Events where I take like 600 pictures make it hard to pare down the best ones for this blog. I’m trying to really pick out the best pictures I have and limit posts to under 100 pictures. Ideally i shoot for around 50. So this post took a lot of effort.

Back in July 2016, we went to see Panic and Weezer in concert. It was my cousin Nathan’s first concert. It was an amazingly fun time. I saw Panic was going to go on tour for their Death of a Bachelor album, and wanted to go. The album is great, if you haven’t listened to it I recommend it. The tour sold out pretty much immediately, but MGM National Harbor was finishing construction and Panic was going to be the third show to play there after their opening. I quickly went to see if my cousins wanted to go see it, after receiving affirmative responses I went to get tickets and they were sold out – except VIP packages. The main floor tickets were only $40 cheaper than the VIP packages, and the VIP packages came with merch that I was inevitably going to buy there anyways (I try to get shirts when they pique my interest). So I figure it was worth it. Boy was it.

The MGM was beautiful inside. We went in and got our wristbands and VIP packages, and went to the GA admission line since I assumed we’d be on the main floor. Turns out, VIP had their own line so we were redirected to the VIP line. We found out also that we were let in about 10 min before the GA crowd was, which meant that we were pretty much at the rail. It was quite an experience. We were maybe 20 ft from the stage. I’ve never been that close before. We were SUPER excited.

Saint Motel was the first opener,

followed by Misterwives.

I love the Misterwives’ Cover of “Same Drugs”, and I’m really glad they performed it:

Some amount of pushing was to be expected since we were so far up and everyone wanted to get as close to the rail as possible. The amount of battle I had to do with the high school girls that wanted to get as close to Brenden Urie as possible was unexpected though. Despite all the pushing and squeezing, I managed to stand my ground and stay in my spot the entire concert. It was definitely an experience, probably not one I’d voluntarily repeat. Tiffany I kept in front of me and helped keep her in place. Nathan became lost to the crowd and pushed back a few “rows”. But the concert was awesome.

I really liked that they played the acoustic piano version of This is Gospel:

And it was great when he played Billy Joel. It was really amusing to me that only a handful of people around me knew the song. The previously deafening choir of high school girls fell silent.

Inevitably Brenden Urie always plays drums at some point of the concert:

After the concert we went to see my friend Chris for a bit and played Exploding Kittens. Pretty fun, low investment game.

The next day, I had expressed interest to Chris about going hiking and checking out some nature. We came up with Great Falls National Park. It was a pretty good few hours of hiking and taking in nature despite some mildly cold temperatures.

I had dinner with my family that night at a lovely seafood restaurant:

Before I caught my plane back to Michigan, I had a delicious brunch with Chris and his girlfriend. We waited 1 hour or so to get seated, and it was definitely hard to find despite having GPS and yelp directions. Was very delicious though.

I leave you with my very talented cousins playing a song on the piano:

-Evilmanta