Jeremy Allen's Grand Illusions Show in Wisconsin Dells

A week ago (June 19) my husband and I went to Wisconsin Dells, or "The Dells" as they are referred to by most Wisconsinites. We had some Dells Season Opener coupon books to use up before July, so we decided to go for a couple of days.  One of the things in the coupon book is the Jeremy Allen's Grand Illusions.  I believe it was $6 per person for general admission tickets.

We decided to go see it Thursday night and we called a few hours before the show and learned the general admission tickets were sold out so we had to upgrade $10 per ticket to get in.  So we upgraded the tickets.  I crossed my fingers that the show would be good since we were spending more on it than originally planned.

We went to dinner and then headed to the show, which is in a little mini-mall right by Timber Falls (if you are familiar with the area).  That immediately gave me a bad feeling, but I told myself not to make judgments yet.  We went to the Will Call table to pick up our tickets.  Based on the size of the inside, I wasn't feeling any better about things yet.  We also noticed it was pretty cold in the building, and learned from the Will Call girl that it doesn't get any warmer in the "theater".   We went back out to our car to get some jackets, which actually came more in handy than we thought.  I'll get to that later...

10 minutes later we were in our seats, which were fold up chairs with burlap over them.  Classy. We were in the second row, two seats away from the stage on the left side.  The stage has a "catwalk" to the middle of the room, where some of the illusions are performed.  The stage was set up to look outdoorsy and there was the sound of crickets, which annoyed my husband.  There was also top 40 music playing, which was weird along with the cricket sound.  The music seemed rather loud at times, and this is coming from a young woman who likes her music loud!  A bird flew out from backstage at one point and went into the rafters.  We thought this might be part of the intro to the show, but no.  It took awhile for the show to actually start.  

When the show did start, some dancers wearing afro wigs and robes that looked like they were made out of quilts.  They did some dancing and drum-beating and then started messing with a wood box. They opened it to show us it was empty, closed it, opened it again and out came a bunch of birds and Jeremy Allen.  The birds flew into the rafters and stayed there for the rest of the show. 

Next he had an assistant get into a box standing up and made it look like he was stretching her out, then he performed some levitating tricks with a piece of paper and a stool.  The stool was kind of impressive since he had it go into the audience a bit.  There was a lot of him and his assistant disappearing and reappearing in other places.  I guess I prefer those illusions since I usually can't figure out exactly how it is done. 

He got some kids up on stage and did a marshmallow trick with them and then scared them by having an assistant in a tiger costume come out of a tent.  That was sort of amusing.  Otherwise, it was honestly difficult to concentrate on the show since the birds in the rafters kept moving around.  Some of them were walking around near our feet.  Others were up in the rafters above us, and eventually they started pooping, as birds do.  At that point, I was glad that  had my coat on.  I was able to put the hood up to defend myself from possible bird poop in my hair.  Luckily, I didn't get pooped on, but it still distracted me from enjoying the show.

On some nights, they have tigers in the show.  I don't know that I would feel safe going to one of the shows with the tigers in it, to be honest.  Seeing the way they handled the birds...

All in all, it wasn't a terrible show. It wasn't a great show either.  I would have felt better about it if we hadn't spent more just to get in.  I would recommend this more for families with young children that might get more of a kick out of it.  I also recommend that you watch out for bird poop!

The Night Before Our Stars: An Early Viewing of The Fault in Our Stars

When my husband and I went to see The Amazing Spider-Man last week, I happened to notice the advertisement for the event The Night Before Our Stars.  It is an early showing of The Fault in Our Stars movie, which is based on the book of the same name. I purchased tickets on the way out, and I'm very glad I did since it is now SOLD OUT.

I love this book, as well as the author John Green!  I follow John Green on Facebook and Twitter and all of that, so I've been keeping up to date on the movie release.  I watched the trailer multiple times on youtube, and I made my husband sit through them when they came on TV instead of fast forwarding through like we do with most other commercials.  So, I obviously knew the movie was coming out June 6th and I was planning to drag my husband to go see it with me.

The tickets to this early showing are quite a bit more than what I would usually spend on a movie, but come on! To me, this is a rare opportunity!  I get to see a movie I have been excited for, get free popcorn (I am a Magical Movie Rewards member), AND there is a simulcast afterward where they show John Green's cameo, which was deleted scene.  I think they also do a Q&A with John Green, Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort and Nat Wolf.  I'm pretty excited to see John Green.  It won't be in person, but this may be as good as it gets for me!  I am a big fan of his since he basically does what I would love to do.  Author Young Adult novels.  Heck, I'd like to write any kind of novel at this point!

As I am writing this now, it is the day of the show.  I will finish this post either tonight after the movie, or tomorrow!  Here is my youtube video where I fangirl about John Green and The Fault in Our Stars!

* * * 

It is now tomorrow, er...today, but tomorrow in regards to what I said earlier.  You get it.

Well, last night was quite an experience! We got in the line that was waiting outside, which wasn't horribly long. We only had to wait about 10-15 minutes to be let in.  We got inside, got our seats and I headed to the concessions for our 2 free popcorns.  I got in line behind a girl and she commented on my shirt saying it was her favorite quote from the movie, which is "My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations". She corrected herself and said it was her favorite quote from the book.  I hadn't even caught the mistake, but me had a chuckle over it and she told me her friend's mom (whom she'd come with) had brought a whole box of tissues.  Smart woman.

While we waited for the movie to begin, the following screens showed, along with a song from the movie:

Before the movie began, there were limited previews, and then John Green came on the screen to welcome us to the movie.  Then, the movie began! 

I do not want to do any spoilers for anyone who may not have read the book or seen the movie yet.  I will tell you that it was even better than I expected.  I bawled my eyes out and did an ugly cry.  My husband laughed at me.  Apparently he was able to choose not to cry.  He was one of the few.  The theater was full of sobbing women.  

Though it was a tearjerker, much like the book, there were humorous parts as well.  If you have read the book, you know all about that.  Isaac, played by Nat Wolff, was incredibly funny to me.  As, of course, was Gus, played by Ansel Elgort.

The one thing I could have done without during the movie was all of the teenage girls going "Awww!" every time Gus was on the screen for the first half of the movie, and other parts throughout. But, I guess that's what you get for going to a Young Adult movie!  

All in all, the movie was fantastic, and I highly recommend it.  Just be warned, there is a likelihood you will cry, so bring some tissues.

After the movie, the credits rolled and we waited from the Live Q&A.  Birdy, a musician who has a song on the soundtrack, played two of her songs, "Not About Angels" and "Skinny Love". 

During the Q&A, we learned what John Green's favorite scene from the movie was: (SPOILER ALERT) The eulogy scene in the church.  There were plenty of other things discussed, but I cannot remember all of them at this point. Perhaps I will add them to this post if I recall them later. I got a few pictures of the Q&A, most of them are blurry, but here are a few of them that turned out OK-ish.

Ansel Elgort (Gus), Shailene Woodley (Hazel) and Nat Wolff (Issac)

John Green (Author) and Josh Boone (Director)

John Green, Josh Boone, Ansel Elgort, Shailene Woodley, Nat Wolff, and Wyck Godfrey (Producer)

Ansel Elgort (Gus) and Shailene Woodley (Hazel)

Shailene Woodley (Hazel)

Hard to see, but the person's Twitter handle is humorous

After the Q&A Nat Wolff and his brother Alex Wolff performed two songs.  Then we got to see John Green's cameo, which was cut from the film for time.

Nat & Alex Wolff performing

John Green's Cameo

And that was it for my Night Before Our Stars experience. My husband and I got out of the theater pretty quickly, got our poster and charm bracelets (bracelets may be on Amazon in the future), or our "Swag swag" as my husband referred to it, and were on our way out of the building when I realized I had forgotten my cardigan on my seat.  So, I fought my way back through the crowd into the theater, got my cardigan and waited in the line of people filing out.  I was able to give some girls behind me a preview of the poster before they got theirs.

Our swag swag!

Poster

Charm Bracelet

And I think that is the end!

Okay?

Okay.

My Life in Wisconsin

I have lived in Wisconsin all 28 years of my life.  I grew up in the small town of Iola (technically a village).  Iola is a tiny, boring town for the most part.  Aside from one weekend in the summer when the Iola Old Car Show, which used to be the Midwest’s Biggest old Car Show and Swap Meet, now it is deemed the Greatest instead of the Biggest apparently.  So, for about three days each summer, Iola is a booming town.  The rest of the time, not much goes on.

I never cared much for Iola while I was growing up.  Not to say it was a terrible place or that I had a terrible childhood.  It has a great school district that prepared me well for college.  However, I wish they had focused a little more on the arts and not so much on the sports.  Basically, if you did not play sports at Iola-Scandinavia, you were not going to be popular, it seemed.  Well, I was not and still am not interested in sports.  At least not team sports.  I have always liked tennis and badminton.  But, I only ever got to enjoy those for about a week each year.  I was never any good at most sports and I suffered through them enough in gym class, I didn’t want to have to suffer through more after school.  Honestly gym class was a personal hell for me on most days. Still, to this day, I cringe when I am invited to take part in a simple volleyball game at a family reunion.

The whole town is sports-oriented.  Perhaps because there isn’t a whole lot else to do besides go to sporting events.  Though I would prefer to watch sports than actually take part in them, still not my favorite thing to do.  The only place for teens to hang out nearby was at the bowling alley, Silver Lake Lanes in Scandinavia.  Needless to say, I was excited (and a bit scared of course) to move away for college.

I moved 3 hours away to Whitewater to attend UW-Whitewater.  Though this is a bigger town than Iola, there isn’t a whole lot more to do there than there was in Iola.  There were stoplights, which Iola had zero of.  There was also more than Subway and a couple of town diners to choose from for restaurants.  This was a good step for me to take.  I don’t know if I would have handled going from little Iola to a metropolis like Milwaukee.

I lived dorms and apartments (with my college boyfriend) in Whitewater for 4.5 years until I graduated and moved back home.  I unfortunately didn’t have a job lined up right away.  So shocking for an English Major/Library Media Minor! Back to Iola I went. Depressing. It would have been worse if one of my best friends wasn’t still living in Iola while finishing college 1/2 hour away.  I also took quite a few trips back down to Whitewater to visit my college friends who were still in that area (which is actually most of them).

About 8 months after college graduation, I was signed up to take online classes from UW-Milwaukee towards a Masters in Library Science.  I had possible plans of moving to Milwaukee in the near future so I could take onsite classes.  But, then I met my future husband on Facebook of all places.  We sort of already knew each other, as we had both gone to UW-Whitewater, lived in the same apartment complex and had been virtual Myspace/Facebook friends for years.  We hadn’t officially met in person though.  Turns out he lived just over and hour away from Iola, in De Pere.  De Pere is basically Green Bay.  We would meet in Appleton, which is about halfway between our homes.

This went on for about a month, then I got a Limited Term job in Janesville, so I moved in with my aunt who lives there for 9 months.  I would travel up to Green Bay most weekends to see my boyfriend (future husband), so we kept the relationship going just fine while I was “away”.  Once my job was over, I moved in with the boyfriend in Green Bay.  A couple years later, we moved to De Pere and that is where we currently reside. Yes, I somehow ended up in Packer-Land Wisconsin, home of the Cheeseheads.  In Green Bay, we lived about a mile from Lambeau Field.  Most people might be excited by this, but its actually more of an irritation for me.  Especially the extra .5% tax I have to pay for the dang football field.  Bah HUMBUG! :)

We are currently pondering if we want to stay in Wisconsin forever, or if we might want to move to another state and see what life is like outside of Wisconsin, or even the Midwest…