I went and saw Pink at the Sydney Entertainment Centre last night. I thought I was going to see a concert but it was actually an all encompassing experience that involved far more than just a bleach blonde acrobat with tattoos singing while hanging upside down over a stage. Firstly there were the pre entertainment formalities to be taken care of. The concert started at 7.30, we turned up at 8 still almost an hour before anybody vaguely Pinklike showed her face.
Prior to entering the venue there was the obligatory facebook check in as absolutely everybody I was with announced to the world that they were at the Sydney Entertainment Centre to see Pink. Frankly with this level of disclosure I'm amazed more people don't get burgled.
"Don't worry about the owners, they're at a Pink concert."
I would push this theme a little harder with snide comments about addiction to facebook but the sad truth of the matter is I also posted a status update announcing my presence. In my defence I didn't "check in" and in my update I poked gentle fun at my comrades who did but honesty compels me to admit that this was just camouflage. I hid behind my shelter of general sarcasm while screaming to the world, "Hey look at me! I'm at a Pink concert!:" Let's face it the only person who is likely to care about my presence is Pink and that is only because I paid for the ticket. Actually since I paid in advance its more than likely that she couldn't care less whether I actually turned up or not thus reducing the number of interested people to zero.
Once the facebook ritual was completed there was the gauntlet of the merchandise stand to run. Only we didn't run it. My friends strode right up to it and offered ridiculous amounts of money for clothing with the word Pink! on it. I like to think they have collectively lifted a Bangladeshi family out of poverty. I did not succumb to the temptation to buy a Pink affiliated t-shirt, nor did I get a Pink glow stick or a Pink clutch purse or a Pink anything else. My friends pretended to express surprise at my refusal to buy a Pink t-shirt but seemed less pleased when I told them that of course I was going to buy one. Its just that I'm going to be buying it in six months time from a second hand shop for fifteen dollars.
Having finally got inside the venue of course we had to have a glass (and by glass I mean little plastic cup) of pink champagne or at least pink fizzy stuff with an alcohol content. Savouring what must have been the product of grapes that even the grapevine was glad to get rid of we wandered in to where the concert was actually going to begin (although not yet). The warm up band was called Herman Wouk I think and they were pretty good. Unfortunately they stopped soon after we arrived to allow excitement to build to Pinkworthy levels.
It was fascinating to watch the crowd which would cheer whenever anything happened (and frequently when it didn't). Naturally there was a Mexican wave (to welcome an American performing in Australia but whatever) and this led me to comment to a friend that a quick glance around explained exactly how dictators managed to get started. Seriously if Pink had come on stage at that moment and said "Kill the Jews" we would have been herding the chosen people into cattle wagons before you could say "anti semitic diatribe". There were great cheers when an akubra hat appeared balanced on top of Molly Meldrum and even more cheers for reasons I was never quite able to discover.
Finally when all the preliminaries had been satisfactorily dispensed with Pink appeared and began performing. She was awesome!
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