All My Little Plans and Schemes

Compare and Contrast

While I'm on a John Lennon kick, here are three versions of his song "Real Love" (originally "Real Life").

This is an early demo that appeared on the John Lennon Anthology collection:


And here's a more polished acoustic guitar version from the Imagine movie (1988):


And here's the version the surviving Beatles tarted up for the Beatles Anthology project in 1995:

God is a Concept

Just watched this again...

Remarkable doesn't even begin to describe this record...

Part 1 has embedding disabled, but it's here.

Part 2 is here:


And the bonus features are here.

For All You Cranky Old Men

With Or Without Your Sense of Humor

Piss & shit & midwives.

You make the call.

Four Things Must Pass

It's hard not to love this:

They're Ready to Go Now...

I think to myself...

The French girl sighs.

And you think French girls always sigh.

But not this one.

This one keeps her sighs internal. She hides them, doling them out only late at night, when no one is around.

She catches herself, looks around to make sure no one saw.

You bury yourself in the book, not wanting to reveal yourself. Not thinking the time is right.

But the French girl knows something is different. She can sense a ripple in the warmth from a thousand yards. She knows when things will happen before they do.

And she sees things. Things no one else can see.

Well, almost no one.

And you smile to yourself, knowing you can see these things too. Not all the time, maybe not even most of the time. But you see them.

Your mind fast-forwards decades and you wonder what she'll be like when she's old. Will she slip up then and let the sighs be heard? Will her grey hair still shimmer in the sunlight? Will she remember all those years earlier that you were behind her in the coffee shop, that you noticed her, smelled her shampoo, and dreamed of Paris.

Will she figure out how you realized she was French or will it remain forever a mystery?

You catch yourself daydreaming. And you scold yourself. You shouldn't be so lost in your imagination.

Or should you? Isn't that where she is? Lost in your imagination?

Or maybe lost in her own imagination. Eating quietly. Observing carefully. Thinking deeply.

And you think to yourself that you should go.

So you gather your belongings and you get up.

And there she is. As if by magic.

The French girl stands right next to you.

And she slowly starts to smile.

And you think to yourself of dark sacred nights. And smile back

Where That Place Used To Be

You know it's not there anymore, right?

Hang around anywhere long enough and you start giving directions that refer to things that aren't there anymore.

This is particularly bad in Los Angeles.

I still give directions that refer to landmarks that shut down 12 years ago.

Which is helpful to those who have a history here.

But more and more we don't.

When I went back to my hometown, I did the "what-used-to-be tour."

And wondered if the kids growing up now will have the same sense of nostalgia about the shit that's there now.

Probably.

Foolish Things

Now all I need is a hill...