The Cajun Dome in Lafayette is not the largest of all arenas. But it seems a lot bigger when you're seated all the way at the tip top and far away from the stage...
So my parents, sister, and I were able to go to the American Idol concert last Monday. I enjoy the show well enough--they have some really talented people on there. I watched it it's second season (one of my teachers was very much into it so it was always a hot topic in class--she even took a group of us to that concert when they came to Houston!). But then I quit watching it. I didn't have the time and I wasn't vested enough in it to care all that much. And then Casey Abrams came around last year...and Hunter and I fell in love with him! He was so different from anything on the show and right up our alley. So after watching the last half of last season, we fell straight on board to watch this season in full.
And what a great year it was to do that! We had our hometown boy, Joshua Ledet, on there to cheer on! He's probably the main reason my family gave into a guilty pleasure and went to the concert.
We laughed so hard that night. Here are some snippets.
We ate at Blue Dog Cafe before the concert. So nice to get a taste of home...
When I say we were sitting at the top of the Cajun Dome, I'm not exaggerating. I was leading the way as we looked for our seats in row PP. As I climbed the stairs, I saw that they stopped at LL. Then you had to go up a few more in a different direction to NN. Then up another little landing to the whopping two seats housed in row OO. Then finally up to our little platform of PP, backed up against the wall and in the corner by the staircase... Once I noticed where our seats were, I could not stop laughing!! I couldn't breathe by the time we sat down because my stomach hurt so hard from laughing on top of climbing stairs (with no rail, mind you!). We were ISOLATED!! There was a good 4 foot gap between us and the row in front of us. And there was even a pole on the other side of Mel to separate us from the 3 other lovely souls stuck up there with us! It was Hilarious. When Mel and I went to get drinks, we stopped at the little landing leading up to our section 322--you know, that little set of stairs that separates the two levels of the stadium seats? We cracked up laughing again. Because all you could see of our seats was this tiny little head poking up above the rest of the crowd--and it was dad's! It was funny enough that I climbed all the way to the top to get my phone, go back down the stairs to take a picture of it, and then come back to sit down (giggling all the way).
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| My arrow is pitiful. But that little bitty head you see poking up over the stairs--that's dad's head. And he was leaning forward for me to take this or you couldn't have even seen that! |
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| We should have brought binoculars... |
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| On the plus side, we had PLENTY of leg room! |
We knew we would be high up when we saw we were in row PP, so Mel said, "it's ok, we'll be watching the big screens anyway." Well from where we were and the angles of the screens, they didn't seem all that big and they didn't help all that much! Something else to giggle about.
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| The screens don't look so big from way up here... |
Dad had been saying that he was going to lose his man card for going to this concert and acting all nervous that someone would know he was there. Well, he was the only one of the four of us who ran into someone he knew--and he saw two friends...and they were both men... I think he can still hold onto that man card.
I really wanted Josh to sing "When a Man Loves a Woman" and Phillip to sing "We've Got Tonight." Neither one of them sang my requests. How did they not get that memo? I was also fretting the entire first half of the concert while Phillip made no appearance at all... Dad had joked with me at dinner that he had read an article stating that Phillip wasn't coming (I didn't believe him, but he really did act like he wasn't joking...the whole night). So I was starting to believe him. I was going to be TickED! But he showed up, so it was ok :)
The crowd was kind of duddy. Only the people on the floor stood up and got into it. And of course I did. But hey, in my isolated state where no one could really see me, I had a full four foot platform on which to boogie the fool right outta myself. Mel stood up with me when I got excited about Elise singing "Whole Lotta Love"...and then I looked over to tell her something 5 seconds later and she had sneaked back to her seat. Turkey.
We sang, we giggled, we ate good food, we made jokes, we had fun. I wish Michelle could have come and completed our little five family core. It was definitely a night that will be tucked away in my memory file for a while...
love, angie
