Dragons and Dinosaurs! Oh my!

After months of waiting, the Imagine Dragons concert finally arrived! I bought my ticket back in February and have been counting down the days!

The two opening acts - Halsey and Metric - were ok. Not great, just kind of eh. Their biggest problem was the band drowned out the lead singer most of the time. Halsey's problem was teenage angst (although she'd 20 in real life, I think).

Imagine Dragons portion of the concert opened with "Shots" and kept going strong the whole time. They played almost all the songs from their new album "Smoke + Mirrors" and a fair number from "Night Visions." I think I heard all my favorites, which was awesome. They had a lot of energy and were obviously having a good time. I included music videos to some of my favorites of theirs below!

"Radioactive"

"Demons"

"Bleeding Out"

"Gold"

"Polaroid"

"On Top of the World" 

"It's Time"

One annoying thing happened at the concert...thankfully not directly Imagine Dragons related. I had a pretty good seat (since I bought my ticket so early), which meant it cost a bit more than others. There was a couple sitting in front of me...probably seniors is high school or maybe freshmen in college, who talked - no, shouted - through 70% of the show. Trying to have a conversation over a rock concert is beyond distracting, due to the necessity to speak rather loudly. When it happened during Halsey and Metric, I didn't really care, since I wasn't invested in listening to them. But once Imagine Dragons started performing, it really started to bothered me. There was a couple to my right and the wife was about ready to smack someone - that's how loud their were being. Literally, her husband wrapped his arms around her to keep her from jumping down the kids' throats. Finally about halfway through Imagine Dragons, I leaned forward and asked them if they needed to have a conversation if they could do it in the back, 'cause it was really distracting. At least that's what I was shooting for, though I couldn't tell you what I actually said. I hate confrontation and so I'm sure I was much more articulate in my head as compared to what actually came out. :)  I didn't want to be "that guy," but I had just had it up to my eyeballs. They were silent for about three songs and then make short comments to each other after that, which was fine. The girl kept throwing me dirty looks the rest of the night, but since that (death glares) hadn't worked on them, I pointedly ignored her.

The only other not awesome thing was the drive home. There was a huge storm blowing across Nebraska and it hit Omaha just as the concert let out. There were some rough patches along the way, but it was the worst on I-80 about 2 miles from the exit to Lincoln. The deluge was incredible. Visibility was only about 10-15 feet and everyone had slowed down to about 40 miles per hour. It's the freakiest thing though was to see a myriad of break lights on the highway...and for the car in front of you to come to a virtual stop before pulling off the road. Pretty much everyone but me and the big rig behind me decided to wait out the torrential downpour. At that point I just wanted to get home...so I put my hazards on and drove in the right lane at about 25-30 miles an hour. Once I was off I-80 things got a little better...but I was quite happy once I finally got home!

On a happier note...there's about a 10% chance I'll be in Denver on July 27th. If that ends up being the case, I may have to go see them perform again at the Pepsi Center! :)

Fun Fact: the lead singer, Dan Reynolds, spent two years in Nebraska (Omaha, Seward and Lincoln) as a volunteer Mormon missionary, so he was excited to be back. The Omaha World Herald did a nice piece about the concert, which you can see here.

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A short note about dinosaurs....

Jurassic World came out this weekend. I went with Matt to the 10:30am showing this morning, which set a new record for the earliest I've gone to see a movie in theaters. I figure it's the "old person's" midnight showing...if you can't stay up to see the last show of the day, go to the first one the next morning! :) 

While nothing will be as good as the first Jurassic Park, this installment was definitely the best of the sequels. The only thing I would have liked to see was a cameo from Jeff Goldblum. :) Although speaking of cameos, mustached Nick Miller (Jack Johnson from New Girl) apparently took a summer job away from the bar as a Jurassic World control room worker. And yes, I so mean Nick Miller, since it was basically the same character. 

If you're a fan of the original Jurassic Park, I would definitely recommend people seeing it. There are some cheesy moments, but overall it was very enjoyable. I would not suggest taking younger kids to see it, though. While it's not horrendously gory, there are parts that I could see frightening little kids. I was surprised at the 10:30am showing a) how many people where there in general and b) how many smaller kids where there. A dad was sitting next to me with his two kids, who were maybe 8 and 10...which in my opinion was a poor decision. It's PG-13 for a reason. I'd take a mature 12 year old to see it...maybe even an 11 year old. But no one younger than that.

For those who don't know, Matt has been a guest on a radio program (Necessary Roughness, ESPN KLMS 1480) for three weeks now. It's a sports show (it's on ESPN radio, so duh) but they decided to have a movie segment once a week and the host asked Matt to be their "movie consultant." This week he talked about, among other things, Jurassic World. You can check out the podcast of this week's segment here.

TGIF and have a great weekend!


~ Katie