Crossing state lines in the name of music

Picture the scene: 7 Hopkins students sitting around the Charles Village Pub, having a drink one Sunday evening around 11 pm.  6 of them had just came from AllNighters (all-male acapella) practice, and I had been called along to hang out for their post-rehearsal happy hour (Ahh, the joys of finally being 21). Stephen Dunay mentions to everyone that Philadelphia was hosting the final American Idol auditions the next day, and wonders aloud whether anyone wants to go. At first, everyone just sortof laughs it off, but because I’m practically an AllNighters groupie (don’t hate!) I kept telling them all they should go, and slowly, everyone decides it would be a fun thing to do. Well, after all of that, I wanted to go along too, so I brought up the fact that I owned a minivan that could drive all of us up in one car. Once that was mentioned, the debating was over. We were heading to Philadelphia….and in order to get there by the 6 am registration deadline, we were leaving at 1 in the morning.

All of the guys went back to their respective apartments to change, and I started cleaning out my car and packing the cooler with ice, drinks, pudding, and whatever else I found in my fridge that seemed edible. We met outside, piled into the Big Red (the name of my minivan), and headed off to I-95.

It’s amazing how clear the roads are at 2 am. We got up into Philadelphia in record time, yet managed to miss the Wachovia center exit and had a slight detour through the city that involved a homeless/possibly dead guy sighting. When we finally got to the stadium, there were cars EVERYWHERE and a huge line to get in to the stadium… so the guys killed time in the car by serenading me. *Swoon*

After we registered around 4, we headed back to the car and napped out in the van for a while until 7 am when we decided to get in line to enter the stadium.

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We passed hundreds of news reporters and crazy-looking people who ended up on the news:

 

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While waiting in the parking lot to enter, the guy in front of us was pointing to anyone with a blue wristband (which signified that they were going to be singing) and demanding they do a solo. After the AllNighters sang a song in the line, the guy exclaimed “If I had the money, you’d ALL have record deals!”

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When they finally opened the doors and started letting people in, we began walking towards the stadium when we saw a guy to our left from Fox 45 Baltimore. I ran up to him while the line was moving towards the stadium and asked him if he wanted to hear the Johns Hopkins AllNighters sing- and he was really excited about getting a whole group from Hopkins! So we all got out of the walking line and he quickly inte rviewed all the guys and filmed them singing yet again. We texted all of our friends who Tivo’d the news, and we ended up on the 10 o’clock news that night! Mission of getting on TV: Accomplished

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So, we got into the stadium and because we had registered like 2 hours before the registration window closed, we were some of the last people that were going to audition. Before they even started auditioning people, though, they filmed a bunch of crowd scenes of the entire stadium saying things like “Welcome to Philadelphia!”. They kept having us re-do it because apparently it wasn’t clear enough. News flash to whatever assistant producer came up with that idea: When you have 20,000 people attempting to say the same thing, it’s not going to sound very crisp. Great. Glad we got that sorted.

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So, yeah, finally they start auditioning people, and things got SLOW. Auditions started at 10 am, and by 1 or 2 pm we were all taking naps in our seats and trying to make the time pass any way we could. I scrapbooked, I think Matt did some Sodoku… yeah. Booringggg.

By 4 pm it was getting ridiculous. They had only gotten through half of the bottom tier of the stadium- and we were ¾ of the way through the top tier! By our own estimations it would have been around midnight by the time that all the AllNighters were seen by a pair of assistant producers who seemed to only be letting the ridiculously dressed people through. Here’s a disturbing half-naked guy, a girl dressed as an angel, and Cat Woman and Wonder Woman: 

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So, after some careful consideration, we decided to leave without being heard. It was definitely a tough call. There was always that chance that someone would have made it through. In the end, though, practical things trumped the elusive dreams. We had to go to work the following day, or move apartments, or run errands, and we needed more than 4 hours of sleep in 48 hours. So, we headed home. However, the 1 am spontaneous road trip was the best part anyway.