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Day 138: Let’s Keep This Party Started!
Some quick-witted people are actually slow to catch on.
Take me, for instance. Owner of two iPods that I can never be without.
It took me until this week, more than four months Without Candy, to realize I have a drug addiction more powerful than sweets.
My favorite drug is actually music. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve craved candy and desserts since I was a toddler. But given the choice between chocolate and music – EVEN IF CHOCOLATE WERE BETTER FOR YOU THAN BROCCOLI AND CALORIE-FREE – I’d take music any day.
A friend surprised me out of the blue this week with VIP tickets for Pink at Nikaia Stadium in Nice. I love love love Pink, who at 30 could be the kid sister or even daughter (Yikes!) of my adored Madonna, whom I make the pilgrimage to see wherever and whenever she is on tour – in Europe or the U.S.
Pink writes or co-writes all her songs, doesn’t lip sync on tour, and has a killer voice that would take Madonna’s any day in an Auto-Tune bar fight. Artists like Pink give me the sweet surge to keep the party started when I can’t eat the candy and ice cream that i want. And she’s better than all desserts.
Pink is the world’s most underrated superstar. Her only problem is her hair – she wears it super-short, which pleases a segment of her fan base – but doesn’t do it for a public weaned on hypersexual, long-haired blondes like Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson. Check out her single about singers like them called “Stupid Girls.” Even Ellen De Generes wears her hair longer than Pink (who is married by the way.)
Pink has a beautiful face, especially when framed by long hair that you hardly ever see her wear. Wearing it dyke-short is her way of not crossing over to the girly, singing-challenged Taylor Swift (who can barely carry a tune in concert) side. But it costs her superstardom.
It was so fun to go backstage and hang with Pink’s tour coordinator Bill Buntain and crash into Joel Madden (of opening act Good Charlotte) at the buffet table. Right outside the door of the crew area was the massive container where Pink (and two stagehands) climb into at the start of Pink’s concert.
(If anyone saw Pink’s ultra-amazing Grammy performance, in which she performed her new single, “Glitter in the Air” in the air without lip-syncing (take that Britney and bitches), you may already know she’s a former gymnast and fearless to boot.)
Pink begins the concert by dropping down from the container, which is lifted high above the stage, and ends it by getting in a harness and soaring, Tinkerbell style, in a fabulous purple sequined outfit, high above the audience.
In between, during a two-hour concert marked by heat and humidity so intense she even said her makeup was melting into her eyes, Pink got inside a huge ball and rolled on top of the audience.
I know that in a way, in this day and age, rock stars are a dime a dozen. But they never cease to amaze me. Sitting backstage before the concert, when Bill was talking about what a “unit” Pink and the band and the dancers are, and how they all do the “Insane” workout every day in a room at whatever venue they are at – I still had to ask him how she does it.
What if you have a bad day? What if you suddenly get overwhelmed at the prospect of getting in a container and having a crane lift you up in front of 15,000 people and then drop you down onto the stage?
Bill has worked for other stars and says even when they have a bad day, the energy of getting out there and feeling the audience gives them the jolt they need to perform for, say, two hours.
For me, artists like Pink provide me with the music that forms the soundtrack of my life and keeps me inspired and happy. But they also do something more. I admire them the way I admire Olympic skier Lindsay Vonn, who once says she looks at a tough hill and figures out how to attack it. It’s not about letting the mountain attack her.
People like Pink remind me that there are humans who go out there and get on top of life, attack it, master it, perfect it – at least for one night.
They give me a rush that even sugar can’t match.
They show me that it’s possible.
