A Night With an Idol

When I was in high school, Billy Idol was probably one of my ultimate fantasy men. That sticky uppy hair. That sneer. That way he punched at the air in time to the music. The way he looked when crooning "Eyes Without A Face". I honestly hadn't given Billy Idol much thought since then, other than during my last relationship (my ex named himself after Mr Idol when performing stand up), but somehow ended up with two tickets to see him at Hammerstein Ballroom last night.

If you had told me that everyone and their mother was attending this show (literally...there were little kids there, with their parents) and that almost every single one of my friends was fighting me for the extra ticket, I wouldn't have believed you. But holy crap, Billy Idol is one popular motherfucker. People of all types were shoving their way into the venue, to get as close to his plastic face and overly gelled hair. It was insane.

There were tons of old bitches and assholes, such as myself, reliving their high school years...and some of them clearly still dressing the part. We saw lots of dudes with Steve Stevens hair,wearing their sunglasses at night, and chicks in leg warmers, paint splattered clothes, bad leggings, and ankle boots. On the flip side, there was one dude in a pink shirt and flipped up collar, who was playing air guitar with gusto. I'm horrified to say that I was finding myself strangely attracted to the pseudo heavy-metal looking dudes, it seems that I still have a thing for guys with crazy hair (ed note: um...who didn't know that?)as I found myself trying to stand close to them and smell their shampoo. Well, the ones that actually showered, of course.

The concert itself was pretty fun. Billy puts on a good show-he does like to change his outfits several times throughout (and at one point Steve Stevens did a really long guitar solo, probably to enable Billy to not only change his ensemble, but to touch up his plastic face which may have been melting under all the lights). He does also like to show off his incredibly pasty white, hairless chest, and flex his non-muscles.

He played some new songs, but mainly stuck to a familiar playlist, including a lot off of Rebel Yell, some Gen X stuff, and all the poppy crap that got played on the radio when I was in college. His final song was "Mony Mony" and I was absolutely MORTIFIED that he indeed added in the chorus "get laid, get fucked". I just looked at Kristen in horror. All we could do was laugh.

I'm not sure I would have paid for those tickets myself, but hey, there are worse ways to spend an evening than a night with an Idol!