There are all kinds of jokes about how old The Rolling Stones are – jokes like the one about how colostomy bags are on their tour rider – but now The Rolling Stones are officially very old.
The Rolling Stones are now so old that they are now too old to watch themselves when they perform at the Super Bowl in one month’s time. Even Ronnie Wood – the effervescent young one in The Rolling Stones at 58 years old – missed the age cut-off by a full thirteen years.
The Super Bowl halftime show is one of the most extravagant moments
in American TV. Previous Super Bowl halftime highlights have included
the time when Justin Timberlake yanked one of Janet Jackson‘s boobies
out of her top, and… um, no, that’s just about the only Super Bowl
halftime highlight.
This year, instead of having a lass with floppy knockers as the
halftime show, the National Football League has decided to allow frail
old men The Rolling Stones (CDs) to perform. But, even though The Rolling
Stones are a picture of resilient vitality, the NFL isn’t so confident
that their fans are. It has offered up 2,000 special invites for fans
of The Rolling Stones to take to the field for their halftime
performance. But not if they’re old. The invites only stand for those
aged between 18-45.
Isn’t this just blatant ageism on the part of The Rolling Stones and
the NFL? Well, no. Because the lucky 2,000 with halftime invites are
expected work work their young, lithe arses off by singing, waving and
dancing relentlessly. And not just once, either.
They’ll have to endure
five gruelling rehearsals to learn how to sing, wave and dance in
exactly the correct way. And each rehearsal is expected to last up to
seven hours each. That’s 35 hours of pretending to like The Rolling
Stones just to be able to spot yourself in a crowd on TV for a
billisecond. An NFL spokesman told the Detroit Free Press:
"You have to attend rehearsal and be able to stand for long stretches
of time. And you have
to run on to Ford Field with 2,000 other folks."
The
age limitation is understandable, though. After all, nobody wants to
see 2,000 obese 47-year-olds clutch their cholesterol-lined hearts and
drop to the floor during the second chorus of Sweet Neo Con, do they?
Read more:
Stones too old to watch their own performance – Guardian
[story by Stuart Heritage]