Apocalyptica

I had become, and still am, extremely tired by this weekend’s affair; I think that air mattress is to blame. We sold some shirts, shot the shi* and showed all of Millersburg that there is nothing to fear from behind the ominous black curtains. And, Iron Man rocked us out of our seat, which is a definite plus.

So…I promised a few people I would write something about my little adventure into New York to see Apocaliptica. We passed countless bars and restaurants attracting Cinco de Mayo customers with drink specials and “authentic” Mexican dishes. We, my good friend Brice and I that is, took the PATH in from Jersey City, which is looking surprisingly clean lately.

So New York was… New York. In the first two minutes I saw three well-dressed bums, heard four different languages, heard someone giving directions to a foreigner, heard two lame (attention starved) street poets, a delivery biker wearing tin foil on his helmet and about sixty tons of garbage (not people, actual garbage).

We made our way through the city from 14^th Street and opted to have a few at a nearby local Irish pub due to our being early. Paul the bartender was quite happy to see us and made it difficult to leave. We then followed the winding entrance line around the corner to find Brice’s brother in law and his friend waiting patiently for us, and their tickets. We grabbed a quick “dirty water dog” to prevent starvation and made our way in without incident to make a second stop at the bar where the bartender gave me too much change. We waited while a DJ played some Freudian Winamp Visualizations on a movie screen and played some decent metal and hard rock. When the venue filled they lifted the curtains for us to see four extremely high backed chairs with giant skulls worked onto them. Each musician came on and started playing slowly before a climax of head banging rock unleashed itself upon the audience.

All in all it was a very good concert. I didn’t get a size 9 upside my head by some retarded crowd surfer. There weren’t too many pretentious teenagers and some drunken chick grabbed my ass. The band played on their Finnish roots and spoke with high squeaky voices that did not go along with their demeanor or appearance at all. Thus, they needed singers and opted to get Adam from Three Day’s Grace and “whatshisname” from Fuel to sing a few of their songs.

Three encores later, the general message of the evening was revealed to me by the often ridiculed “she-male” looking lead guitar…ahem…cellist when he dryly said “Shut up while we play some classical music.” and the crowd of drunken miscreants responded with “WOOO!”

I corrected myself back there because he plays the cello better than any guitarist, plucking or using the bow; it is the most intense thing I have ever seen. They often wanted us to get rowdy and jump around, but I believe that we were all just mesmerized by the fact that we were hearing awesome versions of Metallica on cellos. We just wanted to be witness to it and not interact with it.

We made our way out without problem. My bad luck strikes again as the usher ran out of free $20 itunes gift cards when the guy standing right in front of me got the last one. We all debated doing something after the show until we finally began looking for a restaurant. We found a cute hole in the wall called “Chat n Chew” where I got a delicious burger and pondered some things about “tallys”.

We took the PATH back to NJ and made our way home. I passed out in the car on the ride to and from our destination.

I have been getting yelled at for sleeping in ever since. Hopefully I can get some normal sleep tonight.