Feeling Slimey

Yup, there it is...

Ever heard of Slimefest?  No? Lucky you.  Keep reading to hear all about it...

We went to Slimefest.  Me, Sarah, Josh, Sarah mate, her brother and their Mum, my mate M.

We were last minute entries due to the inability to attend of M's friend.  When she asked me, I didn't know what it was.  But the kids did.  The squealing and begging was hard to resist, and I love hanging out with M cause she is tops.  So off we went.

M assured me about 50 times that I would not get slimed, that I was away from the slime, that I would stay warm and dry and non green.

So, Slimefest.  Put on by the Foxtel channel Nickelodeon, it's a concert of fair to middling performers doing 1-2 songs each, totally biased towards the tween and early teen market, and (totally bizarrely in my opinion) interspersed with intervals where the entire mosh pit audience is sprayed with green slime.

Note: I have no idea what it's made of but it if it dries on your skin, you have to scrape it off.  It is, according to the hosts of SF, non toxic.  It comes out of clothes in a normal wash.  I know this now.

Big orange balloons full of?  Not slime, thank goodness.  Glitter. 

There are several ways to be slimed:  

From above
Over the audience is a big whirly thing that looks a bit like the dough hook in a mixmaster.  At various points during the 90 minute show slime comes spraying out of it.  A siren goes off first.  At this point, all the kids run into the middle of the room and try to stand under it.  All the adults run to the sides of the arena and stand with their backs to the wall, eyes closed, trying to get to their happy place.  

From the front
At other times during the show, people come out onto the stage with enormous, industrial sized super soakers and spray slime from the front.  Usually the hosts and any nearby performers cop it too.  The B grade celebrities who also appear as bit players in the heavily staged events, get totally slimed.  They look like they're having fun.  Maybe I would too, if I was being paid for it.

Incidental sliming
This is the scariest because it's so unexpected.  This occurs when your slimed child forgets that he or she is covered in green goo and gives you a hug.  Lightening fast reflexes are your friend here and if you're quick you can grab them by the shoulders and keep them away from you, while still finding a slime free spot on their head to kiss.

When we arrived we joined a queue (actually we queue jumped, M is a shameless and very talented queue jumper and within seconds had struck up a conversation with the person she pushed in front of, rendering the situation completely neutral).  Then she discovered that we were in the wrong queue and general admission entry was elsewhere, we were in the line to get into the allocated seating.

No allocated seat?  General admission?  This was starting to sound scary.

If you look closely you can see flying green strings of the stuff. 

And it was just as scary as I feared, we quickly found ourselves heading downstairs and onto the floor of the arena.  The mosh pit.  Yep.  I was in a mosh pit.  Packs of crazed teens cruised around trying to find entry into the heaving crush of kids pushing towards the stage.  Our four kids made a couple of attempts to get through the crowd to the front and returned, failing to find a way in.

From our position on the edge of the GA area we could see we weren't going to get slimed.  Unless we wanted to.  The slime only happened in the middle of the floor and the sides were slime free.  I was still very nervous.  As we stood watching the madness, a massive camera on a boom swung down towards us, with kids jumping and screaming and trying to get in front of it.  M and I instinctively ducked out of it's way, even though we were far from it's target market, we didn't want to be the 'horrified parents' shot.  

Eventually Sarah and her mate managed to disappear into the throng.  By crawling through people legs and thanks to the kindness and tallness of the older teens in the crowd they managed to get themselves right to the front.  Not to the stage but to the edge of the Slimepit.  Oh yes, the Slimepit.

A much coveted and quickly sold out position where you can enjoy uninterrupted access to slime and get yourself right up to that stage to scream and wave and be high fived by whoever was performing at the time.  Imagine?  No, I can't.

So the girls hung on to the edge of the slimepit and were slimed many times over.  Josh worked out when to run towards the centre and came back soaked with the stuff.  He was so happy.

He was beside himself with happiness.  What can you do?

Guy Sebastian was awesome.  Justice Crew was fabulous.  The overtly sexual fourteen year old performer who gyrated her way through two songs was not my favourite (old lady me).  And Big Time Rush, the final, much awaited act from the USA was mediocre.  By the time they came on, everyone in our group had been slimed about five times and one of the kids was feeling sick so we left.

Oh so slimy Sarah.  Don't touch me!!!!!

In the throng outside, some people had so much slime on them it was flowing off them as they walked to the carpark.  I have no idea how they cleaned themselves up enough to get into a car.

I am grateful for the opportunity.  I'm glad it's over.  Now I know what Slimefest is.  And that's enough for me.