Wednesday 10 September 2014

Awesome night of laughing to the point of uncomfortableness: Jake and Amir brought If I Were You to London...

Monday night I was giddy. I was skipping around like a little school girl whilst One-And-Only-Daniela watched me warily. I met her after work and made her fajitas whilst I talked non stop on all the reasons why the thing we were about to go to was going to be awesome and how it was going to lead to her thanking me forever for all the many different ways her sides had split.

You see, Monday night I was going to see one of the things that I have featured on my 'Fancy Things Friday' list; Jake and Amir: If I Were You. They do an advice podcast that uses the term 'advice' very loosely, and substitutes it with hilarity instead. They're basically two American guys who do everything in America and had decided to mix it up a little by coming to England. So they came and put on just one little live show in London. I took One-And-Only-Daniela with me, partly because of my unhealthy obsession with her, but mostly because, despite their awesomeness, I have yet to find someone I knew in real life who also listened to their podcasts.

One-And-Only-Daniela had only ever heard of them in the context of me saying things like; "You really need to listen to this podcast" and "Why the hell haven't you listened to the podcast yet?" and "Are you deaf? Am I speaking another language? Are you just ignoring me to hurt my feelings? Are you afraid of laughter? Listen to the freakin podcast!" She never did listen to the podcast, but she did agree to go to the show with me.

We arrived and I marvelled as I went from most people around me not even that sure on what a podcast is, to being in a room full of people who knew exactly who Jake and Amir were. We showed our tickets and went to find our seats... One-And-Only-Daniela naturally getting distracted by a sign directing us to the bar and pulling me off course on a detour. Due to only having little pocket sized bottles of wine, we became classy chicks who ordered enough wine to fill a pint glass. Yes, my dream had been realised, I asked for a pint of wine and the barman didn't laugh in my face. In fact, it seemed to be encouraged.

So, we took our wine pints, found our seats and I began wriggling once more. One-And-Only-Daniela just simply looked at me with a slightly confused and dazed look and it became painfully obvious who was more excited about this whole evening.

Guys, the show was awesome. And due to it being a live podcast; as of most probably Thursday, it will be available for all of you lovely people to listen to. Let me tell you, it's worth it. The crowd were... a little loud. There was a very real possibility that a lot of them had been drinking for a while, but this just simply resulted in a lot of chanting of popular lines from previous episodes and a large amount of encouraging both Jake and Amir to 'neck' their glasses of Whiskey, which apparently is a British phrase only and can be translated to 'chug' for all of those from across the pond who are confused. I laughed a lot. One-And-Only-Daniela laughed a lot. It was amazing, but also far too short for my liking, lasting just over an hour in all.

Afterwards, we left the place to find that they were going to meet and greet us all. Naturally we got in the queue. One-And-Only-Daniela was highly confused as she had absolutely no idea what it was that she was going to say to them once we met. I hadn't even got that far in my thought process and, until One-And-Only-Daniela mentioned her concerns, hadn't even considered that this would mean we'd have to talk to them. This resulted in a 15 minute queue whereby I tried to think of something to say and being incredibly grateful when, 10 minutes in, someone mentioned having a picture taken and I was all "Of course! We could do that! That's so much better than just getting to the front of the queue and waving manically whilst all words cease to exist in my head."

So we get to the front of the queue and I shake Amir's hand whilst thinking in my head 'have I ever shaken anyone's hand outside of interview situations before? Why the hell am I shaking it now? Is this weird? What's my other alternative? It's not like I can throw my arms around him and hold on for a long embrace... or can I? No, that would be weird.' Once this inner monologue had completed, I was aware that now all I was doing was just smiling like a crazy person, whilst still shaking his hand, so I forced myself to speak.

Me: Hi, I'm Lisa.
Amir: I'm Amir
Me: Yup, I know.

And the room fell into silence once more. I had the good sense to let go of his hand but I was painfully aware that I was still just staring and smiling. Guys, it got awkward. Looking back, it would have been the ideal time to just say "The show was great!" or "I laughed heartily!" or just start quoting lines from previous episodes. But instead, I stood there awkwardly whilst cricket noises played in my head. Shortly after this, I heard One-And-Only-Daniela next to me and suddenly realised I had only spoken to one half of the duo and that there was a very real chance that this same awkward dance was going to have to happen again. I turned, found Jake and went with "It's really nice to meet you!" in some form of mumble whilst also shaking his hand. I was still grinning like a mad man, but judging by both of their reactions, I wasn't coming off as too creepy, at least not to a point where they were visibly showing it on their faces, which I'm sure we can all agree is a win. So I nestled in between them and smiled for my camera... creating this moment:



Naturally, I left the venue thinking that that couldn't have gone any better. I clearly nailed that entire exchange, showing off my winning personality in a level of coolness that must have made both of them immediately want to hang out with me and label me their new England best friend... I'm still waiting on the call from them, I didn't give them any number to call, but I reckon they'll try to find me internetually on the basis of all the amazingness and altogether non-awkward vibes I gave out. Yup... any day now.

Peace out my lovelies.

No comments:

Post a Comment