Denem, my cousin's name is Tenille Bonoguore, perhaps you have read some of her stuff. Who knows. She just married a fellow named Anthony Reinhart, he works there too.

Ah, to smell the salty sea air, to carouse through the woods...

Oh great, now I'm homesick.

I'm homesick for a place I can't get back to. I grew up in Pennsylvania and sometimes wish I'd never left. But my parents are dead and I can't go home. I was so eager to get away when I was younger... sigh. At least we had a few really good visits together before they went downhill. I don't think I've been back to see my siblings since the second funeral, and I miss them. Yeah, I could go, but it seems harder now...

The other place to go home to is my mother-in-law's home in PA, where we spend every Christmas. This year will be our last chance at a good snowfall there. She's planning to sell her sprawling house next summer and get a litte place close to us. Good to have her closer, but its hard to see the place go--my husband's grandfather was the architect.

Long about 1:00 AM, the supervisor---not the usual idiot but someone who knows what she's doing---came by with the check. Over the course of the night I pieced together the story of what happened.

I work in automation---I sort letters using a large machine---but there's a manual sort area. Some trays of manual mail came in from Tampa to be sorted, and a clerk going through that found it there and turned it in.

The mystery is this: we know where the checks were found, of course...but what we don't know is whether they came in mail that came in today, or whether they've been sitting over there, out-of-sight-out-of-mind, for the entire time.

(If I'd'a known they had mail like that over there---it's been years since I worked that area and I don't know precisely what they do now---I would'a gone over and riffled through the trays myself.)

1. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds has the most psychedelic effects I've ever seen, I almost went into a seizure.

2. There were only 43 songs on it (which I guess is pretty good for that kind of game) and there were a few I missed: Elenor Rigby, Love, HELP, and that one I can never remember the name of but talks about reading horrible news, oh boy (maybe that one was Wings though.)

3. I want to know who is responsible for never playing "As my Guitar Gently Weeps" on the radio. Why did I have to live this long before I heard it? Whoever it is has some serious 'splainin to do.

4. The story mode is organized by year, not by difficulty, most of the songs on the rooftop are quite easy, and some of them in the Cavern are quite hard.

5. The game has some really gear extra features, like a Christmas album from '63 with just terrible singing. (There is also a lead in to one of the abbey road songs where George is ordering lunch.)

6. I want to watch someone play, so I can see the music videos without failing out.

7. Sometimes being afraid of chickens isn't a good enough excuse for not wearing a chicken suit.

8. John is the Walrus, trust me.

9. The opening sequence has an interesting ending (Spoiler!) a whole gaggle of things are marching towards a cliff led by the group themselves having tea atop a rhinoceros with a grassy head. The rhino moves one foot off the cliff and it cuts to the Beatles and the sound of the footstep happens and rumbles the whole everything and they all stop. The rhino would have had to take that last step off the cliff. But it didn't fall. Pretty heavy meaning there I think.

10. The songs seem to be ridiculously easy, yet they don't sound easy. My theory is, coupled with my familiarity of the band, the Beatles just wrote smoother songs than most people.

11. You can pinpoint right where they met Hendrix, right when they started to really use the power of the electric guitar. (Instead of just enhancing what they'd do with an acoustic.)

12. I really like making lists.

13.

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3. I want to know who is responsible for never playing "As my Guitar Gently Weeps" on the radio. Why did I have to live this long before I heard it? Whoever it is has some serious 'splainin to do.

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Really? They used to. I listen to sattelite radio now so I wouldn't know. Quite a magical song, isn't it? George Harrison wrote it. Did you know that it is Eric Clapton on the guitar on the album?

It might be the best song the Beatles ever did (tough choice though)

On the other hand:

2. "I read the news today, oh boy" would probably be "A Day in the Life."

3. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps."

5. Congratulations on being the first person to use "gear" in a sentence since 1964.

8. "The Walrus was Paul," "Glass Onion," John Lennon, The White Album, 1968.

(Get your hipwaders out, 'cause this'll be kneedeep in nostalgia.)

Back when I first started listening to the Beatles in a serious way, one of my first sources was the album "Hey, Jude." This might be obscure these days, but it was kinda a "Beatles Greatest Hits Package," with a rather eclectic mix of early and late hits. (I learned much later that a new contract with Capitol Records gave them the right to release a package of songs in this matter.)

But it wasn't one of those twelve-inch black disks we called "albums"---it was what we called "eight-track tapes."

These were, I guess, spinoffs of eight-track recording tape. What you got were four sets of matching two-track stereo tracks. You couldn't rewind, you could only play them forward. They lasted through the 1970s until, eventually, being supplanted by tape cassettes.

But the thing is, the stereo separation was superb! One of the great joys of listening to the Beatles so obsessively in those days, was taking the balance knob and turning it so just one speaker and one track played. On "Hey Jude," there were some delightful separations on several tracks, like having two separate versions of the same song.

(This extended past the Beatles---there's a stereo version of "A Little Bit of Soap" by a group called the Jarmels, that I'd pay a lot to have on CD, but that the record company can't find to release it that way, or so they said the last time they released anything by the Jarmels.)

None of the latter-day reissues of Beatles stuff, albums, cassettes, CDS, could match this---until now. I listened, then grabbed my remote and took "I Should Have Known Better" through one stereo side, then the other.

It was cool, hearing first Lennon's vocal and (mostly) acoustic-guitar-and-drums, then Lennon's vocal and (mostly) the electric guitar parts. It put me back in my childhood, playing with my parents' eight-track player.

But, 'cause of this, I now pronounce the Beatles box set good, and well worth the effort of seeking out and buying (that is, if you've got that kind of money.)

Sounds like stereo to me!

"While" I'm going have to remember that. It just bumped "Older" on my list of top three songs.

But the thing is, some of the atrocious lies eventually wound up in the serious histories and biographies. Ultimately, it means you've got to take practically everything they've said, and everything you read about them, with a grain of salt.

Two examples:

"The Day John Met Paul" is enshrined as an important moment in both their biographies. Ostensibly, they met when John's band played at a fete in Liverpool and a mutual friend introduced them. But several people in their social circles at the time are adamant the two of them knew each other before that point. So what really happened?

The Jonas Brothers have a TV show call Jonas, which is just a cooler version the Monkeys. I would kiss the screen, except that my five year old is watching.

I don't know what this whole Walrus thing is about, and I don't think it's that random.

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I dreamt about Jhonny Depp biting people.

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I thought one of them got the papers to print that they mixed their father's ashes with cocaine and snorted it. Or perhaps that was one of the Stones or Aerosmith.

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BTW you ever get paid yet, Robert?

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Didn't I mention it a couple of posts back? Oh, yeah, I did.

Don't know if the check cleared, though...tomorrow, when I've got some spare time, I'll see if I can find out.

*****

Oh, I'm a big fan of the Pre-Fab Four, too---would I have so many of their albums and the DVDs of their series if I weren't?

Sometimes, when I'm a big fan of whatever---written word or recording or TV show---I'll try to lay my hands on everything I can.

(Weird side effect with that---back in the 1970s, when I "took an interest" in things, if the person was alive, they died within a week. This happened with two science fiction writers and Elvis Presley.)

My office is in my basement. A squirrel spends a slice of his day down in the window well rooting around for who knows what. He (she?) lives underneath my deck and is pretty good sized for a squirrel. Did you know squirrels can run right up the plastered concrete of the window well? Straight up and out.

I have no desire to domesticate the thing. I have no idea how disease infested the little critter is. Luckily I live at a high enough altitude that there are no fleas.

Is that random enough?

My parents acquired a new cat. We saw him around the neighborhood, then he wandered up to my mother and demanded to be fed, then came inside their house...he lives there now.

(Or "she"---we're not certain. I will continue to refer to him as "him" till examination proves me wrong.)

One thing he seems fond of is, when I visit, he climbs up on my chest and sits there and licks my hand, often all the way up to the elbow.

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I wish I was in SL

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When we give the cat a treat but aren't quick about it, he says, "Now!"

The oddest moments are when he thinks we've left the house. Then, he paces around the living room, crying, "A-lone!"

*****

I'll be the guy standing next to the water cooler who looks exactly like Brad Pitt (minus the good looks, charm, and general appeal).

Salt Lake City yesterday, Carson City today. If I ever head that way again I will post for all to see.

Other opportunities for others to give me black eye.

Ft Collins, Co Sept. 21

Denver, Co Sept. 23

Witchita, Ka Sept. 25

Kansas, Ka Sept. 28

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I'll be the guy standing next to the water cooler who looks exactly like Brad Pitt (minus the good looks, charm, and general appeal).

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Now we know how you got that name, Z.

A couple, sensibly attired in bathing suits, being served obnoxiously tropical drinks at a swim up bar. Now, that's the whole point of a beach resort, so that's not what caused this canniption... it was the waiter dressed from the waist up in a tuxedo. What is that? I mean, seriously... if you're gonna make the poor man swim for his gratuity, is a tuxedo really necessary?

*****

Back on the Beatles for a moment...I read in one of the books, where John Lennon took up the guitar, and, it said, it took him two years to learn to play the guitar and to sing at the same time.