Opinion Sur Joven

Imagine if you could see Mr. T, Mini-Me, Vanilla Ice, Carrot Top and Gary Coleman together in only one place. Well, that’s what Bizarren Miusik Parti is all about: in Argentina, these parties are organized to celebrate nostalgia with local and not-so-local washed up celebrities.

Buenos Aires. It’s almost 2 a.m. and this is only the beginning. The speakers introduce Nicky Jones, a former singer of the Club del Clan band, and then Machito Ponce. Many have already decided to stand right in front of the stage and start shouting for their first "bizarre celebrity" of the night. And Nicky Jones appears just in time: at 2 o’clock sharp. Of course he’s not that pseudo-rebellious and almost handsome young man he was on the sixties, but a 65-year-old guy who doesn’t even move when he sings. A girl gets all excited and films the whole thing with her cell phone; dozens of twenty-year-olds sing Nicky’s songs along; Jones, partly a freak and partly a rock star, couldn’t care less.

- Do you know who that singer is?-, I ask the girl with the cell phone.
- I have no idea. I know his name’s Nicky, and that he’s old and bitter. It’s my first time at these parties, so I’m gonna shoot every single bizarre thing.

María (21) smiles at me and keeps doing her thing. Now she’s a bit more excited than before, trying to dance with her friends and shoot at the same time without moving the hand holding the phone. On the stage Nicky sings the last songs on the list, an oldies mix. He sings La Bamba, Corre González, a couple Elvis songs and others by Argentine singers who were famous in the sixties and seventies, such as Palito Ortega, Donald and Sandro; in a few seconds he waves good bye and gets off the stage.

“In the last party there was a fat naked man with a toilet costume. He had a sagging belly, it was horrible”, Paula (23) remembers when I ask her what’s the most bizarre thing she’s seen at these parties. “Then, in another party –she continues-, there was a guy dressed as a penis who fought against another guy dressed as a milk carton. I love the fact that anyone can show up wearing whatever they want”. Right now I’m surrounded by Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman, Catwoman and D’Artagnan.

A Mr. T double called Elías (28) tells me: “I’m wearing a costume because we’ve been doing it for a couple parties now. Besides, we already know many of the people who usually come. Once we gathered 120 people and came here on a tourist train. It was awesome”. For Mario, these parties are like short prom trips.

He-Man, or Ariel (24) helps me understand the concept: since I got here, I’ve already seen him make out with three or four girls. Not that I’m following him, but I think his opinion is important for this article; and every time I look for him for an interview, he’s busy. "You don’t need to say a word to have chicks here", he finally said when I found him alone. “Right, I’ve seen that before”, I told him. His friend of Batman, who lets me call him Bruce Wayne and then admits his name’s Roberto (27), adds: “With this costume chicks come straight to me, I don’t need to come to them. Besides, Catwoman came tonight, so I’ll probably score tonight”.

This talk with superheroes ends when people start gathering again in front of the stage. It’s already 3 a.m., time for Machito Ponce, tonight’s main course. People start shouting: “Machito, Machito”… Now there’s a crowd waiting for the singer to appear. Here in Argentina we hadn’t heard from this fake-Caribbean-accent singer for ten years, but today he’s the one the crowd is waiting for.

At 3.30, and after a small show that wasn’t really funny but people enjoyed all the same -"here we play along everything, it’s a rule", tells me Martín (25)-, Nicolás Cors appears onstage. He’s the presenter and the creator of the Bizarren parties. He throws a bomb phrase to the audience: “Haven’t you realized Machito Ponce hasn’t existed for over ten years now?” But the “Machito, Machito” gets louder and some people even show supporting banners.

The first "Don’t want no short dick man" and the presence of Machito Ponce wearing jeans and a shiny crocodile-skin-like shirt turn into a giant magnet for unleashed screaming. The first song ends and people reach their hand to obtain any kind of souvenir. Machito puts the mic on one side and signs autographs to every person with a piece of paper and a pen.

The “Machito, Machito” chorus becomes unstoppable and the surrounding madness, absurd. We could explain it this way: Machito Ponce is on the stage; people are shouting. Or: we are at a Bizarren party. That’s it. That’s why there are banners reading “Machito thanks for coming back” or “Thanks for your magic”. That’s why people are shouting. That’s why this is madness. That’s why they stop the show to have him sign autographs. That’s why all this happens. “I haven’t been onstage for more than 10 years”, Machito kept repeating. “Nico and the people here at Bizarren were the ones who convinced me of coming back”.

“And he keeps talking!”, I hear a girl say right behind me. “What do you expect? He has only three famous songs!”, her friend replies. But the enthusiasm grows. Machito holds the hands of two people at the front row and pretends to jump over the crowd. He sings another of his songs, “Samantha”, and then another one I can’t remember. By the end, "Short dick man" sounds again. The mean girl was right, he only had three hits. But no one seems to care about that. Machito is still the great hero of the night and that’s how he says good bye, accompanied by the "Machito, Machito" sounding louder than ever.

The Pork Guy, a kind of antihero dressed in red and yellow with a cape and a giant P on his chest, enters the scene and starts offering pork sandwiches for everyone. “I’m already a classic here at the Bizarren parties –he says-; I always appear at this hour to make everyone have a bite to eat”. Meanwhile, three or four old men wearing costumes appear onstage. Nicolás announces the “Titanes en el Ring”, the Argentine version of the World Wrestling Entertainment characters. “These are the real characters, you know? These aren’t copies”, he says. The crowd now starts shouting “Perón, Perón”. I touch my moustache, which I especially grew for this party, and I finally give up: Freud and Sherlock Holmes together wouldn’t be enough to sort out the relationship between Pork Man and the Titanes en el Ring, Machito Ponce and Nicky Jones.

6.15 a.m.: it’s time to vote for the best costume. The Bat-duet (Batman and Robin) hold the first place. The voting represents the end of the party. At the exit I see Pork Man in a different role; now he’s offering hot chocolate. I grab one on my way out and then he shouts at me: “I hope this article isn’t like the others, and that now someone finally knows how to depict a Bizarren party”. I make all the promises I can before I walk away from him, but I know what he’s asking me to do is almost as impossible as trying to explain what my granny used to do when she had nothing to think about.