Embarking On A Kylie Pilgrimmage

(Important Announcement: I'm going on vacation for the next week - the content of which I'm about to self-involvingly describe - and, thus, for the next 7 days Cinema Romantico is going all auto post via posts that I have authored over the last couple years but never published for varying reasons. So enjoy. Perhaps. I hope. And I'll catch back up with you in real time soon.)

I am ashamed of many things in my life, dear readers. My inability to use chopsticks. My fear of the trough at Wrigley Field. My affection for "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle." But I am not, never have been and never ever will be ashamed of my love for the music of Kylie Minogue. I mean, she's hot, yes - is she ever - but, irregardless, her music rocks, and the very fact that her music rocks is actually a critical part of why she's so hot. Any minute of any hour of any day of any week of any month her music automatically makes me feel like I'm young, even if I'm feeling old, and it's a Saturday night in some place, any place, I really want to be where tomorrow and yesterday are meaningless. You know in Springsteen's "Racing in the Street" where in the last line of the last verse he sings about riding to the sea to wash the sins from his hands? Kylie's music is the sea that washes the sins from my hands. Long ago I lost track of how many times I've been told to pony up my "man card" on account of my fondness for Kylie when considering that straight males in American society are only "allowed" to like certain things and long ago I stopped giving a shit. Life is too damn short to not like Kylie. Thus, when she announced she was returning to tour in North America for only the second time ever, I flipped my proverbial lid. I'd seen her, of course, the first time she came through Chicago in 2009 and wrote on this very blog: "I, we, all of us, need that second go-around with Kylie." And then asked, almost fearful, "Will she return?" Well, she was returning! One problem: three months and a couple weeks ago I learned Kylie was not returning to Chicago for her second go-around.

I was heartbroken. Devastated. Crestfallen. Genuinely. I could not fathom it. I had not even considered the possibility that she would not make it back to the city where I live. Would she really choose Atlanta and Fort Lauderdale over Chi-town? (As my friend Ashley, who had planned on attending with me, commiserated in an email: "Fucking Fort Lauderdale???") Apparently. She wasn't even putting on a show within driving distance. We had lost. Woe was us. My dream of seeing a show at every single one of Kylie's North American tours was dead only two tours in. Pardon me while I throw myself off the Michigan Avenue Bridge.

Oh, but dear readers, I forgot about one thing. Namely, my old mistress Fate.

The Friday evening that very same week I attended a charity event at Murphy's Bleachers for my friend Dave's office and paid $25 to drink all the beer I wanted to do away with my no-Kylie blues. I also bought $20 worth of raffle tickets for the event's grand prize - two Jetblue airline tickets. When it came time for the grand prize of the raffle, simply assuming I wasn't going to win because, seriously, I wasn't going to win, I thought to myself - honest to God - "If I actually win this thing, I'm going to New York to see Kylie Minogue." The raffle tickets had come in the form of playing cards and when the announcement came up that the winning card was the four of spades I looked at the four of spades in my hand for what felt like a good three hours. Surely, that wasn't a four. Or a spade. Couldn't be a spade. Not a chance. I must be seeing things. That must be a club. Or a heart. Right? In fact, it was my friend Matt who looked at my card and hollered "You won!" So I did. He pulled me to the front of the room and it was confirmed. Victory was mine. The plane tickets were mine. I was so shocked the guy running the event literally told me to "be happy" to which my friend Dave - knowing me all too well - replied "You don't understand, all you've done is add to Nick's anxiety."  

Indeed. From that point forward I was bombarded with advice - not just that night but for days afterwards - by people telling me where should I go and what I should do. Jetblue doesn't go overseas so that was out but they do fly down Caribbean way and to Cancun which is where some guy at Murphy's Bleachers whose name I still don't know told me I should go. Someone else told me I should go to Costa Rica. Someone else told me I should go to the Bahamas. Everyone had thoughts on the matter. I had thoughts, too. Alaska. San Francisco (where I've been once and always wanted to be again). St. Lucia. But......

A little over 10 years ago, my friend Rory, a fellow E Street Disciple, convinced me to fly with him to NYC to see Bruce Springsteen's last show of the Reunion Tour at Madison Square Garden. I remember people at the ad agency asking me what I had done while I was in New York. "Did you see the Empire State Building? Did you see the Statue of Liberty?" "No," I said, "I saw Bruce." I know it's hard for some people to understand - and I don't necessarily want or require them to - but Bruce, to me, is just way cooler than all that what-have-ya.

I'm going to get so high on her music I might just not ever come down. 

Oh, don't get me wrong, there are places on this planet I still want to visit. But I know myself. I know who I am. I know how I roll. Even if I could have used these Jetblue tickets to go anywhere, even if I could have gone to Barcelona or Sydney or, heck, even if I'd gone to St. Lucia I know exactly what would have happened. I would have been laying out in the sun on some sparkling beach with turquoise water just a hop and a skip away and I would have shook my head and said to myself, "Man, I should've gone to see Kylie Minogue instead."

That's why this morning, as I type this, I am on the verge of hopping the train to O'Hare to meet up with my friend Ashley to board a flight to New York City to crash on my best friend's couch to go to the Hammerstein Ballroom to see Kylie Minogue live. Or, like my friend Rory said in response to an email I sent him back in July on the 10th anniversary of our sojourn to the Apple to see a concert, "How crazy the world is and how sometimes it ends up making perfect sense."