when there was Love

Picture this. Anna and I dressed up in formal attire in a speeding minivan rushing towards the Mirage hotel, with a standby ticket to Love (the cirque du soleil) and three things worrying us: one being that if we didn’t arrive by 6:30 we would lose our reserved place in the front of the standby line, two being that there might be a dress code requiring pants and I had worn nice shorts, and three being that Anna had forgotten her glasses so if we were lucky enough to get any tickets, if they were far Anna wouldn’t be able to really enjoy the show.

It wasn’t a great combination of things. The Two Of Us hope and began to accept that we wouldn’t see the show. It wasn’t a big deal, anyway. We had randomly ended up in Las Vegas with my family and had never initially planned on seeing Love. It wasn’t even supposed to play on Tuesdays, so we wouldn’t have even considered it.

An hour before, we had wandered into the Mirage hoping to purchase a canceled appointment’s seats. When we got to the ticket booth, they told us that they use a standby system here we wait in line at 4:30, they take down our names, give us a card, and we then return before 6:30 and take the same position in line before the show. It was horribly confusing, and there was a huge crowd of people for some reason holding cameras and clapping once in a while.

As it turned out, the crowd was there because Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono Lennon, Olivia Harrison, and Larry King were there doing some interview. We had no idea why, but who cared? The living Beatles were in the same room as us. We then were informed that they were doing an interview because it was the one year anniversary of Love, and they were paying tribute to George’s wish to have this show created. Then they left for the Beatles Revolution Lounge, and continued their interviews there.

Then and there, somewhere inside I felt like I Can’t Buy Me Love tickets. Why would anyone cancel their seats the night of the one year anniversary? We figured we might as well try, anyway, and if we didn’t get any tickets, we’d see Spam-a-Lot instead. It’d be fine. Let It Be.

We went to the hotel, changed into some nice clothes, washed up, and prepared to go. My mom picked us up and we started on our way. We met traffic and a series of red lights, which pissed me off. We left fifteen minutes early, and the hotel was two blocks away; we were just trying to Get Back to where we were fricken half an hour ago. Stupid traffic. Anyway, there we were thinking, “Help! I’m this close!” and the clock strikes 6:30.

We got to the Mirage and Anna and I took off, knowing we had no chance. We get there and we see the standby line full of 30-40 people and a man moving people to the back of the line.

That was where it began.

The guy asked for our number. We showed him. #11. He showed us that the people in the front of the line were #13. He unlatched a velvet rope and pushed us into the front of the line. Here Comes the Sun. He asked a lady if it was time to cut off newcomers yet, she said yes. Everyone that arrived after us would lose their place in line. After us. One: we got there in time. She said that there was a party of two who canceled their seats and we would have the option of buying theirs. We walked up to the counter, and a lady helped us out. Guys walked in with tickets in shorts. Two: no dress code. The lady asked us if the seats were ok. She motioned to a map of the stadium. Our seats were in the front. The front section. People had been selling those tickets for up to $3000, and we were about to buy them for $170. Three: Anna could see from the front.

Anna and I were speechless. We walked into the theater with our tickets to Love, the one-year anniversary.

On sheets hanging from the ceiling were projected live feeds of the interview with the Beatles in the Revolution Lounge. That was happening in our building. A man walked out onto the stage and welcomed us and explained that the Beatles would be watching the performance with us. Yeah. They had seats in another section, not that far from ours.

Needless to say Love was amazing. Amazing. That soundtrack is so much more exciting when you know what’s going on to the music. The intro was perfect. It was somber, dark, with figured walking slowly in fog under umbrellas. Then, suddenly, in an explosion of light, the sheets rose, the fog left, and Get Back came after a great drum buildup. Dancers down below, gymnasts up above, men on bungees in the air. Wow.

A great surprise in the middle of the performance came on during one of my favorite songs, Tomorrow Never Knows. A bed was in the middle of the stage, and it began to rise. As it rose, a huge sheet emerged from all sides, covering the stage. It kept growing and growing and I was at a loss for when it would stop. It started to cover the people at the base of the stage, then more and more people, until the enormous sheet covered every singly person in the lower audience, including Anna and I and the Beatles. We touched the sheet, the same sheet the Beatles were touching. That’s right.

At the end (which was inevitable, though I wished the entire time that this would be my death and my heaven) Flower pedals fell from the sky as Ringo and Paul ran around the stage waving to each section. They were so close to us, it was almost unbearable. Less than 20 feet From Us To You, Paul! Less than 20! Paul did a cute little Beatles pose, which made me smile. I wanted to cry, really I did. Cry, Baby, Cry. I wasn’t alone. Anna wanted to, and so many people in he audience did. I heard one lady crying saying , “I’m just so happy. I’m just…so…happy.”

At that moment I knew that night had been the best night of my life.