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Published: April 2nd 2008
View from Wellington Hotel Room
What do you do on Easter Weekend in New Zealand when most businesses and attractions are closed and you're waiting to go to a a two day rock concert?..... See next photo....Back in December the talk around town was the coming of a rock concert the likes of which New Zealand had never seen and would never see again. A two day rock fest summoning rock bands that scream late 70’s and early 80’s was to be held in Wellington over Easter weekend (in NZ, Easter Friday and Monday are public holidays). We just had to go, and decided the $300 per ticket would be a good investment to see musicians that we’d probably never see in person again, the likes of Ozzy, Kiss, Alice Cooper etc…..
It was a concert not to be regretted, despite the fact that as the day of the concert drew nearer the promoter realized he selected the wrong city and couldn’t draw the numbers he needed and slashed ticket prices.
New Zealand almost shuts down over Easter weekend, most businesses are legally compelled to close. I in all my brilliant genius didn’t realize this when I bought my flight to Wellington. I got there far to early in the day to sit around waiting for the rest of my group with nothing more to do than wait in the hotel room and read my
Answer: Play Drinking Games in Your Hotel Room
In this case Hamish drew my least favorite card... 10 or "S?it Mix", which is a mixed drink made up of whatever everyone else is drinking....beer, wine, sprits, soad... you get the idea. Poor Hamish. book. Fortunately I devised some work to distract myself with as I left the airport. Let me explain. Given that most bars and restaurants would be closed after the concert (thanks Easter) we knew that we couldn’t go out afterward to party, it was elected that we would bring the party to our hotel rooms, however alcohol essentially can’t be bout from liquor stores and grocers over the weekend… our brilliant solution?
Bring the drinks with us from Auckland. I drew short straw and had to bring the heavy and cumbersome beer bottles. My bag nearly exceeded the airlines limit of 40lbs, three-quarters of that weight were drinks.
I carefully packed my precious cargo in my bag preparing for the worst (in case of breakage) with, what I thought were water tight bags. I lugged my rolling suitcase to the airport and checked in without incident. As I was waiting at the gate for my flight to be called I heard my name. uh, oh I thought this can’t be good. I knew it was one of two things… either the airlines was going to tell me they couldn’t carry my cargo or two, that my bag was
leaking and demand that they inspect it. We’ll it turned out to be the latter. One of the bottles had broken and some of the liquid (Steinlager Pure - Bill) had escaped the barrier of the plastic bag and had managed to saturate just one sleeve on each of the shirts that I’d packed…my bag was smelling like a Sunday morning after a big party. The airline was great and gave me an even larger bag (human size - I wonder if they carry corpses in them) and let me repack and board the plane…. one bottle down. Well I arrived in Wellington knowing that I’d have to do laundry in the bathtub once I got to the hotel. The laundry part of the story is quite mundane so I’ll end the story there.
The two days of concert were great. Lots of metalheads, rockers, bogans, mullets, Mohawks, black t-shirts and face paint to be seen. By far I preferred the Alice Cooper and Poison for their performance skills and Ozzy and Kiss for the simple fact that I can now say I’ve seen them live. And I don’t feel the need to see them again.
On Ozzy.
While he still has the ability to perform and a good voice… he’s definitely showing his age. After each song he’d say the same line like it was his last song of the night…. “Thank you guy’s your great”. He had this problem of jumping up and down on stage and clapping his hands over his head, however about three jumps in he’d get halfway off the ground for his fourth leap and almost pause midway in air, fall back to the ground with a perplexed look on his face like he forgot what he was doing there at that moment. Yes, lots of F-bombs from the guy, which I guess his to be expected form him now after his tv show. He actually disappeared from the stage for about 8 minutes during his "live" perforamance and then came bursting out onto the stage with a great deal of energy (no wardrobe change so I guess they must have just loaded him up with speed so that he could get thru the rest of the night.
Wellington aside from the concert was great, expect for the lack of open venues. Of note one night after coming home after the
concert H and G thought it would be a good idea to wrestle in the hotel room, on the 12th floor, in a room with floor to ceiling windows. Fortunately they moved away from the window, but G ended up putting an enormous head shaped dent in the wall, after loosing his footing. Try explaining that one to hotel staff.
I’ve got a few more backdated blogs to update so please feel free to keep reading.
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Uncle Cliff
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Booze and Drugs
40 years of rock 'n roll booze, drugs and groupies will make you look and think like Ozzie Ozborne and act like Kiss and Ted Nugent