The Jonas Brothers – Day 2 a Trip to the Cool New Office, and More Factual Insight/Correction

Waiting for the Pandemonium

Fans waiting for the concert with their posters

I tuned in just after 4:00pm and there was a line outside the concert hall with Jonas Brothers fans — scores of teenage girls waiting for the big event. Some had posters, others were making posters — large posters. Jonas Brothers’ handlers were outside working the crowd. They had an over the hill appearance and way about them. It made me feel even older than I felt when I woke up this morning after just 4 hours of sleep. And I realized, once again, that I am in a demographic that just can’t relate to something like a teenage boy band. I thought quickly back to my teen years and who I adored and lived for and it was confirmation that I am more than someone who just can’t relate to the Jones Brother’s genre — I grew up on the Beatles and Monkey’s phenomenon. The screaming my girlfriends and I did in our rooms with the cheesy portable plastic record player in monaural (mono) sound as the cheap needle scratched the coveted vinyl with each heavy dance step we created as we bounced around the floor was simply — crazy. And what I am hearing as Nicholas, Joseph and Kevin make their way to the stage is on par with how we acted decades ago. The music may change, but human nature doesn’t.

Arriving at the concert hall

The boys did a sound check and the mic was so hot it was too loud to listen so I backed quietly out of the stream and headed over to Jeffy’s where things were heating up. His room was inundated by Jonas Brothers fans and the chat was out of control. Jeffy and the regulars engaged the girls in all kinds of negative comments about the teen idols and it created near pandemonium as Jeffy saw record viewer numbers. He leveraged the teen craze and drew in viewers in double the numbers of a normal afternoon. It didn’t put him at the top of the lifecasts, but kept him in the top half, at least until I had to leave to make dinner.

The chat was uncontrollable with spam in all designs

I was wondering how the girl’s parents would feel if they knew what kind of subjects and language was being spoken in the room this evening. But then again, I would imagine a lot of these girl’s parents are using the internet as a cheap babysitter and there could be much worse things they could get into than chat in Jeffy’s room.

Why Complain?

I am not so sure why people are so upset about the hoopla surrounding the Jonas Brothers? Some think they are just trying to make money. Isn’t that what it’s all about, working to make a buck? Isn’t that something we’d all like to do? So, a lot of teeny boppers have been hanging around JTV the past 24 hours. Once the concert is over and the memories are a thing of the past, viewership will probably go back to normal, but I am ready for the next thing to cause such a stir.

The boys on stage

In the room tonight I mentioned how I remember being just like these girls, that I would have gone to the end of the planet to see Todd Rundgren — that I did go to the end of the earth (the little area I was living in and had the ability to get to) to see him. I went out to the palace grounds in Bangalore with tens and tens of thousands of people on a rainy night to sit in folding chairs on muddy grounds for a whole lot of money to see Elton John just a few years ago — 2003. I didn’t stand up and scream, but I enthusiastically got into the event, while the people around my friend and I sat almost silent during the 3 hour performance and did little more than offer up golf claps. I am sure if I enjoyed the kind of music the Jonas Brothers performed and if they were not minors, I’d be into the craze that’s going on at JTV tonight as well.

It just makes perfect sense to me and the only thing that bothers me is that lifecasting wasn’t around sooner!

The JTV Gang Hits Success Tonight

The fratboys have created a buzz and have shown us that they know how to draw an audience and tonight they showed that they could stream the before, during and after performance action without much problem.

Waiting for their teen idols to appear

The cameras don’t do a great job of clearly capturing motion, but until the industry starts creating hardware specifically for this type of medium, I doubt there is much that Justin and team can do to improve things. It surely didn’t seem to cause much angst among the fans.

The Brothers hand out hugs to the fans — all I can think is — eeek, germs! 🙂

Is a JTV Team Term of Endearment Soon to Be Warranted?

Is Justin going to miss the casual dress of the fratcave office environment?

When I saw Justin conducting business this morning in his underwear from his bed, I had to laugh. My friends and I would often talk about how fun it would be to do the multitude of conference calls we all spent our days conducting or attending in our jammies on days we would work from home, but I could never bring myself to do it. I have always had a fear of the camera getting turned on by accident. As a child I dreamed of the days of video phones, and now that they are here, totally ubiquitous, I resist the technology at all costs!

I can’t imagine how business would get done with all the distractions, no matter how beautiful or not the people on the screen were. Even more than being judged on my looks, I’d be consumed by worry about what the other person would think of my capabilities as a business person.

JTV Headquarters

Tonight’s vegetable

I tuned into Justin’s stream and caught the tail end of the fratboy’s visit to the new office. I am very excited — they chose a really great piece of property. I still think it could end up being a money pit and that it is not necessarily the type of set up I would have gone with if I did not want to spend $$ making some structural changes, but I would love to live and/or work in a space like this. To me, it’s the perfect spot to foster creativity.

Well, enough of that. My point here is this — I started calling Justin, Emmett, Michael and Kyle The Fratboys many months ago. I fully realized they were not all frat boys in the true sense of the term, but their living, eating, working, partying behavior quickly brought to mind my summer living in the ATO house on the American University campus as a way to not have to move back home waiting for the fall semester. There were about 5 guys and 2 other girls living there that summer. It truly was a fratcave. Downstairs, in the walkout basement level was a kitchen, or what realtors would have called a kitchen, but which I never once used. It was something the CDC would have liked to come take samples in. The living room, in what I imagine was at one time a really beautiful space with large plate glass windows around 2 walls was a dangerous place.

Slice tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, top with fresh basil, EVOO, balsamico, salt and fresh cracked pepper — Voila!

In the middle of the floor, in front of the fireplace was a giant hole — right to the bottom of the house — directly above the kitchen. When my folks came down for a visit, I had to warn them to be careful. The fratboys had cleverly put a thick rug over the hole to cover it up, but as I saw my dad walking precariously close to the space where I knew the hole was, I screamed! STOP! My room was not large enough for anything more than a twin bed and a small night stand. It was horrible living conditions. Some nights or mornings, I’d look at the door which didn’t quite close all the way, and see someone’s face up against the crack looking in at me. It was more than creepy.

Frats were not big at that time and especially not a big deal at AU and this was one that seemed to attract guys with sloth-like behaviors, so that’s what came to mind when I saw the JTV guy’s and their living conditions. Especially at Crystal Towers. It’s been a bit better in the current place, but the name stuck.

I am beginning to think that with the move to the office a new term of endearment might be in all of our futures. It will come to me once I see how things are going.

Ideas?

Viewer Counts and Popularity

I knew that there was a chance that some of the questions I raise in this blog would be answered by someone on the JTV team from time to time and I now have answers to the questions I have raised about viewer counts that we see in IRC and site chat and the popularity rankings for stream positioning.

It appears that Justin is usually appearing as #1 in the streams on purpose. Many people still come to the site looking for him or his stream and as a result, he still most often garners the top spot, and Wild94 embeds their stream on their own website, so although we may not see the numbers in chat, there are still a lot of viewers which is included in the stats. And this often places them in the #2 positio

So, that answers a couple of outstanding questions.

Interesting, right?

Now, I have one last question. Where the heck has Yalie been the past 24 hours? This Jonas Brothers thing seems to be something that would be right up his alley, that he could get a lot of mileage out of. He’s missed all the fun. I can’t even imagine what may have flown off his fingertips had he been here.