I really like The Beatles. Ok, my CD collection ranges from the Best of the Beatles: Red (1962-1966) to the Best of the Beatles: Blue (1967-1970). The defining difference between the Red and the Blue is that the Red CD has all their early stuff. The songs about young love and hard day’s nights that all go for around 2 minutes, 12 seconds. The Blue stuff is the harder stuff; when they let the drugs shine through.

My mother liked them too. But she’d say, “They were ok until they started taking <drugs>”. Now to fully appreciate how my mother used to say the word ‘drugs’, you have to say it quickly, low and in a hushed toned. This, from a woman who lived fairly directly through the hippie generation. <Drugs> she’d hiss.

Well, if the Beatles hadn’t taken drugs, then someone wouldn’t have said, “Hey, let’s take some more drugs and listen to The Beatles”. Then someone of importance wouldn’t have said, “Man, what would be even better is if we took some drugs, listened to The Beatles and had Cirque de Soleil dancing around in front of us” and so The Beatles ‘Love’ Cirque de Soleil show was born.

One thing that endeared the show to me was that the music beautifully familiar. I went and saw a similar Cirque-style show many years ago; ‘Saltumbanco’ I think it was called (spelling, anyone?). All though the show this woman was singing and wailing in what I assumed to be Spanish. Or Italian. Or Esperanto. Or something. As it turns out, she was making it up. What’s the point of that? At least with The Beatles, they sang, depending on the strength of the last ingested opiate, mostly in English. To hear them out of a billion speakers (some, it appeared, were in the headrests of the seats) was, well, music to my ears and almost worth the price of admission alone.

Another good thing about the music is that they didn’t mess with it too much. Some of the lyrical mixes I’m certain were the exact recording off the original quadraphonic tapings; they just sounded exactly what I know from my Red and Blue CDs. Others, where the timing and set up of the show did not allow the original recording, were sung by people who were pretty good at sounding like The Beatles. They were certainly better at sounding like John, Paul, George and Ringo than Brian Henson was at sounding like Kermit the Frog.

So musically and aurally, the show was just awesome.

Now this is of grave importance; if your son ever comes up to you and says, “Mum, Dad, I want to be a dancer,” the initial thought would be that he is gayer than the Queen Mary. Now while this is entirely possible, there were so many performers in the Cirque de Soleil show that they couldn’t have all been queer. And I can guarantee that the ones that weren’t would be scoring more hot female dancer tail than you could possibly imagine.

There were performers falling from the sky, flying out of, up and over the audience and appearing out of an ever-changing stage floor that would have challenged Rubik himself. There was a man pulling a cart that was so heavily weighted at the back that he walked like The Michelin Man or Neil Armstrong, who, let’s face it, walked about the same. He also used his cart to rescue nubile young dancers from ropes high above. I was most impressed with his cart-dancing abilities.

There were also Volkswagens; one made of wrought iron and another that was right-hand-drive with UK plates and seemingly immaculate until a performer clambered out of the engine compartment. It had no windows, which was handy for all the monkey-like performers zooming in and out and may have been electric powered as there were no wires. Later it seemed to make a re-appearance however just as it came into view, it exploded into about twelve parts and danced around on the ends of sticks. Now that is serious opiate-action.

When my wife said, “Let’s see a Vegas show” just to say (to whom, I am unsure), “We saw a show in Las Vegas” I was dubious. She wanted to see The Lion King, a stage show based on a movie I haven’t seen, however I’ve seen Bambi and the story is pretty much the same; ‘animal parent dies horrifically and young animal has to make it on his own to become the leader of everything.’ I tend to avoid watching stuff about parents dying because it’s happened to me twice now and if it happens a third time I’ll be really annoyed.

So when we saw an advertisement for the Love show on the side of the Mirage Casino that took up most of one side of the Mirage Casino, I was convinced.

I was certainly more convinced by the Mirage’s advertisement for the Love show than by our own hotel, the Flamingo, which has a 20-storey high advertisement for Donny and Marie Osmond, of which seven storeys are reserved for their teeth.

Cheers,


Dave

great stuff dave it flows out of you ....you take in everything in life and decifer it ..keep up the writings of dave cheers mate dave in qld

Those would be some serious teeth !! ... "which has a 20-storey high advertisement for Donny and Marie Osmond, of which seven storeys are reserved for their teeth"
Fabulous Dave, absolutely fabulous.

About the Bambi thing, don't worry it's a fairy story as a opposed to a gay story. In reality parent animal dies and young animal becomes so embittered at the cruelness of life they go on to brutally murder anything that evokes the same mindless violence that cost the young animal it's parents and either dies a horrible death at the hands of a completely blind society of descends into a drug or alcohol sometimes both induced depressive spiral to their eventual demise at the hands of Hollywood movie writers.

Pictures of the 440 New Yorker please.

Cheers
Rob

It seems I gotta watch the Bambi and Lion King again..................


Dismembered Veedub remnants dancing on sticks......Hmmm, Opiates! My only experience here is once when my back exploded, they had me in traction and fed me 5mg of Valium 3 times a day to go along with the Morphine, for 3 days. I remember having a dream that I was driving my '67 Crown towards Crookwell and stopping to give a bloke & his horse a lift. The Horse had to stand with it's 4 feet together in the boot, sideways. This was O.K until some hoons in an F.J Holden overtook us on the dirt road & cut us off. The horse nearly fell out. Down the road a bit and the F.J. is upside down & there is a horrific scene. There was a woman complaining about the inconvenience as she couldn't get past. I woke up before I strangled her, and vowed never to experiment with any drug!

So, Mrs. Dave is with you! Good! (This is the first mention). Sounds like you are having a BIG experience. How could it be anything else - They've made ostentation an art form!
Please write more - fun to read!
Cheers, Matt.

I like how lucid you were with that opiate dream there Farmer! Any dream I have generally makes no sense and can feature, in no particular order, Abraham Lincoln, Han Solo and one time a guy with no top half of his head and several eyes on stalks instead. He used them to wash windows. Blurgh.

You might have almost killed someone, but at least it seemed pretty straightforward at the time!

Yeah, the ability of the human mind to cungure up unusaul states, induced or otherwise has been a trait for centuries.

Like the time I drove a bellett into a far away place, getting deeper into undrivable terretory only to find myself pirched on a cliff top knob with stones crubbling into the abysses below. I then exit in a somewhat panic and athletically bound across the deep canyons, only to meet a friend on stable ground and give him/it/her the keys with a sense of relief and comfort. What seems like a lifetime passes but in reality is a few seconds, yearning to return for the bellett. I am now clawing up the loose cliff. As the bellett comes into view it has suffered the hands of time, but a mere rusty shell with growths protruding, still teetering on the rocky knob. As I lift the bonnett in the last desperate breath to get it going.....wake up in a palpatating sweat. Now thats a rough night without the use of earthly or unearthly stimulii.

Can relate to the opiate experience Farmer. I ended up in a hospital ward having a telepathic conversation with a fly on the wall from 10 paces away, dulled the pain though, so who cares....

B.

quote of the century!!!!!!!!!!

while i would never make fun of the passing of a close mate's parent, the way u write this made me laugh like a 5yo on a red cordial diet.

and exploding volksy.... the best thing that could happen to them!
after all kiddies, they dont call them 'hitler's revenge' for nothin'.