tomorrow never knows

newly discovered photos from a 1968 beatles photo shoot include this shot, staged somewhere along the river thames in london. the photo was taken a full 12 years before mark david chapman would stop lennon outside new york's dakota apartments under the guise of asking for an autograph, but of the four beatles, lennon was the first to go. and if you look closely, the wire-rim spectacles lying next to lennon's head are eerie precursor to this:

it was 29 years ago today...

all these things i don't believe in

"I no longer believe in myth, and Beatles is another myth.

I don't believe in it. The dream is over. I'm not just talking about the Beatles, I'm talking about the generation thing. It's over, and we gotta — I have to personally — get down to so-called reality."

the new issue of rolling stone magazine re-examines the breakup of the beatles, including complete audio of jann wenner's historic 1970 interview with john lennon.

do you want to know a secret?

john lennon, august 1966, in the beatles dressing room at jfk stadium (actually the old locker room for the philadelphia eagles.) one of 3500 recently discovered photographs of the beatles and the rolling stones taken by tour manager bob bonis, many of which are on display until april 14 at new york's not fade away gallery.

i buried paul

at the end of the beatles' "strawberry fields forever" john lennon mumbles something nearly inaudible. lennon claimed to have said, "cran...berry...sauce" but fans who listen to the recording over and over again claim to hear him say "i...buried...paul." this all came in the midst of the "paul is dead" rumors and, for beatles fans, was just another piece of the puzzle. paul mccartney was dead and the remaining beatles were trying to tell us.

when you listen closely, you hear whatever it is you want to hear. if you listen for "cranberry sauce," there's no mistaking it. if you have "paul is dead" in your mind, well, there it is.

this, to me, is a perfect example of people going over the edge. spending too much time mired in all the talk. staying too long at the fair.

hillary clinton's "3 a.m. / red phone" ad has garnered tons of attention. you can watch it here. barack obama responded to it immediately with his own version (here.) it's been talked about and discussed and debated over and over again. one of the sleeping girls from the stock footage used in the ad is now an obama supporter, a fact that every cable news channel will tell you a zillion times a day.

the ad was even lampooned on saturday night live, in a sketch that both clinton and obama supporters are claiming shows their candidate as the strong one. (in the sketch, a president obama is the one making the 3 a.m. phone call -- to clinton, to ask for her help. that would seem to show clinton as the smart one, the strong leader. except the whole premise is that it's a clinton produced political ad, with hillary herself saying "i approved this unfair and deceptive message.")

now, according to orlando patterson, it's a racist ad. in his op-ed column in the new york times today he says:

"The danger implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from this threat."

patterson goes on to say that this implicit racism could have been easily removed, had the children or the parents in the ad been black. instead, we first see a snoozing blond girl. the second two children, according to patterson, are "vaguely latino." i actually have several friends who are vaguely latino, so i know what he's talking about.

patterson goes on:

"Finally, Hillary Clinton appears, wearing a business suit at 3 a.m., answering the phone. The message: our loved ones are in grave danger and only Mrs. Clinton can save them. An Obama presidency would be dangerous — and not just because of his lack of experience. In my reading, the ad, in the insidious language of symbolism, says that Mr. Obama is himself the danger, the outsider within."

what's apparent to me, is that this is patterson's "i buried paul" moment:

"I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery, and when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society."

sheesh. now we're linking clinton with the klan. is this the backlash from the "obama is a muslim" nonsense?

look, i'm all about subliminal messages. you haven't noticed, but there are plenty of them hidden in this blog (aren't you craving a goo-covered apple fritter? see.) but sometimes i think we all get a little too close to that "i've gone a little crazy" line, you know?

and sometimes we pole-vault right over it.

UPDATE 1:39 p.m. -- huh. turns out one of the kids in the ad is african-american. oops!

by george! pete who?

not terribly surprising, these results (from our first official online poll.) interesting that both george and ringo are at 11%. also interesting (to me, anyway) that no seemed to know who pete best and george martin are. (george martin is widely considered to be the "fifth beatle". and pete best actually was a beatle...albeit for a short time.)

vote

it's your patriotic duty to vote in our online poll.
(it's in the dark green sidebar over there to the right.)

don't take your time. don't consider the choices.
don't look at each candidate clearly and objectively. don't do any of that bullshit.

snap judgement. ready, go.

and no -- i'm sorry but you can't pick two, even though i know you want to. and wait a minnit...our poll? right. like there's a staff of writers sitting in my living room. who am i kidding?

UPDATE / 12.28.07 -- oops! too late, too late! voting has ended in this poll. you can see the results here.