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Aliens & AIDS! AIDS! AIDS!

posted by Liam Reed at 5:26 am.

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Last night I had the pleasure of going to Life Ball 2008 with some of my closest friends here in Vienna. For those of you who don’t know, which is probably all of you since the American press never seems to advertise these sorts of things, Life Ball is an annual charity event that takes place in front of Vienna’s city hall in order to raise AIDS awareness, promote finding a cure, convince people that homosexuality is totally normal, and to basically have a good time and gawk at crazy ass costumes and oogle over celebrity appearances.

When I first got there with my boy Jensen and my bud Roland we thought the whole thing was going to be cut off from the public. They kept us out with fences and laughed in our faces when we asked if they would be taking them down to let the public in to watch the costumed party goers go down the red carpet. I made an angry YouTube video which you can see here:

EDIT 01 June 08: I had to take this video down for reasons I will probably mention in a later post. But not now, because it ain’t the right time for fights of that nature. Woof.

Yeah. So naturally 42 seconds later they opened the fence, right where we were standing, and let us all in. We got an amazing spot right on the red carpet and were able to see everyone perfectly. I was just a whiny little bitch. It happens.

We were able to watch them do preparations for the fashion show which involved the pope wrapped up in a rope and being dragged down the stage by models. They were very sexy models. Do take note.

Soon the show was about to begin. It opened with this guy, the Rocket Man, blasting off in a jetpack and then crashing into the red carpet, burning a hole through the damn thing. We have some good video of that too but I’ll let you search for that on your own because you’re a big boy and go to college and know how to do these things.

Shortly thereafter the Sisters of the Perpetual Indulgence came down the red carpet. The Sisters are a group of gay nuns, if you will, who have orders all over the world promoting human rights issues in the LGBT community. Naturally, I knew one of them. Rosa La Ola Grande saw me and walked up to me to have a little chat. Yeah, I felt pretty bitchin’. I met Rosa La Ola in Rostock, Germany when I was studying abroad there in high school. She was a friend of my ex and she would always be dressed up at the clubs handing out free condoms, lube, and pamphlets about safe sex. I recall coming home from a volleyball tournament once and running into her without makeup. Totally bizarre. Point of the story is she gave me a kiss with her blue lips and confused the hell out of my boyfriend.

Sisters of the Perpetual Indulgence

Suddenly a large amount of guests started strolling down the red carpet. I think I heard the number was around 4,000 or so. In order to get a ticket you needed to enter a raffle and if you happen to be selected you pay 150 euro per ticket. Something like that. If you happen to be lucky enough to win a ticket your goal is to make an extraordinary costume that matches the theme, which, this year, was Landing on Planet Life Ball. This basically meant the theme was aliens and would allow for all sorts of messed up costumes. I have lots of pictures of these but some of them probably aren’t allowed to be posted on this site. Lots of tits, my friend, lots of tits.

Yes, I am aware that those are not tits. No, I will not post them for you. I gotta keep it classy.

A lot of the costumes involved aluminum foil, rubber, or plastic tubing. Apparently aliens like to wear PVC as jewelry. There were lots of cool costumes. An old woman was decked out entirely in rubber bands (which she naturally shot into the crowd), a naked man wore an S&M rubber mask, shoes (no socks), and painted his *ahem* blue. Might I add that it was a very European and very uncut *ahem.* My favorite costumes were probably the ones that involved body paint. These men and women had crazy scales or were cyborgs or combinations of both. Some carried large balloons, others water guns, and others passed out cups of fruit covered with whipped cream and schnapps. It was a good time. Well, for the first hour or so, after which it became pretty damn repetitive.

Never fear! Soon the celebrities entered! Aside from German TV stars and models from Germany’s Next Top Model, there was also Debbie Harry (of Blondie fame), Sharon Stone, the only Austrian astronaut, a former goalie from the Austrian soccer team, that crazy chick who talks like she’s a jaguar and has gigantic lips (Amanda Lapore?), and of course, my favorite guest of the evening, Kim Cattrall, aka Samantha from Sex and the City. Kim seemed to be the guest of the evening as she was welcomed last and honored with a huge line of glowing butterfly people. She spoke on stage and had memorized a few lines of German. Unfortunately I didn’t get all of this on cam, and we weren’t close to the stage at all so you can’t see her, but whatever man, it’s Kim Cattrall.

Sharon Stone

Kim!

Debbie Harry performed, or rather, did some interesting dancing as she lip synced to a song that I’d never heard before. A Falco (<3) song was played and there was some crazy video of aliens dancing with Viennese girls in a park. There was a giant UFO and crazy dancing and giant lipstick and all this crazy stuff that I could write about but Jesus this blog is already way too long for its own good, so let me talk about one last thing and then I’ll let you go. For real.

After the waltzing aliens things got serious. They talked about AIDS and how much it sucks and how what really sucks is when a mother passes it on to her child through birth. It’s true. That DOES suck. Then the organizer of the event, Gery Kreszler, was honored with a fantastic award from some Austrian minister of yada yada yada. I know, this is the actual interesting stuff that will make a difference in the world, but at this point I had been standing outside the city hall for 5 or 6 hours and was ready to go home. What I think the whole event was getting at was that AIDS is bad, discrimination of gays is bad, and dressing up like a damn fool is good.

The Producers, a current hit in Vienna theater right now, took the stage and started singing a German version of Keep It Gay. This was my signal to leave, grab a kebab, and then, shortly after, regret the kebab.

It was a great show, got a bit long and I probably missed some stuff. Apparently Alan Cumming was supposed to be there. And Rose McGowan too (wasn’t she awesome in Planet Terror?). I just couldn’t deal with being there anymore. Maybe I’ll stick around next time if I land upon the 150 euro ticket, but chances are that it may be a while.

http://thesisters.org/
http://www.lifeball.org/
http://www.rocketman.org/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRNrau5KC3Y <— my vid of Kim Cattrall speaking at Life Ball
http://youtube.com/watch?v=liiOBZOIcrw <— footage of Kim Cattrall speaking at Life Ball press conference

P.S. I have exactly one million more photos from this event, so if you want to see them and happen to be my friend, check out the album I’m posting on Facebook. If you’re not my friend, you’re a stalker and you should stop biting the hand that feeds you!

View of the Rathaus/City Hall at Life Ball 2008 in Vienna, Austria

Liam Reed: 1987 model, runs fairly well, few dents, starts in cold weather, no baggage, loves flea markets and canned soup. Send all hate mail, love mail, and sexual advances to withtongue@gmail.com