Best. Video. Ever

This afternoon Lil Sis texted to ask if I'd seen the new Judas Redux video (Some of the Starkids are putting on a production of "The Last Days of Judas Iscariot" this summer). I hadn't, so she said I had to when I got home.

And boy am I glad I did. Here's a link.

Here's a rundown...

It starts with Joey and Brosnthal hangin' out in a pool...

Which leads to them throwing their books into the pool.

Then they emerge from said pool to be greeted by Mia, Darren's possibly, maybe girlfriend

Who holds a giant towel in front of them while they remove their bathing suits...

Cut to Lauren Lopez randomly putting in her contact lenses.

Next some girl name Jennifer says her part as Lauren randomly wanders into and out of the camera shot.

Then Joey and Brian are getting ready together in a very nice looking bathroom...

Then "Dylan Saunders" aka Sean Astin of Lord of the Rings fame, shows up wearing a Team Dylan shirt, pretending to be Dylan while ironing a belt.

The Starkids became friends with Sean at a comic-con type event and thought he looked like Dylan...

Then we're back to Joey and Brosenthal looking dapper and sharing some celebratory champagne.

When who should appear but Darren Criss!!! What?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Wait. You guys are doing a play?

Then they all drink and laugh and Joey slaps Darren on the back causing him to spit his champagne all over the place.

Oh yeah, in between there they gave a lot of actual information regarding ticket sales, but please we were all focused on Joey in a bathing suit, Sean Astin as Dylan and Darren showing up.

Awesome!

Also, that's got to be Darren's house with the pool that they're filming at right? It's seriously way nicer than Joey and Brosenthal could afford.

Also, reading all of the cast bios made me so proud.

http://judasredux.com/cast

Random Phone Pics

Here is a jolly collection of pics that have been accumulating on my phone lately.

Lil Sis are you sure you don't want a Wreck-It Ralph shower?

The headband I bought for Lil Sis's wedding

Sending Lil Sis pics of my proposed shower ensemble.

Showing Momma how clean my desk can be when it needs to be :) i.e. for Kindergarten Registration

One of our Oreo attempts for Lil Sis's shower. Thankfully they still tasted delish!

My copy of Lauren Lopez's cookbook, which I did not buy until she sold 100 that had been kissed by Mr. Joey Richter. Now I own one of Joey Richter's kisses! It was totes worth a cookbook I'll probably never use!

Lorax mustaches for an Earth Day craft for my class.

Pretty daffodils one of my kiddos brought me this week!

The dino currently taking up residence in our classroom.

New Darren Criss shirt I wore today :)

AVPSY Feels

Oh, AVPSY. You were just as amazing (if not more) watching you again on my little laptop in my apartment. OK, maybe watching you live with a couple thousand Starkids was better. But I could see and hear a little better via the internet.

Before the show, Darren went sorta crazy on twitter. He was posting a lot about how awesome AVPSY was. He doesn't normally post much about Starkid, as not all of his Glee fans care, but he didn't care that night.

1. 
   
2. Darren Criss ‏@DarrenCriss15 Mar

   Yeah, that's right, I'm replying and retweeting the shit outta this biatch... What can I say, I'm excited for tonight! Who's got questions?

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3. 
   

   Darren Criss ‏@DarrenCriss15 Mar

   If any of you following me don't know what AVPSY is- look it up, along with TeamStarkid. You won't regret it. It's a big deal for me.

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4. 
   

   Darren Criss ‏@DarrenCriss15 Mar

   Alright all you Starkids- now that it's March 15th, who's pumped for the long-awaited release of #AVPSY ? TONIGHT's the NIGHT! @TeamStarKid

   
   

It made my little Starkid heart so very happy!

As this is a Starkid show, AVPSY was about 20 minutes late being posted online, but after 7 months, what's 20 minutes... Lil Sis and I got about 3 minutes off from each other while watching, so she would text me between videos and I wouldn't be there quite yet... I got two pieces of Red Vines stuck in my throat at various times during the evening and even my Squirt couldn't get them out.

The taped show lasted about 3 1/2 hours instead of the almost 4 1/2 it was live. Lil Sis and I did notice a few things that were cut from the posted show (Damian, Tom Riddle's Anti-Christ Friend; part of the flashback scene at the Riddle's house; Harry picking Ron as his campaign manager; the Candy Lady's campaign sign, etc.) but nothing major.

It turned out that the technical difficulties that so delayed the posting online were Darren's mic not working. They literally had to crank up the volume on other people's mics to get his audio and then splice that in. His audio sounded off and there was a lot of background noise, but you could hear him, so I think they worked miracles!

During the live show at Leaky Con the first couple of scenes were hard to hear, but things got much better as the show went on. I'm still not quite sure that I can organize my thoughts into any kind of organized post, but here are some of my thoughts, links to other people's thoughts, etc. that is saved in a word document on my computer as AVPSY Feels.

I loved that Evanna Lynch, the "real" Luna from the movies, played Luna in AVPSY. I can't believe she was allowed to :) She's friends with some of the Starkids.

I loved that so many jokes and lines were brought back from old shows. I loved when Draco talked about going to Pigfarts during their third year and when other characters would start talking about  the years between the other shows and this one, but it would just fade out.

The joke about how Hermione looked different now (since it was a different actress) was great and Meredith did a nice job, but I couldn't help missing Bonnie.

Sure some of the songs (The School is Mine, especially) were pretty rough, but dude Darren and Joe blew I Was out of the water as did Joey with Sidekick. Considering the time they had, it was fantabulous!

I loved the times that they broke character or messed up. Brian as Hagrid, bouncing Darren and Darren not being able to hold it together. Perfection. The whole mess with the tie. Upon re-watching, I'm still not quite sure how Darren managed to get his tie so mangled, but he did and we all loved him for it. It's enough to make you want to buy this shirt.

One of my favorite lines from the show, which Dumbledore says to Tom Riddle. "Sometimes you accidentally kill your family. You know who killed his sister, while fighting with his boyfriend? This guy."

From about Act 2 Scene 5 till the end I was in full tilt ugly cry mode. The scene when Ron tries to convince Harry to come back to Hogwarts and starts getting all emotional, ah, it slayed me.

"Cool doesn’t come from other people, it comes from you." Also Joey killed it on Sidekick. Amazeballs.

The Marauders coming back onstage and singing to Harry. The revelation that Lily is with Cedric in Heaven. While watching it live, I was so excited because I thought Snape was going to come out and then it was Tyler as Cedric and I just died. All of the find jokes "If it's not broken, don't find a way to fix it." "I guess I'm your Heavenly Father, eh Potter." Tyler as Cedric is awesome. Then Snape did come out and gave that great speech about choosing how you go and making choices because it's the right thing to do. So great.

Harry reprising "Going back to Hogwarts" was so great! I was so hoping that they would pull it out again and it didn't disappoint. And then Days of Summer with all of the actors crying real tears. The Langs in a Post-AVPSY interview said that the end was designed to make you cry and the rest of the show was setting up the end. :)

Darren standing alone on the stage, facing the audience, saying "It's been totally awesome" not in his Harry Potter voice, but in his own voice. I am dead.

But then he comes back out with his "son" and sings "You Get to Go Hogwarts" and any semblance of calm that I had gathered at the video change was gone. The way he pumps his fist and can barely get through those lines/song. His eyes filled with tears. No fair.

Then Quirrell and Voldemort come back and give their speech about how sometimes you have to move on from even Harry Potter. OK is wonderful. So is bawling your eyes out over an internet musical.

“Harry Potter gave me a new family. He taught me how to love and I guess that’s kinda what Harry Potter’s all about. But you know, there comes a time when you have to move on, Quirrell. A time when we have to let even Harry Potter go, and that’s okay.”

Here is a note I found on tumblr:

Dear All Fandoms.

You may think you’re crazy for crying over fictional death. But at least your not crying over the fictional death of a scarf.

Sincerely,
The Starkid Fandom

Yes, we all cried when The Scarf of Sexual Preference, aka Scarfy, died. He's such a poor, defenseless scarf and he didn't deserve to die :)

The whole ending when "Harry" aka Darren was saying good-bye to all of his friends was so real. Everyone was in tears, but then I see this gif with Joey in the background tearing up and I lose it.

Here's another note from tumblr "I’m not crying, I just have a Starkid musical in my eye."

This pretty much sums it up.

I was in a little bit of a post-avpsy depression the next day, but I chose to adopt Dr. Seuss' wonderful advice. Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened (and that you got to see it live and again on youtube).

Now we can start getting excited for Twisted, Starkid's new show which is opening in July!!!!

AVPSY

The time has come, the walrus said to detail Lil Sis and my epic adventures at Leaky Con and seeing AVPSY. As AVPSY is (finally!!!) being released on youtube on Friday, I figured it was as good a time as any to revisit our fantabulous weekend in Chicago.

It started one day last July when I was perusing twitter and saw a tweet that Starkid would be performing A Very Potter 3-D: A Very Potter Senior Year at LeakyCon in Chicago in August. I immediately texted Lil Sis at work. Chicago is not far from where I live and I knew that we must be there to see it live. Not satisfied when she didn't respond immediately I also left her a voicemail. She called back shortly thereafter and we ordered tickets right away. It was seriously such an exciting day; this show has been years in the making and Darren's fame and schedule just didn't make it possible for them to do the show until then. (Darn you G.L.E.E.) We didn't care that it was only going to be a "staged reading," we were psyched. We would get to  see Darren and our other beloved Starkid's perform live in the roles that made us fall in love with them in the first place!

The show as set to be performed on Saturday, but we decided to head out Friday and spend the night because we didn't want to run into traffic or something and miss the show (and yes we're paranoid like that). We rocked out to Starkid tunes all the way to Chicago, managed to find our hotel fairly easily and get checked in. Then we decided to do some shopping downtown, which was just down the road from our hotel, except we went the wrong way the first time and ended up going at least a half a mile in the wrong direction before we realized it... But we managed to find the shopping and perused some stores; the American Girl Doll store was a must!

After walking around all afternoon, we decided to get dinner and not at some place we could eat anywhere, an only-in-Chicago type of place. Except we were really hungry and the first place we passed that looked good was a Bennigan's, so we stopped there. But we did sit out on the sidewalk, which we couldn't do back home, so we claimed that as a victory. It was fun to people watch all of the people dressed in their Harry Potter and Starkid gear.

Then we went back to the hotel and decided to check out the merchandise. As chronicled in my Denise Donovan blog, we took a long time deciding what Starkid merch we wanted and met Denise Donovan! I ended up with a Granger Danger T-shirt, JMOMS DVD and powder blue sweatband.

This was our first taste of living in a world where people loved Starkid. I got lots of compliments on my Keep Calm I'm a Starship Ranger t-shirt. It was so fun to be surrounded by people who got all of our random Starkid references and geeked out over powder blue sweatbands. We overheard someone saying that their mom saw Joey Richter at the ice machine, so of course our eyes were peeled for Starkids whenever we left our room ;)

We also checked in to the Leaky Con (since we only had passes for the conference for Saturday) and got our Leaky Con swag.

After making our purchases we decided to hit the pool, with about half of the other people there :) But it was fun and we got to relax our muscles that were sore after a day of a lot of walking!

Here we are rocking our homemade A Very Starkid Summer T-shirts. Mine says "I'll see my friends, gonna laugh til we cry" from Goin' Back to Hogwarts and Lil Sis' says "We've got these days  of Summer" from Days of Summer. The back lists the dates for Apocalyptour and Leaky Con.

The next morning we got up bright and early to attend some conference sessions before AVPSY which was "scheduled" to start at noon. They had said that if you attended a session from 11:00-11:50 you would be let in before people who just stood in line, so we had planned a full morning. We also packed our nifty Leaky Con bags full of snacks because there would be no time for lunch! 

Rumbleroar!

Our first session stared off pretty humorously. First off all, the wrong lecturer showed up. He started trying to lead us in yoga and we were all like, "What?!  Isn't supposed to be about how no one in Harry Potter has any parents or parental figures or something?" Then they got that straightened out and our lecturer never showed up. But being the true fans we are, a few people just started running it like a panel. 

Then we went to a simply fabulous session about Snape and whether he is truly good or evil. The place was packed! But what made the whole thing, was that a Snape impersonator showed up and started taking part in the discussion, in character! It was so much fun :)

I think the next session was the 11:00 that we really had no interest in, but we had to pick something so that we could get into AVPSY first... I felt bad for the guy because, seriously, no one really wanted to be there and everyone was counting down the minutes to noon. Lil Sis and I munched on some snacks. Then some workers came to get us in line... and we stood in line for like at least half an hour... It was excruciating, but we had some lovely Starkid sing-a-longs to tide us over. Then they marched us through the Chicago Hilton like a giant conga line! I'm sure we looked crazy to the legitimate guests. When we got closer they made us put our badges on our foreheads so it was easier for them to check. At that point we would have done whatever they told us!!

We finally got seated, discovered some lovely 3-D glasses under our seats and tried not to freak out! I won't spoil the show, yet, except to say that it was amazing. Very few people left without tears in their eyes (cast included). It was funny, touching, full of amazing songs and clearly more than a staged reading. Yes, there were tons of goofs and everyone read from the script, but it wouldn't be a Starkid show without mess-ups and they really only had like 48 hours to rehearse. It was amazing to see Darren (and everyone else) perform live. It was perfect.

We got out and realized that it was after 5:00! A show that was supposed to go from 12-3, went from 12:00-5:00! Again, not a Starkid show if it wasn't super long, and to their credit it didn't start until at least one by the time everyone got into the room.

Since the schedule was all out of whack, Lil Sis and I just skipped any more sessions and headed to get food. On our way to McDonald's, we got several really strange looks and possibly a comment about us being hippies, when realized that we had re-entered civilization while still wearing our sweatbands :)

We took our Mickey D's to Millenium Park to eat and debrief on the awesomeness that we had just experienced.

Next we went back to the hotel and took part in a rockin' Starkid sing-a-long. So fun to be around people who had the words memorized just like us!

Then there was the ball. We hadn't really been sure if we would attend, since we were driving back home that night, so we didn't bring any ball type clothes, but we still went anyway. It was so much fun to just dance the night away, even if we were carrying around our large bags the whole night! The DJ played "I Wanna Be" and some Disney songs! I saw Dylan Saunders wandering through the crowd and we said hi and gave him hugs.

After awhile a bunch of the Starkids came out and were dancing, which was fun to see.  We were sort of far away and it was dark, so my pics aren't very good... Some of the Warblers were there and started dancing when some of their songs from Glee came on :)

Oh, Joe Moses (wearing the hat)

Joey is in red on the far right of this pic and Darren's a tiny bit right of center wearing a blue short sleeved shirt and black vest...

We were pretty pooped from a seriously long and emotional (very, very exciting!) day.

Around midnight we had to decide, were we going to stay until 2:30 for the traditional singing of Total Eclipse of the Heart or leave then. We decided, you only live once; we were staying. This is also when we saw Matt Lang, but decided he looked uncomfortable enough that we didn't approach him.

So we stayed and rocked out to Total Eclipse of the Heart with a few hundred of our people and then hit the road. They usually play the song several times, so after the first playing we left to beat the rush. Which led us to meeting the adorable Nick Lang in his purple tracksuit. One of our biggest regrets is not asking him for a picture, but we did tell him we loved the show and he thanked us for coming. 

Then we almost didn't get let out of the parking garage, but thanks to a nice garage attendant we did and were on our merry way!

It was an epic and, dare I say, magical weekend!

The Other Brian

Brian Rosenthal, aka Brosenthal, is today's Starkid of the Day.

Brian played one half of the Professor Quirrel/Voldemort combo in A Very Potter Musical. The part that is not a fragment of a soul, but the part that just wants to plant flowers when he takes over the world and misses the crazy serial killer when he is no longer attached to the back of his head and wonders if OK is good.

In the sequel, Brosenthal didn't get as big of a role. He was Seamus Finnigan and James Potter, both smallish parts.

During Starship, Brosenthal was still in school and so he wasn't able to be in the show. He was however able to be a part of the "Starship Ranger" video that played at the beginning of the show. You can watch the video here.

In AVPSY, he reprised his roles as Seamus Jillian Crockett and James Potter, including singing as James in the song Everything Ends.

Brosenthal was also a part of the Apovalyptour

Oh goodness. I was looking through google images pics of Brian and I found this hilarious one of he and Joey at a U of M football game. Joey looks like such a baby!

That's Brosenthal!

Joey Freakin' Richter

Another day, another Starkid. Today it's the adorable Joey Richter!

In AVPM and the sequel, he was Harry Potter/Darren Criss' BFF Ron Weasley:

In Me and My D***, he played Joey :)
He was the leading bug, Bug, in Starship, during the rehearsal process of which he commuted between Chicago and Ann Arbor, because he was still in school.

And of course he reprised his role of Ron for AVPSY this summer.

He has also done a couple of episodes on the Disney Channel show Jesse. He played Officer Petey and might have made Lil Sis and I watch Jesse a few times...

He's such an adorable little cutie. I love his crooked jaw :)

Also he is amazing in this "Call Me Maybe" video from Leaky Con. I watched it several times a day for like a week after Leaky...

d I love following him on twitter. He's silly and goofy and I just know we would be best friends. He once tweeted about how much he likes washing dishes (which I usually do), how it was one of those days where you wake up and hope you turned into a Newsie overnight (what? I love Newsies). 

He loves his friends and is an awesome singer.  Here's a link to his solo from AVPSY. 

It was awesome!!

And is real life friends with Darren. :) I cannot wait until he shows up on Glee on tonight!!!! Lil Sis and I imagined he and Darren freaking out together when he got the job and how excited they are to be on the same show. Hopefully he will find a way to stick around Glee :)

So excited!!!!!!! My little Starkid heart is so proud of him!!!!!!!!! He's just, just, just, just the best!!!!

Harry and Ron Reunited!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

A couple of days ago, I found an interview online of Darren Criss saying that "There’s somebody who’s going to show up in an episode, that if people know where I come from [...] Someone’s gonna show up. It’s really great." Cue Lil Sis and I having major freakouts. We interpreted this cryptic message as someone from Starkid is going to be on Glee!!!! This is pretty much a dream come true.

Starkid is the theater group founded by Darren Criss and his college friends while they were at the University of Michigan. Together they've written and performed six musicals, A Very Potter Musical, Me and My D***, A Very Potter Sequel, Starship, Holy Musical B@tman! and A Very Potter Senior Year: A Very Pottery 3-D, all of which are wonderful with great music and hilarity.

So the speculation and rapid texts began firing between Lil Sis and I. It must clearly be one of the Starkids who re-located to LA. Could it be Joe Moses, who recently re-located to LA? Maybe, but he's not the best singer, so maybe Dylan Sauders, another semi-recent transplant, in my opinion, their best singer? But we would die if it were Joey Richter. And so the conversation ensued.

Here is the aforementioned Dylan Saunders at Leaky Con this summer right after Lil Sis and I both gave him hugs and told him how awesome the show was!!!

Today someone on tumblr posted a link to a story saying that Joey Richter 

(aka Ron from the Potter Musicals and the lead role of Bug in Starship, aka my fav Starkid after Darren) would be in the Jan. 24th episode of Glee as a member of a Glee club trying to recruit Kurt. I immediately got super duper excited. Ron and Harry, Darren and Joey Richter, best friends reunited! However, when I clicked the link to popwrapped, the organization claiming this exclusive, their website said "Coming Soon." 

So our enthusiasm is tempered as we await confirmation that is true. I certainly hope it is, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up...