Saturday night Gaelic Storm returned to the Wolf Den at Mohegan Sun.  I had not been to Mohegan since 2019 and was sad to see while everything else seemed to be the same, my favorite machines were no more.

We waited in line for the 3 hours before the show, since the last time we went to see them we barely made it inside.  It seemed like despite being a Saturday night, people were a lot more fashionably late to arrive and for a while we weren’t even sure the small place was even going to fill in.

The band took the stage at 8 with their new fiddle player, Natalya Kay. She seemed to fit right in and I thoroughly enjoyed the evening.  Lionel Richie was playing in the Arena and they made a few cracks that we could “even dance on the ceiling!” “Hello!” showing that they knew what they were up against (and at the end, thanked us for going to see them instead of Lionel)

While there was a lot of clapping in the first song, for the second we were told we needed to wave at them… for the whole song… and that the song was 46 minutes long.  It turns out that it wasn’t and we didn’t even need to wave the whole song, just when we were instructed to.  But there was indeed a lot of clapping because at one point my Garmin said I was at 998 steps and by the end I was into the 1200s.

They also made some jokes about driving on 95 and that it has been around since BC but they have been working on it ever since.  I mean, it’s probably not too far from the truth. Some stretch of it is always under construction.

Another cool thing they did was partner with set.live, a website where you can check in to the show you are at and sign up for the artists mailing list.  At the end of the show, they selected 2 winners from those who had checked in to come on stage and get a personalized signed poster.  The site seems really neat and I’d be interested to see if any other shows I go to end up incorporating it.

Friday night, Big Time Rush played their 2nd show on the Forever Tour at the Hartford Healthcare Amphitheater in Bridgeport, CT. (Will that ever not be confusing?)  Connecticut born Dixie D’Amelio opened the night and I am absolutely too old to have any idea who the heck she is. (The mom next to me was reading on her kindle throughout her performance which probably wasn’t a bad idea considering the amount of books I need to get a move on to read and review)

Although the fashion made me think I was back in the ’90s, I knew I was in the ’20s when there was a sea of phone cameras were held up anticipating the curtain in the front of the stage to drop and for Big Time Rush to take the stage.  I opted to take a photo of it with my… actual camera.  No doubt one of only a very few in possession of anyone in the crowd.  (Several tour photographers were out and about however with theirs)  They started with “Windows Down” which samples Blur’s “Song 2” which I remember vividly from 1997 and I honestly wonder how many of these girls jumping around and screaming the “woohoos” were even alive then.  (I heard one of the girls next to me say the last time she saw them was 10 years ago when she was in 4th grade.  I was much older than that the last time I saw them, also about 10 years ago)  I also need to direct some of these girls to check out some *NSYNC performance videos because the dance moves they were cheering for, while I appreciated the choreography, were mediocre at best. (Though I was impressed by James feeling the need to jump all over the platform and not use the stairs – especially since he was seen wearing a knee brace in rehearsal photos.)

Not included in the setlist.fm set is in the acoustic breakdown when they did a medley of songs with Carlos playing the ukelele.  Carlos did Na Na Na, Kendall morphed it into CeeLo Green’s “Forget You”, Logan decided it sounded more like Sublime’s “What I Got” and James… well he started singing “I’m Too Sexy” which made Logan jump up in front of him when he started to take of his shirt.

Big Time Rush played for nearly 2 hours, the amphitheater was absolutely PACKED and they even went out in the crowd for a song with Kendall and James ending up dancing on one of the Dugout bars which I don’t think was part of the plan considering they had platforms out in the crowd for them.  Also of note, they had a T-Shirt cannon, but Logan and Carlos opted to throw a shirt out into the crowd by hand – both of them landing with the same person which made Carlos fall to the ground laughing.   What are the odds?  They also brought out a boombox to which one of them said, “Hey there’s a cassette inside!” and one of the others quipped, “no idea what that is.”  Cmon boys, I already felt enough like a grandma in that crowd lol

Sorry not sorry for all the James pics. I clearly have a favorite.

In October 2019, The Ridgefield Playhouse booked a show with Mandy Moore, who hadn’t toured in over 10 years.  On December 20, 2019 I spent $135 on a ticket to see Mandy at The Ridgefield Playhouse on Saturday, March 28, 2020.  You can probably guess what happened then.  March 24th – it was postponed to a date TBD.  In October 2020, it was rescheduled to Sunday, June 20, 2021.  Then nearly the whole tour got canceled, but somehow the CT and NJ date survived.  It was then rescheduled for Tuesday, June 21, 2022.  914 days after I had bought the ticket, I got to see the show.  I am not sure I have waited that long for anything else before in my life! The Playhouse even renovated their lobby in the time we waited – and it looks awesome! Way more spacious than it had been.  Mandy had some changes too – she and her husband (who is on tour with her in her band!) welcomed their first son, Gus, and now she is 6 months pregnant with their 2nd son right now!

The opening act was named AHI – a singer from Toronto.  His set was a bit of a roller coaster – but in all the best ways.  He did one song about having to give up on someone because the love you have for them isn’t more than the love they have for themselves, a song for his wife (who is also his manager and currently at home taking care of their 4 kids!) and probably the most powerful a song that he had dreamt and woke up to write about the senseless gun violence against blacks that he dedicated to all the mothers who have lost their children.  Definitely check him out if you can – he seems to be doing pretty well on Spotify and I really enjoyed his songs and his storytelling in between his songs!

Then it was time for Mandy – who came out and said “We finally made it!”  I also liked the stories that Mandy told in between her songs as well.  If you knew me in high school – you’d know I absolutely was NOT a Mandy fan.  Mostly due to jealousy because she got to open for *NSYNC and was in an episode of 2gether!  You know, all the legitimate reasons for a teenage girl to not like another teenage girl.  I obviously knew “Candy” and “I Wanna Be With You” but that was the extent of it until her 2020 release “Silver Landings”.  I also hadn’t gotten the chance to listen to her latest release, “In Real Life”, before the show. (Though I’ve had it on in the background as I write this!) But I thought she did a great job of mixing in some older songs (Apparently “Only Hope” is a popular oldie – I’ve had 3 people ask me if she sang it – and she did!) as well as songs from both of the new albums she is kind of touring with together.  I unfortunately opted to not keep track of the setlist and while setlist.fm has several shows up, it doesn’t have anything from CT so the following is a bit pieced together from me seeing what seemed familiar and what she seemed to play consistently at her other shows on the tour.

Every Light was done acoustically with just her husband on guitar and the rest of the band had left the stage.  I’m not sure if it was my spot in the theater or what, but I found for some of the softer ballads her voice was a bit drowned out and overpowered by her band (who were excellent, by the way).  But overall the show was a lot of fun and dare I say worth the 914 day wait. And I’m probably still a bit jealous of Mandy (now she got to work with Milo Ventimiglia and Justin Hartley!?) but can deal with it like an adult. 😉

She kept saying she just had a few more songs – but hadn’t done Candy yet! (And she was selling a Candy shirt so I figured it HAD to have been coming, even though she did talk about trying to come to terms with that chapter of her life and moving on)  When she came back out for the encore she said of course she couldn’t NOT do the song.  The second song of the encore was a song that she had sung on This Is Us and talked a bit about how she had spent the last 6 years on the show and initially wasn’t sure if she wanted to get back into music or not – and Mike and Taylor (members of her band/her best friend and husband) had kind of gotten her back into it and also that This Is Us did as well with her character’s backstory.  It seemed fitting that the encore was kind of her first song and last song (for now, anyway) and kind of bookended her career thus far.

In Real Life
I’d Rather Lose
Little Dreams
Fifteen
Extraordinary
Save a Little For Yourself
When I Wasn’t Watching
Heartlands
Only Hope
Every Light (acoustic)
Gardenia
I Could Break Your Heart Any Day of the Week
In Other Words
Brand New Nowhere
Four Moons
I Wanna Be With You

Candy
The Forever Now

I had been intrigued by the idea of the Masked Singer Tour since it was announced a few years back.  I went back and forth on buying tickets and then eventually ended up finding out I had the opportunity to get free VIP tickets and I couldn’t pass that up.

My VIP access gave me a M&G with the host of the show, Season 6’s Pepper, Natasha Bedingfield.  She was super sweet, loved the shirt I had made of the Russian Doll’s face and we chatted a bit about that.  I also got to meet 2 of the characters – Banana (from Banana Split) and Pineapple.  Pineapple also was pretty into my shirt lol  We also got a free drink coupon and access to the venue early for “crowd free” merchandise shopping so I got myself some pins and a magnet.

I wasn’t entirely sure how the show was going to work and even after seeing it I am not sure it totally worked.  There were costumes “from the show” that performed songs and there was a bit of a storyline as well – Alien and Taco got engaged, an audience member got to come up on stage for Alien’s bachelorette party and got a lap dance from Thingamabob and Robot among other characters. Another audience member (or perhaps a plant) came up on stage when they were looking for the golden mic (that allowed the characters to sing any song they wanted like the original) and then there were performances from Natasha mixed in (she killed it on Purple Rain!)  The costumes were not celebrities, just I guess dancers who “lip synched” to the original songs. (Or whatever costumes with no moving lips do!)

Each night the show has a “local” celeb that performs and is unmasked. I had been following along with the tour’s instagram to try and guess each night.  It started off pretty nice with Drew Lachey and Maddie Poppe – but quickly went into a bunch of local Fox news station reporters and weather people so I wasn’t entirely sure who CT would end up getting.  The clues ended up being someone from The Bachelor or The Bachelorette. Of course, a show I have never seen one episode from.  It turned out to be Matt Munson from Season 13 of The Bachelorette who is from CT. He sang “It’s Tricky” as his song.

Overall, for free, I enjoyed the show but if they did it again I am not sure I’d pay for it – dependent on who the host might be.

Wednesday, May 11,  I made my way to Westchester County Airport in White Plains to begin my trip to Tulsa.  For whatever reason, Delta had no options out of Hartford with longer than a 40 minute layover and the ones out of White Plains were 3+ hours each way.  When it was about time to board I overheard someone talking about “lots of damage” and figured I’d end up going 0 for 4 on trips this year going smoothly.  I was right.  It turns out the plane I was set to board had hit a bird (“a big bird”) on its way into NY and they needed to call someone to inspect it and clear it for flying before we could board. With the talk of damage I thought for sure we’d need to wait for a new aircraft, but fortunately once someone came on site it was cleared and we were only delayed about an hour. (Good thing for that 4 hour layover in Atlanta, I guess.)

I met up with a friend upon landing in Tulsa and we go the shuttle to the hotel.  I immediately changed out of my plane clothes to hit up Ida Red for some special T-Shirts they had made, but ended up getting distracted by spotting Taylor on the sidewalk outside the studio.  I said hey, got a quick pic, made it to Ida Red only to find out they already sold out of all the shirts (what!? hardly anyone was even in town) and met up with friends for dinner at The Tavern.

Thursday I lined up early for the store and was able to get almost everything I wanted (one item was the wrong thing but hopefully customer service will be correcting that for me!) being one of the first ones in there.  I ended up doing some volunteering and then it was time for HTP Live.  This is the first time that they had done it, and one of my friends got to be one of the reporters to interview them so that was really cool.  We weren’t entirely sure how it was going to work or if it was going to be running on time, but it did end in time to remove the chairs for karaoke!  Isaac has been hosting karaoke for the past few years but this time it was 90s themed and people really went all out with their outfits for it.  I liked the 90s throw back songs way more than the excessive Hanson songs, but it’s a Hanson event so of course that’s what most of the fans are most comfortable performing.

Friday I did some more volunteering and then we had the RGB Listening Party. On first listen, not a huge fan, but it always takes me a few listens to have songs really grow on me. I did miss the harmonies we are so used to hearing though.  Then it was time for the Storytellers Concert – which started off a bit like BTTI part 2 – but fortunately after a couple of songs they changed their direction in a way that made me happy. We’ve always sort of known that MMMBop came from a part in an older song called Boomerang.  Recently discussion about it had come up again on the Hanson.net forums and someone had mentioned that they did a part of it during “The Story” at 5 of 5 in London and I had gone looking for some crappy YouTube footage of it.  Getting to see it all in its entirety was really awesome since they hardly ever play the songs they had written before Middle of Nowhere.  They also threw their shortest song, Watershed, into the set which I had previously heard just once before.  I was a bit disappointed we didn’t get any of the new EP “White Rabbit” especially since Zac had mentioned he had a story about one of the songs (and what better time to tell that than during Storytellers?) but I understand that they put most of their focus into working on the setlist for the RGB Tour.

After the show was the Dance Party – I was giving out glosticks at the door and by the time my “shift” ended, Taylor had decided the equipment was not working and that we’d have a redo the next night instead.  Got 1 photo in my care bear outfit I made just for the dance party… so that was a bit of a bummer.

Saturday we had the ST Leaders lunch with Hanson and due to some communication issues, we were *just* about to eat by the time the guys came in to talk to us.  If you told 12 year old me I would be in a room with Hanson and would opt to stuff my face with pizza instead of engage in conversation with them, she’d have been horrified. Isaac did talk about movies with my group for a bit, but I figured it was the safer bet to not let me get to level “hangry”.  We ended up going to local brewery Nothing’s Left next as they were doing a Hanson collab/inspired flight with 3 sour beers – red, green & blue.  (Blue was my fave) I also had to get my fave stout of theirs, Deez Nuts and then they had a pineapple dole whip as well so… of course.

Then it was nearly time for the “Members Only” show.  While this show typically has more members only content, it was the unofficial kick off to the RGB tour so it was…. lots of singles.  Not my favorite for a trip to Tulsa but as I always say I’d rather be at a Hanson concert than anywhere else, and having most of my friends back by my side made it just a bit sweeter.  I do hope they will end up rotating in and out more RGB songs (maybe through solos) on tour though.

After the concert it was time to try and find food – ended up with MORE PIZZA! And then Taylor’s 2nd attempt at the after party.  This one was a success but I did not have time to change into my dance party outfit again.   (I did still manage to be on theme since I was wearing Chuckie from Rugrats shirt)

Sunday I met up with some friends at the Tulsa Drillers game.  When the visiting team took the lead of 3-0 in the top of the first, but the drillers got 2 back to make it 3-2 after the first, I thought this might be a nice back and forth game.  Unfortunately the Rough Riders kept pounding out HRs and in the end the Drillers lost 18-4.  But most of us were just baseball fans and not really rooting for either team, so having some downtime to chat while at the game was nice compared to the usual hustle and bustle going on Sundays during HDay weekend that is Hop Jam.

Monday I managed to fly home without incident (aside from no one with a wheelchair ever picking me up at the gate in Atlanta) and the shuttle to the parking lot was there waiting for me.  Apparently they had even called looking for me while I was trying to figure out how to reach my luggage on the carousel.  Of course, 2 seconds after we got out of the shuttle, it started sprinkling which gave way to a sudden downpour as I tried to load all my luggage back into my car.  There also was news spreading of a few friends having tested positive for Covid upon arriving home. I joined that club as well. 10 days later I tested negative again and blame the delay of this post on that.  I’m still not 100%, but getting better every day.

Jagged Little Pill was the first CD I ever bought and I’m surprised I didn’t wear it out playing it so much on my discman in 6th grade.  Last summer I finally got the chance to see Alanis live on her Jagged Little Pill Anniversary tour.  I’ve yet to see the broadway show, so when I saw there was a novel based on the musical, I had to read it.

I went in to reading this book having 0 idea about what the musical plot was – just very much so knowing the album. (There were a few easter eggs of lyrics here and there, I noticed.)  Turns out it is about a family – Frankie is adopted and her brother Nick and their parents as well as some of the kids that they go to school with.

Each of them is dealing with their own struggles and trying to overcome them in a town in Connecticut that likes to keep all their troubles secret.  Some of them end up coming to light and the story details how they all deal with them and help each other deal with them.

This was a pretty quick read but I really enjoyed it and am hoping all the more that I’ll get a chance to see the musical in the near future!

I received a free e-copy of this book from NetGalley in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.

About the Book

Swallow it down—what a jagged little pill . . .

Jagged Little Pill: The Novel follows the intertwining lives of five teens whose world is changed forever after the events at a party.

Adopted Frankie struggles to see eye-to-eye with her mother—who would rather ignore a problem and preserve their “perfect” life than stand up for what’s right. Jo just wants her mom to accept her queer identity—and is totally crushed when Frankie, the only person who really gets her, finds herself infatuated with someone new. Phoenix tries to find his place at the new school and balance wanting to spend time with Frankie but knowing he also has to help out with his sick sister at home. Bella wants to enjoy the end of high school and just head off to college without a hitch. Everyone expects Frankie’s brother Nick to be the golden boy, but even though he just got into his dream school, he’s not even sure he’s a good person. Each of their stories intersects when Bella is sexually assaulted at a party, and it looks like the perpetrator might get away with it.

Moving, heartfelt, and raw, Jagged Little Pill: The Novel draws on the musical’s story and gives readers deeper glimpses of the characters. It’s a story about the power of voicing your pain, standing up for what’s right, and finding healing and connection.

The second weekend in March, 90s Con made its debut at the Hartford Convention Center in Hartford, CT.  When it was first announced last summer, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be ok with going to a convention with such large crowds yet, but as they added more and more guests I ended up buying a Saturday ticket and would give it a go.  About a week before, we found out that Joey Fatone wouldn’t be able to be there on Saturday, but that he would be appearing Friday and Sunday, so we opted to buy a Friday pass and I decided to add a pro photo op with Rider Strong so on Saturday whoever we ended up meeting, we’d meet and I wouldn’t be in panic mode all day.

Friday finally came, and as we were pulling into the parking garage, we got word that Joey’s flight had gotten canceled and he would not be making it Friday OR Saturday.  We managed to get in an ADA entrance and grab a spot for the MMC panel at 5pm.  They held it for a while because so many people were stuck in line getting their credentials checked for their covid vaccines and weren’t making their way inside yet.  6-7 was supposed to be our Joey hour, so we just kind of wandered around a bit and then 7 was my photo op with Rider.  We didn’t hang around too much after that, but it was nice to get the layout.  I should have probably tried for another photo Friday to knock more off of my wish list, but I am very much so out of con shape.

Saturday we got in early, but again just kind of wandered around and did a few of the photo ops and the Spice Girls display.  At noon I made a voodoo doll and I started realizing time was running out if I wanted to meet everyone.  We got in line for Will Friedle, and then my friends had their Full House photo op so I was off to meet Matthew and Joey Lawrence on my own.  Danielle Fishel’s line got capped, so I got in line to see the Boy Meets World panel at 3 and was able to stay for the Full House panel at 4.  After we went back downstairs, and Daneille’s line was capped once again.  I did end up going in the order of how badly I wanted to meet them so I was ok with missing out on Danielle. (With any luck, next year they’ll be back AND with Ben so I can do a cast photo!)

Next year, I’m hoping to go again and I’ll have a better game plan figured out. And maybe I’ll stay on site as well to not have to drive back and forth an hour for 3 days straight.  It sounds like it’ll be back in CT – just waiting on dates!