Unt Rammstein Concert Unt Frozen Chicken!
Adam, Rick and myself saw the Rammstein concert on Wednesday night last week. Adam and I were going to travel to Rick’s place together, but when I rang Adam he said he might be working a bit late.
‘You can’t work too late, you know,’ I pressed. I got a loud yell in response - something about him waiting for a 150mb file to be emailed to him from one of his clients.
I caught the train to Adam’s work, planning to hang around his office for a little while. I like Adam’s work - it’s cruisy and cool (like my work), but with free alcohol (most unlike my work). I phoned Adam when I arrived at his building’s lobby with my tongue quivering in the anticipation of sweet Victoria Bitter. The day was quite humid and I’d deliberately been working up a sweat on my walk to the building, in order to fully comprehend how well a beer can quench a thirst.
It was a little disconcerting when I got a repeat performance of his previous phone conversation, albeit a little more alcohol-fueled on this occasion. Distressing not only because I’d have to kill more time, but also because he had free alcohol up there in his air-conditioned workspace and I didn’t.
I walked around and got slightly lost before encountering a McDonalds. I bought an (unfortunately, very non-alcoholic) ice cream and sat lazing in the sun, watching pedestrians attempt to fight their way through the humidity. Weather like this can do strange things to people. I saw one lady trying to massage her head with a handbag. One man even banged into a pole as he walked over the road. He didn’t seem to notice, though; so I guess it was okay.
Suddenly, my phone treated the surrounding area to an analogue reindition of Ride of the Valkyries: Adam was ready to catch the train to Rick’s house. After I hung up, I thought the people behind me were arguing over if my phone’s ringing tune was the theme from Superman or not.
‘No, it’s not,’ I advised, happy to iron out any marital conflict.
‘What?’ gasped the woman, before turning to her beau in horror. He in turn gave me a look that suggested he was about to offer a free facial rearrangement consultation. I took the hint that the dispute was not about live action comic-book movie themes, but rather the status and impending future of their relationship. Looking at the McFlurry icecream in my hand, I decided I’d better McFlurry myself.
I located Adam shortly afterwards, and we began our journey to Rick’s house. Upon our entry to said destination, beers were swiftly thrust in our faces. I was thankful - well, mostly thankful, because it was New Zealand beer. What’s that saying about drinking cat’s piss if it was free?*
After a couple of hours of trying to convince Adam that he actually would enjoy the concert (’Trust me, the singer comes out on stage wearing a dildo, it’s hilarious’) we decided to make a move. A train ride to Newtown later, we walked the short distance to the Enmore Theatre to be confronted by all sorts of goths and metalheads. Adam won the Inverse Individuality award by being the sole person to wear a polo shirt.
After Adam had a frightful experience in the toilet - he claims he was worried about some of the freaks in there, and if they worry Adam they must be pretty mean - we sunk a few VB’s and headed into the theater.
The concert was all it was made out to be - Adam and Rick understood what the band was like as soon as Rammstein’s singer entered the stage in Terminator headgear. Oh, and the whole setting-own-body-on-fire thing, too. The concert is very much about showmanship and is very funny. Lots of fire, explosions, and German lyrics that nobody can understand but everyone seems to pretend they know anyway. The three of us later decided that you can sing along to any song (or even pretend to speak) in German, as long as you use the word ‘unt’ (pronounced ‘oont’) a lot.
After the concert, we thought some drinks were in order, so we legged it to the nearest pub. It was quite crowded and a very festive atmosphere. We were only standing around for five minutes while Rick slowly began to pale, then finally asked Adam and I if we could leave.
‘You know what’s going on in there, don’t you?’ he said.
‘No?’ Adam and I innocently replied.
‘It’s… it’s… LESBIAN NIGHT!’ he stammered.
‘Ahhh,’ Adam murmured. We hadn’t even realised. It was like that scene from The Simpsons where Homer is sitting in a lesbian bar, then exclaims ‘I know what’s wrong with this bar… there’s no FIRE ESCAPES HERE!’
‘I’m scared of lesbians, man,’ Rick shivered.
‘How can that be?’ I asked, a little perplexed. ‘I mean, there’s the whole you-being-gay thing.’
‘I just am,’ he replied flatly. ‘UNT LESBIAN UNT SCARY!’
‘Unt, unt,’ I nodded in reply.
We continued to the local gay pub up the road, which was devoid of lesbians due to Rick’s nightmare a few doors down. We ventured to the bar upstairs, which was quite cruisy if not for the barman’s slightly over-attentive offers of assistance to Adam. After an hour or two of some more drinks, I needed to use the toilet.
I’ve always tried to avoid toilets at gay bars. Some places are so eager not to discriminate against the slightly more blurred-gender-line patrons that they simply only have one set of toilets (trust me, you don’t want to see a drag queen exiting a cubicle in the process of zipping up in ANY toilet you’re about to use). I searched around the area but wasn’t able to locate a toilet of any sort. I gave in to the inevitable and decided to ask the barman for assistance.
I don’t like doing this. Such a simple question can have a vast meaning of difference in different situations. Let me explain:
At a regular bar…
What you say: Excuse me, I’m wondering where the toilets are.
What someone will decipher this as meaning: Excuse me, I’m wondering where the toilets are.
At a gay bar…
What you say: Excuse me, I’m wondering where the toilets are.
What someone will decipher this as meaning: Excuse me, I’m off my tits on E and want a fuck.
Thankfully, the barman had morals (or crabs) and decided not to follow me into the bathroom. The clock ticked on in the accelerated parody of time it always seems to perform while you’re drunk and the time came for the barman to kick us out.
‘You might want to head over to the Imperial Hotel,’ he mentioned. ‘They’re still going over there.’ We thanked him for his advice and left the building, setting off an alarm in the process. We stumbled outside, Rick got a quick fright from a passing bulldozer-type lesbian on her way home from the bar nearby, and we flung ourselves into the dodgy back streets of Newtown (history lesson: Newtown was originally founded by Roman settlers and named Squeezus Parallelus Parkus).
I’m not sure if anyone was navigating, but we ended up at the Imperial anyway. Or Unt Imperial, as we referred to it as the time.
Sadly, it was quite empty, and the fact that we started playing ‘If You Had A Gun, Who In This Room Would You Shoot First?’ probably wasn’t a good sign.
We decided it was time to leave when Rick said ‘I’m standing here in a pub that’s next to empty, with a fat ugly drag queen conducting a ten-pin bowling contest using ten bottles of mineral water and a frozen chicken that’s defrosting to the point of falling apart. I really think it’s time to leave.’
Rick remained so disturbed by the chicken (and possibly the lesbians too), that we realised he’d been holding on to his beer glass the whole hour-long walk home. Security beer, perhaps.
So: Germans wearing fake dildos, underground lesbian assault, frozen chicken bowling contest. All without the aid of LSD - and this was only a Wednesday night.
*Farewell, New Zealand readers!