[mousepod]

OK... part two.

While I am clearly a Beatles lover, I consider myself a Cirque liker. I was wowed by Alegria, my first show, and have never been transported by another Cirque show quite the same way since. It was kind of like my first acid trip - while later experiences were fun, exciting, and even terrifying, I was never able to capture that initial feeling of awe again. I had never experienced a "permanent" Cirque show - for some reason I've skipped La Nouba time and time again - and my only Vegas theater experience was the tacky and godawful EFX (Hello Dolly --> Phantom --> EFX ... trace Michael Crawford's trajectory, shall we?). I didn't think I'd be in Vegas anytime soon - I live in California, which is of course a world away - so I expected that I would purchase the 5.1 mix of Love when it was released, and choreograph the show in my mind's eye while I grooved on the couch to The Beatles.

Then two things happened. First, I found out that my whole family was going to get together in Las Vegas for Veteran's Day weekend. Then, the 4 song pre-release promo of Love found its way onto my iPod. I ordered a pair of tickets for Love for Saturday night ($275 for the pair including service charge for ninth row - the first several rows go for $325 a pair) and bought my ticket for Las Vegas. I'd be in from Thursday, Heather would arrive on Saturday - and we'd come back to SF on Sunday afternoon.

I listened to the preview tracks and was fairly impressed with the mash-up gimmick. Sure, the editing was sloppy in places, but it wasn't like the producer had the original tapes and millions of dollars of equipment at their disposal (if I did smilies, there'd be a big sarcastic something right about here). As someone who used to play "Beatles needle-drop" with his friends (you'd graze a Beatles record with the needle and identify the song), it is definitely fun in a train-spotting sort of way, but "Good Night" really never did belong with "Octopus's Garden", did it?

Anyway, I'm not a gambler and I'm not shopping too much these days (saving for a move to more Southern climes in the near future - beware), so Las Vegas was about strolling and people-watching for me. It became pretty depressing after the first 20 minutes (quick aside - when I try to describe Disney parks to folks who are familiar with the Vegas of the past 20 years, I tell them that Disney parks are built with money made from people's happiness...) I knew that I couldn't just stroll the strip on Friday night, so I talked my brother-in-law into going to see Ka with me. While I found the music in Ka to be a little "Cirque-y" for me (the mix of new age, "world", and neo-tribal that I have grown to expect from them), the show was a revelation. From the moment the show started, I was transported. It was over-the-top, for sure, but I was amazed by the costumes, the staging and the performers. It was a wonderful balance of "how do they do that?" with "holy crap!". I left the theater thinking, "If this is Cirque circa 2005, imagine how great Love is going to be, especially with Beatles music." To paraphrase the Fab Four, that was my first mistake.

part 3 (the final post in a series) in a bit. I need to clear my head and listen to my favorite new rock anthem for a few minutes.