galactic: bounce baby feat. z-trip
do you know what my favorite pair of pants are?
VIP PANTS!
and on saturday, i got to wear the crap out of them. henri and i were invited by a lady who works for red bull to sit in the VIP section during flugtag.
now, if you’re like me, you read “flugtag” and think: hmm. perhaps it’s a giant game of tag! played all over zilker park! with teams in different colors and bases and heart-stopping chases and lots of skinned knees!!!
if you’re like me, you may be disappointed.
ok, but not tooo disappointed, cos flugtag is actually really neat. it’s a contest where teams build something that will fly and then attempt to launch their aircraft off a huge pier in the middle of town (i mean, lady bird johnson) lake. lots of teams enter the competition with drawings and themes, but only twenty-five are chosen to compete in flugtag. you get points for how far you can go AND for creativity in design, theme, etc.
you can read more about it and check out more pictures here.
but you know what you won’t see on that official site? the vip section, baby!
that is why i, posh deluxe, exist to blog, for you.
first, here is the entrance to the whole shebang.
yikes. i know. it was like ACL, but without the religious protesters and people selling pipes.
the vip section was located by a little gazebo along the water and THANKFULLY in the shade. guys, there is no WAY i would go to flugtag if i had to stand around in the sun with the plebs. first of all, cos i am the Pale Queen. second, cos prols smell bad when they get sweaty.
here’s henri and carrie, enjoying the shade and FREE BEVERAGES (i’ll get to that in a minute). tim was there too, but he was up in the judge’s stand. as the night wore on, i gathered from his pronouncements that the judge’s bar is even *more* generous than the one in VIP.
there were also lots of people standing on the first street bridge. in the hot, austin sun. for hours.
again, prols confuse me.
i do, however, commend the people who came in boats to watch the show. first of all, it’s cool to have an aquatic audience, yeah? second, they got a much closer view than most people. third, they may have owned those boats and therefore NEED TO BE MY FRIENDS IMMEDIATELY.
who wants the other half of my BFF necklaaaaaace?
but let’s get back to the VIP action.
there were two bars, and both of them were plastered with the red bull logo:
and guess what! you could get a vodka red bull, a gin red bull, a rum red bull, ANYTHING YOU WANT… with red bull. that was the only mixer they had.
guys, a warning: it’s better to drink too much alcohol than to drink too much red bull. i don’t care WHAT our government tells you, it’s true. after two mixed red bull drinks and a can to top it off, i was toast. i couldn’t see straight. i had flashbacks to college when amber and i pulled an all-nighter together and sent random emails about cadbury eggs to everyone in our address books and ended up jumping on the trampoline at 5 AM and shrieking like people in those LSD public service announcements.
i was totally tripping on red bull. and i was so excited! i was so excited! i was so, i was so… SCARED!
fortunately, they also had beer.
notice my sweet VIP pass. i’ve never gotten one of these before!!!! it was just like when wayne and garth get BACKSTAGE PASSES TO ALICE COOPER!
around 6:30, the competition finally began. with red bull coursing through my veins, i could not WAIT to see all of these vehicles fly and CRASH into the lake with people flying out of them. U.S.A.!
coincidentally, my former craytopia co-worker, marlana, had a son on the second team: ready to drumble. inspired by spinal tap, their project looked kinda like a stage with a band on it. as i soon discovered, all of the teams focused a LOT of energy on the artistic vision and not so much on the whole aerodynamic thing.
check out ready to drumble’s attempt:
hey, at least the top kinda flew. that’s more than i can say for most of the teams.
and they even threw in the drum kit! major!
several teams into the competition, i realized that none of these things were gonna fly. earlier in the day, carrie told us about her own flugtag submission idea, involving a rubber squirrel suit. i kinda sorta thought she was crazy, but by the midpoint of the show, i figured that a person in a squirrel suit could fly farther than any of these vehicles.
meanwhile, the VIP party tent was slammin’ like vicci on a saturday night! complete with blue lights!
there were some radioactive umbrellas lodged into the ceiling so that people could feel like they were at a rave sponsored by morton salt.
as i continued to stick to beer (i got my effing wings, red bull, ok? are you happy? ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?), a few of the teams suffered some pretty big disasters. this one is probably my favorite (and by favorite, i mean, i’m really sorry this happened to you after all of yr hard work, team! i wasn’t laughing AT you. i was laughing… cos of red bull. it was all red bull’s fault!):
were they supposed to be like the caterpillar from alice in wonderland? eh? maybe i was just experiencing an RB hallucination.
and the winner for most OUCH: this pilot should have focused less on flying and more on moving his body *away* from the craft.
if you want to see a close-up of one of the teams, here’s a little video henri took from one of the screens:
from that angle, it looks kinda professional, you know? a little bit death-defying even! i may have gained new respect for… ok, no. after watching 25 crashes, there’s no respect here. but amusement? sure! and a belly full of free drinks? i consider that a day well spent.
ok, now somebody crush a bell in their bare hands so i can lose my red bull wings.
LINKS
insta-happy: feist on letterman with members of the new pornographers, mates of state, broken social scene, grizzly bear and the national! guys! call me next time! i’ll bring pizza! let’s hang out!
i can’t believe it, but it looks like texas might be going a little easier on the wacky tobacky.
GUNS GUNS GUNS! WE LOVE GUNS! MORE GUNS!
uh, president bush? um, yeah, you’ve uh got some uh… vajay-jay on yr face.
Ah, Red Bull, unofficial sponsor of my medical residency. I couldn’t have gotten through all those weary nights without your ridiculously sweet, potentially carcinogenic goodness … I don’t know what the hell it is, but taurine sure puts a sparkle back in my bleary eyes.
holy crap, i cany believe you referenced the greatest episode of Saved by the Bell ever.
and that tetris clip is kind of crappy, tetris blocks only have 4 squares, i will refrian from the cheap mexican knock-off line…oops.
We had sobe bombs (didn’t have RB at that bar) in Vegas made with the Sobe Citrus Energy drink and mandarin vodka. They were yummy.
hee hee… saved by the bell… hee hee.
What is Taurine? A good question.
It is synthetic bull bile. Basically.
We were on the bridge, which was not nearly as hot or horrible as it sounds. We had food right behind us, which was awesome, and had shade from the huge light fixture. We couldn’t see too well at the beginning but by sunset, we were right on the edge of the bridge. We could watch the launch, then watch the replay on the TV that was like 30 feet away. Had a Wahoo’s Taco Bowl Thing, and it was all good.
Next time, I am renting/buying a kayak/canoe thing, those people had the seats, did you see the people just standing in the river too, I didn’t know you could even do that.
You need to be drunk to send cadbury egg e-mails? Excellent Wayne and Garth reference. Why did we get two Wayne’s World movies but THREE Austin Powers movies?
I might rent So I Married an Axe Murderer tonight.
I alllllmost went to Flugtag. My friend Jenny hocks Red Bull out of one of those mini-coopers as a job.
Seriously - her job is to walk around and hand out free red bull. She knows what Taurine is, too. Wish I could have made it to Austin, but considering I probably would not have been in the shady VIP section (double entendre scores two), my paleness is thanking me right now.
(Randy’s right. I hock Red Bull.)
Team Ready to Drumble!
It was my job to keep them hydrated throughout the day and I held their wallets while they went for their swim.