"Ask me for a flower, and I will show you a Light."

At yesterday's protest, some people did their own thing. Here's a friendly gentleman in a "PEACE" hat, with a framed picture of John Lennon, a scattering of sayings, a small "Recall Gov. Scott Walker" sticker, and a lot of postage stamps. The stamps, he told me, were his contribution to the government.

Also in the photograph:

Right side: The man-in-tights blogged here.

Top left: Corrugated cardboard signs, readable in the super-enlargement. Why do people do signs on sorry-ass broken-open cardboard boxes?

Top right: The lined-up police who were keeping the pro- and anti-Scott Walker people apart. I suspected that there was an official police policy to keep the Tea Party crowd from getting big. We were forced to enter the Tea Party group at corner of the block and blocked from walking across the lawn. I expressed my theory to a woman standing next to me, and she said: What do you expect? Whose side do you think the police are on? Meaning: They're all public service employees too.

I said that I wanted to get over to the Tea Party group and complained about the difficulty of getting through the crowd to the entrance point at the corner. Her attitude toward me suddenly changed. She snapped: "You're a Republican?" Pussy that I am, I said: "I just want to get into the Tea Party group." Actually, I'm not a Republican, but I backed away from the challenge so reflexively — a habit of 25 years in Madison — that my conscious rational processes never crystallized into the lucidity that would have produced a simple "no." 

"[T]he worst pop song designed to reflect a profound moral conscience. I.e. the smuggest, most pretentious pop song in history."

Andrew Sullivan sets up a poll for what he (a bit inaptly) calls the "Shut Up and Sing" award. You can't really shut up and sing. He's just looking for bad lyrics of a particular sort.

I only know 4 of the 10 songs on his list, and they don't really bother me. I mean, it's fun to knock Sting, but other than that, who cares what Madonna was actually saying in "American Life"? And if Stevie Wonder wants to sing with Paul McCartney about racial harmony using a piano keyboard metaphor, that's too sweet to get upset about. As for "Okie From Muskogee," that song has aged fabulously well. I was around in the 1960s when we hippies loved hating Merle Haggard for the things he said in that song, but it's nuts to take it the way we did back then:

"Okie From Muskogee," 1969's apparent political statement, was actually written as an abjectly humorous character portrait. Haggard called the song a "documentation of the uneducated that lived in America at the time."... "I wrote it when I recently got out of the joint. I knew what it was like to lose my freedom, and I was getting really mad at these protesters. They didn't know anything more about the war in Vietnam than I did. I thought how my dad, who was from Oklahoma, would have felt. I felt I knew how those boys fighting in Vietnam felt."

That text is from Wikipedia. "Abjectly humorous character portrait"? Somebody doesn't know the meaning of "abjectly." But I'm inclined to say that Andrew Sullivan is abjectly humorless... at least when it comes to marijuana....

"We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee..."



Smug? Pretentious? Absurd!

You know what deserves to win the award Sullivan defines. It's damned obvious and it's not on the list. Imagine all the peeepull....

Really, this award is no fun if you take shots at lightweights like The Partridge Family and the New Kids on the Block — as Sullivan does. Get the guys who've been taken seriously, like Bob Dylan. ("He that gets hurt will be he who has stalled...") Pick a worthy target or... as they say... shut up.

If you're thinking of saying something about Elizabeth Edwards in the comments to the previous post....

... you need to put it here instead.

ADDED: Let me front-page something Clyde said in the comments to yesterday's post noting the death of Elizabeth Edwards:

This is probably an inappropriate question, but if as some have speculated, she knew the end was near and stopped taking the drugs: Did she decide to check out in December before the Death Tax kicks back in in 2011? Dying before January would be very lucrative for heirs, as opposed to hanging on until January 1st and having her estate get slammed with a 55% tax (or I think 35% if the deal Obama made with the Republicans goes through)...

AND: Irene said:

Rich people like Elizabeth Edwards plan for death, and their lawyers draft dispositions that minimize the impact of the estate tax. She knew she was dying, and she probably had a plan that gave a good chunk to charity. She also had plenty of warning since her initial diagnosis, and she could take advantage of making lifetime gifts to her children.

If she didn't plan, then everything passes to John Edwards without any tax implications. They're still married, and there is an unlimited marital deduction for spouses.

I didn't realize they were still married. Did they stay married as a tax-planning scheme?

"An unspeakable tragedy..."

30 years ago....

"I don't believe in magic..."

Waking up in a red state, the lyric "The dream is over" played in my head. That song, that John Lennon song, you may know, is called "God." It begins: "God is a concept by which we measure our pain" — and that seems like an apt rebuke in a political world in which we imagined our President to be some kind of God. Idolatry is not a good thing, and we — not just the President, but we — got our comeuppance. Lennon's song continues...

I don't believe in magic
I don't believe in I-ching
I don't believe in Bible
I don't believe in tarot
I don't believe in Hitler
I don't believe in Jesus
I don't believe in Kennedy
I don't believe in Buddha

Maybe, like me, you exclaimed: But maybe I believe in Aqua Buddha!

Let's hope last night's revolution was a revolution toward reality, away from government, and a return to belief in what individual human beings can do on their own, without magical dreams about government.

Waking up in a red state.

Good morning, from Wisconsin.

My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over....

Or maybe just... The dream is over...And so, dear friends, you'll just have to carry on...

John Lennon is 70.

There's a nice tribute to Lennon in today's Google logo. An animated line drawing, with exactly what you'd expect in the audio track. Must it always be "Imagine"?

Imagine no "Imagine"
What song would they use
For every Lennon tribute
In the annual Lennon news
Imagine all the people
Freed from that old song...

You may say I'm a dreamer
Like some crazy peacenik dove
I hope someday you'll join me
And the new song would be Love.

"Here's the famous banned butcher cover. You can sell it for $11m dollars."

So wrote John Lennon. And now, the item is offered for sale, at $11 million, naturally.

(If John Lennon really wrote "$11m dollars," he made a common redundancy error.)

The photograph — which, btw, is offal — may top the list of the most expensive Beatles memorabilia, which currently looks like this:

#5, John Lennon's talisman necklace...

#4, Gibson SG guitar played by George Harrison and John Lennon...

#3, A hand painted Beatles Sgt. Pepper's drum skin...

#2, John Lennon's Steinway piano...

#1, John Lennon's hand painted Rolls Royce Phantom V...

Heavy on the John Lennon. Light on the Paul McCartney.

At the Amaryllis Café...

... amour is real.

Bob Dylan, unrecognized, took an ordinary tourist tour of John Lennon's childhood home.

"He could have booked a private tour but he was happy to go on the bus with everyone else."

IN THE COMMENTS: There's some talk about running into celebrities and Palladian says:

I once ran into Woody Allen. Literally. He was coming out the in door at Lincoln Center and I smacked right into him. He was wearing Woody Allen clothes, his trademark glasses and a fishing hat. I didn't knock him over or anything but he was obviously shaken up. The funny thing was, I automatically, instinctively reacted to him in a Woody Allen way. I started mumbling and saying "My God! I'm... I'm sorry, I'm really... My G-god, are you alright? Wow, I'm... shocked... shocked? I'm... surprised. I-I- are you ok? I mean, can I... can you... are you alright? Geez!" He mumbled right back in a Woody Allen way as he composed himself and then he took off into the plaza. It was really, really surreal because for a brief few moments I was basically in a scene from a Woody Allen movie.

Then this Trooper York comment slips in next:

I do think it is a shame and a crime that he has not yet been elected to the Overrated Hall of Fame.

Well maybe the veterans committee will correct that injustice.

He adds:

Oh and that goes for the Woodsman too.

And Palladian's all:

It's the Academy of the Overrated, along with such notables as... Gustav Mahler and Carl Jung and Isaac Dinesen... and Van Gock.

With video:

"But it grieves my heart, love/To see you tryin' to be a part of/A world that just don't exist ..."

"It’s all just a dream, babe/a vacuum, a scheme, babe/that sucks you into feelin’ like this."

Is "To Ramona" really the 24th best Bob Dylan song ever? I don't know, but it's meant a lot to me over the years.

It remains one of the best songs based on a woman’s first name, up there with Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” and John Lennon’s “Julia.”

See the muddy waters rise.

Thanks to Jason for pointing me to The Beatles Search Machine, after I tweeted about wanting a place to search Beatles lyrics, the way you can search Bob Dylan's lyrics at his official website. I wanted to know:

Is the only reference to "water" in the Beatles' lyrics "muddy water"? (Typical of the kind of thing I need to know to blog.)

Don't you think it's interesting that the word "water" appears only once in all those lyrics, and it's muddy water? The "he" of "Come Together" "got muddy water." (I'm not sure how well the "mojo filter" works to clarify said water.) Presumably, the reference is to the musician Muddy Waters, though surely he is not the "he" of the song. (It's Timothy Leary, right?)

The Beatles Search Machine also returned "Mother Nature's Son," but there, the word actually is "waters," so it does not undo the conclusion that the only "water" in a Beatles song is "muddy water." But the "waters" of "Mother Nature's Son" look sparkling clear:

Sit beside a mountain stream — see her waters rise
Listen to the pretty sound of music as she flies.

The usual things that are said about the difference between Paul and John can be said here. John's dark "shoot me" song has muddy water, and Paul's sweet happy song has us listening to the pretty music of a mountain stream. But I must add that "see her waters rise" today makes me think about global warming. Now, I hear that song and picture Paul, Mother Nature's son, in his field of grass, with his swaying daisies, and the mental picture is ruined by big old Al Gore lumbering up and harshing his mellow.