A Night with John and Hank Green Tour 2017

To help promote the release of Turtles All the Way Down, John Green did a tour with his brother Hank. I had to attend, even though the closest venues were over three hours away. I live in Toledo, Ohio, and I bought a ticket to the event in Cincinnati. It was a long drive, especially all by myself, but the show was amazing and I'm glad I got to see it. Here's some pictures I took and highlights of the show:

I was very worried about finding parking. I'm actually constantly stressed about parking every time I go anyplace new. There was a spot open right by the tour bus and it wasn't blocked by an orange cone. I was worried that it was a trap of some kind, and sat in my car for a couple minutes because I thought I would need to move, but it turned out to just be lucky timing, I think.

We started with John Green reading from Turtles All the Way Down. He read the end of chapter five, from pages 45 to 47. It's a good choice for a reading. Then he talked a bit about the book, Aza, and mental illness.

Dr. Lawrence Turtleman gave a scientific lecture. It was pretty silly.

After that, John and Hank sat down and answered audience questions. My picture of this is terrible. This was the part where one audience member had a special question for his girlfriend, who he met at the John Green event for The Fault in Our Stars. I'm so clueless sometimes and was actually wondering what he was going to ask her before my brain turned on and was like, "Ooooh." Anyways, they got engaged and it was fairly adorable.

That's from John Green's Twitter page.

After that, Hank Green played some songs for us. There was a funny one about how the universe sucks. We did a bonding exercise where we sang "Sweet Caroline" but we had to keep completely silent during the "Ba ba ba" parts. The show ended with a singalong that John said is his anthem of 2017, The Mountain Goats' "This Year." It's a lovely song, and very inspiring actually.

"I am going to make it through this year if it kills me"

Here's the swag bag that came with the ticket price.

Contents of the tote: autographed copy of Turtles All the Way Down (My second autographed copy), program, and tour poster. The tickets weren't terribly priced, considering you also got the book and considering how popular the Greens are.

I decided to buy the special limited print poster. It's really cool, though I bent it in half trying to store it in my tote.

So, I'm definitely glad I decided to attend the event. At first I was going to rent a hotel room to stay in after the program, but I decided to just drive home. It was kind of a mistake. I kept drinking bottles of water and singing Fall Out Boy lyrics in my head to keep going. "If I can live through this, I can do anything..." Shut up, it inspires me. My biggest regret is that I wanted to make my famous sugar cookies for John Green, but decided that I probably wouldn't be able to get them to him. There was a table to give them gifts, though...maybe next time?