#54 Attend a Pink Concert



Truth be told, when Kristy's "Attend a Pink Concert" appeared on my bucket list, I didn't really know much about Pink. I knew of a couple of her songs, but I thought this was going to be a hard one, "What's the likelihood of Pink doing a concert in Australia?" I thought, "Has she retired or something?".

How wrong I was.

When Kelly send me an email mentioning that Pink was coming to Australia I thought I was in with a bit of luck - she's actually doing a concert here! I contacted Kristy and started talking to Kristy, Kelly and my housemate Bec about going to a show.

Well... Turns out that Pink is extremely popular here in Australia. The show sold out by the time that the group got back to me about tickets. Ugh. I didn't want to miss out on what I still naively thought would probably be my last chance to go to a Pink concert and tick it off the list, so I hit the ebay and bought some really expensive tickets off a scalper. Too expensive for Bec... She pulled out.

And so it was that one fine Saturday night Kelly, Kristy and I headed to the Sydney Entertainment Centre to see Pink's "Truth About Love" tour.

The first thing that was immediately obvious was the demographic of the crowd. There was a reason why my Mum had been telling me she was really jealous I was going to Pink - Pink's fan base are middle aged women. To a ridiculous degree. There must have been at least 10 women to every one man, and, rather pleasantly, I felt YOUNG at a music concert for once (certainly since turning 30 I've definitely felt like one of the oldies at most of the concerts I go to, so to feel like a young one is a nice change).

It was definitely going to be a first for me - not only was it the first time I'd been to a concert for middle-aged women, but it was also the first time I'd really been to a pop concert as such. To be frank, the pop concert part concerned me a lot more than the age/sex of my fellow attendees - I'm not the biggest fan of pop music and some little "individualist" part of my brain was telling me that there's no way I can like this - I'm way too unique for pop music dammit!



Bungie Jumping from topless men.
As you do.

So all this said, the usual next line is, "I was amazed from the very first song and Pink captivated me to the very end. So glad I went!"

Unfortunately, that's not really the case. I was immediately weirded out by just how showy the whole thing was. Here I am used to a band coming on stage and making music together... but in the very first song Pink came out doing bungie jumping from a trio of semi naked men, all while singing her heart out!

I stood flabbergasted. The music was entertaining and it all sounded good, but I had no desire to dance. I just wanted to watch the show and see what happened next. What sort of a music concert encourages you to watch rather than dance? A pop concert I guess (going off my extensive research of one pop concert).


More differences I observed from this concert to the average rock concert I might attend:

• No moshing. Everyone kind of pleasantly swayed to the music and sang along a bit but, like me, mostly just watching the show. Maybe things were a bit more excitable up the front, but it didn't really look like it. Certainly less energy that I'm used to. I didn't even need a shower afterwards!
• So many costume changes! Every second song Pink and her backup dancers would pop backstage for a moment to change into something else.
• Special effects! An astounding amount of effort had been put into the audio visual aspect of the show. Giant screens hung above the stage showing unique graphics for each song, fancy apparatus was used by Pink and the dancers to do acrobatics and entrances and exits were made from every corner, trapdoor or on stage elevator that could possibly exist on one stage.

Can you believe this is one of my best photos of the concert?
My camera doesn't like the dark...

The weirdest thing to me though was that lots of people had brought GIFTS to give to Pink. Every now and then she'd go over to somebody in the front row and they'd pass her a stuffed animal, or scarf, or Tim Tams, or hat, or whatever. Then she usually said thankyou, tried to say something about the gift and then add it to a massive pile at the side of the stage. So strange! Shouldn't it be the other way around? After all, we'd paid a couple of hundred dollars to be there, and it's not like the merchandise was marked down or anything! Shouldn't she be thanking her fans, not the other way around? This concept was so bizarre to me. I wonder if it's something that happens at other pop concerts, or has Pink found some way of making this a part of HER show? That when people go to see Pink they're expected to bring her gifts... And after a run of more than 40 shows in Australia, how many freakin' gifts will she have accumulated? Surely she's not taking all that stuff home. What's she doing with it?

I was still scratching my head over exactly these thoughts when Jimmy Slolina, the "host" for the concert came out to introduce the encore, one of the more hilariously revealing parts of the show. Why? Well, he came out and started organising a chant - getting the women to scream for an encore, followed by getting the men to scream for an encore. Problem was, when it was the women's turn a great shout came from the audience... but when it was the men's turn well, the only cheering you could hear was the quiet pre-recorded one coming from the speakers!

Anyway, Pink came out and did a very spectacular rendition of "So What" while swinging around suspended above the audience. It was indicative of a lot of the show - Pink belting out songs (without lip synching) all while doing energetic dancing/acrobatics. Even though I may not be a fan of her music, I couldn't help but be impressed by her as a performer - there's not too many people out there with a show quite like it.

According to Wikipedia, Pink's Truth About Love tour was the third highest grossing tour in 2013. In the nine weeks she spent in Australia, the tour made more than $100 million. Very impressive. She was the first artist to sell more than 250,000 tickets to Rod Laver arena in Melbourne, which she did during a record-setting 18 sold out shows. And I thought nobody really cared about Pink anymore!

As for our evening, there was just one *very* important thing left to do after the concert... planking!

 

Thanks for the enjoyable evening Kristy. I'm glad I went. Despite not becoming a Pink fan... and despite the damage it has done to whatever reputation I had as a young alternative male!

#47 Play board games for 5 days straight, stopping only to eat, sleep & use the bathroom

Easter was the perfect time to do this item: all Petra and I had to do was take one day off work and we'd have five days free to chill out and play board games all weekend. So first thing in the morning on the Thursday before Easter I packed a bag and headed to Petra's, where I'd be staying for the weekend playing games... only stopping to "eat, sleep and go to the bathroom".

Thursday

We'd invited people to join us at times over the course of the weekend, but as everyone was working, the first day was just us. So we set up in Petra's library and dived into a bunch of two player games:

Lost Cities
Classic 2 player card game that's got a simple mechanic and is always a favourite

Mr Jack Pocket
One player is Jack the Ripper... The other player must catch them!

Black and White
An angel and a devil influence innocent souls to do their bidding

Dominion
Some game I've never heard of

It was a bit dangerous once we started playing Dominion. As it is our favourite game and recently the online version we played had been taken down, we could totally see ourselves continuing to play Dominion all weekend. We ended up deciding to just play a few rounds, but to leave it set up in the library and to play other games downstairs. So the library became the Dominion domain, and we moved downstairs.

Mr Jack: The Board Game
One player is Jack the Ripper... but this time in board form!

Kieran joined us for a game of Booze Cruise. He beat us, so we didn't invite him to play anything for the rest of the weekend!

Friday

On Friday, we figured we'd do something a little different - board game championships were being held at the Hellenic Club in Woden, so we entered into the Settlers of Catan tournament.

Settlers of Catan tournament

Neither of us qualified for the final.

That evening, Kelly joined us from Sydney. She wasn't super enthralled by the idea of a full weekend of playing games, but figured she'd pop in and out, or read; as well as joining in for the occasional game. As there was a Ticket to Ride tournament at the Hellenic Club which we'd entered, we taught Kelly how to play Ticket to Ride.

Soon after that Quay also arrived and joined us for a couple of games.

Ticket to Ride
Build railway lines across America. Toot toot!

Tobago
Slowly narrow down the possible locations of buried treasure - then nab it before the others do!

Saturday

As Kelly had enjoyed learning Ticket to Ride, we managed to convince her to join us in the tournament on Saturday.

Ticket to Ride tournament

Unfortunately, given her inexperience with the game, Kelly instantly qualified for the bottom table, where she stayed for the rest of the afternoon. Petra and I fared a little bit better, narrowly missing out on the final (there was four spots and we came fifth and sixth).

Ticket to Ride tournament

Kelly has since got addicted to playing Ticket to Ride on her iPhone and owns all the expansions.

That evening we decided to up the geekiness factor - board games PJ party!




Zooletto
Build a little zoo by claiming incoming carts of animals. Kelly will let baby pandas die.

Zooletto - With PJs!



Trans America
Building railways lines across America... Sounds a bit familiar...

Sunday


On Sunday morning, we started off with a bit of Havana...

Havana
Managing resources and roles in order to build buildings in a fledging Havana

... and then Petra had invited a bunch of her board game friends to come round. They were board gamers indeed and brought piles of games with them... along with a desire to play really complicated stuff instead of the casual, mildly strategic, takes about an hour to play kind of thing that Petra and I had mostly been playing up to that point.

Puerto Rico
Erm... Managing resources and roles in order to build buildings in a fledling Puerto Rico. And there's trading

It was when I ended up with a group playing Eclipse that I really knew I was in hardcore gamer territory. They'd decided I didn't have a chance and didn't bother explaining all the rules to me... because there was too many rules to bother explaining to me....

Eclipse
Get confused trying to conquer space

I didn't have a chance, and spent most of the time watching the others have space battles with each other.

Eclipse + a whole pile of games

Monday

Last day! We were on the home stretch. Petra had invited people over again, but we didn't play Eclipse. Thank God.

Innovation
Really fun. Really random. Really like nothing you've played.

Terra Mystica
You're a race of mythical creatures trying to live in a magical world. There's mana orbs and stuff.

As the evening got later, and Petra's guests had left, we figured there was only one appropriate way to end the weekend - and that was by playing Dominion!

Yes, while it didn't look like it in most of the pictures here, pretty much any moment we had to fill in, Petra and I filled it with playing Dominion in the Dominion Domain (aka Petra's library).

Card Sharks

Nerdy Planking!

Thanks Petra (and Kieran) for having me for the weekend. It was fun, and I didn't get as sick of playing games as I thought I might. We tried out lots of new games and played some favourites as well. A nice way to spend Easter.

Thanks also to the team at the Toy and Game Expo for the pictures of the tournaments. The Toy and Game Expo is in July in Sydney; but they also run casual game tournaments around the country.
www.toyandgameexpo.com.au
http://tournaments.toyandgameexpo.com.au


Summary

For the record, Petra's favourite games over the weekend were:
1. Dominion - because even though Brad beat me two times out of three the variability and luck of the draw kept things exciting.
2. Lost Cities - because it was simple to learn, challenging to play and didn't take more than about half an hour!
3. All the various Ticket to Ride games - because you get to play with little trains (toot-toot!).

Kelly's:
No.1 Has to be Ticket to Ride for me, since I'm still playing it on my phone hehe.
No.2 I like to the Zoo one, its fun cute with animals and I won, twice :P

No.3 Hmmmmm I have trouble remembering what new games we play, I quite like the one we played with Quay, the treasure one! (Brad: It's Tobago)

 Brad:
1. Zooletto - It was an easy game to get into, with a nice theme. Plus you could play with each other's heartstrings by threatening to kill baby Pandas (by the way this isn't actually what happens in Zooletto).
2. Dominion - Always love me some Dominion, and Petra was a good opponent.
3. Tobago - Another game with a great theme. Who's doesn't like treasure hunting? Plus, the way you play the game is really original.


More Stats!

Brad won:
Lost Cities
Mr Jack (pocket)
2x Black and White
12x Dominion
Ticket to Ride USA
Ticket to Ride Nordic
Kingdom Builder
Tobago
Trans America
Innovation
2x Terra Mystica
Total: 24

Petra won:
Lost Cities
Black and White
6x Dominion
Mr Jack
Innovation
Modern Art
Total: 11

Kelly won:
Dominion
Ticket to Ride USA
Ticket to Ride iPad
2x Zooletto
Havana
Total: 6