your fate is my toilet

son in law eggs at 'hawker bar'

rating: 1997 Plymouth Voyager / 10.0

NXNE Part Two

We reached Yonge & Dundas Square to the rackety sounds of Hollerado finishing their set, and we grabbed some free promotional ice cream, energy drinks, and candy -- the trifecta of early traumatic death foods. We entered an adjacent building to use the washrooms, wandered around some video game section for a bit, and then waited for my friend's girlfriend to arrive. He told me he was supposed to break up with her that day. When she arrived, there was some form of awkward tension in the air, and I stood around unsure of what I was supposed to do with myself, as they traded some sparse conversation. He was sitting on the floor, so he got up and hugged her.

We then went outside towards the stage for the Oberhofer set. Oberhofer is a Brooklyn pop band named after their frontman who sings 'ooo, ooo, ooo' a lot -- likely because his name is Oberhofer. Oberhofer finished and 'of Montreal' was to play next. Their lead vocalist was a painted and flamboyant soul with an exposed chest. They had a lot of gimmicky theatrical side acts composed of people wearing vulgar costumes. These troupes came on stage every other song to dance. Near the end, two superheroes in capes came on stage and eventually threw themselves into the crowd. Except, they did not crowd-surf in the truest sense of the word crowd-surf. Instead, they flew like superheroes, carried by the arms of the audience. If it wasn't for us, and it wasn't for their spandex suits, they wouldn't have been able to fly as they did.

In the middle of one of their theatrical farce-prop displays, my friend said he was going back to his place for a bit because his leg hurt. When the song finished, he weaved his way out of the crowd, and I was left there standing awkwardly next to his girlfriend. 'of Montreal' eventually finished their set; at this point I was pretty intent on starting some sort of conversation, if not out of humanity, at least in an effort to lessen the situation's strangeness. Maybe it was the ritual of obligation I was embracing again.

The thing was, before I could start, she started. We talked about music, concerts, parents and sheltered lives, Action Bronson, and Toronto restaurants. Our fragmented conversation was far more bearable than I had first imagined it would be. I actually, in many ways, enjoyed the conversation. It did eventually die off however; The Flaming Lips were taking an unearthly amount of time to set up. We were both about to see why though. It was probably 40 minutes after they were scheduled to play when you could tell that the show was finally beginning.

Now this was the grandest show you could imagine -- if not the most memorable someone could experience. The background semi-circle jumbotron all of a sudden opened one of its panels, and one of the members of The Flaming Lips stepped out through the door frame, followed a few minutes later by another member, and then another. At this point, the jumbotron was displaying a naked woman appearing to be preparing for child birth. Wayne Coyne suddenly showed up, I think he came out of the screen wrapped in this mess of plastic. I'm pretty sure he was supposed to be a fetus or something. The plastic around him started inflating, and before long he was standing, arms raised with an uncontainable smile, in a perfectly round plastic bubble. That was when he launched himself into the crowd and began rolling around to the insane ecstasy of the crowd below him. He eventually rolled back to the stage, somehow tore himself out of the bubble and began singing. Not long after, streamers and confetti began pouring down and a bunch of gargantuan balloons filled the sky above the crowd, and it became ten or fifteen minutes of pure and unadulterated ecstasy and joy.

The show continued on its meandering path, trickling down to a sorrowful and heartfelt outreach to the Radiohead family who had lost one of their crew members in a stage collapse just over at Downsview Park that day. They did a beautiful cover of 'Knives Out' and continued on with some more of their beautiful songs, 'She Don't Use Jelly' personally being the highlight of my experience. By this time my friend had come back to catch the tail end of The Flaming Lips show, and his girlfriend told me she was going to go find him. The remainder of the show was this visceral and transcendent wall of noise droning mysteriously into the night with a waving blanket of green lights radiating from the stage and syncopated lights fading on and off in the city sky. The show finished off with more confetti and streamers, but I couldn't leave when it finished because I had dropped my camera lens cap during the show. It took me a while to find it under the blanket of confetti apocalypse. There were bubbling false hopes of an encore at the same time as well, but I eventually found it.

I went by the beer garden to find the food trucks I had heard about. One called Food Cabbie was there with a special NXNE menu. I had three chili pork tacos with lime cabbage and tropical fruit for $7. I also grabbed some deep-fried oreos for $3. My friend came to find me, and took me to JOEY where he had grabbed something to eat with his girlfriend. I finished my food truck things outside, and then went inside for a bit while they finished up. Their bill was paid and we hopped onto a subway, and my friend and I got off at a transfer spot while she continued on to wherever she lived.

As we walked towards the other platform, my friend said to me, "That was a pretty terrible break-up, eh?" or something like that. I laughed a little. We hopped onto the westbound subway. We found a newspaper on one of the seats, and worked on a crossword puzzle together the whole way home. He said he was going to do it on Monday instead.