I hope you had the time of your life.

So we went to the Green Day concert at the Pepsi Arena last night (I can't believe I've finally succomed and am no longer calling it "the Knick").

I'm watching my brothers this week, staying up at their house in Clifton Park, while the Wham and Pa are on a cruise so I had to put Dave in charge of the "little" guys while Alex and I went to the concert. I've never felt so old. I rushed home from work, got dinner on the table and afterwards loaded and started the dishwasher. I got the guys started on their homework and then signed off on their assignment notebooks. I gave Dave instructions to keep his bedroom door open, not let the kids kill each other, and to make sure they got to bed on time, and then was off to the concert. We took the "mom-mobile" mini-van to Albany, but I was sure that I'd feel young again when we got to the concert. I mean, I was wearing my Invader Zim "Gir" t-shirt.

But, I felt pretty old at the concert as well. Sigh. The oldness started when Kevin handed me a pair of earplugs in case it got too loud inside... I took them and seriously considered how useful they might be. A truly young person wouldn't do that. (I didn't use them though. Rock! Am not a truly old person either!) When we got to our seats (which were one row away from the very top of the arena - did I mention that I'm terrified of heights?) we were surrounded by kids who looked as if they were in Junior high... Smelly boys in front of us and screaming skinny girls behind us.

The concert itself was awesome. They started off with the first three tracks off of the American Idiot album, and then did some stuff from Dookie and Nimrod. The little screaming children all screamed along to the songs off the new album, but didn't know any of the "old school" Green Day songs. When the drum beat at the beginning of "Longview" started, they all kind of stopped and looked at each other with confused expressions, while Beck, Dodi, and I were all yelling with delight. :) Billy Joe invited a child up on stage with him to help squirt the crowd on the general admission floor with Super Soakers and we thought that was incredibly cool and that kid was really lucky. But then he asked for three voluteers from the audience - a drummer, a bassist, and a lead guitarist. He got three kids who claimed they knew how to play and each band member taught the kid how to play the song they were on. The kids were kind of adorable. They really got into the whole "rock star" thing: strutting around the stage, jumping from level to level... It was hella cool. And then, after the song was over, the lead guitar kid got to keep his guitar! It was awesome. The staging of the show was pretty cool. They had pyrotechnics in some of the songs and the lighting was very cool - especially in "King for a Day". Billy Joe strutted around the stage and was SO animated the entire show - it was very cool. He lead the crowd in a bunch of "sing-alongs", including "Shout" and at the very end, "We are the Champions". They shot of confetti cannons during that song, and then dimmed the lights and Billy Joe sang "Good Riddance" ("I hope you had the time of your life") alone with just his guitar and the confetti was floating down around him, seemingly sparkling as it fell through the spotlights. It was very cool.

After the concert, the oldness returned full-force. It was 10:30 as we were walking back to the van and I got on my phone and called home to check with Dave that the two younger brothers were in bed. After I got off the phone, all I could think was, “I can’t believe I just left a Green Day concert and the first thing I did was call home and ‘check on the kids’.” Ah well. The guys were fine on their own and I had an awesome time at the concert, so it all worked out well.

I took a couple of videos with my phone at the concert. I’ve uploaded them, so feel free to view/download. The quality isn’t all that great, but hey, I took it with a cell phone, let’s not expect too much. They’re in Quicktime format, and you should be able to click and view in your browser, or you can right click and download to your computer for viewing.

Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Good Riddance

Enjoy! :)