Hannah Montana Screams into Town

The Disney Universe rolled into San Jose California at 4pm yesterday.
Hannah/Miley and her opening act, The Jonas Brothers, brought a polished show that had clearly spent a lot of time in rehearsals, and the set was on par with the flashy stuff I’ve seen at concerts featuring actual musicians...Go figure, it wasn't a Ken Feld Disney on Ice Production.

The Hannah Montana concert could have been as eminently unwatchable as the TV show that spawned it. Instead, from an adult’s point of view, it was, at the very least, better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick...Although just about as pricey based on the medical bill vs the 30-50 dollar t-shirt purchases that were going on.
Oh, my God, people. The shrieking! I’m not kidding, I nearly lost my mind because of it. Like, literally, my mind nearly snapped in half and came leaking out my lifeless ears like brain-scented Jell-O.
I have never heard shrieking like what revolved around the San Jose's HP Arena. This was a noise that was not meant to be heard by humans.

I have thought long and hard about how exactly to describe the shrieking to you. While words could never fully express the true, bone-crushing nature of that sound, I will try.

Imagine that someone has grabbed you and shoved you inside the trunk of a car.
Now imagine that your captor opens the trunk and tosses in hundreds upon hundreds of starving and highly agitated cats, a badger or two and 15 pissed off rattle snakes...
Now imagine that the entire car is dropped out of an airplane from 20,000 feet up.
The sound you would hear in the trunk of that car – for a few seconds, anyway – would be maybe half as shrill as the sound I heard at the Hannah Montana concert.

I really don’t think I’m exaggerating here. We’re talking about 15,000 little girls and 7 or 8 boys, all shrieking in full throat, all at once. It is now the morning after after the show, and the opening bars of “I Got Nerve” still cause me to involuntarily clamp my hands over my ears and wait for my nose to start bleeding.
Several times, they’d shriek for no discernible reason. My guess is that a few girls somewhere in the building would start shrieking about something, then everyone around them would figure there must be something worth shrieking about, so they’d start shrieking, and then moments later all the girls in the building would be shrieking, even though 14,997 of the 15,000 had no idea why. It was a mob-shrieking mentality.

Oh, yeah, while you weren’t looking, Hell froze over and Billy Ray Cyrus evolved from a mullet-wearin’ laughing stock into the center of the tween-tertainment universe. My guess is that the contract for his soul is right between Howie Mandel and Carrot Top’s in Satan’s inbox.
At least when Hannah herself came on stage, there was music to help overwhelm the shrieking. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to hear her music as I was when I realized it was drowning out the shrieks.

First, rest assured, your kids will love the show.
Second, if you don’t wear ear plugs, you’ll shave at least a year of good hearing off the end of your life.
Below you will find a short clip I shot of the SCREAMING, just in case you don't believe me...