cimorene

We went to see Lady Gaga yesterday.

It started hailing 5 minutes before we left the house.

waxjism became flustered & forgot to wear her jacket or bring the map she printed out. She became soaked walking the 5 blocks to the train in said freak hailstorm. It later dropped to +1°C (when we walked home from the bus at 3:30 am, that is), and she was just wearing a hoodie and t-shirt.

A Finnish redneck couple got on at the first stop and sat across the aisle from us, next to a pre-teen child and her mom who were sharing a muffin & reading quietly. They ordered the cheapest, nastiest Finnish beer - Lapin Kulta, aka (I am informed by morningfine) reindeer piss. Then they proceeded to pour it into plastic cups, spread out, and have a loud, obnoxious conversation. They left their half-full cups and non-empty bottles all over the tiny table when they finally left, and when the train pulled into the station these fell and spilled beer on the floor and seats and the pre-teen girl. Also, the woman was wearing the most horrifying jeans I've ever seen, adorned with a white embroidered stylized fugly daisy pattern about 6" across. There were like, five of these giant daisy embroideries on each leg, centered, starting at the ankle and going up to the thigh, and the denim was CUT OUT in the center of each petal on all of them, providing a horrifying window to her flesh & socks sticking out of her hideously ugly ankle boots.

The merch shirts weren't stunningly eye-catching or anything, but the one thing I regret not getting to buy was the photo books, which were going for 20€ and definitely worth it. Big 8x10 size book full of gorgeous full-page photographs.

Things Finland is Unclear on the Concept of #1,600,042: Stadium Food I was startled that the stadium food was so similar, although they were missing the nasty Velveeta nachos and hot chocolate. I bought some popcorn, figuring that I could at least console myself with salt and fake butter in my boredom, only to learn 15 seconds later at the doors to our section of seats that you can't have stadium food in the stadium. Yes. It's like... stadium HALLWAY food, or something. Do they have baseball in Finland? Do people walk up and down the aisles, in that case, selling hot dogs and pretzels, only to say after you hand over the cash, "And now you'll have to go eat that outside"? I tried to eat about a liter of popcorn as fast as possible, leaning uncomfortably on the wall and watching the parade of teenies headed for the floor. There were some truly awesome Gaga costumes and some great wigs, but also some horrifying strapless shirt/strappy bra disasters.

The openers weren't even ready to come on yet, so the beginning of the show was... okay, the stage was set for the openers, but there was a DJ table in the middle of it. And behind it was a woman in knee-length jeans, red boots, and an open red karate jacket, doing a combination of dancing, miming, push-ups, and... stuff. For the next hour. To the worst playlist I have ever heard, including that wedding where a woman at a keyboard sang nothing but shitty Your Mom's Radio Station pop ballads by bands like Five for Fighting. Wax informed me that the torturous assault on my ears that continued even when I put in earplugs and covered my head with my arms, was a 90s metal playlist featuring Guns'n'Roses, Rage Against the Machine (the only bearable track) and Iron Maiden (the worst of the lot). I wouldn't even recognize the Iron Maiden song I was forced to listen to; it was too featurelessly boring, while also being loud enough to keep you awake if you hadn't slept in 36 hours. It sounded like a really, really loud "AUUGH AUGH AUGGHH" (Wax says this is a "thrash" sound)(She also said the playlist was "nothing but the classics - like somebody's wedding playlist", so... there's a wedding I'm lucky not to have been to).

Gaga was amazing! *_* Of course, most of the audience - okay, I'm exaggerating; that was the other weird thing, there were a good third of the people who stayed sitting even when she was up there screaming repeatedly for the audience to get on their feet - got on their feet, screaming and applauding, when she made her big entrance to "Dance in the Dark". And in the middle of it - while waxjism and I were clutching each others' forearms fiercely and bouncing up and down to the music - we felt an obnoxious bony finger poke us in the shoulders. Some half-balding little dude in a buttoned-up-to-the-neck polo shirt behind us - probably in his 60s - asked us to sit down. We were exchanging completely dumbfounded looks like, "What?" And apparently he went on to say, in Finnish, that in the seats you're supposed to stay seated. (Wax theorized on the way out that he might have never been to a concert other than chamber music before, but surely he noticed how the openers had already spent some considerable time yelling for the audience to get on their feet? Or how two thirds of everyone was?) We sat down right then - against my inclination, which was to flip him off - but the first time Gaga asked us to stand up (at the end of the song) we were on our feet again, and obeyed every such command regarding hands, screaming, dancing, jumping, standing and singing along throughout the show.

I'm still not over this cold and am in the coughing stage and had made a resolution not to scream. Yeah, I gave up on that at the third song. Whatever. I did refrain from screaming as loud as I could... but I unfortunately discovered that with my cold I can't scream as loud (or as high) as I usually can anyway. Which is a bummer because screaming is usually my favorite part of a show (or gymnastics meet. I miss my hometown's nationally-ranked ex-Olympian-filled women's gymnastics team).

Gaga made a bunch of amazing, inspiring dippy hugbert speeches and called us all her little monsters. She compared a stadium full of fans to family time with her parents and told us to leave the show not loving her more, but loving ourselves more. waxjism and I kept cracking up. For a while I felt a swell of earnest desire to do as she commanded, but I'm not sure if I even have that much hugbert in me. I've been a cynic basically from the womb, so whatever. Gaga also said to embrace everything about yourself because you were born that way, so fuck hugbert pressure. LADY GAGA COMMANDS IT is a very satisfying excuse.

The costumes were AWESOME, and some were familiar, but they were not all the same as her fall US tour (thank you obsessive concert pic posters on Tumblr)! I was bummed at missing some of the ones I've seen pictured but I was also excited for the new ones I saw.

THE MONSTER AT THE MONSTER BALL IS THE LANTERN FISH FROM FINDING NEMO, LIKE 20 FEET HIGH, WITH A BUNCH OF TENTACLES! IT TRIES TO EAT GAGA BUT SHE VANQUISHES IT WITH HER SPARK-SPITTING LASER GUN BOOBS AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH THAT WAS THE MOST HILARIMAZING ENDING OF ANYTHING. EVER.

Excited for her new album! The track she played wasn't truly new (Wax says it actually debuted at Sir Elton John's birthday?) but it was still fun. Very classic rock vibe.

The huge, teeming hordes of humanity all poured down the walkway to Pasila train station (I say this as a misanthrope with social anxiety: my reaction to a horde of humanity is about the same as my reaction to a horde of maggots, or the reaction other people have to snakes and spiders). We were still in the midst of a crowd all the way to the big bus station in Kampen. When we got to the bus platforms after a long hunt for water we found the area around the Turku platform overflowing with people waiting already. Twenty loud, shouting, giggling teenies arrived in line after us, shoving up close to the door and elbowing in front of people, so everyone already waiting was quite anxious about getting a seat, which meant for the last 15 minutes all of us were standing. Even when the bus arrived they continued this behavior and 10 or so elbowed in front of us just while we were in the part of the line going through the door. The joke was on them though, because after the regular Salo-Turku bus filled every seat, an extra bus driver took all the rest of us in an extra, unscheduled bus on the same route. It was mostly empty, dark, and quiet, and everyone got to spread out with seats between them and anyone else. I'm also fairly sure I saw their bus still waiting at Salo to take on more passengers when we pulled out after dropping half of ours. The bus ride was cold and I wasn't able to take off my hat or gloves (although Wax got hot and took off her boots, of course), and of course we walked home through the aforementioned +1° weather at 3:30 am. At least it wasn't actually snowing! And I got tea with honey when we got back, which did a great deal to restore my spirits.