I'll say it, Sensation White was not the time I expected. Though I should have expected a giant white sausage fest (for reasons not limited to the fact that I myself traveled there exclusively with four other dudes), the YouTube promo-videos I watched ad nauseum beforehand gave me the fabricated impression that Sensation White is a slice of electro-heaven teeming with buxom European bitches in undersized tank tops and angel outfits getting in cat fights over sexual access to American guys who blog.
This was not the case.
Instead, Copenhagen's Parken Arena was a whole pie of innumerable groups of dudes, possibly huddled around a hot girl or two, but more likely just huddled around themselves, flexing and peering around for girls that weren't accounted for.
Gentlemen of Europe, YouTube has bamboozled us once again.
Alright it wasn't that bad. The concept of tens of thousands of youths clad in white converging on one city for one night of blue-chip house music is a pretty cool idea, and something I'm proud to have said I did. But if you consider the logistics, it's pretty impossible to execute this concept without the problems that I (and just about everyone else I knew there) encountered.
Namely, a) an abundance of cock, and b) the impossibility of finding anyone you aren't holding hands with.
a) In hindsight, this is pretty fucking obvious. Heading into last weekend I knew of (or tangentially knew of) at least 20 guys that were mad amped for the Sensation White, and exactly 6 girls of the like. There has to be some sort of sociological explanation for this, but I still have my doubts about science so I'm gonna attribute the discrepancy to the fact that everywhere I've been in Europe, notably Oktoberfest and Prague, I feel as if I'm always near a 8+ person herd of greasy, tan, drunk European men, but NEVER do I feel proximate to European women in groups of more than three anywhere. There's an important lesson to be learned here: when in doubt, blame European guys.
But seriously, the guy to girl ratio at Parken Arena was probably 6 to 1, and that's generous.
Granted, it's not as if I went into the night thinking, "tonight, in a massive arena seething with bass, will be the night I find my blonde, smokeshow, Scandinavian soul mate." That's dead-end logic every day of the week for me. Not only because I have the WORST press-your-crotch-up-against-the-hind-of-a-random-girl-in-the-club game, but also because I have without any doubt the WORRRST press-your-crotch-up-against-the-hind-of-a-random-girl-in-the-club game. I am certain that my lifetime batting average against not-fat-girls in situations when I cannot introduce myself first is .000. And I've come to accept that; I'm just not that guy. So instead of trying to fail at being someone I'm not, I tried to find people I knew that were there.
b) Which I also failed at.
For no identifiable reason, I was by myself within 5 minutes of walking into Sensation White with three other people. Maybe it's because I insisted on waiting in line for drinks and a hot dog, maybe it's not. I just don't know.
I do know that I love the way Copenhagen does hot dogs (Wikipedia just dropped a knowledge bomb on my ass; apparently I was not eating the "traditional" Danish hot dog, but rather the French hot dog, which I'll just pretend doesn't come from France): they chop off about 20% of a baguette, hollow it out, squirt a condiment down the hollow (you're limited to one, which is unfortunate but very acceptable considering the taste advantages of a toasty baguette over your run-of-the-mill hot dog bun), and then chase the sauce with a foot-long weiner, which protrudes from the baguette just slightly. And this is getting weird.
The snack bar was also serving Captain & Cola in a can.
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| Captain & Cola in a can. |
Not a chance there was more than 4% alcohol in each one, but they tasted like candy and, in the same vein as the midget principle from my toothpastes post, I'm a sucker for products that are diminutive and/or previously unheard of. These were both, and each sold for the equivalent of 9 US dollars. I really am a sucker.
When I wasn't focused on consuming, I was focused on locating companions, which I tried to do by making lap after lap after lap around that gigantic fucking arena using the advertisements under the box-seat level as landmarks (there was literally no way of accurately describing to someone exactly where you were in that arena because each of the four sides were 97% identical).
During one of my latter laps, my Blackberry up and decided it should dress the part as well.
I wanna send a very special Not Very Tall But Slow shout out to the asshole that danced all over my phone as soon as it fell out of my pocket. Really, thank you for destroying my single effective means of communication while I'm abroad, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to falsify an insurance claim when I finally get back to America in a month (immediately after I penned this dependent clause, I realized I should probably take care of the insurance claim ASAP, which I've now done; but I can still be a badass who blogs about his own insurance fraud right?).
So, I found no one I looked for (namely, Margaret Hollingsworth and Dave Hamilton; congratulations, you guys are famous), which certainly detracted from the experience, but I managed to enjoy myself nonetheless.
My videos and pictures:
Fedde Le Grand
Note: The video above was taken on the highest level of the very Mayan looking center stage, into which was built a most impressive light show. Needless to say, the four sided, interactive stage was a siren call for dudes of all creeds and colors (mostly white guys, though).
Fedde Le Grand Mixing Something Mayan Sounding
Fedde Le Grand Mixing Dirty South's Phazing
0:07-08 - Look at all those fuckin' dudes!
And to think that I was having a hard time finding people...
Joris Voorn & 2000 and One Mixing Duck Sauce's Barbra Streisand
Best video I've seen since I think Rad Anthem.
Then on Sunday, I ate at a ridiculously overpriced breakfast at a place named "Hollywood Cafe" or something of the like, which meant it was just a shit-ass restaurant disguised by tons of cheaply framed print-outs of famous people. If any readers find themselves in Copenhagen, starved on an early Sunday afternoon, don't go to The Hollywood Cafe, but if you have no other option, don't order the nachos.
After walking out of the restaurant less-satisfied than I was when I walked in, my friends and I bumbled around the city center a little bit. But it was cold and rainy, so we opted to see a movie instead of wet Copenhagen.
It was just our luck that Tony Scott's newest gem Unstoppable was the only movie we could watch in its entirely without missing our flight. I don't think I need to say it, but Unstoppable has Oscar dark-horse written all over it.
.......psych! I'm not here to be the movie snob that lambasts big-budget, high-intensity films about a [insert looming disaster that is ultimately thwarted by an unlikely hero]. These movies will be made, and these movies will make money, for generations to come--at least until humans evolve into machines that receive emotions in binary code via an intravenous USB port. But I will say this:
1) Denzel, isn't there some way you and your perfectly symmetrical body can avoid aging, at least cinematically? You're in your fifties, I get it. But do you have to start playing the flabby, sage old-timer just yet? Your double-chin in Unstoppable was very clearly made up, and it looked like you were wearing at least 6 thick coats the entire time. All I'm saying is you don't have to be fat to be old. Point in case:
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| Stephen Lang is two years older than Denzel Washington |
Boy Meets World? Fat, mean doofus. American History X? Fat, van-driving, neo-Nazi doofus. Remember the Titans? Really fat, kind-hearted doofus. Blow? His character's name was fucking Tuna, and he was so fat and doofy that his most memorable scene is him lying sideways on the ground next to a bong, laughing at Dooley getting high in his stupid hat (or, arguably, his most memorable scene is the cannonball at the end of the Mexico house montage, which is equally indicative of fat doofusness).
If you read Suplee's IMDB credits, you'll see that over half his characters only have one name, and usually the names are in the same vein as "Tuna" or "Thumper" (The Butterfly Effect). In Unstoppable, Suplee portrays "Dewey," the fat, slow doofus who exits his moving train in order to do some train thing and then trips on route to board his moving train, creating the aforementioned looming disaster that Denzel and Chris Pine ultimately thwart. (Did I ruin it for you? So sorry.)
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| Train go fast. Me go slow. |
After the movie, I took this video.
I do love a good accordionist.
Then I flew back to Prague. Then I wrote that last post, then I wrote most of this post, then I went to Ireland, and now I'm back from Ireland finishing a two-and-a-half-week old post. Slow and steady wins the race.
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