Well, it turns out that I should have listened because we were accosted at the door by a bunch of really rude chicks. I mean, dudes, I'm old enough to be their mother, and they were giving me the "OMG YOU ARE SUCH A DELINQUENT" attitude.
They wouldn't allow me to bring in my WINE COOLERS (don't laugh, I'm doing an entry on them, they're these amazing Thai wine coolers, very lame and embarrassing I know, but so delicious and only 5% alcohol so I can drink 4 in a row and not feel anything). Wine coolers...! There's more alcohol in my morning pee than in a dozen of those! But I played nice and said, "Let me leave them here at your desk so I can go inside and pick up the tickets first."
I was gone for less than a minute, and when I got back, the wine coolers had disappeared. They had actually asked someone to hide them, and DL told me later that one of the girls had had a hissy fit and tried to get them to throw the wine coolers away.
Jesus fucking Christ, it's so true that if you give someone a little bit of authority or power, they'll seriously go nuts with it.
So DL and I had to spend some time outside the Hangout drinking up all our alcohol. Not really a problem with me, although DL wasn't sure if she wanted to drink all of hers up in one go and was thinking about just smuggling it in. Since I didn't bring a bag, I wanted to accost a young'un and bully them into bringing the drinks in. Also, I was convinced that they would try to search us. However, we ended up drinking everything anyway.
This is where we stayed:
And here's the other shitty part. We went to the toilets first to pee, and WE GOT FOLLOWED. What the fuck? Like they were expecting us to do what in the toilets? Snort cocaine? I mean, EW, how tacky is that shit? I don't do dirty-ass street drugs. I was raised to be a fucking lady (I'm not joking) and no classy dame walks around with coke boogers in her nose.
Seriously, getting stopped and searched by the cops is one thing, but being treated like a criminal by CHILDREN is just insulting. I guess I should be flattered that I look young enough to be treated like a peer, but COME THE FUCK ON.
Anyway, so this kind of ruined our mood, and it was not helped by the first band we saw perform. We'd missed out on two other bands while drinking outside, but if they were worse than the one we saw, then we dodged two bullets.
I'm not going to write mean stuff about the bad bands since it's just a waste of time. Shit is shit, no matter what smell or texture or colour it is. Instead, I'll focus my energies on praising the two good bands that we saw.
The first band that put a smile on our faces was Die In Velvet. DL had seen them perform 4 years ago, and she was excited to see them again as they had apparently broken up and only recently reformed.
They're a hardcore band, and you can listen to their music on MySpace here. Loved their performance, even though it was very short. So much energy, and the lead singer, Ian, is extremely charismatic onstage. He chatted with us after their performance as he was passing out flyers for another show. What a sweet, humble kid!
The other band that made us dance around was Tonick. Ah, what a fun performance! I'm so glad the show ended with them because they really made me happy. They are a pop punk band, kind of like Richie Ren meets Blink-182. DL and I kept raving to each other how likable the singer was onstage. Just charming and cute, and the band looked like they were having so much fun together, which is so important.
This is what the Hangout looks like when the lights are on. They had a raffle draw at the end of the show.
Holy crap, this dude plays in one of the bands (don't know which one), and he has got some crazy fucking style. I only took a picture from the back, but dude can DRESS. In fact, there were a lot of really styling kids in the show, DL and I were very impressed.
ps. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of growing up listening to Richie Ren, here's a live video of one of his silly, fun songs. I loved this as a kid.
I know Richie looks dorky and sweet (and that's part of his charm), but man, when he got together with Johnnie To (along with Wong Kar Wai, my favourite film director), he turned into a fucking BADASS. Here's his scene in Exiled that made me go on a huge smoking bender. My poor lungs! He starts in at 4:00, and to put a context to this, the movie is about a bunch of hitmen who have to do one last job in order to save the life of their buddy, but the van full of gold that they're supposed to rob gets ambushed by another gang first. Richie plays one of the security dudes in charge of defending the gold. Ah, just watching that scene again makes me want to pick up a pack of Marlboros and a rifle.
By the way, if you haven't seen the movie (and you should!) it will spoil the hell out of it. He was also really fucking cool in Breaking News, another Johnnie To film. You really have to respect Johnnie To for turning Richie from the gentle boy next door to a motherfucker.
