There you go, hiding behind a smokescreen of bourgeois cliches.

Taking Jess Wundrun's long anti-Beatles rant from last week (I'll See You In Hell John Lennon) at face value I have a confession of my own to make- I'm a Beatles fan. I've loved the Fab Four since I was a little kid and had just worn out my little 45 of Phil Harris singing the "Bear Necessities." I played that "Jungle Book" song in a sugar-infused marathon of howling and dancing that must have driven my parents to distraction.

Without anything to dance around my bedroom to singing I decided to nip one of my parent''s albums. I'm pretty sure it was A Hard Day's Night because it had "Can't Buy Me Love" on it. I was hooked and never went back to that Disney crap.

This last weekend I got my grubby little mitts on the DVD The Four Complete Historic Ed Sullivan Shows featuring the Beatles and other Artists. This thing is in a word; "awesome." Not only does it feature the Beatles but each of the four shows is packaged as they originally aired. This means we get to see acrobats, musicians and commercials for dinner rolls that promised to contain "real butter."

So far we've only watched the first appearance of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show and there are a couple of things I find striking. The first is how darned nervous they all look. McCartney and Harrison put on a brave show but they have happy feet. They don't seem all that comfortable on stage.

Lennon is really the one that looks like he wants to crawl out of his own skin. Picture this shot below with Lennon essentially standing rooted on the spot bouncing up and down like some sort of angry gorilla. It's very uncomfortable to watch the big galoot.

Why I find that interesting is that when I think of the Beatles I usually think of the later years when they were a bunch of supremely confident guys who couldn't give a rat's ass what the world thought of them. "We are more popular than Jesus Christ" and all that.

The other thing that struck me about this television performance is the realization of what a sea change these guys were to middle America. These days the Beatles are considered mellow, retro-rock. Evidence of a kinder time.

Here they were sandwiched between a magician doing card tricks and and Frank Gershin doing impressions of Burt Lancaster. The Fab Four must have looked like Hendrix setting his guitar on fire or Ozzy biting off the head of a bird to the people watching at the time. Maniacs with long hair playing impossible sounds.

I can see why they scared the hell out of the parents of our parents. The Beatles didn't just represent a new sound, they represented a new world. Today their music may seem trite and more appropriate for elevators, but there's no denying what they were.

I can see not liking their music, but you damned well better respect it.

(Except you Jess. You're too cool for me to try and boss around. :-p )

Shall we play a game?

Jess tagged me with the Six Questions virus. Just remember Jess that on the internet revenge is a dish served electronically. That may not make much sense, but I typed it just the same.

* The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.

* Each player answers the questions about himself or herself.

* At the end of the post, the player then tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Ten Years Ago I Was

About 50 pounds lighter and not as thin on top.

Five Things on Today's To Do List

1. Purchase tickets to Iron Man.

2. Give wife, kids and chihuahua hug.

3. Pick up a pizza on the way home from work.

4. Call lawyer for update about accident.

5. Enjoy my favorite meal of Scotch, Waffles and Steak.

Things I'd do if I were a Billionaire

Buy a bigger blog with HUGE fonts.

Give more money to charity.

Buy a Unicorn.

Use the money to become self-sufficient (wind/ solar power, crops/ livestock, firearms and a tank.)

Three Bad Habits

1) Does blogging count?
2) Living like a hobbit sometimes especially when it comes to diet. "Elevensies anyone?"
3) Too much coffee.

Five Places I've Lived

Dorms, apartments, floors, bedrooms and in front of a computer at work.

Six Jobs I've had in Life

1) Shoe Clerk for Nordstroms.

2) Chippendales Dancer.

3) Production Assistant for low budget Kung Fu movie.

4) Manager of Temporary Employee franchise.

5) X-Wing pilot.

6) Manager at a Law Firm.

I tag Swinebread, don snabalus, Overdroid, Digby, Atrios and Kos.

You're gonna eat lightnin' and you're gonna crap thunder!

Tooling around the net yesterday made me feel a little silly with my lame attempt at an April Fool's joke. At least I wasn't the only one taking a stab at it. There were a ton of sites that tried throwing their readers for a loop. Most of the stuff was lamer than mine so I got that going for me. It wasn't a good day on the interwebs.

Some of the stuff on my mind and in no particular order-

At Swinebread's suggestion I just finished reading Alan Moore's "The Watchmen." Better late than never, eh? It's an amazingly layered piece of art that really transcends it's genre. Perhaps "transcends" isn't the right word. It elevates it's genre and shows what's possible.

I am concerned that there's so damn much there it may be unfilmable but, like Swinebread, I'm now excited to find out. If it's successful it might kill superhero movies for a while. There's going to be no way the other that's come out will be able to match the psychological depth of the characters in this story.

Jess Wundrun won a story contest where she's going to get to go to California and eat at that "Hell's Kitchen" guy's restaurant. If you haven't read her story it's pretty good. It's sort of Michael Jackson meets Martha Stewart.

I'm not sure Hillary Clinton picked the best metaphor for her campaign with "Rocky." If you remember the end of the original movie you'll know what I'm talking about.

Oh, and Mash did a nice tribute to journalist Dith Pran who died this week. I had a pretty right wing buddy in high school that was always dragging me to movies like "Invasion America USA" and "Red Dawn." He took me to see the "Killing Fields" and it really had a profound effect on my thinking about governments and totalitarianism. Pran was a very brave soul.

This isn't Geneva, Colonel.

Jess Wundrun catches the President speaking out of both sides of his mouth on torture. Since there's usually also chaw in there the whole thing is pretty gross.