Happy Birthday Dear Sanjaya Videos
Three weeks ago I wrote some stuff after my yoga retreat that triggered another fan war outbreak between the Fanjayas in rickey.org, dazeoffire and votefortheworst.com. The sanjayafans.com kids were not involved (although they would be in another fan-upheaval just last week, LOL). Thankfully, like many things in this volatile Universe, the issue subsided, and I was off to making birthday plans again as I got things off my chest.
To be honest, I thought it would be difficult to pull off a birthday song if we just sang on our own at some point in the concert. I thought that it may be easier if the band started playing music to queue the audience. So I wrote Momjaya an e-mail (my first) about the Fanjaya birthday plan, and she responded enthusiastically to the idea and said she would work on it.
She also wrote that she had gotten word about my angsty post, and basically wrote in her e-mail that I was Sanjaya's #1 supporter through thick and thin. She had been informed countless times about what we had done for Sanjaya here in the blog, and that they, the ones that really matter, have nothing but love for Rickey. Cool. The Malakars are Rickeyjayas and they love me. Yay! A couple of e-mail exchanges later: I had a ticket to the Washington, DC concert from Momjaya, and an assurance that the band will play. As you guys know, everyone "got working" because the song is happening. People made flyers, and made plans to come to DC and not miss this event. Basically, we all panicked. Hahaha.
HisOneAndOnly flew in from Houston. Coco flew in from St. Martin in the Caribbean. Sprout flew-bussed it from Toronto. IslandMomma flew in from Los Angeles. Pooja made a last-minute decision to fly the day of the concert from Cleveland, arriving just in time for the best parts. While in Atlantic City I sensed that the DC concert would be a great chance to meet some of the Fanjayas on the boards, so I nagged Teanzane to come with us pretty much the entire time I was with her in AC. I was able to convince her -- but she went back to New York from Atlantic City by bus Sunday morning, and then from New York to Washington, DC in the afternoon. It thrilled me that everyone, not only myself, would have a great story to tell, about this night because of the lengths that they had gone through just to be there.
Little did I know that we would be in for such a treat. Not only did we get the birthday song we thought would be the coolest thing in the world, it was led by Shyamali. 10 Fanjayas show up as "torch bearers" and we get treated to VIP status by Momjaya (everyone had a backstage pass). We ended up going to a separate room for our Meet and Greet with Sanjaya, complete with 2 birthday cakes and Martinelli sparkling cider (a Sanjaya favorite apparently). We got to spend maybe a good one hour and a half with Sanjaya, Shyamali and Momjaya -- and everyone had a chance to get a good one on one with him. For some reason, some people needed a bit of an extra push (in the beginning everyone was just standing around Sanjaya pretty much not knowing what to do with themselves), so I helped people out a bit. HisOnAndOnly got very shy and looked like she was going to wilt in a corner, GirlyGirl got shy about telling Sanjaya about the Ninjaya book she made, etc. For godsakes do something, he's here. Hahaha.
Sometime during the party, some people came down to meet Sanjaya. Momjaya told us that the girls that came down were Saudi Arabian princesses who watched the show. There were also some Blaker girls who came down. A young boy. And then all of a sudden, Melinda, Jordin, Haley, LaKisha and Phil were in the room -- and they mingled with us! Not the typical Meet and Greet where the fans line up to meet them -- they came down to meet us (and have cake).
We spent a long time with Sanjaya and at about 11:40 PM, the venue staff closed the lights to get us out of there and Sanjaya had to rush to the tour bus to get his stuff (since he was flying to Chicago today -- will tell you what happened there tomorrow or Wednesday, hopefully with pictures). We walked out of there pretty much in a daze -- and the place was closed for the night and we had to look for the one open door. I was thinking: I really hope these guys remember what happened because my memory was already getting blurry. Can we really forget? But then again, the experience was a bit overwhelming and most of us needed to travel. Perhaps all the individual reports will paint a better picture of what transpired last night.
It was a great night. Could not ask for anything more. Hopefully these two videos will bring all of you who weren't there to the high we all felt.
Torch reports at dazeoffire
Sanjaya Birthday Song:
Birthday Cake
Fanjayas in an elevator:
Today is Make the Charts Monday!
Buy the Sanjaya Malakar -- EP on iTunes
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