Yoshimi, they don't believe me, but you won't let those robots eat me

Last night was amazing:

Not only because of the ticket price either.

Here's how it all came about:

Friday morning I received a voice message from my friend, A-Piz. He wanted to know if I'd heard anything about The Flaming Lips playing a show at The Palms. I hadn't. I called him and said I'd look into it (he couldn't because he'd flown to Austin to see Bjork play at the Austin City Limits music festival). Anyway, after fruitlessly searching the band's and box office's web sites for information I turned to our good friend Google and found out that they were playing a show. A free show. All we had to do was purchase a specially marked 18 pack of Miller Lite from select local retailers, then take the sticker and the receipt to the box office to redeem it for two free tickets. I called A-Piz back and let him know that I'd take care of it.

Him: But you don't even drink. What are you going to do with all the Miller Lite? You should take it to a park and give it to the homeless. (The scary thing is that thought had already crossed my mind. You could consider it my good deed for the day.)

I called the box office the next morning (they were closed by the time I found out what was going on), and they said they still had plenty of tickets available as long as I got there by 7:00 p.m. with the sticker and the receipt.

Armed with the knowledge that tickets were still available and that one of the select retailers was very close to my house, I set out on my quest to obtain beer (for the homeless) and tickets. Unfortunately, the retailer near my house was out of the specially marked boxes, but they told me where another one was and I drove to it. They were out too. Now I had to seek help, so I called Ladyflash. She looked online and told me where a few other locations were, so I drove to some of them, all to no avail. My hopes were fading, but one of the retailers was close to A-Piz's house, so I called him to have him go check it out. He hit paydirt and got the last two specially marked cases.

It was a little more complicated than that because I forgot to mention to him that we needed the receipt as well as the stickers. He hadn't asked for one, so he had to drive back and get it. The task was apparently really complicated, perhaps a little too complicated for the store clerk, because it took her about ten minutes to figure out how to print up a receipt for the transaction. I'd like to say that's an exaggeration, but it's really not. Once we got the receipt, I picked up Ladyflash and drove to the box office. Of course, on the way there we noticed that one of the specified retailers was literally right across the street from campus, and another one was inside the casino immediately across from the box office. Whatever. We got tickets, and that's what mattered.

Earlier in the day, I'd also called my friend BJ (who doesn't like to be called BJ because it has little to do with his actual name, and has other implications, but we keep calling him BJ anyway) to let him know the deal. He'd also been unsuccessful in his attempts at finding specially marked packages, but it didn't matter because we had a fourth ticket anyway. I called him back to let him know that it was his if he wanted it. He did.

I was extremely excited before showtime. The Flaming Lips is one of those bands that I've wanted to see live for a while because they put on such great live shows. It felt a little bit like the anticipation of a birthday when I was a kid. Anyway, Sunday evening finally rolled around, BJ came to my house and we hopped in my car and picked up Ladyflash. A-Piz said he'd meet us there. We arrived early enough to find a decent place to stand and we waited for the band to take the stage.

It didn't take long before a bunch of girls wearing alien masks and carrying spotlights made their way through the crowd and took the stage. Shortly after that a group of people carrying spotlights and wearing Santa Claus costumes did the same. Then The Flaming Lips took the stage. They played one song (Do you realize?), and when it was over Wayne said that they always play that one last so they had no choice other than to leave the stage right then, but if we cheered loudly enough they'd come back and play an encore of about 15 songs. I don't know that the crowd really cheered loudly enough (this is Vegas after all, everyone's too cool for that), but they came back out and played for a while. It took about half the show before they could really get the crowd into it. They tried once by doing a sing-along to Yoshimi, and it sort of worked, but not really. So, when they played The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song, Wayne wouldn't take lack of crowd participation as an option, so he kept on everybody until people finally started to get noisy. I'm glad he did. It got even more fun after that. Strangers were getting everyone to form a giant group hug (which I grudgingly participated in, but not quite as grudgingly as BJ who doesn't like to be called BJ - he was so uncomfortable with it that the rest of us group hug-raped him after the show), everyone started jumping around and singing along. It was one of the best concert experiences I've had since I moved to Vegas (Tenacious D and Pearl Jam are the only other two bands who have made the crowd go crazy like that).

I was a little disappointed that he didn't break out the giant hamster ball and go crowd surfing, and I wanted them to play the song where they throw fake blood on the audience, but even without those things I still had a great time. I'm really glad that I finally got to see them live.

Oh, and for once I actually remembered to keep track of the set list for any of you who might be interested. At least most of it.

SET LIST
Do you realize?
Fanatical
Fight test
Mountain side
Vein of stars
Yoshimi battles the pink robots
Riding to work in the year 2025 (your invisible now)
Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung
The yeah yeah yeah song
Taps
Waiting for a superman
[Song that I didn't know and can't seem to find]
Race for the prize
She don't use jelly (this was their "2nd" encore)

Also, here are some pics that Ladyflash took.