It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The country is going to hell in a handbasket and business is tough. There's some illness in the family and people need ferrying about,and just sofa time, too, with coffee and family photos and sharing of memories.

With all this life sh*t going on, who jumps in a car by themselves and drives seven hours to see some dude and his band sing for a couple of hours.?

I do, apparently. Here are these tickets like Holy Grails in a little cardboard rectangle form, and a person of great generosity ended up with a spare ticket which they kindly offered me, and there was all this excitement in the ether of the odd little rock star fandom digital treehouse where for whatever reason I often go, and I was tired of being sort of sad, so it just seemed like a good reason for an irrational road trip.

BTW I just have to tell you, there is such a thing as too much New Jersey. It's like a pie that you're okay with when there's just a portion of it, like on the way to Manhattan, but when you have to eat or drive through the whole pie or state, it seems endless. There's Pottery Barn New Jersey along the top of the Garden State parkway, crackhead New Jersey around the exits for Newark and South Orange, Springsteen New Jersey hello Asbury Park, Ikea New Jersey, pine barren New Jersey where they hid bodies in some old Sopranos episode and which is very piney, and then some exits for places that sound kind of Martha Stewarty like Tom's River and West Egg, and finally, Atlantic City New Jersey which is, let's face it, freakish. Somebody cloned a piece of Las Vegas and dropped it along a salt flat by the Atlantic. I think I kind of prefer the salt flat.

Speaking of David Cook, dude, I hope at some point you get some time off to hang out on the East Coast outside your tewer, because it really is lovely, and now I'm afraid you're going to go home to Missouri with an impression that's formed entirely of snow-covered college rec centers, highway rest stops, Manhattan, casinos and pine barrens. Really, we're not as weird as it probably looks from all that.

By now a ton of people will have recapped the actual show, and I saw a ton of cameras so hopefully lots of virtual goodness. I took neither still pics nor vids, I just wanted to take it all in. I sang, boogied, pointed, clapped, and probably annoyed the nice couple next to me. I'm pretty sure I also randomly hugged some people out of sheer David Cook inspired glee.

I met Yak, Sasha, queenjacklyn, AheadofStraight, Angie, ellemarie, sky1234567 (sp?), Janus and her manus and other cool people some of whose real names I got but not their screen-names. If I met you and did not get your name, apologies. It was very cool to arrive by myself and just find meld gently into such a happy, fun-having bunch of peeps who I'd never met before and yet, had known for all this while. Weird and fun.

David sang beautifully. Andy and Neal pretty much cuddled on stage. Joey was hilarious and also musical. Kyle sounds absolutely thunderous live and is a pleasure to watch to boot.

The room was full of love. There are a lot of patient, sweet guys out there who were sort of supporting their wives in their Cook Love, and gals and daughters, but had a good time too.

The World I Know was an exceptional thing, because we felt with David a circle that had come full way round. I think he figured that the casino shows have a really high percentage of people who began with his story on the show, so getting to hear him deliver TWIK was poetic for us.

Mining this even deeper, we got a big amazing helping of the songs from the wider circle, outside of DCTR: We're Only Honest When We're Sleeping, Make Me, Souvenir. Maybe he figured out that, even more then the college audiences, we'd love exploring all his twists and turns, and going beyond the edges of what's familiar from the album. He was right.

At some point in the evening, things were getting just too sexy with the Five being all gorgeous and cool, so a gang of 20 women helped out by putting electric blinking bunny ears on their heads, a traumatic sight which kind of sterilized away all the sexy fumes for a little while, so, helpful!

Before and after, I met these David Cook fans. Smart, affectionate, funny, cool people. We had drinks and just talked about stuff. Some of it was about David, Neal, Andy, Joey and Kyle, but some of it was about a hundred other concerts, people's tattoos and kids and vacations and hometowns. After the show--this is gonna blow your mind, I know it's wild--we ended up at some goofy little cafe that was shutting down so people were only able to grab a few beers and those little airport bottles of wine and some biscotti. Then we hung out and talked some more. That was us going wild, and it was pretty enjoyable to me after a tough recent time.

The next day I hit the road early. I had a dear friend I hadn't seen in many months and the chance to see her for a few hours on my way back up East, so that was like a separate gift I got out of making this trip. At one point I got caught in a truly insane traffic mess on I-95. How insane was it? People were getting into the breakdown lane and freakin' REVERSING back to the last exit in an attempt to escape. I sat tight. I literally spent two hours creeping along and making a list of all the stuff I had to be thankful for, to be gracious for. Not because I'm a good person, but the opposite. I don't spend enough time thinking about all the awesome, good, generous, interesting, funny, cool, patient things that people do for me, and I need to more.

I am a lucky person. This weekend was brought to you by David Cook, his and, and some really great folks who were there.