When I tell you I’ve never been more insane than these 2 weeks.
I’m going to take you through this day by day in extreme detail and I hope y’all love the sitcom I was living in.
Tues Nov 21- Fri Nov 24
This all started with the anual Roadtrip to Hotham that I go on with my friends. THIS was the most chill part of this entire thing. I was up there vibing, cross stitching and reading in the sun. We were all drinking homebrewed beer that my bestie made, going up to the sumit to drink beers we got from Bright and eating cheese while watching the sun set.
This trip always includes the now tradition of forcing my friends to watch the worlds greatest shitty film… Repo the Genetic Opera. This is followed by the amazing animated film, Robots. It is a wild ride from start to finish.
The start of this week was absolutely fine (other than the 3 hrs sleep I’d had and the meltdown in the shower from missing my girlfriend) UNTIL the Friday. Now the Friday was absoutely fine, we were driving back from Hotham (Which is a 4-5ish hour drive). The issue? Getting stuck in the rain and it taking 2 hours to drive a 1 hour trip because of HOW BAD THE TRAFFIC WAS. This would be all fine and dandy if I wasn’t going out to dinner with my partner’s mum and brother at 6pm… I got home at 5:45, the walk is a 15 minute walk, you get the vibes by this point. We manage to make it to dinner AND to go and see The Ballard of Songbirds and Snakes at 8pm. By the way, loved it and I’m back in my Hunger Games era. We leave that amazing time at around 11 and I go and drop Scar’s brother off, which is an hour round trip. By the time we FINALLY get home its around midnight and I have yet to pack FOR SYDNEY THE NEXT MORNING. So I rush to pack and figure out my fits to go and see Paramore in Sydney. At this point I’m dead on my feet BUT THAT DOESN’T MATTER I’M WAKING UP AT 3:30AM TO DRIVE TO THE AIRPORT AND GET ON A 6AM FLIGHT.
Sat Nov 25
This is where shit gets chaotic.
Now this concert started with 4 sleep deprived besties all getting ready in the airport. We are all trying (And failing) to stay awake. Scar and Dex have somehow found a Teck Deck (which was bought due to Dex’s nickname Teck Dex). Their paired ADHD is keeping them giggling and alive while I sleep on this hour long flight. NOW an important part of this story is my friend Renee was wearing a pair of converse, which were at the end of their life. KEEP THAT IN MIND FOR LATER.
We finally get to Sydney and it’s miserable and raining and this concert is outside. We’re all thinking “oh fab its going to be cancelled and we’ll be stuck in Sydney for 24 hours”. This was thankfully not the case so we go to line up, get our line wristbands, this being the very late numbers 470-474. I, naturally had a MELTDOWN cuz if you’ve been following this blog for the past while you know how much this band means to me. We leave thinking we’re going to be so far away from the stage. At this point we go and sleep on couches until our hotel is ready.
By 5pm I’m ready to sleep standing up. We get at the back of this early entry line to realise HOW FUCKING LONG THE “normal people” line is (security guards word not mine). HOLY SHIT was this show going to be big. We manage to get way closer to the stage than previously imagined. At this point we are all looking like sparkly drowned rats because of the rain waiting for this band when we hear the words “the whole venue is at capacity”. This is significantly bigger than anticipated, this is FIFTY THOUSAND PEOPLE WHAT THE FUCK AND WE ARE SO CLOSE TO THE STAGE.
Remi Wolf was incredible and Disco Man is now the national anthem of our house.
Paramore. Revolutionary. We find out that this is the biggest show they had played in their 20 year long career and I’m out here sobbing like a baby.
When I tell you this setlist is elite I’m not kidding. These motherfuckers hit us with Last Hope, which as a religous trama girlie hits way harder than it should and I send this amazing text to my best friend:
It gets to the end of this concert and Renee looks at us and is like “dude I’m about to pass out my feet hurt so fucking much”. We all manage to get to the hotel and they take these dead as fuck converse and she has trench food…… TRENCH FOOT LIKE WHAT THE FUCK WE IN THE TRENCHES FR. In their own words “and I’d do it again bitch”. This 24 hours was the most intense and some of the best times of my life.
Sun Nov 26
This is the most chill day out of the next week. We chill out and wait around for our plane (at 10pm) This would be all fine if our plane wasn’t delayed until 11pm. At this time I had bought tickets for Paramore’s Melbourne show on the Monday. Here we go again with the sleep deprivation.
We get home at the great time of 2am and my friend Hannah is coming over at 5am to go to melb with me to line up.
Mon Nov 27
At this point I’m actually ready to pass out standing up. No amount of caffiene is bringing me back from this.
There was this amazing girl at the front of the line handing out the fanmade wristbands for the next 2 hour wait (She will be important later in the day). We get our official wristbands and fuck off. I want to go to dymocks for some coffee and food. We get to the cafe and I find a couch and PASS THE FUCK OUT FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF. When I tell you this was the best fucking nap of my life I mean it. The worst part was I woke up to 10 other people eating and reading around me. Hannah was my knight in shining armor, making sure that I’m not about to get robbed.
We get to the venue at the 80th mark in the line. The doors open and we start going in when I notice the girl from earlier in the day. She looked so fkn stressed and I’m standing here like damn shes meant to be AT THE FRONT like she had been lining up since 8am the day before. So I go up and ask if shes okay. I find out that her ticket was fake. This is the most fated moment ever because I’d had someone pull out of seeing them earlier in the day so I had a spare ticket and bring her in with me and she gets front and centre barrier! I’m so glad that we could get her in because she was dressed to the nines and the universe clearly wanted her to be there.
Seeing them at Rod Laver 5ish years since I saw them for the first time healed something inside me. I was scream singing crave while Hayley fucking stared into my soul singing my favourite lyrics “What if I told ’em that now that I’m older there isn’t a moment that I’d wanna change?” That changed something in me and I’ll never forget that moment. Along with that Zac gave me the longest glare (in a positive way) in his song Baby cuz this audience DIDN’T KNOW IT (GO STREAM HALFNOISE DAMNIT). This was also the night of the “somebody is getting fired” moment and I’m glad I got to be a part of 2 iconic Paramore moments. (this and the Beacon Theatre concert in New York)
The concert ends and I’m feeling tired but amazing. This day however, doesn’t finish here. We are going to skip forward in time to where I slept on Renee’s couch for a solid 2 hours until we woke up at 2am to go and line up AGAIN for the third and final time.
Tues Nov 28
This was the final day of this hectic Paramore saga. I’m sleeping on the concrete and in the rain out past Rod Laver as we wait for the wristbands at this point we are in the 50s and I’m going to pass away being right next to barrier and significantly taller than everyone around me. I don’t know what to tell you but so many Paramore fans are short and I’ll stand by that forever. I’m here with only Scar this time and she gets some amazing photos that I’ll put in after this. I get to stand there with the love of my life as Hayley serenades us with Only Exception and I get to make new amazing memories to a song that before this concert only held bad memories and trauma.
I left that concert feeling so incredible I can’t even describe how much those concerts meant to me. Anyway here’s some of the photos Scar and I captured (Some gorg and some fun)
Wed Nov 29
Now I was a complete dumbass and didn’t take this day off AND WORKED ALL FUCKING DAY! I’m a dumbass I know.
Thurs Nov 30
This day consisted of me sleeping til 2pm, waking up for therapy and falling back asleep. Good times cuz the next day was FUCKED again, but was the last day of this chaos.
Friday Dec 1
Friday needs some backstory.
Now Halloween, I got extremely FUCKED UP. The party we were at began with someone making a Banana Bong (TM) and ended with me watching the sun rise if that puts it all into context. I do not remember how much I drank, but in that time I only remember listening to ashnikko at 4am and being picked up at 9am by Dex. I woke up with a fabulous hangover and the vague memory of buying Good Things tickets. I was out here thinking “surely not” and check my bank account….. $200 gone! Fab! I don’t need food anyway.
In this absolutely munted state I had managed to not only get all my card details righ but also GOT MY ADDRESS RIGHT AND GOT THE TICKET SENT TO MY FUCKING HOUSE.
All of this to say I ended up waking up at 8am to go to this festival in Melbourne, mind you its a 2 hour treck and I was already so delulu from the past 2 weeks that I was running only on caffiene and the gay audacity.
This festival was WARM and so much fun. I got to see Limp Bizkit which was so theraputic. Screaming Break Stuff with 30 thousand other people was the best experience and really helped sum up what this week was like.
I ended this hectic 2 weeks by watching Fall Out Boy with my friend Emily and passing tf out as soon as I got home.
All of this to say that I got so fucking sick with the “paraflu” that I just lay in bed passing away for 3 straight days.
Was it worth it? 100 times yes. Would I do it again? absolutely. Would I change some things? Yes, I would bring a pillow to sleep on concrete and bring a fucking umbrella as well as telling Renee to wear some real shoes next time.
I hope you loved my Ted Talk about all of this because I had to get this out there. It was insane. *I* was insane for it and I had all my friends egging me on to finish the weeks with a bang. So fucking worth it but I hope I’m never that busy again.
Love ya, byeeeee ❤
Punk.n.Plant 