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[And now the second edition of Wristband Overnighter Adventures! Tamar and her posse camped out on Friday night to snag MMVA wristbands, and here's what happened...]

8:00pm
The troops are gathering for the training session and debriefing. Tonight’s mission: obtaining wristbands for the 2008 MuchMusic Video Awards. Our team will consist of yours truly, Brendan, Simon, Kyle, Martina and Edwina. We’re going to train ourselves with some traditional teenage pastimes to get us into our undercover personas, then head out to MuchMusic HQ and loiter legally, for the first time in a very long time.

12:40am
Everybody’s here, we’re gonna bounce to MuchMusic HQ and see whats afoot. Only 8 hours until wristband retrieval! Oh, and if you’re wondering what we’ve been up to for the last four and a half hours, I have two non-words for you: Youtube and Facebook. And Simon must have made us listen to Low by Flo Rida about 12 times. I’m pretty sure I was about to get violent that last time. On the bright side, I’m all set for singing along next week. On the downside, this song will probably still be stuck in my head when I’m on my deathbed. My last words will be, “With the straps!”

1:30am
We are comfortably settled on this dirty street of which the name I am not aware. We’re sitting on some garbage bags to keep our butts relatively clean. Eddie was smart enough to bring Dollarstore pillows, but I did not have the luxury of bringing something like that, since I’m directly off to a concert once we get our wristbands. In front of us is a group of people sitting in chairs. They look really comfortable… I hate them already. Behind us the line has already grown monstrously. I’m so surprised how long the line is already! We’re on the 3rd side of the Much building. I don’t think the line has ever been this long at 2am before. We spoke to some of the people at the very front of the line, and two girls have been here since the day before yesterday. As in, Thursday! The second people in line arrived here 10am this morning. These folks have got SERIOUS dedication. For the time being, I’m going to listen to my iPod on low, eat this free pizza (thanks MuchMusic!) and answer all the drunk people asking what the hell we’re all doing here.

3:20am
It is very balmy, and nice! Much better than 2 years ago, when it was positively FREEZING while we camped out on the streets. Plus, it only rained for about 30 seconds, so things look good for the next 4+ hours! We’ve been having a riot keeping ourselves entertained - and everyone else in earshot awake. We are definitely the raucous ones this year.

Interesting fact that came up! You probably know how it’s a ‘gaggle’ of geese and a ‘murder’ of crows, right? Well, it’s also an ‘unkindness’ of ravens! That’s so… odd! Can they not be unkind when they’re on their own? Oh the things that come up in the small hours of the morning.

Probably the highlight of the last two hours however was all of us belting out the theme song from Pokemon. Don’t pretend like you don’t know and love it! Haha, I’m pretty sure most everyone hates us for being loud, but secretly envies how cool we are. And by cool, I mean comfortable in how utterly lame we are. I said how we should be in the MMVAs, since we were clearly such great performers, and Kyle said, “Except no one would pay free to see us.” I can always count on him to keep me humble. Thanks Kyle, you’re a real friend.

4:50am
Just came back from McDonalds to use their bathroom. The sun has begun to rise. The entire group is spooning on the sidewalk, trying to catch some shuteye.

5:15am
Everyone has given up on trying to sleep. Eddie and I were being too loud, and Brendan is trying to teach us how to say, “You don’t know math, you stupid assface!” in Chinese. Man, I hope no assfaces are reading this. I don’t want to offend anyone.

5:25am
Oh! I forgot to mention, but some time earlier some people walked by and dropped this smoke bomb right on the other side of our guard rail. It was vile! I unwittingly breathed it in, and I could taste it through my nose, and literally almost threw up on everyone. As hilarious as that might have been in retrospect, really not a pleasant experience. I hope those jerks got fined.

During this lull, I will share with all you avid readers my playlist for the night. I recently … acquired a whole bunch of albums which have been playing on my iPod all night.

MMVA All-Nighter Album List
* Yellowcard - Paper Walls
* The Early November - The Room Is Too Cold
* Cute Is What We Aim For - The Same Old Blood Rush With A New Touch
* Augustana - Can’t Love, Can’t Hurt

If you haven’t heard these, you should check them out! And by check them out, I totally mean download, but don-t tell the authorities-that-be that I said that.

6:10am
So the line has moved! It was pretty exciting. Unfortunately, now we’re not allowed to sit. Also, we’re standing by some really gross-smelling garbage juice that’s just all over the sidewalk. We’re also reminiscing about past MMVA-related experiences we’ve had near this sketchy alley. Oddly enough, there are several. Oh, while we’re not moving, here’re some of the snippets of conversation that we’ve heard in the last few hours.

* “Honey, I was born and raised a bitch.”
(Our remarks: “The doctor to her mother, ‘Congratulations! It’s a bitch!’”)
* “It’s illegal to walk a cow along Queen street.”
(While I didn’t hear her explanation, I think that this is a piece of knowledge that will be much valued by readers.)

7:00am
We’ve been parked on Richmond for some time. The sun is bright and very hot, and we just enjoyed an in-depth grammatical evaluation of our generation’s music, featuring recording artist Timberland! It was both hilarious and depressing.

7:35am
Very interesting development! We were standing close to the corner of John and Richmond, making very witty jokes about the Scotiabank Theatre (formerly Paramount Theatre) when a guy approached us to plug his CD. This guy was an independent musician who just moved to the T-dot from Montreal, and decided to capitalize on all us music-lovers conveniently congregated around the Much building. He had a very Jason Mraz-y hat, which I liked. In lieu of a free sample, he did some freestyling for us. The interesting part was when he got into this rap battle with some guy behind us. Needless to say, he kicked that kid’s ass. Haha, all of you should check out MC Prolific, if only because he nearly made that boy cry. No, I’m kidding, they were on good terms after the rap battle.

I know you were dying to hear our witty jokes about the Scotiabank theatre. To sum it up, we were essentially thinking up names of movies that would play at a theatre owned by a bank:

“Mortgage Zone II: What happens when you can’t make prime
Tag line: ‘This time it’s fiscal.’”
We’re going to make millions.

8:10am
You will not believe what I just heard. You remember how I mentioned those two girls who have been here since Thursday? Well! Apparently they didn’t bring ID, and therefore didn’t get wristbands! I feel bad for them, but at the same time, I think that’s absolutely hilarious! Am I a bad person?

10:03am
We’ve got our wristbands! This year they are red, which means I lost the bet. I bet they would be green. I think next year they should be blue! Blue matches more clothes. Wow, they’re really sparkly this year…

So… wanna know the lineup for our stage? Here it is:
* Flo Rida (Simon is ecstatic)
* Akon
* Rihanna
* Simple Plan
* Hedley

It’s going to be a fun night. I was realllly tempted to go to John street’s stage, because they have the JabbaWockeeZ. Oh, and Girlicious. <3...! Haha, except not. Illscarlet (wooh, Canadian!) will be serenading us from the roof. Wow, talk about role reversal! Usually the serenading happens from below.

Wow, this has been a really fun 9 hours. I can't believe it's already MMVA time. Here's a picture we took with our flashy wristbands on. We have such a picture for every year. Pretty awesome.

Posted on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 12:20 pm by Matt and is filed under MMVA2008.

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