g'bye, gibson

so the summer has come and gone, and you're left with an extremely burning question:

did wan and the teen see the jonas brothers in concert this year??

well, i'm here to ease your mind and tell you that yes, we did indeed see the boys on stage during their recent summer tour.  i know you were really worried.  after all, their l.a. stop was the very last show on the tour.  but come on now - you know us better than that.

it was kind of cool to return to the gibson ampitheatre - where it all began so many years ago.  although i was pretty bummed to hear that this is the last year of performances at this venue.  they're tearing it down for some harry potter crap that i honestly don't give two shits about.  that's where i saw my very first concert, man!  olivia newton-john, at the height of her "physical" popularity.  i was ten, in the 5th grade, and we had 8th-row seats.  my second concert was here too...barry manilow.

shut up.  the man put on a hell of a show.

aaaaaaaanyway, we were pretty excited.  shocking, i know.

we gave ourselves plenty of time to arrive, find parking, and grab something for dinner before the show.  plus, it'd been awhile since we'd visited universal city walk, and while it was the same as always, it was still fun to walk around and check things out.

holy shit, universal studios has gotten expensive as all hell.

we perused the "despicable me"-themed merchandise at the studio store, intending to pick something up for the bean but not really finding anything worth buying.  didn't stop us from getting a little silly for a second, though.

at sparky's, one of our favorite novelty shops, we came across a nice selection of pocky.  i wanted desperately to pick these up, but couldn't bring myself to fork over $4.95 per box.  psh.

near the entrance to the gibson, crowds of excited jonas fans were starting to congregate.  it was close enough to showtime, so we decided to head on in.

i love looking at the stuff these girls wear.  i didn't take a lot of pictures of them, but this ensemble was one of our favorites.  she had stuff written all up and down her arms and legs in black sharpie, too.

as per tradition, we stopped here.

yaaaaaaaay!

although it's a relatively small theater, where pretty much every seat is good, ours were great.  not as great as the 3rd-row tickets we'd had last november, but not too bad.  we sat there for a few minutes before the first of three warm-up acts took the stage.

apparently, she'd also been in attendance at the jonas concert back in '08 here at the gibson.  performing here and opening for the boys was her dream come true.  and after her set was done, she was replaced by this dude.

i'm too old for this shit, man.  his whole schtick involved making music with his mouth, which totally reminded me of "pitch perfect," and i'm sure that's not what he was going for.  anyway, i was bored stiff and read a book on my phone for most of his time onstage.  sorry, dude.

the final warm-up was a group i've actually heard of before.  you probably have, too - karmin.

as they did their thing, we noticed some activity a few rows down from us.  the teen leaned over and whispered "it's miranda cosgrove." most know her as "iCarly," but to me she'll always be the band manager in "school of rock."

when the main event finally began, we were surprised to see that joe and kevin came in from behind us.  they were escorted by security, and the fans went ballistic.  you can't see anything from this picture - and it's all we could see, too.

they made their way up and joined nick, who was already onstage.

i was glad i finally remembered to bring the point-and-shoot, because i got much better pictures with it than i ever could've with my phone.

right in the middle of a song, i found myself being shoved over a bit.  i looked over and this dude was literally on top of me, with five people crammed into the three seats between me and the aisle.  what the fuck, man.

jerk.

i was so pissed.  he showed me his ticket, which was for the seat next to me, but it was so loud and the other assholes next to him were ignoring me as i tried to figure out what the hell was going on.  and we were stuck in the center of the row, so it was impossible to get ahold of event staff.  ugh.  i refused to give him any room, and finally he and his cohorts gave up and headed off in search of more seats to usurp.  and they weren't the only ones - we noticed several different groups trying to sneak into seats that weren't theirs, only to be bumped out when the ticketholders arrived.  seriously, WTF.

anyway, once all that was over it was nice to hear old songs, new ones, and also a few from nick's and joe's solo albums.  they closed the show with "burnin' up," and skyped in big rob for his part.

encore!

and since it was the final show, they not only introduced the band but brought out all of the members of their crew, too.

getting out of there is always a clusterfuck and a half.  ugh.

also, some information that would've been useful an hour prior.

but we'd had a blast as usual, so all's well that ends well, yes?  and joe announced that they'd be back on the road in october.  stay tuned for the next installment of "all my jonas."