Paperback Reader

If you've examined the right sidebar, you've noted my current reading material.

(Although, really, I haven't started "Portnoy's Complaint", aka Jewy Jewy JewBook, yet. I read "All Quiet on the Western Front" first, and learned that World War I was a really, really, really shitty deal. They used sharpened spades in hand-to-hand combat, because bayonets would get stuck between ribs, and then you've have to push against the enemy soldier to get it unstuck, and that takes too much precious time, so you just pummel 'em with the spade. Like I said: shitty.)

The other item in the sidebar is "Many Years From Now", a Paul McCartney biography written by Barry Miles. I read it in college, but I've forgotten much of the material -- important material these days, as I've lately found myself in multiple Lennon vs McCartney arguments.

The book's written with a slant toward Paul (obviously, because it's HIS biography, but also because it's written by a friend of his from back in swinging, psychedelic London). Case in point, this awesome passage:

John later complained that Paul took over and led the Beatles after Brian [Epstein, their manager] died, but no doubt if John had come up with some suggestions of his own instead of drifting in a haze of heroin and LSD, then the others would have been equally responsive. As it was, even before Brian's death, virtually everything the Beatles did from Sgt Pepper onwards was initially proposed by Paul, though Beatles democracy never faltered and all projects had to have approval from all four members of the group.

That pretty much sums up why I'm a Macca man.

But I give John his due. The second-greatest Beatle leaves a terrific legacy, but one I believe has been inflated due to his murder and due to the fact he lived in NYC.

And "I Am the Walrus" is pretty cool:

The "Eggman" in the lyrics is almost certainly Eric Burdon, who was known to his friends as "Eggs" because he was fond of breaking eggs over naked girls during sex.