Vans Warped Tour 2015

(This is a copy/paste of my post from DJP with some additons.)

Monday, I went to Warped Tour, and let me just say that my excitement still hasn’t died. It was my first concert, and I had six straight hours of them. I found so many new bands that I love, I got to go to signings, and I crowd surfed. I CROWD SURFED TO ASKING ALEXANDRIA!! My life is almost complete. I didn’t get to go to the AA singing because they had a sign up for it and by the time I got there it was full T-T I still bought two tank tops from them. I took $100 with me and surprisingly only spent $85. The signing I went to were for This Wild Life and Night Riots. We saw the Night Riots show completely on accident while waiting for another show, but we fell in love with them. When we went to the signing and got our pictures taken with them, Breanna looked at Travis and said “You’re the love of my life, I promise.” and then HE HUGGED HER and told her that was sweet and to tag him on Instagram about it. The tank top I bought at their merch tent is probably the softest band shirt I’ve ever felt. I bought 4 tank tops and a poster (that is ruined from being in my bag but its signed so its on my wall). When I bought the Metro Station tank top, the guy just gave me their new CD for free. Not to mention all the other people walking around handing out free stuff. We watched Being As An Ocean, Neck Deep, Blessthefall, Beartooth, This Wild Life, Metro Station, Night Riots, a little bit of Beautiful Bodies, and Asking Alexandria plus whatever other bands we passed by while walking around (also Black Veil Brides, but we weren’t really watching them as much as we were waiting there so we could get good spots in the pit for the Asking Alexandria show afterwards.

Being in the pit and crowd surfing is probably one of the most fun things that I have ever done. The pit isn’t a scary place at all. There are tons of nice people that can see if you don’t want to be there or are scared and they will push others out of the way for you, form a wall and a path for you to get out, or even just pick you up and power through the crowd to get you out if they have to. Also, crowd surfing is surprisingly easy. You just find a group of burly men and say something like “Can you give me a lift?” or “Hey, Can you put me up?” and up you go! At the front of the stage there is a fence with staff members on the other side that catch you and stop you from going on the stage or just being dropped. Well I got to the staff guy and latched on, but the crowd immediately started dropping me and the guy was like “PUT YOUR FEET ON THE GROUND YOU’RE GOING TO BE OK” I didn’t have a problem with that; I survived crowd surfing. I just had a bit of trouble finding Breanna afterwards because she was waiting by the fence exit for me where everyone else runs out from crowd surfing, but I wasn’t there because I didn’t make it over the fence. I also just couldn’t find her because I was blind (I gave her my glasses and my backpack beforehand so I wouldn’t break or lose anything).

I’m sorry for the big jumbled mess, but I’m still so excited and I’m dying for next year’s Warped Tour to get here already. I was dripping in sweat the whole day (and had other people’s sweat all over me as well), have a sunburn and killer tan lines from my backpack, and I spent all my money but it was the best experience of my life. My phone got water damaged so those photos/videos might take awhile.

Stepping on Roses | Haredashi de Bara wo Fume

A few days ago, I read the manga “Stepping on Roses” (Japanese: 裸足でバラを踏め; Haredashi de Bara wo Fume). As I was looking through my library’s manga section (I happen to be lucky enough to have a Carnegie funded library in my town. It has three levels and quite a selection of books.) and the title was the first thing that caught me. The words “Stepping on Roses” gave me the impression that this was going to be some sort of romance that needed a certain amount of carefulness to maintain the relationship between the characters. The title got me interested, but the cover and description of the story are really what hooked me. The art style really is lovely, in my opinion, and the story of a poverty stricken girl marrying a rich man to be able to support the orphans that her broke, gambling brother always brought home really appealed to me. To be honest, I don’t remember much of the description on the back, now that I think about it, but it was something along those lines.

When I started reading, I was caught off guard that the story was set in the Meiji era. I don’t think the description mentioned anything about it. Either way, it was nice surprise. The author, Rinko Ueda, used real historical buildings and places to base the world off of, which made for some very lovely scenery in the story. She also did a good job at making sure the characters of different classes really appeared to be of different class. The rich women wore elegant kimono and had very ornate hairstyles, while Sumi and the children had very simple looking Kimono and even looked a bit grungy.

Very early on in the sotry, one of the children becomes ill and Sumi desperately looks for a doctor to treat her, but no one will see the child without payment. As she sits in the street begging for money, a very handsome, wealthy-looking man gives her a handkerchief with money to buy medicine for the child. He leaves without giving a name. Later, the landlady and burly men from the streets come to the house for payment on debts that the family has. Unable to pay, Sumi goes to sell herself.  very rude, yet handsome, young man agrees to her price and quickly takes her away. But little does she know she is to become his bride for show. a bit later, Sumi meets a familiar face, and things snowball from there.

It is quite a nice story with a few plot twists and “wtf” moments. I will stop here before I give any spoilers. I’m bad at writing reviews, but this wasn’t really intended to be a review.

Here is where I will take my leave, so good day to you all!~