In an alternate universe, John lives, and the Beatles sing on

What if, in 1976 — six years after their breakup — the Beatles had actually accepted producer Lorne Michaels’ jokey invitation to get back together and perform on Saturday Night Live? Blogger MightyGodKing takes this as a starting point and imagines a mind-bending alternate timeline in which the Beatles reunite; John survives (for a good while longer); new albums are made (and sell in the millions); and Ringo is, crucially, much more than he seems (and hints at the unintended consequences of time travel). Some choice events:

December 14, 1980. Having “had a sit back” (Ringo) after [the new album] Eventually’s staggering success and taken time to concentrate on their own projects and personal lives, the Beatles make their first televised appearance as a group since the SNL reunion, appearing on The Muppet Show. (Lennon leaves New York for the first time in six months to do the gig, eventually spending the entire month of December in England.) The episode is the highest rated episode of The Muppet Show in the show’s history and the most watched television program of the entire year, beating even the news coverage of the 1980 American presidential election. The undisputed highlight of the episode is the “battle of the bands” between the Beatles and the Electric Mayhem (although Starr says his duet with Fozzie the Bear remains his personal favorite moment). Jim Henson would later say that the Beatles episode “rejuvenated” his joy in working on the show, which by that point he had begun to feel was growing stale: the show continues for another seven seasons.

January 7th, 1981. Lennon, Harrison and Starr attend the funeral of a New Yorker named Mark David Chapman, who committed suicide in mid-December and whose apartment, after the fact, was revealed to be a shrine to the Beatles. “I just felt, you know, responsible somehow, like he died because of us,” says Starr, although he refuses to articulate further on this point. Harrison agrees: “it’s amazing to think how great an impact we can have sometimes. You just want it so that you don’t have this kind of impact.” Lennon says nothing.

1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that [Michael] Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event. The “Startin’ Something Again” tour plays packed stadiums and larger venues around the world for eleven months straight – the smallest concert played is 240,000 people in Rio de Janeiro, and the tour closes with a free concert in Central Park with an estimated crowd of one point three million people.

January 5th, 1984. Jackson and McCartney are filming a commercial for Pepsi when pyrotechnicians accidentally set Jackson’s hair on fire. Jackson is rushed to the hospital with severe burns, but dies of shock in the ambulance before he can be treated. The Beatles attend his funeral en masse. “He changed things,” says Lennon, “and that’s something I don’t say lightly.” Starr is especially saddened, saying “it wasn’t supposed to be like this.” Harrison says nothing. McCartney promises that Michael Jackson’s legacy “will not be forgotten” and pledges to make sure of this, although he is unspecific as to details.

2002-3. John Lennon, having never abandoned peace activism (his 1991 re-recording of “Give Peace A Chance” before the first Gulf War sparked much controversy), begins harshly criticizing the American buildup to war in Iraq, calling it a “pack of lies.” After the first round of peace protests are largely ignored by the media, Lennon goes on The Late Show With David Letterman and launches into a tirade, visibly furious that the protests were ignored. “Half a million fucking people in New York saying “we don’t want a war” and CNN doesn’t say a damn thing.” The soundbite becomes a flashpoint for debate over the war. Sean Hannity calls for Lennon’s deportation. Lennon offers to come on any show opposing his viewpoint: he receives no response.

Much more here. It’s an extremely well-imagined (and ultimately melancholy) bit of wish fulfillment, and as a Beatles fan it really makes me want to tear my hair out that I don’t live in this universe. There should have been more. There should have been so much more.

(Image from The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics. Thanks to commenter Paul W. at FlickFilosopher for the link.)

Why stereotypes need to die, cont’d: Hollywood and African men

Brilliant:

Andrew Revkin adds:

The tendency to focus on the grim side of any issue, or group, goes far beyond the movies, of course. [...] The bottom line, for me, is that there is a great opportunity for nonprofit groups, university communication and journalism programs and creative individuals to step in to the gap left by Hollywood and the media and find ways to tell the up side of the human story. This is one such attempt. What else is out there?

(via The NY Times)

Moby-Dick and Martians

Margaret Atwood offers a reading list to visiting Martians, as a window into American politics and culture. The aliens dissect Moby-Dick:

“Holy crap!” they said. “Does this mean what we think it means?” they said.
“What do you think it means?” I said. “I’ll do the popcorn myself: you might get the wavelength wrong.”

“ ‘Moby-Dick’ is about the oil industry,” they said. “And the Ship of American State. The owners of the Pequod are rapacious and stingy religious hypocrites. The ship’s business is to butcher whales and turn them into an industrial energy product. The mates are the middle management. The harpooners, who are from races colonized by America one way or another, are supplying the expert tech labor. Elijah the prophet — from the American artist caste — foretells the Pequod’s doom, which comes about because the chief executive, Ahab, is a megalomaniac who wants to annihilate nature.

“Nature is symbolized by a big white whale, which has interfered with Ahab’s personal freedom by biting off his leg and refusing to be slaughtered and boiled. The narrator, Ishmael, represents journalists; his job is to warn America that it’s controlled by psychotics who will destroy it, because they hate the natural world and don’t grasp the fact that without it they will die. That’s enough literature for now. Can we have popcorn?”

More here. My own thoughts on Moby-Dick here.

(Image via Bookman’s Log)

Best use of the crappy Star Wars prequels ever

DJ duo Hot Problems offers a song — and a video — for the weekend:

(via Tor.com)

“My liberation as a man is tied to your liberation as a woman”

In her inspiring letter to her daughter, Mur Lafferty links to this powerful TED talk by activist Tony Porter, who reminds us that raising up women doesn’t mean putting down men; on the contrary, liberating men from the twisted social conditioning that leads them to denigrate women is absolutely crucial to the liberation of women as well. See the whole thing:

Yes.

Dar Williams, in her incredibly wise “When I Was a Boy,” puts it this way:

Men and women are allies, or should be. And the idea that men should feel threatened by feminism is ludicrous, because feminism is a win-win situation: a path not to an imbalance or reversal of power, but to a society of mutual respect among fellow human beings, who have access to the entire range of human emotion and potential. We men need to try harder, to be humble, to learn more about how to be the fiercest allies we can be to our daughters, wives, mothers, sisters, friends. We owe it not just to them, but to ourselves.

“You’re worth a billion of them”: A writer’s advice to her daughter (and to girls everywhere)

Author and podcaster Mur Lafferty writes a must-read letter to her daughter, offering the love and support that I hope I’m giving my own:

So. The world hates you. You are considered the worst thing to be compared to. Throw like a girl. Talk like a girl. Cry like a girl. God forbid we ever be girls.

No, we wouldn’t want to take utter delight in beauty and love. We wouldn’t want to carefully watch and study something to learn. We wouldn’t want to look at the world and for just one second think that we have as many opportunities as boys. That we can play sports. Play the drums or saxophone. Play video games. Excel at science/math. * And for that second, before something or someone starts opening their shit-hole to put down little girls, we can fly.

So what can we do, dear daughter? When you get a little older, I will be honest with you and tell you — fuck ‘em. You will not change their mind by arguing, by telling them they are wrong. You change their mind by showing them how being a girl is awesome. You show them by not hiding, by not being demure. [...]

You show them by being more than your looks, even if that’s all people comment on. You show them by your independence. You show them by being more than they expect to see. You show them by not taking their shit. [...]

So they hate you. But fuck ‘em. Because you are a force of nature, a powerhouse of emotion and talent and stubbornness and potential.

You’re worth a billion of them.

Read the rest here.

(h/t Boing Boing; image via Jimi666)

“Sometimes a dream almost whispers”

Steven Spielberg praises teachers, talks about how he fell into filmmaking, and offers inspirational advice:

When you have a dream, it often doesn’t come at you screaming in your face, “This is who you are, this is who you must be for the rest of your life.” Sometimes a dream almost whispers. And I’ve always said to my kids: the hardest thing to listen to — your instincts, your human personal intuition — always whispers; it never shouts. Very hard to hear. So you have to, every day of your lives, be ready to hear what whispers in your ear. It very rarely shouts. And if you can listen to the whisper, and if it tickles your heart, and it’s something you think you want to do for the rest of your life, then that is going to be what you do for the rest of your life, and we will benefit from everything you do.

(h/t AICN)

Books are made of win, cont’d: “A momentary stay against confusion”

Clay Shirky says:

[A] book is a “momentary stay against confusion.” This is something quoted approvingly by Nick Carr, the great scholar of digital confusion. The reading experience is so much more valuable now than it was ten years ago because it’s rarer. I remember, as a child, being bored. I grew up in a particularly boring place and so I was bored pretty frequently. But when the Internet came along it was like, “That’s it for being bored! Thank God! You’re awake at four in the morning? So are thousands of other people!”

It was only later that I realized the value of being bored was actually pretty high. Being bored is a kind of diagnostic for the gap between what you might be interested in and your current environment. But now it is an act of significant discipline to say, “I’m going to stare out the window. I’m going to schedule some time to stare out the window.” The endless gratification offered up by our devices means that the experience of reading in particular now becomes something we have to choose to do.

The social piece of reading is a kind of penumbra. It’s something that forms around the text and after the fact. The feature of “highlight this passage and immediately see how many other people have highlighted it”? I mean, ZOMG, no. I want my own thoughts rendered as the most recent entry in the constant, long-running popularity contest that is the Internet – in real-time. Pick it up and do anything you like with it. Tell me later who else liked it. Show them to me, introduce them to me, whatever — not right now. Right now I’m reading.

Shirky writes more here — part of a fascinating series on the future of reading (for good or ill).

Nick Carr adds:

We don’t like being bored because boredom is the absence of engaging stimulus, but boredom is valuable because it requires us to fill that absence out of our own resources, which is process of discovery, of doors opening. The pain of boredom is a spur to action, but because it’s pain we’re happy to avoid it. Gadgetry means never having to feel that pain, or that spur. The web expands to fill all boredom. That’s dangerous for everyone, but particularly so for kids, who, without boredom’s spur, may never discover what in themselves or in their surroundings is most deeply engaging to them.

I’m sure neither author means to suggest that reading physical books is boring. But it does require a qualitatively different kind of attention than the restless browsing that typically happens on the Net, or the multitasking that our new devices make all too easy.

(h/t The Dish; image via CEN)
_____
4/15 Update: I see The Dish has now put up a nearly identical post — ironic, considering a previous Dish link to Shirky’s piece (but emphasizing a different topic) inspired mine. Let the record show that I got to this one first.

Ashley Judd takes on patriarchy, the media, and the conversation about women

I really have nothing to add to Ashley Judd’s fantastic takedown of the current media obsession over her appearance, except to encourage you to read it in full. A lengthy excerpt:

The Conversation about women’s bodies exists largely outside of us, while it is also directed at (and marketed to) us, and used to define and control us. The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. We are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of personhood to simple physical objectification. Our voices, our personhood, our potential, and our accomplishments are regularly minimized and muted. [...]

[T]he recent speculation and accusations [have been] pointedly nasty, gendered, and misogynistic and embod[y] what all girls and women in our culture, to a greater or lesser degree, endure every day, in ways both outrageous and subtle. The assault on our body image, the hypersexualization of girls and women and subsequent degradation of our sexuality as we walk through the decades, and the general incessant objectification is what this conversation allegedly about my face is really about. [...]

That women are joining in the ongoing disassembling of my appearance is salient. Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it. This abnormal obsession with women’s faces and bodies has become so normal that we (I include myself at times — I absolutely fall for it still) have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly. We are unable at times to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women. [...]

I hope the sharing of my thoughts can generate a new conversation: Why was a puffy face cause for such a conversation in the first place? How, and why, did people participate? If not in the conversation about me, in parallel ones about women in your sphere? What is the gloating about? What is the condemnation about? What is the self-righteous alleged “all knowing” stance of the media about? How does this symbolize constraints on girls and women, and encroach on our right to be simply as we are, at any given moment? How can we as individuals in our private lives make adjustments that support us in shedding unconscious actions, internalized beliefs, and fears about our worthiness, that perpetuate such meanness? What can we do as families, as groups of friends? Is what girls and women can do different from what boys and men can do? What does this have to do with how women are treated in the workplace?

I ask especially how we can leverage strong female-to-female alliances to confront and change that there is no winning here as women. It doesn’t actually matter if we are aging naturally, or resorting to surgical assistance. We experience brutal criticism. The dialogue is constructed so that our bodies are a source of speculation, ridicule, and invalidation, as if they belong to others — and in my case, to the actual public. [...]

If this conversation about me is going to be had, I will do my part to insist that it is a feminist one, because it has been misogynistic from the start. Who makes the fantastic leap from being sick, or gaining some weight over the winter, to a conclusion of plastic surgery? Our culture, that’s who. The insanity has to stop, because as focused on me as it appears to have been, it is about all girls and women. In fact, it’s about boys and men, too, who are equally objectified and ridiculed, according to heteronormative definitions of masculinity that deny the full and dynamic range of their personhood. It affects each and every one of us, in multiple and nefarious ways: our self-image, how we show up in our relationships and at work, our sense of our worth, value, and potential as human beings. Join in — and help change — the Conversation.

The whole article is very much worth your time. And The Takeaway offers a very smart conversation about it here.

(h/t Feministing; image via Jezebel)

Books are made of win, cont’d: Chip Kidd gets skanky

…and gives a hilarious and enlightening talk on the creation of some of his iconic book covers:

My job was to ask this question: “What do the stories look like?” [...] We bring stories to the public. The stories can be anything, and some of them are actually true. But they all have one thing in common: They all need to look like something. They all need a face. Why? To give you a first impression of what you are about to get into. [...]

The book designer’s responsibility is threefold: to the reader, to the publisher and, most of all, to the author. I want you to look at the author’s book and say, “Wow! I need to read that.”

And just as I’m watching this and thinking “That’s another thing that’s lost in an e-book,” Kidd agrees: “Try experiencing that on a Kindle!”

Don’t get me started. Seriously. Much is to be gained by eBooks: ease, convenience, portability. But something is definitely lost: tradition, a sensual experience, the comfort of thingy-ness — a little bit of humanity.

Watch the video, though. It’s a lot funnier than the serious quotes I’ve pulled out.

More reasons why books are made of win here.

(via TED)