Features:
- check in at a separate location, presumably to conceal the location of the wine tasting event five blocks away
- Welcome basket, including snacks and souvenir glasses
- Open bar. They did have a few things other than Josh's wine
- Hors d'oeuvres buffet with small plates, pretty well stocked with a variety of healthy foods and later dessert
- Station for reviewing merchandise from the @joshgroban.com store, with forms and pens, where you could grade the merchandise and comment on it, also a box for depositing reviews
- table where you could meet the lady who owns the vineyard where Josh's wine is made, and she would pour wine for you. Her vineyard did not burn though
- Station with pens, forms and box, for asking Josh questions
- Some tables and chairs, but not enough for all
- Coat check
- Security at entrance
- Restroom and small theater in basement
- Side door with elevator where Josh came in briefly to meet us
- photo session with Josh in theater in basement
- Surprise media review in theater after photo session with really tight security
- They actually called my home when I hadn't checked in by 5:30 due to last minute crises
inconvenient aspects
- hard for people with disabilities to get from check-in to venue
- No special basket for me even though I had clearly indicated food sensitivities
- Basket large and hard to transport if you weren't staying in the hotel
- Long wait outside of venue in extreme cold before they opened the doors and then for security and bag check
- The door to the venue was open during extensive security process making the place freezing
- long wait for food. Given that we paid so much money, they should have had larger plates and let us make a dinner out of it
- There was a long wait during second security to get to the surprise media review, someone fainted
- During the media review, I got a pen late, which distracted me and I think I rated the first song lower than I really felt about it
- Strange commute home. Got out late. Took the 12:20 train from GCT. They were demolishing the Tappan Zee Bridge that night, so they didn't want to run the train under it, so they had us take a bus for part of the trip, but I got home o.k.
Media review program
- animated music video with Josh and Tony Bennett singing a Christmas carol
- Five unreleased new songs for us to review and comment on: a power ballad, a soft pop/rock, a classical, a soft jazz, and a folk. I think Josh wanted to figure out which types we liked best.
- A live action music video with Josh and a children's choir singing a different Christmas carol
- MC was Tariqh
- There was a disembodied voice that Tariqh said was like the voice of Oz or God, but I'm assuming that was Josh disguising his voice. Perhaps he felt we would be more honest if he wasn't there. Perhaps he felt vulnerable exposing his little babies to review, Tariqh said he hadn't heard them before either
- Really intense security to prevent recording of unreleased material. No purses. Cell phones in locked pouches. Men's pockets, however, were not checked the way women's purses were.
This is more for me, so I'll remember. I hope I'll get to something more narrative. I did have a lot of nice conversations with Grobies
Link to tweet with short video https://twitter.com/skysong263/status/929421577648857090
Link to tweet with short video https://twitter.com/skysong263/status/929421577648857090
Addenda 11/20/17
OK I think I can reveal now that one of the videos that we heard during the media review program was this one. I think they did some video filtering on it since the time we saw
I must say, seeing this a second time, which I didn't notice the first time, that that little blond boy looks pretty miserable.
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