May 09, 2008

Taking Back Sunday at Madison Square Garden

Oh, man. I'm excited to finally get to this entry! (I'm writing this in May 2010). Up until a few weeks ago, my good buddy Matt Rubano was in a band called Taking Back Sunday. Two years ago last week, they played Madison Square Garden with My Chemical Romance. It's not everyday (or in my case EVER) that you get to see your friend's bands play at MSG in NYC. Needless to say, everyone in our group in attendance was ready to GO BIG.

THE GARDEN!

Taking Back Sunday was up first. Matt hooked us all up with backstage passes and awesome free seats right next to the stage in a private section. Faaaaancy!

The crowd! Insanity.

TBS taking the stage.

Matt runs all over the stage.

When he came to our side of the stage, we couldn't help but notice...

matt — ...how much he looked like Prince (in a GOOD way) on stage.

Last song.

Goodnight, Cleveland!

jenny penny, karen, matt, meredith — Backstage congratulamagatin.

matt, me, meredith — Congrats, homey!

matt, meredith — Awww.

It was really hot and crowded backstage, so Karen and I went back out to see My Chem.

My Chemical Romance

jenny penny — Karen and I kept hearing a familiar "wooooooooo!" sound and sure enough, when the lights came up, we spotted Jenny Penny!

karen, me — Me and Karen. So happy!

The only other time I'd ever seen My Chem live was when they were playing hundred-person venues.

It was amazing to see them put on an epic area type show. They totally killed it.

karen, sarah — Karen (making a Jew nose joke?) and Sar.

After the show, there was a catered, open-bar after party in one of the Garden's Lounges. In order to get in, you had to have one of these bracelets. There weren't enough bracelets to go around...

macgyver — ...so Sarah ripped a bunch of them in half, and then used strips of the backstage passes in order to turn them back into bracelets! All you gotta do is hold out your arm wrist up when presenting your bracelet to the entry guard. Voila! And that's how you can double-up your bracelets to make sure everyone can get it! Pretty sneaky, right? Sarah's like the MacGyver of gate-crashing.

Check out the plasma-ringed uber sports bar!

matt, sharif — Sharif taking in Matt's post-show man-musk.

Joobs is half-Italian and half-Jewish, so they had pizza bagels in his honor. (See that glass plate? Keep that in mind for later).

Oh, and free drinks. We weren't sure how long the free bar was going to go on for so every time some went up for drinks, we'd double the order. Hahaha. Here's the stockpile we built up in one trip.e

me, sharif — Hahaha.

sharif — When I went back up for the second time, and asked for a double order of our entire table's order, the bartender revealed himself to be a kindred spirit when he said "Nice stockpile strategy, but the bar's open for another 3 hours. So how about I give you less glasses and bigger drinks?" Two scotches. Neat. Oooof.

karen, me, meredith, sharif — Drinks like that inevitably lead to a group that looks like this.

jenny penny — Around 12:30, Jenny Penny announced that the after-after party had started to Hanger Bar and that we should meet her there. Then she popped out a tit.

And activities like this. Any time that you think it's a good idea to try to see if you can still put you're leg behind you're head and you're in a bar...

...it probably means you're drunk. But hey, she did it! So, win!

matt, meredith — A little before 1am, our bellies full of pizza bagels and our hearts filled with free-drink cheer, we bid Matt farewell! (We thought we were going to see him at the after party, but he's ex girlfriend had some drama and he didn't end up coming. Boo!)

sharif — While we were waiting down in the lobby to see if Matt was coming, I tried to get a picture of Sharif in the midst of catching a thrown cigarette.

sharif — Closer!

sharif — Closest! (and also my favorite).

sharif — Hahah. I love how forlorn Sharif looks in this photo.

meredith, sharif — Trying to capture a simultaneous catch proved impossible. (A+ for effort, though).

leigh, sarah — We arrived at Hanger Bar around 1:30 to find that Sarah and Leigh were already on hand behind the decks!

jenny penny, karen, leigh, sarah — Ok, now this photo is taken about 30 minutes later. The number of people behind the decks has gone from two to four.

jenny penny, karen, leigh, meredith, sarah — And Meredith! Five!

jenny penny, karen, leigh, sarah — Turn it up, you little knob-twister!

jenny penny, karen, leigh, marisa, paul hanley, sarah — A couple minutes later we're up six people (seven if you count THE LURKER in the corner). Check out Jenny Penny popping out a, uhhh, valentine for Marisa. (And is that Paul Hanley in the hoodie?)

jenny penny, karen, leigh, marisa, sarah — OMFG. I'm writing this entry after a totally crummy day at work and this photo just instantly made me able to forget my bad day. Hahah. Check out LURKER totally getting his half-hearted party on with the ladies.

jenny e, karen, leigh, sarah — Hahaha.

leigh, meredith, sharif — Woodland Creature smoke break.

sarah — Ok, now back to the dance party!

jenny e, leigh, meredith, sarah — Dip the DJ (and LURK!)

leigh, meredith — I like how it looks like Meredith's in awe of Leigh's dramatic, finger-pointing dance move.

leigh — Dance it out, Shinypants!

leigh, me — Watch yer eye!

leigh — Leigh manned the decks for the last few songs of the night.

annie lesser, meredith, sarah — Last song.

Jenny Penny taking a break on the dance floor.

jenny e, leigh, sarah — It's after 4am at this point, and in the midst of Leigh and Sarah getting ready to pack up their stuff, Jenny ran into the dj booth and started busting out her cans again!

jenny penny — Oh, and then upon exiting the dj booth, she started doing doing a little "private show" for our good friend THE LURKER, whose patience finally paid off!

jenny penny, sarah — Sarah, who's clearly a better friend than me, realized what was happening and rushed over out of the booth to stop Jenny from ass-flashing THE LURKER. I love that Jenny's mischievously smiling while being admonished.

annie lesser, jenny penny, marisa, meredith — Hahaha. After ass-flashing a lurker, we realized that it was our duty to make sure Jenny got home safely.

jenny e, meredith — Get a load of this lurker-encourager.

jenny e, meredith — Meredith, Leigh, Jenny and I all got into a cab and we headed just a couple blocks to where she told us her apartment was in the Lower East Side. We got out of the cab and walked to her front door. She got in front of her door and then exclaimed "Wait a minute! I don't LIVE HERE any more!" We all laughed. But then when Jenny couldn't remember where she'd since moved we realized that she was A LOT drunker than we'd originally estimated.

After wandering around a couple of blocks hoping to jog her memory (we knew she still lived in the neighborhood!), she told us she needed a break and plopped down on the sidewalk. Leigh suggested we look through Jenny's phone and start calling people that might know her current address! When Leigh opened Jenny's purse, she pulled out two giant GLASS PLATES.

jenny penny, leigh, meredith — Hahahaha. "Uhhhh, Jenny? Why do you have glass plates in your bag?"

jenny penny, leigh, meredith — Turns out that these were plates from the buffet at the MSG after party. Jenny had taken a whole bunch of food from the buffet, put it between two glass plates, wrapped it in a napkin and put it in her purse. But the napkin had come undone...

meredith — ...which meant that her entire purse was filled with buffet food. I love this photo so much.

jenny e, leigh — Jenny has no recollection of this whatsoever! When I first showed her these photos, she was laughing and she asked "What in the world was I eating? What are those, cookies?" I told her, "No, they were chicken nuggets." Jenny groaned really loud and said, "Oh, nooooo! I'm a vegetarian!" Hahahaha.

jenny e, leigh — I also love how the whole time all this nugget-eating is going on, Leigh's calling and texting people in Jenny's phone at 4:40am trying to figure out where her apartment is.

jenny penny — NUGGETS!

leigh — At this point, it's close to 5am and Meredith was losing patience. (Well, we all were, but Meredith was the first to snap!). She was like "Jenny, it's 5am and you don't remember where you live! Why don't you come crash at our place?" Jenny refused and explained that she had to be at the apartment at 8am because movers were coming to get all her stuff - she and her boyfriend Josh were taking the big leap and moving in together! Meredith was like "Well if you're not going to come stay with us and you don't know where you live, I am going home!" She wished Leigh and I luck and hailed a cab. Hahahaha.

jenny penny, leigh — So in the doghouse.

leigh — A little past 5am we finally got someone on the phone (Sarah maybe?) that didn't know Jenny's exact address, but knew that it was "across the street from San Loco on Stanton." So we mobilized!

leigh — When we got to San Loco and pointed out the buildings across the street, Jenny STILL didn't recognize any of them. So we ended up having to take her giant comedy-keyring and try all the keys in three different doors until we finally unlocked a door! We walked her all the way upstairs and even made sure she got into bed without setting the place on fire or something. Mission accomplished!

leigh — Walking Leigh back to her apartment, we passed this awesome sign for a psychic. Leigh was in the midst of doing an impression of the lady on the sign and saying something and this is the result.

leigh — Leigh's the only human I know who can pull a face like this and still look pretty hot. Like, if her face looked like this ALL the time, I'd still be down. (Just sayin.)

Cab ride home in the day light. Good morning, New York.

It's time for bed. Thanks for inviting us, Matt!