Michael Gerber
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Commenter Gibson pointed me to this cri de coeur from Beatle author Geoffrey Giuliano on the perils of “thinking about the Beatles a little too much.” It tickled me immensely, and some of you will have strong feelings, I’m sure. I look forward to hearing them in the comments.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go back to frying chicken. 🙂 You’ll get the joke if you watch the video.

(Actually, Kate and I are about to go to The Getty Villa. Ancient Romans had many analogues to Beatle-worship, and not simply gods and emperors and the cults around each. There were passionate fans of certain gladiators, certain chariot teams, certain actors…I would argue that these fandoms are a function of civilizations of a certain complexity, and are neither good nor bad on their own. IMHO Rome had its Beatles, surely; unfortunately they’ve been lost to history, thanks to the biases of ancient historiography (no such thing as “bottom-up,” or even oral history, back in those days) and the massive knowledge losses of the Christian era. But there surely were Roman Johns, Pauls, Georges, and Ringos.)