On Monday, December 6th, at 5 pm, Itai and I left the hotel where we stayed in London, to wait at the bus station near Saint Pancras Station for line 214, which would take us to the HMV Forum, in which our hero - the one and the only - "Weird Al" Yankovic would perform.
We waited and waited.
And waited and waited.
And line 46 arrived.
And we waited.
And another 46 arrived.
And we waited.
And a full-of-people 214 arrived, got some people off, and went on.
We waited.
And a 46 arrived.
And we waited.
And a quite empty 214 arrived, we got right in, slowly defrosting.
When we arrived to the HMV Forum we saw in the VIP queue my friend Graham, and Lou, whom I recognized from WOWAY (World Of Weird Al Yankovic forum), both had VIP tickets and a permission to go to the after-party backstage.
We ran towards them and shook hands with them.
I already met Graham, and I was happy that Lou had recognized me from Facebook, apparently.
Graham told us that the VIPs just get in before everybody else, so he said that he would try to save us a place to stand at the front (which could be very helpful, due to the fact that I'm pretty short in comparison to most people).
Additionally, Lou gave us a "used" VIP ticket and some unneeded Weird Al trading cards and magnets she didn't need. Needless to say, I was VERY happy to receive them.
We thanked Lou and Graham and went from the VIP queue to the normal queue.
It was LONG. (that's what she said)
We walked to the end of the line, and we knew that we had about 45 minutes until the doors would be opened.
45 minutes to stand still and wait.
It was cold.
So cold.
So VERY COLD.
I was FREEZING.
Steve Jay (Al's bass player) came out of the building to smoke at some point, and we looked at him strangely because we recognized him but didn't have the guts to show it.
That's probably how he's keeping his bass voice so low, going out to smoke in the cold.
We continued standing and freezing, and the doors eventually opened at 7.
At the entrance the security guards made sure that we weren't terrorists and took away my two bottles of water.
We entered the theater. The big theater.
We saw Graham waving at us and ran happily to where he and Lou had been standing, which was at the very front, and just opposite the microphone that Steve would be using afterwards.
Lou was talking to Steve who was standing on the other side of the border that separated the audience from the stage. I tried to join the conversation but eventually found myself just nodding constantly until Steve left to go backstage.
An hour later, they started playing "Fun Zone", which made me VERY excited because I knew what that meant.
Then they played it again.
And then they started screening the random bits of video.
And then Al got on stage, and started to play the polka medley, and then he stopped.
The band started playing "Frank 2000" TV".
And Al was standing there, singing and playing the accordion.
Right in front of me.
I don't have anything to say about the concert itself, apart from the fact that it was AAAWWWEEESSSOOOMMMEEE.
Al was unbelievably amazing especially considering the fact that he was very sick.
Just so amazing.
They improvised when they were having technical difficulties.
After all technical difficulties seemed to have been fixed, Al continued:
When the concert was over and we could finally hear ourselves Graham told Itai and me that we probably couldn't meet Al and asked us if we have something to give him.
We gave Graham the spatula I had made (with Al's face burned into it), the shirt Itai had made (which said "I'm with the Eat-It-Guy" with an arrow pointing up) and an enlarged reproduction of the drawing I made on a Post-it note, on which we wrote our Twitter usernames.
Graham kindly gave me 20 pounds as a Christmas/Hanukkah gift, and he and Lou said goodbye and went to meet our weird idol.
Itai and I hurried to buy shirts (he bought a "Smells Like Nirvana" T-shirt and I bought the notorious "White & Nerdy" hoodie of the tour).
We finally went outside and met Hagay Giller and his two friends, Asaf and Yoni, with whom we had spent the morning, exploring comic book shops.
We talked with them a bit, and as we were walking our separate ways and were about 50 meters away from them Hagay called my cellphone.
He told me that the band was exiting the building, and that we should come because we may have a chance to meet Al(!).
We came back to where now many people were congregating around Steve.
We got the chance to talk to him, Hagay had him sign his Israeli copy of "In 3-D"(!), and I took a picture of Steve, Itai, and Hagay.
A long time had passed until a reliable someone told the crowd to stand on the pavement, which we did quickly.
I felt so bad at that point.
I was over-excited and felt sick, I was insanely cold, and I really needed to go to the bathroom.
I have no idea how, but Itai and Hagay encouraged me to stay, despite my pessimism.
And then they let us in.
To the relative warmness.
The whole line of people was recreated inside the hall, and Al was standing at the end of this line and talked and had his picture taken until the last of the fans would leave.
Graham and Lou were standing near Al, and Graham came to where we were standing to tell us to tell Al that we were the ones who had given him the spatula (that Graham already had given Al in the after party).
When we got closer and closer to Al my body was really shaking, from excitement and coldness.
Hagay was before us and asked Al to sign his record too, and to take a picture with him.
So Al signed his record and Asaf (who somehow ended up as the "official" photographer of the fans who wanted him to take a picture of them with Al,) took the picture.
Then it was our turn.
We told Al that we were the spatula kids and the ones who brought him the shirt, and he said he really liked them (he wondered how I actually had made the drawing on the spatula) and that they were cool and I was humble.
We asked him to sign our enlarged copies of my post-it note and he did.
Asaf said "group photo!" and we posed.
Right after that Itai and I quickly got outside to the coldness, and began walking towards the bus stop.
The cool screen at the bus stop said the bus should arrive 20 minutes later.
I realized that we had waited in the coldness long enough for one day, so I called my mom and told her that we were taking the tube.
When we entered the station and looked confused, a man who noticed us asked us where we needed to go.
We answered "Kings Cross" and he said that the last train was waiting and VERY kindly led us to the right platform.
The train was almost completely empty, and after a few minutes started moving.
After about 3 stops we were in Kings Cross.
We were very tired and confused but we found the almost nearest exit to our hotel - all we needed to do is to get to the other side of the road and to walk a bit.
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