Lennon on the cover of Newsweek, Dec. 22, 1980. Guys, just wanted to let everybody know that an essay I wrote on the 30th anniversary of John Lennon's murder--and what I plan to do to commemorate it--is up at The Huffington Post. Welcome fellow Dullblogger Devin McKinney to The December 8th Project!
[This morning, as we were listening to Breakfast with the Beatles, my wife Kate launched into a long analysis of the Beatles photo that Apple has been using for its campaign, the McBroom session of April, 1969. I thought what she said was really funny and interesting, so I asked her to share it.--MG] Thanks to the combination of the Apple/iTunes Beatle campaign and the fact that I was reloading the Apple site every five minutes on Thanksgiving night (looking for the Black Friday discount that made it possible to buy the spiffy new laptop on which I am writing this email), [...]
Stolen from Brian Epstein's closet. Dullbloggers, I made these t-shirts for myself a while back and thought that some of you might enjoy them, too. I'm still figuring out which service to use for all these ideas--CafePress, Zazzle, Printfection, or others. Any opinion?
I hope our Dear Leader, Mike, will excuse me for posting this...I was flipping through a recent-ish New Yorker and came across an article about parodies, written by Louis Menand. Reviewing the anglocentric new Oxford Book of Parodies, Menand cites Bret Easton Ellis and continues: "Many other Americans could receive nominations: Framk Cammuso for 'Glengarry Glen Plaid'; Michael Gerber and Jonathan Schwarz, for 'What We Talk About When We Talk about Doughnuts'..."What a great piece that was! It appeared in The New Yorker's pages; here is the "abstract" from the magazine's archives. It is pretty hilarious even in this abbreviated form—a must [...]
This morning I had a great idea: "Wouldn't it be great if everybody who loved John Lennon and The Beatles did something nice in his name on December 8th? Something that he might've done, if he were still here with us...like donating to the ACLU; eating organic (or even macrobiotic) for a day; spending some extra time with a kid; making some art that showed love for people and hope for the world...Wouldn't it be wonderful to turn a tragic anniversary into something awesome? And wouldn't that show, once and for all, that violence doesn't work unless we allow it to?" Like [...]
...I love Magical Mystery Tour. Love love LOVE it. Maybe it was seeing the movie as an impressionable 12-year-old at the Tivoli Theater in St. Louis, wreathed in pot smoke and surrounded by kids from Wash U.; or maybe it's the fact that most of the LP is singalong singles; or maybe it's the shimmery quality of the production (Elliot Smith was trying to recreate the MMT sound in his home studio when he died); or maybe it's the fact that the group still seems to have the "free from touring but still interested in being Beatles" vibe going... For whatever reason(s), [...]
The Beatles from jordan stempleman on Vimeo.(Via Poetry Foundation)
Why don't they just let Ringo play?
Imagine no possessions…or borders. Nice our boy made it onto a coin and all, but it doesn't look like him to me. More like Queen Victoria. Somewhere, John is looking down and saying, "Couldn't they have made me a little skinnier?"
I owe commenter Tony (aka Pismotality) a pint, a kidney or something even more important for bringing this into my life. From the British sketch show "Harry and Paul": http://youtu.be/SgnaAiAi1Pk I particularly enjoyed the banter on the bus--somewhere Alun Owen is smiling. And the bit with Lennon and the Germans..."Harry and Paul" is now more popular than Christ, at least in this household. Dullblog people, you are the greatest!