All at once the gates of Sleep were thrown wide open and my waking ears took in the purr of a cat anxious to break her fast. I had awoken from a dream involving my wife. Oh, and Piper too. I am unsure which part of it was the most distressing: my wife rejecting me in some way that I cannot recall or Piper joining a gang of miscreant cats that caused mayhem throughout the neighborhood. When I was told that Piper had joined the gang of felines reprobates, my dream cut to a crawl space underneath the house that the dream took place in and arrayed on the dirt were several cats with my beloved Pipey in the middle. Despite the nightmarish quality of this stress dream, as a friend called it, the morning went rather well.
Still, Wednesday proved to be something of an odd day.
Later that afternoon I listened to a podcast in which two women talked about cleanliness vs. clutter. There was something positively eerie about one of them remarking that her apartment is rife with clutter and that it doesn't bother her one iota. It was something that could have come directly from the mouth of my my wife. Indeed, something very similar did. Probably more than once. The conversation just struck a little close to home as this very subject was a major factor in the dissolution of my marriage.
And then that night I went to my wife's favorite tavern, Mickey's. Not once but twice. Thankfully I didn't run into her. My first appearance there was to meet up with some folks for a drink before going to the cinema while the second was an after-movie nightcap. We saw Rolling Stones - At the Max.
I knew one of the people I met at Mickey's and found the rest of the folks to be splendid company. They were all music nerds of varying degrees who had all seen the Stones live and were endowed with great senses of humor. I was hoping that "Midnight Rambler" was in the film and even sang to one of my companions:
Well, you heard about the Madison
Bucky, it's not one of those
The woman who drove us to the theater had a fancy, newish car. At one point we were asked what we wanted to listen to and I told Alexa or Siri or whomever lived in the dashboard that I wanted to hear "Monkey Man" by the Stones. My request was met by silence as the dang computer didn't play it at first and so I felt a bit like Dave Bowman.
I cleared my throat and a second, more authoritative try proved more fruitful as the opening tinkling of the ivories came through the speakers. It was my first successful attempt at getting a car to obey me by voice command. I felt confident that the vehicle would let me back in after the movie.
Rolling Stones - At the Max was a blast despite the glaring omission of "Midnight Rambler". There's something a bit unsettling about a giant Keith Richards strumming away before you. I thought it was a bit funny to see those guys looking like leviathans on the screen while knowing full well that Christina Aguilera was quite a bit taller than they were. Or Mick Jagger, anyway. (Thank you Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.) But what can you expect? The guys in the Stones grew up in post-war England, raised on a diet of rationed powdered eggs and potatoes.
Jagger was a bundle of energy and he ran around the enormous stage set throughout. After the show, some of my cinema companions theorized that his moves were inspired by Bowie's. The giant inflatable women that came out for "Honky Tonk Women" were hilarious. One sat with legs crossed, a huge cigarette dangling from one her ginormous hands while the other woman sat there with legs splayed open. While Jagger hoofed it from one end of the stage to the other, Richards and Wood spun and kicked and skipped around the main stage area. Bill Wyman, however, was having none of that and stood still in largely the same spot throughout.
The performance was shot in 1989/90 on the Steel Wheels tour and so many things reeked of the 1980s that I just had to laugh, not the least of which was Chuck Leavell's shirt. However, Bill Wyman wore a blue dress shirt and, um, colorful vest. Furthermore, he sported a mullet and played a Steinberger.
The giant IMAX image was marvelous and the sound fantastic. The experience was loud and the band so in your face that I nearly started clapping after the first song, "Start Me Up", had finished.
A grand time was had by all.
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