night will billy

I wish I could say that this is an actual picture I took of Billy Joel at the concert last night, but alas, it's just one I found on Google Images.

Because I played hooky from work today and I don't have any crazy school stories, I'll dedicate this post to my evening with Billy (and Ben and Jake and Angel...)

I'll admit I wasn't way excited to go to the concert because I felt icky with the throat and the sneezing. But, I put on a happy face and bundled up. Ben and I parked the car quite a bit away from the Energy Solutions Arena so we had a decent walk. We got almost halfway there and Ben realized he'd left the tickets in the car, so we had turn around. I was way annoyed and almost beyond the point of freezing!

We finally made our way through the doors and walked around the arena to find our seats. I'll make this Utah comparison of our seats: If the stage in the arena was the heart of downtown SLC and the entire arena was the Wasatch Front Valley (and a little beyond), our seats were in the Provo/Orem area. (I wish I could say this is an original joke of my own, but Billy Joel actually began his concert by waving to all of us in the Provo area and so I stole it from him.)

Jake and Angel got there and we visited for a bit and then right before the concert started these 20 something girls sitting next to us spilled beer on the ground. Nothin' like the smell of beer?!?!?! Eventually the music started and then a burst of light came on and there was bald Billy Joel rockin' on the piano.

The first few songs weren't ones I recognized, but Ben and Angel (the big BJ fans) were singin' along immediately. Finally he stopped singing and started talking. He made some inappropriate joke about his bald head and then made fun of Madonna, which was kind of funny. The stage was interesting because his piano was on a turn-table and every few songs they would rotate the piano. The lighting was also pretty cool.

Of course, we mostly watched the performance from the Jumbo Tron because from where we sat, Billy looked much like a tiny bug. The camera kept showing the first few rows of seats by the stage, full of 20 and 30 year old women wearing I Love Billy Joel t-shirts and then a few who had cleavage friendly tops and we unfortunately almost got to see their bits in full a few times.

I had mentioned before that I hoped he'd play "We Didn't Start the Fire." A little over halfway into the show, Billy got off the piano seat and the piano went back down under the stage. He grabbed a guitar and suddenly started singing "We Didn't Start the Fire." While singing he played with the microphone stand and was twirling it like a baton. Then he walked down amongst the crowd of heaving-bosomed women and the Jumbo Tron showed these women grabbing his bottom!!!

They played for about 2 1/2 hours with 2 encores at the end. The very last song was "Piano Man," which is Ben's very favorite, and one of probably only 3 or 4 songs I knew. I suppose my favorite part of the whole thing was just seeing Ben smile and get excited. We got out by about 10:30 and the 4 of us decided to go to Denny's.

Jake and Angel's two boys were sleeping over at their grandma's house so they weren't in a hurry to get home. After eating we all came back to our house and played Battle of the Sexes IQ Edition. We were having so much fun, they didn't leave until almost 3:30am!!!

It was a fun night and it felt great to sleep in a bit today. I actually slept most of the day and for the first time since Tuesday I'm starting to feel better. It's approximately 31 degrees here and it looks like the snow is going start falling any second. Ben's working and I have stuff to get ready for my Primary Appreciation dinner tomorrow night.

Happy Weekend!