La Pistola

Imagine there's no Imagine

I was talking with my brother the other night about this and that, and for whatever reason the conversation came back around to a statement I had made several weeks ago while we were vacationing on a houseboat on the Mississippi River: I hate John Lennon’s song Imagine. I mean…I hate it. Now, my brother William’s musical tastes and mine began diverging somewhere along the time he traded in his Cure and Adam Ant records for a big purple and green van and began following the Grateful dead in about 1986. Still, he did introduce me to the Cure and to the good part of The Beatles way earlier than that. But… Imagine? Let’s review the lyrics:

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Okay…ick. It’s not that I’m necessarily anti-peace or anti-hippie or even anti-positive-thinking-can-change-the-world, but that’s just crap. That sort of stuff can get you kil…um, relegated to releasing your records in a Starbucks.

So, William, thanks for the Cure and thanks for teaching me how to smoke but seriously…fuck that song.

A little bit of nothing

Sometimes I take photographs. This is one.

But last time I was out taking pictures I dropped my camera as I was changing out a roll of film and it broke. Now what do I do? I have an old digital camera but it’s dead. It needs a cord to make it not dead again. I don't have that cord. Dilemma. These are the sort of things that keep me up at night…not wars and famines, not politics and powers…nope…missing cords. Minutiae. That and the fact that my fish, Chester, looked like he was wearing chapstick this morning when I fed him. That’s been on my mind all day.

100 Top Ten Lists

People just love to make lists—end of the year lists; top 100 film lists; 10 greatest pound-for-pound fighters, etc. I got an email the other day from my good friend AJ Schnack over at All These Wonderful Things and he is doing a list of people’s predictions for Sicko’s box office take (I already fear I guessed high.) Matt Dentler consistently releases his 5 Albums worth your 10 cents list. My belle is rather obsessed with lists. Wherever we go she brings along a little notebook and we’re always creating little lists; things to do, foods to try, books to read, movie roles we wish we could live out in real life, top 5 personal obsessive-compulsive tics…

And then, the other day, I found this: 5 People Who Have Died During Sex – And 100 Other Terribly Tasteless Lists by Karl Shaw. Did you know that in 1994 Peter Weiller, a German filmgoer, was beaten to death by ushers in a Bonn theatre because he brought his own popcorn? I bet not…but there it is in the Ten Food-Related Deaths list. Also in 1994 Ramon Barrero, player of the “world’s smallest harmonica” inhales and accidentally chokes to death on his instrument in mid-performance. Did you know that the actor Lorne Green had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while filming Lorne Green’s Wild Kingdom? Probably not, but he did if you believe the book. Alfred Hitchcock was afraid of eggs…that’s Ovophobia to you and me.

Anyway, it’s way more fun than the new AFI top 100 list…