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November 04, 2005

520: "It's from their new album, You Were Late."

With a sense of Nineties nostalgia, we laced up our combat boots and trudged over the Garden for Nine Inch Nails ("I call it Ninnnn"). For the record, none of us were actual NIN fans, but we came ready to give Trent a shot -- I mean, the guy's been at this thing since '88, he must be doing something right.

You see, it's the NIN fans that have colored our opinion of the band for so long, not the band (and by "band," I obviously mean, "Trent Reznor"). Unfortunately, our concert experience only reinforced some of our snobbery about a small but highly annoying portion of the NIN fanbase. The situation at the Garden could be best described as: "This is what it's like when worlds collide."

There were pockets of teenagers in trench coats, aging gamers, and packs of frat bros ready to get all aggro in the pit. We should have caught NIN's last NYC visit, when the crowd was of a higher caliber and included MOGpac members. We didn't. We showed up at the Garden where I immediately sensed that roughly 20% of the audience population wanted to get seriously PWNED. We respectfully declined and, being among the portion of the audience old enough to indulge in such behavior, enjoyed several beers sipped through straws.*

The audience included Michael Pitt of Tommy Gnosis fame. Kate points out that he's gotten legitimately heroin chic lately, although notably less "chic" than "heroin." The kid looked like he just fell out of a dumpster, seriously, but his date looked like Boo Radley, so all things considered... I guess looking like a hobo isn't so bad.

It's hard to not feel for the guy, though. Didn't he charm you in Hedwig? Doesn't he seem like he'd want to copy your calc notes? Let's forget his turn as a "round featured Goth" in Murder by Numbers (not to be confused, as I inexplicably do, with Jared Leto's Panic Room). And -- obviously -- let's forget that before he made a career of looking homeless, he bore a disturbing resemblance to someone I dated (oh, young love... so stupid). You've got to like a kid who, despite being basically kinda famous, clearly has nosebleed seats at a freaking Nine Inch Nails concert. That's a quality in a minor celebrity!

Amazingly, the audience didn't seem to include our previous minor celebrity sighting -- that Juliya girl from Fuse. She appeared to be headed elsewhere, given we saw her getting a taxi two blocks from the Garden. Maybe she just wanted to arrive in style, stepping out of a banana yellow Crown Vic at MSG but I doubt it. You'd think she'd be all over the NIN show but, mysteriously, she wasn't.

Perhaps the most notable member of the audience (outside of the fabulous members of our own runnin' crew) was the girl who sat right in front of us, who provided her own form of entertainment throughout the show. She arrived phenomenally late (hence, the title of this entry), just as Queens of the Stone Age were finishing their set. She flopped into her seat and turned around to screech at us, "OMG! WAS THAT THE LAST SONG!? OMG! I'M SO *beeeeeeeeeeep*! I LOVE THE QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE!" This message was repeated in various forms to other people in our area, including her friends, who appeared to barely tolerate her existence on this planet. (Understandable).

We stared at her in disbelief as she spent the rest of the night dancing like a fat Michael Jackson, getting into a screaming match with security, offering words of wisdom about Nine Inch Nails ("This is the best Nine Inch Nails song ever.... well, it's in the top three"), and freaking out whenever possible. You know you're a problem when a stick-thin Goth girl screams at you to shut up -- or, I guess a sane person would know that because when the wee girl sitting next to us spoke up and told fatty to shut her trap, fatty was baffled. Fatty was equally baffled when my phenomenally laid back brother told her to her face that she was annoying all of us. It seemed nothing could stop this girl's mission to be a pain -- not Chris's kindly put venom, not the anger of underage gothlings, not my piercing stare of death.

But then I had a revelation -- isn't this why we're here, watching Nine Inch Nails? Weren't we once emaciated teenagers with dyed hair and enough misdirected anger to asplode a microwave oven? Well, one third of our group may have fit this description but it's the third who blogged this so let's accept it as a universal truth.

So I spent the rest of the concert happy in my nostalgic rage, grinning smugly at fatty because I had the power to put my thumbs right in her eye sockets but simply chose not to. We were there to rage in a cage with the underage, and ended up doing that... I won't say "literally," because I really hate people who misuse the word "literally." We're living in the adult world, going to our adult jobs... but we've still got that teenage rage that puts a spring in our Gothic step.

Of course, while all this is going on, there were actually bands performing. On stage. Amazing, I know.

Death from Above 1979 were not worth mentioning. QOTSA were, as Chris promised they would be, fantastic. Josh Homme is a big man in a little shirt, but if he'd yelled out in a shrill voice "ARE YOU READY TO ROCK!?" we would have answered, "Yes. Yes, we are." And whatever snobbery I had about NIN is now dead and buried -- the show was awesome.

I wondered what Trent could still be so angry about at 40, and now I know. He went from being a social misfit in rural PA, to an aging, litigious rocker living in LA. What's this guy got to be all enraged about? I'll tell you -- the man has 'roid rage. Clearly. When did this little guy asplode? If you were wondering what he's done in the past few years, other than have dreams about Quake, the answer is: he whaled on his pecs.

If only he would whale on that irritating fan-girl's face -- man, that'd be so sweet.

* At first, we were understandably not cool with our beers being served in plastic cups complete with covers and straws. But, truthfully, I really liked not having my cup get sticky from beer spillage. It's embarrassing to be seen drinking beer like this but I have to say, I'd be more embarrassed to dump my beer in my face just because it was dark and I couldn't quite figure out the distance between the cup and my mouth. Not that this has ever happened to me. *cough* *cough*

Posted by ashley at November 4, 2005 11:43 AM

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