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My Profile
Fairytales for a Practical Princess - 2008-11-30
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3:44 p.m. - 2003-04-24
Now that I can read again (thank you, bifocals) I've started in on the pile of books next to my bed which I'd culled from various sources over the last 6 months. Library sales, book shops, Salvation Army stores and the like. Not being able to read comfortably never stopped me from BUYING books. I prefer to read essays, short stories, and poetry in the john. Novels tend to trap me in there for hours, reading on and on until I hit a chapter break sufficiently startling enough that I come out of my book coma and realize I've been on the toilet for 95 minutes and everything from my ass down is numb. So out of consideration for my family's bladders and my own poor circulation I try and limit my reading material to that which can be read wholly in short takes. My new bathroom book is "In My Life", a collection of essays and poems about The Beatles. Writers and musicians share their memories of the Fab Four. It's a pretty good read. Arranged chronologically, I'm still in the early years, a time so well documented by the self absorbed Baby Boomers that I am very familiar with it despite the fact that I didn't lose my first baby tooth until 1969 and was obviously far too young to remember that era myself. In fact I barely remember the Beatles together as an entity at all. If it weren't for Mrs. B's older son, who was a whopping ten years older than me, the break-up of the Beatles would have slid past me completely. But as it was I remember well the day Vito stood at the top of the stairs cursing and crying because he'd heard the Beatles had broken up. The wonder and fear of seeing my "big brother" (so tall and so very cool) with tears and boogers all over his face shouting down at his father on the landing that NO! he wouldn't mow the lawn. Couldn't he understand? THE BEATLES had disbanded! Music was dead! Yeah, the Magical Mystery Tour was over before my own musical tastes had matured past cutting out the Archie's records which came on the back of cereal boxes. As far as I knew, John, Paul, George, and Ringo were ALWAYS known as "ex-Beatle So and So". And just like how I'd only come to know the Beatles after they had stopped being Beatles, all my brushes and stories about them, except for one, are second and third hand. John Lennon fixed my friend Tsuki's mother's camera when Tsuki's mom and her friends had shyly approached him and asked for a snap. The camera jammed and John, who spoke excellent Japanese much to the delight of Tsuki's mother and friends, got the film spooled properly and was quite patient and friendly during the whole incident. My great-aunt Kit, the world traveler, asked for a new room in a hotel in Paris. The McCartney family was in the adjacent room and the kids roared and screamed like zoo animals. The hotel management thought it almost sacrilegious that someone would ASK to get away from McCartney and Co, but Kit didn't care that Paul was her next-door neighbor, she just wanted a good night's sleep. Our downstairs neighbor in our apartment here in Podunkville is the sister of the security guard who brought down Mark David Chapman after he'd shot John. Jay worked at the Dakota and it was his jacket Yoko wrapped around her dying husband as they waited for the ambulance that arrived too late. My own firsthand brush with a Beatle is pretty pathetic, but here goes. I’d gone to Atlantic City to try out for “Jeopardy”. Funnily enough I ran into an old school friend of mine in the casino. I hadn’t seen Bill in 10 years and talking to him helped assuage my hurtsy feelings about flunking the try-out exam. (As did a staffer’s aside to me as I was leaving that I’d come really close and should try again next time they held try-outs in A.C.) Atlantic City is quite a haul from here. Too far really for me to drive alone, so I’d taken the bus. The bus is cheap and all the more cheaper as the casinos subsidize the tour lines. Senior citizens by the hundreds clamber aboard and daytrip down to A.C. The casinos give out chip vouchers and discount coupons for the buffets to the bus passengers and the old folks gamble away their golden years playing nickel slots and Kino. Besides the driver, I was literally the only person on the bus younger than 70. Dispirited over flunking and tired from the long day, I brushed off the old ladies’ offers of cookies and Tang and sat silently staring out the bus window on the return trip. New Jersey is the toll road capital of the world and I amused myself with keeping track of various cars that we’d catch up with again and again as we hit the endless tolls. I noticed this one Jaguar in particular. The license plate said, “ABBEYRD”. Abbey Road, eh? Well SOME-body was a Beatles fan! I looked for the Jag at each toll hoping to get a peek at the driver. Just curious, you know. Well imagine my shock when the bus finally pulled up beside the Jag and I got to see who was behind the wheel. It was Ringo! Not somebody who liked to play up the resemblance, but the honest-to-godfrey man himself. There was no mistaking that nose and the scraggly skunk striped beard. Holy Shit! Ringo! Almost swallowing my tongue from excitement I turned to the old ladies surrounding me and gasped, “Did you see that? It’s Ringo!” The old ladies frowned a bit and asked, “Who, dear?” “Ringo! Ringo Starr! He’s in that silver Jaguar in the next lane!” The old ladies nodded and said, “That’s nice, dear.” But clearly hadn’t a clue who he was. What a let down! Just my luck to spot an actual Beatle and not a single person around me cared a fig. You guys probably don’t care either, but it’s my tale and now I’ve told it. LA’s Pick of the Day: “In My Life” by The Beatles
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