Luckily, the Germans were playing 1 week later in Riga, relatively close from Tartu, and I convinced my Finnish friend Ilkka to come from Helsinki and drive to our destination of glory and rock.

Rammstein must have been on the top 3 of the bands that I still had never had the chance to check live and really wanted, so it was worth the effort; although I cannot really thank the promoters from BDG-FBI. They procrastinated in answering my emails, and gently denied me any press ticket, apart from not answering anything when I proposed farther collaboration for reviewing their events. How many publications do you have in English focused on culture and entertainment in the Baltics? I suppose that it must be more rewarding to sit all day at the office checking Facebook and Orkut than trying to do a good work. But well… if I start to talk about incompetent people in promoting and events management positions in Finland or Estonia, I would never reach to the point of talking about the concert….

Arriving in Riga became a little odyssey due to the heavy snow falling. After 3 hours of driving from Tartu, we encountered traffic jams everywhere, a lot of police and ambulances running from one place to another, and 4 or 5 small car accidents around the Latvian capital. The city seemed to be receiving a summit from the World Bank instead of a rock concert. Some of my Estonian job mates mentioned later that the car accidents were due to them being 6-toed Latvians, but I will remain impartial about the sticky subject ;)

But what it is true is that the organization of the concert in Latvia was awful. We encountered another more annoying queue for accessing the parking or Riga Arena, which turned to be full. Luckily, driving a few hundred meters away, a friendly Russian guy left us parked in his parking for just 2 Lats. We did not have Latvian cash, so gave him 5 euro. The E-Tickets that I had pursued in Internet worked (thanks god) and then I encountered the longest queue for a male toilet that I have ever seen in my life. So I decided my kidneys should have to wait until the end of the gig. With the traffic jams, we missed the first band, so accessed directly to see Rammstein show in an ultra packed standing up area of the arena. And when I say packed, I mean packed. Organizers again fucked it big time. There should have been easily at least 200 tickets less sold out there. We were at the bottom, very far from the stage, and we already could hardly move, a situation that I had experienced before just when being near the first row close to the stage. It is a miracle that not more people got into fights there or fainted. Chaotic!

The concert started with Rammlied, but being honest, the first 4-5 songs were closer to a nightmare than being a joyful event. I was literally feeling like a sardine in a box and very far from the stage with no chance to advance or move. Not helping that the old Murphy´s Law about taller guys always standing in front of you in a concert, and me being not the tallest in the world, made me literally almost break my neck to try to see something of what was going on stage. Latvian guys for your information are not the shortest of the world, so it does not help when you have a fucking basketball team in front of you.

The cherry on top of the cake is that there were no screens on the sides of the stage. For a band with the category that Rammstein has, and with tickets whose price started at 50 euro, a small fortune in Estonia or Latvia, I did not understand this either. What is the point to create amazing pyrotechnic effects on stage when half of the audience is not going to be able to see a shit if they are not in the first rows or in the seating places?

Luckily and wisely, we moved to one side that was a little less packed, and enjoyed some of my favorite tunes like Keine Lust! or Weisses Fleisch. The middle part of the concert was a bit boring from my point of view, it always happens the same when a band I like releases a new album, I always think that they should not play so many of the new songs. For example, Frühling in Paris could have perfectly been erased from the setlist, while it was an absolute pity than songs like Spielt Mein Klavier, Du Riechst so Gut or Azche zu Azche were missed.

Undobutedly, the end of the concert was the best, with amazing tunes like Links 1-2-3, the unavoidable and always awesome Du Hast and the catchy Pussy. A great end that was followed up by an encore with Sonne, the surprising Haifisch (I was not expecting the keyboardist “Flake” surfing the audience on the inflatable boat with this one, but with the classic Seamann, which I think would have been still much better, and Ich Will for closing the first encore.

While it seemed that everything would be over, and more than 1 person in the audience started to exit, the band still gave an amazing present performing a second mini-encore with Engel, with a huge and beautiful white angel on flames displayed on the stage, that finished the show; a great end for a concert that left me a bitter sweet taste due to the chaotic organization.

I introduce you the almighty Schlangemann!!!

Advisory: It contains explicit sexual content.

Well, I belong to a generation that grew up as children playing with G.I Joes in their living rooms. I still remember the arcade videogame after many years. So for me, this is not just another action movie. And actually, I must say that although I was expecting another disappointment as big or even bigger than the one I suffered the other day after watching Transformers 2, I kind of liked this movie.

Sure, the script is not made for receiving an Academy award, and people seem to find whatever minimum excuse to turn evil and try to destroy the world, but nevertheless, as a product of entertainment, the film works. The characters are what you expect them to be, no more, no less. Both female lead roles incarnated by Siena Miller and Rachel Nichols have a great presence on screen and a notable sexual charge, Ray Park (do you remember him in, among others, Star Wars I?) as Snake Eyes is once again amazing in the fighting choreographies and Channing Tatum And Marlon Wayans are pretty convincing as the “good guys” couple.

The bad guys look like bad guys, and just the presence of Dennis Quaid appears not to have much sense. The action is good, the special effects, although sometimes they are not at top level, work reasonably ok, and in this case, opposite to the second part of Transformers, I do not feel like being part of just a shallow propaganda for the American Army, but as of the fun of watching a notable action movie.

Imbd site´s users can say whatever the fuck they want, rating the movie under 6 out of 10, but for me, this is a more than a decent result, compared to all the crap that invades the DVD stands of any shop nowadays. Resuming, a movie worthy to watch if you like action movies without having to analyze the philosophical reasons of the human being´s existence.

Rating 3/5

The best: Marlon Wayans trying to get into the pants of Rachel Nichols.

The detail: G.I.J.O.E. stands for Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity

G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra Trailer

Some thoughts came to my mind after last night: first of all that I should try to go to other clubs where people are older. I was feeling like in a kindergarten there, and it is not that cool when everybody around looks like 6-7 years younger that you. Luckily, my English friend is even older than me…

Secondly, that I do not like that stupid rule that most of the clubs have that many nights (like yesterday) men have to pay the entrance fee while is free for the women. It is a much extended practice in Estonia, and for me, it is plain discrimination. I understand the reasons of the managers to do that: so pretty girls would go to the club, and then guys are attracted by them so they will come too and spend more money on drinks. But if we want an equalitarian society, that should apply to everything. I have not read any single voice that has been raised against these kinds of things in the media, and I think it is intolerable, but nobody seems to care. What would happen if next week, in the cafeteria down my work the meals would be free for men but women had to pay? A bunch of feminist associations would come immediately in rage… but well, this seems to be the way it is here, and we can take it or leave it…

Third, that the drinks are too expensive. We are talking about a club located in the same building that a student dormitory, with very young audience. Come on guys, having to pay 65 crowns for a small glass of rum with coke is not cool, even more now in crisis times. But take also into account that in Estonia there seem to be a big culture of “showing off”. Estonian guys will pay the drinks in the club, and dress like if they would live in Melrose Place, and for the rest of the week they will be eating pasta at home with no money to do shopping. That happens when MTV culture collides with low wages…

And in general, I realized that I do not like much the social dynamics of nightclubs in Estonia. True, for a man like me, it is very nice to watch 100 hot young girls dressed to kill around. But after a while, you realize that it is not really that fun. People are not very accessible to talk to, everybody is looking at everybody, but nobody interacts with others than the old friends. Girls just walk around showing their latest acquired mini dress, but they have a sign that seems to say “look but not touch”, with a very cold attitude, and boys are not really very friendly either for a conversation, and not very subtle when hitting on girls. Actually, the few times I could have a nice conversation in a club in Estonia usually take place in the smoking room. So if you want to have a bit of social interaction, you will have to sacrifice the health of your lungs.

I bet that at the end of the night, 95% of the people who went to the club left with the same group of friends, and without having made any new acquaintances. At least, I remember in my younger years when visiting a club in Spain that at the end of the night you could see many new couples around the corner kissing. I am a defender of “make love, not war”, so I find that much better than fighting in the streets. But in the club, you could hardly see anybody making out or having real fun in a conversation. Everybody dressed up, everybody expecting somebody else to make a move…nothing happening, boring. And because of the price of drinks being so high, most of them, being just young students, could not even allow themselves to have a glass in their hands.

On a more positive side of the night, I have to say that after that, I visited Genialistide Club for first time in my life, and I liked the atmosphere there very much. I actually do not know why I have not gone there before. I ended the night in Zavood, another mythical bar in Tartu, and I can say that in both bars I have in a few minutes many more interesting conversations with new people I was introduced that in all the previous hours at the nightclub. The usual crowd in those bars are much more relaxed and open minded, and although of course there can be some asshole like in everywhere, it is usually easy to have a nice talk while playing a fuzzball game or just ordering a beer on the desk. Not mentioning that prices are really much cheaper there.

http://www.clubtallinn.ee

http://www.genklubi.ee

http://www.zavood.ee