Dear Taylor Hicksth...

It wasn't until almost 5:00 yesterday that I realized, "Ohmygod, Amanda and I need 'Soul Patrol' shirts!" So I popped over to Michaels on the way home from a four-hour wedding-planning session and got two plain black t-shirts (youth mediums, to give the illusion of stylish baby tees) and iron-on rhinestone letters.

Amanda was a little late coming to pick me up, which gave me time to make the shirts and put on, like, a ton of makeup. When we got to the casino, the valets dicked us around for a while, so that by the time we got in to the concert, we'd missed about the first 15 minutes. So instead of showing us to our real seats, the ushers put us in the most convenient seats, on the end of the row - two rows back from what I'd paid for! We quickly remedied this, joking with one usher in particular, a robust black man with a lazy eye, that we'd happily sit in any empty seats he had even closer to the front, because "Taylor needs people up close!" We didn't win that one, but we did climb into our own seats, between two little old ladies, in front of a couple "hip and fifty"s, and behind a guy with a big, bald head.

And that was pretty much the demographic for the show. What happened to all Taylor's young, American-Idol-loving fans? Don't get me wrong, the old people were totally into him: the lady next to me had binoculars (which she offered to share with us) and kept waving at the stage and yelling "Taylor!", much in the manner of the gay guys who'd been calling out "Britney!" at Tuesday's show. But it was sad, and kind of awkward, that we were pretty much the youngest people there.

At one point, we decided to get up and dance, because nobody really was, except some girl on the end about 10 rows in front of us, and a group with neon-poster-board signs that we couldn't read from across the lawn. We felt like idiots, dancing to a song that was slow in the verses and picks up for the chorus, but we went with it - at least until the women behind us asked Amanda if we could please sit down, because they couldn't see at all. Amanda tried explaining that we were dancing, and that they should too, because it was a concert. "Well, no one else is, so please sit down," one of the women retorted. Amanda was furious. We kept thinking of things to say to them, like could they please stop taking pictures, because the flash was reflecting off this guy's shiny bald head and blinding us; or could they please stop singing along because we just want to hear Taylor. Towards the end of the concert, Taylor encouraged everyone to get up and dance, and we overheard one woman say to the other, "Well I guess we just have to stand up, since everyone else is." Ha! In your face!

Taylor gave an encore number (unlike Britney), and then, as the crowd was dispersing, we formulated a plan to find and meet him - since we'd just missed doing so after the American Idols tour last August. We approached our usher friend and asked, "So is Taylor jumping right back on his tour bus, or should we go try to find him hanging around the casino?"

"Actually," our friend said, looking both right at me and off somewhere to stage right, "there is going to be a meet-and-greet tonight!" He then went on to explain that it was by wristband only, and that he didn't know how we could get a wristband, but that we should go ask the people inside. So we got bounced around from authoritative-looking person to authoritative-looking person, until we finally found a group of people with big red stickers standing in a roped-off area by the stage door. They were headed by a little man with a taupe suit and a Napoleon complex, who was asking that anyone who had a V.I.P. sticker put it on and line up over there, and that the rest of us needed to exit the lawn so his staff could start breaking down.

We found the nearest usher, a young, relatively attractive Latino named Felix, and asked him how we could get V.I.P. stickers. He explained that the stickers had all been given out already, to people who had arrived early (not us) or who'd been in the right place at the right time (curses!); then he talked to us for a while, heard our sob story about how this was going to be the second time we'd just missed Taylor, and apologized, really seeming to mean it, saying that if there was any way he could get us in, he would.

We were amongst the last of the people being corralled out of the theatre, and just as we were going to check out the merchandise (not that we needed t-shirts; a few people had already commented on, even asked us where we got, the ones we already had), cut our losses, and go home, Amanda noticed who she thought was Taylor's guitarist, walking out behind us. "Maybe he can hook us up to meet Taylor," she said. "Should we go flirt with him?"

So we did. The guy, who turned out to be the sax player, not the guitarist (we obviously misjudged the size and shape of his instrument case), also turned out to be really nice - and cute - and much older than he looked (myspace stalking reveals early 40s). We complimented him on the show, asked about the ups and downs of being on tour with Taylor, asked him what he really wants to do with his career... and then got to the point.

"So... Can you help us get V.I.P. stickers?"

He couldn't. And he wasn't going to see Taylor again that night to be able to hook it up for us later. "Are you staying here tonight?" he asked. We weren't. In retrospect, maybe we should have: had we really just turned down breakfast with Taylor? "If I could help you out, I would," he said. Second person of the night to tell us that. At least that felt good.

It was hard, standing there talking to Taylor's sax player, trying not to seem like crazy psycho fangirls. Amanda's shining moment of the night was when she asked if we gave him our email addresses, maybe we could be Taylor's "email pen pals." My shining moment was when I sort of blurted out that I was getting married soon, and that my first dance song with my groom was going to be "Places I've Been" (a Taylor Hicks song, obviously). We both did a lot of backpedaling, trying to reinstate that while we're fans, we're not crazy fans, and if we ever do get to meet Taylor once, we swear we'd leave him alone afterwards.

"I know, I believe you," [sax player] said. "You two are sweet as sugar." And he meant it. Awesome.

In the end, we did give him our email addresses - just in case - and our snail addresses, because he'd promised he'd "get us something" - presumably a signed photo or the like. And he gave us his email address, so we could look him up and friend him on myspace. Which is why I need to get those trenchcoat-and-underwear photos uploaded stat, so that Amanda and I can have cute new profile pics, so that [sax player] will be reminded of how adorable we are. He is, after all, our prime connection to Taylor Hicks.

Yep. Not crazy fan girls at all.