Everybody Talks About the Neon Trees

Since we had a long weekend, all the students in Presidential Powers had to read twice as much as usual. Instead of one article, we had two and they added up to 50 pages! It was a lot of reading, but the articles are very helpful and interesting. The authors demonstrate how to expand and analyze fairly narrow topics, which is similar to our goal with the research paper. I actually pushed myself to write six pages today, so I think I'll be done by tomorrow! Hopefully I can add my citations and have the paper reviewed by the TA, my RA, and the professor before turning it in. Doctor Porwancher says that most professors don't go over essays before they're due, but he is one of the rare professors that does. I like that all of the articles we have read can be related to previous articles and activities in class. One of the articles we read today was about the effects on people after watching the movie JFK. We're going to be watching the movie this Friday.

Right after class ended, all the students going to the Neon Trees concert had to meet at the gazebo. There was forty or so students who bought tickets. Since our concert was at Central Park, we just took the subway and walked across the park. The concert didn't actually start till later, but the RAs wanted us to get good spots in advance. It was so hot for the first three hours. I drank a whole can of coke and ate a sea-salt caramel and Mexican chocolate ice-cream before the opening acts even began. Even though the two opening acts sang well, I had no idea who Smallpools and Nightmare and the Cat were. Neon Trees didn't start performing until 8:30PM.

Lexie, Anne, and I

My friends and I questioned whether the concert was worth all the waiting and heat for a while. We waited for almost four hours for this band and it was overly crowded. There were so many people that you could feel the stickiness every time you touched someone, which was the whole time because everybody was pushing themselves towards the front. The crowd roared when the band came out! Personally, I only know the three songs that have made it onto the radio, but their other songs were great too! The lead singer, Tyler Glenn, was dressed in an extravagant yellow suit and coat. We all sang along when we heard Animal! We actually played Animal in marching band during my freshman year, so that was awesome!

The grand entrance!

Tyler Glenn told us little stories in between songs to lead into the song titles. He even told us about him coming out as an openly gay male. It's been in the media for a while, but he was very humble about it and he told the crowd to stop cheering about it. He said that he just wanted fans to treat him the same as we would treat anyone else. We could hear him gasping for breath in between songs when he told is the stories. To top everything off, he started to crowd surf! It was so exciting. He passed through the area that my friends and I were at, so we got to pass him through to other people. Everyone screamed and rushed to wherever he was. I guess he wasn't supposed to do that because a security guard started following him, trying to get him back to the stage. 

The band went silent for a while, so we thought that the concert was over. As a group, we all chanted "One more song! One more song!" The concert wasn't actually over,he just needed to change his shirt. He sang another song and ended with "Everybody Talks". It started playing and the crowd went wild with singing and dancing. The singer was very inspirational in that he explained the meanings of the songs to us. He said that people are always going to be say something regardless of what you do, so just ignore the negative things that people have to say. I had the time of my life! People were talking about the concert the whole way back and I know the talk will continue tomorrow!

The last song of the night, "Everybody Talks"