Sydney: On a Night Like This

Apple is late. 

Normally Apple is never late.  With Fatigado in tow though, he is on occasion prone to being anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 hours late.  It’s not Fatigado’s fault.  He is Mexican.  And generally very tired. 

I’ve never been to Mexico but after meeting Fatigado my impression is that the other 111 million people who live there would all be similarly entertaining and delightfully contradictory:  tired when you should be awake, awake when you should be asleep, highly excitable about small things like stairs but excessively laid back about things like gunshot wounds; tall but short, thin but fat, honest gangsters and sympathetic criminals, hardworking idle farming corporate executives, really savvy facebook users, and all steadfastly patriotic about their tacos.   

I have this completely baseless image of the country being a little bit similar to Fiji.  Fiji, with its highly annoying ‘Fiji time’.  Or as I like to call it, Bula Time.  Or more appropriately, Bullshit Time.  If you have ever been to Fiji, you will have no doubt been subject to it. 

At first it is endearing.  You are a tourist after all and in no rush for anything.  Bulllaaaaahhhh, the locals hoot and wave in welcome as they slowly amble over.  Eventually, if you’re lucky, they may even bring menus.  And if you happen to catch them on a particularly attentive day, they may even take your order without you pestering them three times.  After that though it’s a lottery as to whether you’ll get your food any time soon.  If in fact at all.  Why?  Because if asked, they’ll tell you that it will come in ‘Fiji tiiiimmmme’.  A person could die hungry before being fed in that place.  My advice?  If you find yourself in Fiji and you suspect you will be hungry in an hour and a half’s time, order immediately.  You have not a moment to lose.

I know it might look like me,
but it's actually Kylie

This time though, the Sydney traffic is to blame.  And in fairness to Apple & Fatigado, mid-week Sydney peak hour traffic can always be to blame for just about anything.  Plus Kylie Minogue is in town for her second Aphrodite concert.  And we’re all going to see it.  I know.  Gay as.  In honour of Kylie I made sure I wore a sparkly top especially for the occasion.  In honour of the water theme, I made sure it was aqua blue.  And in honour of Ancient Greece, I made sure it was a floaty, see-through fabric.  I even wore my fawn-coloured suede high heels I bought in Athens while backpacking.  That's right.  High-Heel Backpacker does Aphrodite.  Unfortunately minus the Dolce & Gabbana.

Because Apple is a gallant, kind, thoughtful friend who has just bought himself a swanky new car he has offered to battle the horrific Sydney traffic and drive from one end of the city almost to the other in order to pick me up. 

As we waste a tank full of petrol idling in traffic while moving in tiny 1cm increments, Fatigado pauses in the middle of his latest facebook status update and, from the comfort of the red leather upholstered front seat of Apple’s new BMW asks if we have far to walk once we get there.  It’s not laziness (he swivels around quickly to make his point) it’s his sore leg – the one he hurt.  That’s what’s worrying him.  Out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of movement.  The hands have started to wave and flutter.  Just a little, but the potential for a meltdown is there.

Unfortunately Fatigado is a little ahead of himself though since the three of us won’t be walking anywhere anytime soon.  We are jailed in a centre lane in the heart of an unmoveable CBD gridlock.  We might only be roughly 200 metres from our destination as the crow flies but since we’re not moving an inch*, no one will be walking anywhere.  Kylie Aphrodite will just have to wait. 

Fatigado would have none of it.  This is the very night he’d spent his entire World Trip pestering Apple for.  As Apple so candidly put it, he’d been banging on like an old screen door for months about seeing Kylie (he loooovvvvesssss Kylie) and a bit of gridlocked Sydney traffic wasn’t about to stop him.  He’d come this far already.  All the way from Mexico really.  Fatigado would rather die than miss Kylie wiggling and shimmying her Locomotion while every other queen in Sydney (except for cousin Wilma) converged on the Entertainment Centre to watch it, snap it, text it, facebook it, upload it, tweet it and talk about it for the next century. 

I’ve seen our little Kylie in concert before.  In around 2002, 42@42 and I decided to make a last minute (what a surprise) dash to the box office on the night of her mid-week concert and see if we could score a couple of seats.  Score we did.  Front row and only ten pink feather boa lengths from the stage.

This time our seats might be further afield but we were smack in the middle with a direct view of the entire replica Parthenon spread before us.  Not a male dancer’s abs, acrobat’s upside down flipover twirl, famous Kylie bottom wiggle, glamorous designer costume change, sparkling boot or heel,  or water jet squirting over the expensive and exclusively designated Splash Zone would be missed from this vantage point.  It was gold.  No really.  We paid for Gold Tickets.

Apple has many talents but the one most prized on a night like this was his ability to make his new BMW behave like a Vespa and dart in and out of horribly congested traffic with only the faintest touch of delicate swearing and one or two mild honks.  I’m surprised he didn’t just get Fatigado to download an app that sounded like a siren and drive on the opposite side of the road like an ambulance would.  I was right there and I still don’t know how he managed to weave his way through it.  If it were left to me we’d still be sitting there in that traffic right now. 

Meanwhile, at the Kylie end of town the Husband sat alone in the Pumphouse Bar, waiting.  Having fixed his face into his most menacing “fk off this table and three empty chairs are mine” scowl (which quite frankly if you knew the Husband, wasn’t very menacing), he fought the Aussie Pub Battle of the Spare Seat War and was currently winning.  I might point out that this was no mean feat with Kylie right next door and ten thousand other people prowling for precious table space to rest their VB* on.  How much longer he could hold off being pummelled to the floor and tied to a spare pole while other aggressive Kylie fans stole his table was anyone’s guess.  If we didn’t get there soon, push would soon come to shove.

It wasn’t long after we arrived to rescue the Husband from a certain and thorough ball-kicking that Fatigado started to come to life.  I’m not sure if he actually logged off facebook but he certainly put his iPhone in his breast pocket long enough for his little face to begin to light up with anticipation.  In fact, if you’d been monitoring Fatigado’s status updates that day, you’d have been able to read about just how excited he was (well, almost – if you could understand the combination of Spanish, Youth Speak and abbreviations).  From what I could gather from the number of responses though, all of Mexico City was just as excited for Fatigado as Fatigado was for himself.  He and Kylie would soon be in the same room.  Together finally.  Just him and Kylie.  Plus a small entourage of hundreds, and ten thousand of her closest screaming fans.   

Kylie is fitted by Dolce & Gabbana

If we’d known there was to be a support band though we’d never have given up the table the Husband had spent all that time so bravely defending.  It seemed only 43 other people didn’t know either because when we arrived promptly at 8pm for Kylie, that’s all who was there.  Poor old Gypsy and the Cat (I know, never heard of them either but they seemed like a polite bunch of lads with an affinity for white t-shirts) were never going to garner any support from us.  We just wanted them to leave and bring Kylie out immediately.  It was a school night after all.

When the lights finally dimmed and the filmy white curtain lifted to reveal the Parthenon and a diminutive little Kylie perched at the top of a set of gilded stairs, the iPhone cameras went crazy.  Fatigado was beside himself with excitement.  Perched on the edge of his seat the entire time, he stared in rapt attention, hung on Kylie’s every warble, ogled Kylie’s every gorgeous Dolce & Gabbana outfit – each one more elaborate and impressive than the last - sang all the words to all her songs, and I think I saw him shed a tear or two when she finished her last encore. 

It has to be said, Fatigado has good taste.  Little Aussie Kylie knows how to do Spectacular.  She changed costumes more times in two hours than I could count with two hands and both feet, and all in under 20 seconds flat.  No sooner had she disappeared into the shadows underneath the Parthenon wearing what looked like an enormous black wedding dress, than she was being launched from a secret new entrance beneath the imposing Doric columns standing aloft a scantily clad male-drawn gold chariot wearing a new white and gold see-through chiffon caftan.  She had a team back there who could rival even the swiftest of Formula One Pit crews. 

I was pleased to see Kylie’s infamous cut-off denim shorts finally make an appearance.  As the concert progressed I confess I started to worry that all of her signature hotpants had been put out to pasture which would have been entirely unacceptable.  Fortunately Kylie didn’t disappoint.  While more Coogee Beach than Ancient Greece, the tiny denim shorts coupled with what looked like a to-die-for pair of glittering stilettos (only one pair out of a hundred reportedly worn that night) certainly sent the crowd beserk.

But it wasn’t until the water jets started spraying over the expensive Splash Zone, the crowd got wet, Kylie started addressing the crowd, and a little girl called Ashley came forward with an offering of a simple bouquet of pink roses that Sydney’s loyalty and adoration were firmly cemented once again.  Kylie had exceeded expectations for extravagance and charmed the audience with her Aussie unassuming nature.  Us Aussies - we like that in a person.  There's a real art to ditching the movie star attitude, the arrogance and just behaving as though you’re an ordinary person on the street and a few notable Aussies do this well: Hugh Jackman, Pat Rafter, and our little Kylie.  

So to rate the concert with an Aussie stamp of approval, I give the whole thing a two thumbs up.  I'll even throw in a couple of Mexican tears of joy, just for good measure.

*Did you see that?  The switch from metric to imperial measurements?  I throw these little tests in just to see if you’re paying attention.

*VB: Acronym for ‘Victoria Bitter’, an Aussie full strength beer made in Victoria (no surprises there).