G Love Has Been Met

And he did not disappoint at all, for all you naysayers, I am still a huge fan. Bruce look away... Oh my God he is soooo hot and talented. And like after every concert I have ever been, I am currently experiencing the G Love after glow.

Here's the break down of events (written with much help from Olive.) These events strictly relate to the meeting of G. Love there will be more posts on the entire trip later:

We arrived in Cleveland at 3:30ish... I will write more about the whole adventure later, but this post sticks to serious issues... which are G. Love and some Special Sauce. The event started at 5:30 but we arrived about 10 minutes early to get tickets and coat check. When we checked in, Olive said, the tickets should be under Holladay... the reply, "Jennie Holladay. The Jennie Holladay? From Michigan?" It was like we were famous, the TiVo Changed My Life Blog, can make you famous, who knew. We met Bob Winovich (brother of Barry, who started the foundation) and Todd (the poster/Angel who led me to Mecca aka this Cleveland concert.)

We talked with them, we enjoyed a drink, a slider (enjoyed by only me) and little tiny spinach pies (enjoyed by both Olive and I.) We sat for a while, Olive spent most of that time trying to calm me down and get me to speak in coherent sentences. Soon a photo-journalist from WEWS Channel 5 News came to the event. Why was he there, well great Public Relations by Olive and yours truly. Really it was the fact that we told our friend Todd that he had to send a photographer, but more on that later. Todd pulled through and the photographer got video of the event, unfortunately G. Love's plane was late so he didn't get to videotape the one song promised, despite my efforts telling him to blow off all other assignments for this, mainly so I could get the raw footage.

So after about two hours of waiting, me with my heart racing at warp speed the whole time, it was like working out without doing any thing but thinking of G. Love, hmmmm that sounds like an infomerical. I am going to have to think about this. Eventually I force Olive out of her comfortable seated position, to go stand dead center in front of the stage, yes we stood there for an hour, but we didn't come to Cleveland to eat spinach pies and see him from 10 feet away instead of reaching out to touch his knee at the one foot away. Did I mention that the room we were in had only about 100 people? Yes, it was like having our own personal concert with about 100 of our new Cleveland Friends.

So he arrives. G. Love's attire is casual, but polish. He is wearing a jean jacket with motorcycle collar, jeans and a blue graphic t-shirt, and basketball sneakers. He sits down and apologizes because it was the airlines fault. He gets his box of harmonicas ready, tunes his guitar. He starts playing, we are quickly informed that we can't take video just still pictures. The first song, well at that moment we were both have out-of-body-experiences and neither of us can really remember. However, you can rest assured it was fabulous. There were some kids (when I say kids, picture elementary schoolers) to the right that were screaming Back of the Bus, and he said,"you have to make the kids happy." So he played an acoustic version of that song.



He played Sara's Song and then his political song, that we don't know the title, but we agree with. Then that ended his set. It looked like he was about to slip away, when Olive made the move, because certainly I was in no condition to be brave. I had brought my CD and a sharpie (which I borrowed from Todd.) G Love signed the CD with his name and he also opened it up to sign the sticker and ticket stub that was inside, without prompting by us. Then everyone else wanted autographs.

He came back to us for a moment and I asked him to sign to Jennie (with the ie) on the cd and he did, Olive said, "you made her life."
She then said, "We came up from Detroit."
He responded, "Did you see the Blues man when we were in Detroit a couple weeks ago?" Olive says (yes I am silent with a huge smile through most of this) "Yeah, Steve, the Traveling Blues Man right."
GLove, "yeah, yeah right, he's great. I actually am bringing him up again tonight."
Here's my big moment, I said, "I did a little video and put it up on you tube."
GLove, "cool, we are going to video tape him tonight."

Then Olive was given a camera by some girl to take a picture, which of course made her think, we need a picture. So she told me, who was in a haze and could not think for myself. Get out your camera. I did this, then we got our picture taken with G. Love for posterity. Therefore G. Love has been met. And was very nice and cool. Of course after he was swept off the stage, I was kind of standing there, just wishing I would have said more, but glad I didn't because Lord knows more would have been me making a fool of myself. I will be calmer and more prepared next time. Yes, next time. After this meet and greet I feel that I can still show myself at concerts. Here's the picture that Olive took of me after I meet G. Love. That smile you see hasn't come off my face since, last night my cheeks literally hurt from too much smiling. And I am sure you are noticing my "fly" t-shirt that I bought off ebay, yes I-76 is my favorite song, so I thought it would be fun to wear a Philly 76'ers t-shirt. I am sure I looked a little foolish.