|
George reviews the Milwaukee show Bradley Center @ Milwaukee, WI - 1/12/09 Upon arriving in Milwaukee, I was greeted with 8 degree temperatures. The weather dude on the tv in the airport even said, "It's 8 degrees out. Enjoy it while you can, because it's going to get cold tomorrow!" Have I mentioned that I hate the cold? I met up with Super Ron at the airport and we headed out into the snow to find the arena and a place to eat. We ended up eating at the Mexican equivalent of Seinfeld's Soup Nazi. We sat down at a table and nobody came to serve us, so eventually we started investigating the place and discovered that there was a line of customers in the back with a seemingly angry cook running the show. One guy even got yelled at when he got out of line. We followed protocol and managed not to face the wrath of the Burrito Nazi. (The food was actually really good and cheap.)
 "No burrito for you!" After lunch, I went to check out the line at the arena, while Ron caught up on some sleep in the car. The "line" ended up consisting of 3 dudes from Milwaukee whom I ended playing poker with (despite not knowing how to play poker). They let us hang out in the lobby of the will call area which was nice and toasty, so that was a plus...that is, until about 3pm, when they booted us out in the cold. Super Ron was still sleeping in the car, when a drunk-off-his-butt scalper came by looking for tickets. He provided an entertaining distraction from the cold for a bit. After a couple hours of waiting in the cold, they let us in, and we waited. The Sword eventually started playing, and we waited. Machine Head came out and played, and we waited. Finally, Metallica came out and got things going. The setlist was decent, but there wasn't really anything special about it, other than it was my first time hearing "All Nightmare Long" live. I really dig all the new stuff live.
 You can actually see Ron and I, if you look closely Picture from MetOnTour.com After the show, we trudged through the snow to get back to our rental car, which we were dropping off at the airport before hopping on a bus to Detroit. After catching a cab to the bus station (actually we took the cab to a gas station to get some Gatorade, but the place was closed, so we walked the rest of the way to the bus station), we were greeted with the news that our bus had been cancelled (and we were greeted by a belligerent bus station security guard who smelled an awful lot like marijuana). Fortunately, the bus station and train station in Milwaukee are in the same building, so we started to head down to the train station to see when the next train left. For some reason, the stoned and belligerent security guard decided to start yelling at us asking us what we thought we were doing, and yelled, "Don't you see the sign?" The nicely handwritten sign at the bus station said that the bus was cancelled. Yes, we already saw that. As we were going back over to re-read the sign (which did not explain why we couldn't walk over to the train station, unless there was some Kryptonian code on there that I didn't catch on to), the security guard told another guy working there that he was "about to take of this uniform and whip somebody's ass." We questioned the guy about the sign and explained to him that we were merely going to go check the train schedule to see if we could catch a train instead. For some reason, he was magically nice again (it might have had something to do with the fact that Ron called him out on "whipping somebody's ass" but I'm not positive). Strangely, he was buddy-buddy with us the rest of the night. We slept on the cozy floor of the train station only to be awakened around 3:30am by the police who were looking for 3 caucasians who had robbed somebody. There's nothing quite like being awoken to a flashlight in your face. (Incidentally, there was a French girl sleeping down there, too. Three caucasians can be very suspicious, apparently).
The Good: "All Nightmare Long" live for the first time
|
