The Best Day of Klew's life

Okay so, if you know anything about me you know I love to ask people about their favorite things (as does Hoven. I think that's why we started to become friends). Also, you know I have some pretty solid things that are my "favorites:"

• Cheerleading
• The Color Blue
• Broadway Musicals
• Disney Princesses, especially Cinderella
• Cinderella on Broadway
• Jimmy Fallon
• Pizza
• Sweets
• New York City 

Today I got to do basically every single one of my favorite things in one day. 

We woke up and had NYC bagels in Times Square for breakfast. We sat in the middle of Times Square and enjoyed a perfectly authentic Bagel with schmear. It was also delightfully empty in Times Square that morning so that rocked. Usually that place is a pain in the ass because it's the capital of "oh, let's just stop walking in the middle of the sidewalk and pose for a photo with our iPad" and I have NO PATIENCE for that. 

We walked around Midtown and I got to see all of the Broadway Theaters. I love walking past them and seeing them RIGHT THERE. I think that's so cool. 

I took this picture of the Jersey Boys theater to send to Dan. He loves Jersey Boys.

For lunch we ate at Pronto Pizza, which is my favorite pizza place in the city. I burned my tongue but who cares. Nothing could get me down on the best day of my life. We hung out in Bryant Park (which is my favorite park in NYC. I like it even better than Central Park. Yeah. I said it.) and there was a free concert of Broadway musicals in the middle of the park. We got to watch the casts of Matilda and Motown sing songs from their shows, as well as a preview of On The Town, which is a new one that's coming soon. I think that one is going to be really cool. 

Broadway in Bryant Park

After we did the Bryant Park thing it was time for Jimmy Fallon. We headed over to the NBC Experience Store at 30 Rock to check in with our tickets. We waited in line for about 30 minutes and were given wristbands and tickets with a letter E on the back. They told us to come back to another location in 30 rock at 3:50. We spent the hour or so we had to kill eating cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery, my favorite cupcake ever. We came back to the designated area and they lined us up in alphabetical order. It seemed to me that each group of people gets its own letter, because we were the only ones with "E." They filed us all into the studio and we sat IN THE VERY FRONT ROW. I'm not kidding you. It was really just dumb luck, but we could've reached out and touched Tariq from The Roots. The Roots came out and played for us for a little bit before the show started, and then Jimmy came out. The three of us were all grinning like idiots. You can probably see it on the TV. Jimmy waved at us and did his monologue literally 10 feet from us. I'm not kidding. He was so close. It was amazing. 

It was kind of the lamest Jimmy Fallon episode ever (he didn't play any games and there wasn't a musical guest), but we didn't care. It was awesome to just watch how the show is made. It was like being in a dream because everything looks exactly like it does when you watch it on TV. At the end of the show Jimmy runs up and down the aisles of the audience. We were the very first ones so not only are we on TV, we got to high five him as he ran by. It was amazing. Like I said, we were grinning like idiots. 

Here's the screenshot from Hulu. 

After Jimmy was over we marched our happy asses right over to The Broadway Theater for Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella. Hoven met us, and we had AWESOME seats. It was my second time seeing the show, but nobody else had seen it. I was stoked to see a different princess than I had originally seen. We saw Paige Faure as Cinderella and she did not dissappoint. I mean, I think Laura Osnes will always have a commanding hold on that role, but I loved Paige too. It was cool to see how two different women portray the same character, and they both put different spins on it. The music was beautiful as always, and the costume changes still blow my mind. Cinderella was delightful, and it will always have a special place in my heart. It will always fill me with joy. I felt really lucky to sit there and watch it, and to get to share it with some of my dearest friends. 

Finally, we had dessert at Serendipity3, one of my favorites in the City. It was a perfect ending to a perfect day. I had a zillion second long snap story. So basically I woke up, had NYC pizza for lunch, hung out in Bryant Park, saw/touched Jimmy Fallon, ate a Magnolia Bakery cupcake, saw Cinderella and ate my favorite dessert. It was perfect. 

I just don't see how you're gonna top this day, dudes. I just don't see.

"...and I like it so well that for all I can tell I may never come down again."

We got tickets to jimmy fallon

Okay, so I’m not sure if you know this, but Jesse, Lauren and I are going to New York City in August. We're seeing Aladdin, Cinderella, and A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder (Yeah. We bought tickets to that the DAY AFTER it won the TONY. We're good at what we do). The whole time we've been planning this trip we've been daydreaming about the possibility of going to see The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. I've heard it's pretty complicated to get tickets, so we’ve been STALKING Late Night with Jimmy Fallon for about 2 months now for inside information. I follow them on all Social Media outlets and have read COUNTLESS articles about acquiring tickets to see the show.

Learning the Patterns

So I've been monitoring the ticket website since May, and I've realized he releases tickets one month at a time, and usually releases them at the beginning of the month for the NEXT month (so he released August at the beginning of June). He also sometimes tweets out when the tickets will be released, but he hadn't done that consistently since May. At this point I figured trying to get Fallon tickets was probably going to be a lost cause.  I have the “get tickets” website bookmarked and I check it hourly in hopes of gaining information about August Ticket releases. Well yesterday I was half-assedly reading through Twitter and just HAPPENED to stumble upon this:

Hey, pals! We'll be releasing August tickets tomorrow (7/8) at 11:30AM EST. pic.twitter.com/tiohhroy8U

— Fallon Tonight (@FallonTonight) July 7, 2014

YES PEOPLE, IT WAS BY CHANCE THAT I SAW THAT. So last night I recruited like 10 people to help us try to get tickets to Fallon when we’re there in August. We gave them explicit instructions on how to do it, and figured we’d just all try at the same time. I was pretty sure that they go really fast, and you have to just happen to click on it at the right time. I figured it was a LONG SHOT, but what the hell. We had to try!

Refresh Refresh Refresh

So This morning I did nothing but refresh the Fallon page from about 10 am to 10:30, as did Lauren. We knew that in order to get tickets online you were going to have to be on the website AT 10:30 sharp. Once 10:30 hit, a lot of us got redirected to an "error" page. Those people are basically the people that don't even make it off the platform in the Hunger Games. About 5 of us (including me) were directed to this “queue” page…it was an automated page saying that we had a spot in line and not to exit from the window or else we’d lose our spot. It also said it would redirect us once it was either a. our turn or b. sold out. I reached this page first, at about 10:35. I kept that open for about 5 minutes, and then it redirected me to the calendar page. I found August 14 and RAPIDFIRE clicked it and filled out all of the information. It only gives you 9 minutes to fill everything out, and I've read stories about people losing their tickets while they're filling everything out because they took too long and other people swooped in and filled them out faster. We thought you were going to need the name and information of everyone in your party, but you don't. You just need information for one person. I wish I could tell you how many days were already empty when I got into the "pick your dates" section, but I was moving so fast that I didn't take the time to make note of anything.

Order Confirmed - Commence National Klew Day. 

I FREAKED OUT when I got to the confirmation page that said “congratulations! your order has been confirmed!”

WE DID IT. WE GOT TICKETS TO FALLON! OMG!

I still can’t believe it. So on August 14th I’m probably going to have Pizza for lunch, go see Fallon, then go straight to see Cinderella. They might as well re-name it National Klew Day. It's all of my favorite things in one day. I am over the moon.

Who's the guest going to be? 

So now, we're speculating who we think the guest will be. We've been looking up movies releasing around that time, and trying to cross of people we know it WON'T be, since they were just on the show. (One Direction has a concert that night, so it's not going to be them. Don't worry. First thing we checked.)

I have a ton of people that I hope it will be, but frankly I don't really care. WE'RE GOING TO SEE JIMMY FALLON YOU GUYS! THIS IS AMAZING!

Stay tuned for stories of our adventures. I'll write another post about the show! WEEE!!!

Songs we would sing if we were in a Jimmy Fallon lip sync battle

Okay you guys,

As you have probably seen, Emma Stone was recently on Jimmy Fallon and they had a lip sync battle that was absolutely hilarious. If you haven't seen it, I'm nice enough to provide you with a link.

The enjoyment of this clip has sparked a spirited discussion between Hoven and I: What would WE sing if we were ever on Fallon? Which two songs, when juxtaposed next to one another, would elicit the most laughter/wonderment out of the audience and Mr. Fallon himself? We tossed around a TON of ideas (sorry 'Call Me Maybe' and 'Fight For Your Right To Party,' you came close, but no cigar), and both decided on our final two. Well, I still can't 100% commit, but someday I'll get there.

Then we became curious as to what other people would say.

So we asked a ton of people. Friends, family, basically anybody we talk to with any sort of regularity. We asked what songs THEY would choose should they ever find themselves in a situation where they had to face the great Jimmy Fallon in a lip sync battle. Every single one of them was nice enough to humor us/text us back. A lot of them replied almost instantly without any hesitation. Those were probably the ones that gave us the biggest laugh, and those are the ones listed below that don't really have any other commentary. Those were the people who had thought about this just has hard as we had, and for that, we salute them. Others really took the question to heart and pondered and thought until they were able to provide us with their perfect answer. Those are equally as funny, and we have included some of their thought proceesses. Anyways, here ya go. Enjoy. Let us know who you think would kick the most ass.

Klew - Overland Park, KS

"I Believe in a Thing Called Love" by the Darkness. I know all of the words and it's really fast and I could CRUSH IT.

For my second, I feel like I would need to send it home with my amazing lip sync belting skills. I'm torn between "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" by Celine Dion and "Don't Rain on My Parade" by Barbara Streisand in Funny Girl, because I kill both of those in the car. Such RAW FAKE PASSION PEOPLE. Probably the Celine song just because more people know it, but I like Barbara's better.

Also side note if Broadway showtunes were widely known and were acceptable to lip sync battle everything would be different. (Eponine, Elphaba, Elle Woods...I could go forever. You would literally have to yank me off the stage.)

Hoven - Chester, NJ

"Spice Up Your Life" by the Spice Girls. 1. Because I BELIEVE IN IT, every boy and every girl. 2. Built in dance moves.

"Monster" by Kanye West, Jay-Z, Rick Ross, and NICKI MINAJ- specifically Nicki's verse because IT'S THE MOTTO IDIOTS. YOU COULD BE THE KING BUT WATCH THE QUEEN CONQUER. (Sorry to my brothers who find it disturbing that I know every word to this song.)

+Taylor Renft - Prairie Village, KS

"'Car Wash.' The Shark Tale version."
(She's had a long week.)

Dan Woodward - Aquinas? TCU? KU? Baylor? We're unsure

"Definitely 'Super Bass' by Nicki Minaj LOLz. Also Beyoncé's 'Love on Top' because I killed that as a solo in Aussie Land. Shoutout to you for that Klew."
(it's true. he knew nothing of that song before I showed it to him.)

Victoria Zonko - Lenexa, KS

"Shoop" by Salt n Peppa 

"Countdown" by Beyoncé

(She's one of the ones that had no hesitation. All hail the queen Zonko. All hail the queen.)

Shanna Stonestreet - Lenexa, KS

"'Paradise by the Dashboard Light' by Meatloaf. It's my favorite song to sing."
(Again, no hesitation.)

Anna Thomas - Kansas City, MO

"'Call Me Maybe' by Carly Rae Jepsen and 'Come and Get It' by Selena Gomez. Done."
(This is infuriating because Bones sends about 900 Snapchats of herself singing Come and Get it per week.)

Cara Keeble - St. Louis, MO

"Possibly 'La Vie Boheme' rom Rent but not enough people know it, so 'Prince Ali' from Aladdin. There are enough fast words to show you know the song, and enough big notes to go crazy." 

(Keeble is clearly on the same page as me in the showtunes department, and strategic. She'll win against Jimmy with this for sure. A Klew/Keeble lip sync battle would be one for the books. Can you say all Disney ever?!)

Emily McCartney - Los Angeles, CA

"Humpty Dance" by Digital Underground and "It's Raining Men."
(This was a surprising answer, since Emmy is a DIE HARD Kelly Clarkson fan. After I asked her about it, she started to feel bad and now I think she's re-thinking.)

Katie Wells - Lawrence, KS

"Bennie and the Jets" by Elton John.

Shanah Gaskill - Dallas, TX

"Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix A Lot.

Maddy Finch - San Antonio, TX

"Like a Virgin" by Madonna and "Livin' on a Prayer" by Bon Jovi

+Jesse Hoffman - Kansas City, MO

"Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen.
(With the understanding that it's so long he would only get one.)

Darby Evans - Barcelona, Spain

"Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen and "I Say A Little Prayer For You" by Dionne Warwick. (Considering matching Darby up against Jesse. That would actually be the most hilarious lipsync battle. )

Drew Auer - Lawrence, KS

'I Will Always Love You' by Whitney Houston and 'Miss New Booty.' She also answered "All the Small Things" by Blink-182. 

+Kerry Benn - New York, NY

"One Week" by the Barenaked Ladies. She said because she'd love to nail that really fast "Chickity China, the Chinese chicken" part. Similarly, "Ignition (Remix)" by R. Kelly.

She also said she would choose anything by Christina Aguilera because that girl can sing.

Elizabeth Raplinger - Dallas, TX

"Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice and "Let's Groove" by Earth Wind and Fire.

(Apparently Zee is a fifty year old dad?)

+Lauren Vanlandingham - Kansas City, MO

"What Makes You Beautiful" by One Direction and "Single Ladies" by Beyoncé.

(She didn't think these really needed any explanation. Also I think this is Lauren daydreaming about who she would want to show up to WATCH her lipsync these. Aka I think Lauren might have been daydreaming about dating Harry Styles again while making this choice.)

Jordan Kelly - Kansas City, MO:

"I only need one. 'Strawberry Wine.' I'd probably sing it too."

Megan Wells - On the Titanic.

"Undo It" by Carrie Underwood and "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey.
(This is like, the most "Megan Wells" answer you can possibly give.)

Nate Watson - Chicago, IL

"'N***as in Paris' by Kanye and Jay-Z"
(His reply was almost instantaneous. Of course Nate, of course.)

Sam Logan - Kauffman Stadium

"Easy. 'Rude Boy' by Riri. then to bring it home I'd counter with the opposite, 'Promiscuous Girl' by Nelly Furtado."
(Hoven backs me when I say that I would possibly pay to see this happen)

+Elizabeth Albani - Parkville, MO

"Honestly, probably something Dixie Chicks. Or maybe 'Total Eclipse of the Heart.' A throwback of some sort."
(Everyone imagine Liz belting 'Total Eclipse.' I think she wins overall.)

Enjoyed/Enraged - Pop Culture 4.28

Okay this one is pretty quick because it's been a crazy week. But....

ENJOYED

The Cheerleading Worlds Happened

You guys, I'm not even going to spend that much time explaining it because you will never understand how cool this is. It's a weekend of amazing cheerleading and it's in Disney World. You do the math.

EXCEPT I WILL SAY THAT KC CHEER FIERCE 5 WON FOURTH PLACE!!! THAT IS SO AMAZING! It's the highest any KC Cheer team has ever finished, and there were 91 teams in their division. I am the proudest proud proud alum.

Emma Stone Totally Killed It In her Jimmy Fallon Lip Sync Battle

Emma Stone was on Jimmy Fallon this week and they did a lip sync battle. It. Was. Hilarious. She killed him. This has also led to many a spirited discussion on what we would sing if we were to ever find ourselves amidst a Jimmy Fallon lip sync battle. That post is coming soon y'all, because we had some funny responses.

The Tony Nominations were on Tuesday

I couldn't properly stalk them on the internet because I was in Disney World and had more important things to worry about (HELLO CINDERELLA'S CASTLE), so I don't really know a whole lot about them. All I know is that it means the Tony's are coming up and they will be on TV and I can DVR them and re-watch the performances over and over like I did with the Cinderella performance last year. Idina Menzel and Sutton Foster are both nominated for Best Actress in a musical and they are both TO DIE FOR.  As are the others nominated in that category. I've heard that Jessie Mueller is BRILLIANT in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. Also Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder is nominated for like 5000 things so now I am interested in that. Too bad we didn't see that coming, because we could've gotten ahead of it like we did for Aladdin. We bought Aladdin tickets for our upcoming trip in August and now it's nominated for Best Musical, so the ticket prices are way more expensive than they were when we bought them. HOWS THAT FOR BEING ECONOMICALLY SAVVY!?!?!?!

Watch this video of Audra McDonald as Billie Holiday in "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill." She's nominated as well. This is amazing. She sounds EXACTLY LIKE HER. Also if she wins she'll make history as the first woman to win six Tony awards. That's amazing, you guys.

Enraged

HEYYYY WE WANT SOME ORANGE RAYS! Is not the real words to the song. 

This was a huge dissapointment. The Stingray AllStars Orange is like, my favorite cheerleading team. They have won worlds 8 TIMES. EIGHT PEOPLE. And their dance music this year was like "HEYYYYY WE WANT SOME ORANGE RAYS!!" and I loved it. I found out this week that that is actually based on a real song, and the words to the real song are inappropriate and I refuse to ever sing any words besides the Orange Rays words.

Beyonce & Jay-Z Are going on tour!

Thats right people. It's happening. The 21st Century Bonnie & Clyde. The King and Queen. THEY'RE GOING ON TOUR. Normally this would be a LOVE because I HAVE THE STRONGEST LOVE FOR QUEEN BEY but I'm putting it in the hate column because a. It's not coming to Kansas City, and b. I can't go see it. Zee spent like three days on the phone trying to get tickets (it was near impossible. EVERYONE WANTS TO SEE THEM DUH) and she DID OMG! She got four tickets to the Dallas show and she was thoughtful enough to set one aside for me! But alas, it is the same weekend as my cousin's wedding. I'm not too bummed, because weddings rock and my fam rocks, and I DID get to see Beyoncé fly through the air in a sparkly jumpsuit in Dallas last summer. It was everything, you guys. I love Beyoncé. So whatever. Zee, you're just going to have to give me a detailed description. DO YOU THINK THEY'LL SING DEJA VU BECAUSE I SING THE BEYONCÉ PARTS OF THAT IN MY CAR AND PRETEND IM DOING A DUET WITH JAY-Z.