I like a boy in uniform (flaming uniform)

Last night my roommate and I went to Boston to see the Pipettes after someone I’ve never met mysteriously invited me via facebook message. Now, I know what happens when you get mysterious invitations to see your favorite band, but figured what the hey, it’s the Pipettes, right? And the invitation said it was a fashion show too and, you know, fashion shows are cool. And they said it was free if you brought an article of clothing for a holiday clothing drive. Easy enough, right?

We drive up to Boston after picking out what clothes we want to donate (I settled for a vest and this girls’ medium t-shirt I got at Limited Too that says “If it wasn’t for boys I would drop out of school”, which I love but which was obscenely small on me 35 pounds ago.) So we get to this place, a “rock and roll piano bar with sing-alongs” across the street from Fenway. Signs point to uh-oh when we hear Cascada from within and the bouncer guy is bobbing his head along. Then we get inside and everybody there is really–well, young. They were all… co-eds. And not very fashionable ones. Hmmm…

So then the two hosts come out and make a really, really long string of announcements about t-shirt contests, Jetblue vouchers, and this lady in the audience named Kristi who’s the marketing coordinator for Macy’s. Because the whole thing is sponsored by Macy’s. In fact, it’s a Macy’s fashion show! But instead of models, they’re using BU students! From different clubs and sororities! Like the nutrition club! The finance law club! And something called The Champions!

Macy’s gave some money to the club whose model could entice the crowd to “make the most NOISE!!!!!” And since The Champions, whoever they are, were basically just very tall frat boys, then it wasn’t a big shock that their model, Brandon, won.

Brandon, incidentally, is one of the ugliest people I’ve ever seen in my life. A totally unattractive jock-boy body with a head not unlike the guy from the original Xanadu. At one point he lifted up his shirt to display his abs (this getting the crowd to make more NOISE), and I kind of accidentally squealed with terror.

The fashion show itself was basically lots of intensely boring clothes from Macy’s and a DJ that played the first forty seconds of every hit song from two years ago. And then, after all the hullaballoo, the Pipettes came on.

And oh boy were they awesome. We were standing just a couple of feet away, which probably wouldn’t have happened if we had actually gotten tickets to their sold-out show on Thursday. They did a few songs I didn’t know, which was nice. My personal favorites were Guess Who Ran Off With The Milkman, I Love You, and One Night Stand, which they dedicated to The Champions. (At one point they told people to get on the runway to dance, and the only people that did were the two hosts, The Champions, and the Macy’s marketing people. It was kind of like we were extras in a movie about really really lame people who went to BU. Or, you know, like the season of Dawson’s Creek where they all went to BU except Pacey, who lived on a houseboat.)

Gwenno, the Welsh Pipette with the red hair, is totally my favorite now, even though Rosay does the best hand gestures when she’s dancing and Becki, the one with the controversial Wikipedia entry, has cute glasses and wrote a dissertation on porn.

But then the room had to go fill up with smoke and the cutey drummer started coughing. The people from the club started running around. All the girls in the audience made a mad dash for the coat room and everybody else calmly walked out onto the sidewalk, where Kristi from Macy’s and the two hosts picked out winners of the raffle for a JetBlue voucher (which I didn’t win.) One of the three identical-looking Macy’s people was wearing what I’m pretty sure was a royal blue satin potato sack, which I hadn’t noticed when they were all standing right in front of me during the show. (I feel like my roommate and I are going to be in the background of all the event photos that are probably being passed around Macy’s board rooms at this very minute.)

Anyway, The Pipettes got on their bus and only came back out to take pictures when the fire trucks showed up. And that was it. It was just a speaker or monitor malfunction or something, but the bouncer guy wouldn’t even let me in afterwards to pee.

All in all, it was a really good show, even if I didn’t get to hear Pull Shapes or I Like A Boy In Uniform (School Uniform), and the whole night was sort of unpleasantly dominated by a club that BU doesn’t even acknowledge. (And my one friend that went to BU has never heard of. Actually, now that I think about it, they were totally dancing with Kristi and her friend in the royal blue satin potato sack–I wonder if the whole contest was rigged!) But, you know, I saw a good show, had a brief moment of knowing what it’s like to be a character in a cheesy college movie, and still got home by midnight. So who am I to complain?