I want you, I want you so bad... Beatle Juice

Thanks to my pal Kirsten for scooping this out! These are fictional Beatles juice cartons featured on the blog "Serious eats". I don't think I'd trust Mango Starr...he looks shifty.

Of course these are fake...but imagine if they were real. I know the stoner guys down at my local Jamba Juice "invented" a drink called the "POMMA Cartney", which was totally awesome. They were trying to get corporate to pick it up. But, I think the old pommegranite doesn't just allow his name to be slapped on any old piece of junk...or super delicious frozen drink.

But, because I'd really like for those juices to exist, along with some specialty juice blends like "Rice where a wedding has been" Milk and "Marshmallow Pie" Shakes (only to be drunk by rocking horse people, of course), the song of the day is "I want you (she's so heavy)." I really want a Pomma Cartney right now...but, since that concoction is like 200 percent of your daily fruit and sugar allowance, you'll be heavy if you drink too many of em.

Happiness is a warm gun...

Well reader(s?), I'm back from my trip to New York City, and I have some bad news. But it's also good news. I'm sick. That's right, I'm sick. Caught a cold from my loverly hosts in the city, complete with drainage, loss of voice, shakes, shimmies, shivers, schvitzes and coughing, oh, the coughing. But the good news is that this proves my theory! On travel day (Thursday), the wife and I choked down quite a helping of Beatles on our Beatlepod. But, during our NYC fun day fun time adventures on Friday and Saturday nary a Beatles tune was heard. And, BAM, on Saturday we get sick. So, there you have it. More irrefutable logic that proves that listening to the Beatles keeps you well...and that going cold turkey will get you sick as a dog.

So keep listening and get your Vitamin B!

Now, on to the song of the day. Let me be clear that this isn't a threat or anything of the sort, but just so happened to be the song running through my head during the 36-hour period of my vacation to New York city while our luggage vacationed in Cleveland, back in Dallas and somewhere lost in transit in Manhattan: to you, American Airlines and the oh-so-ironically-named Perfect Delivery Company, I dedicate this song:




This little tune kept me secretly stroking my warm gun while spending precious hours on the phone with the nice but hapless baggage services people at American Airlines.

Let's start from the beginning.

We were on a plane from DFW to Cleveland. One hour layover, then fly to JFK. After an hour on the runway in Dallas, we knew we were missing the flight to JFK. I went to investigate. They confirmed that, yes, I missed the only flight from Cleveland to JFK that day. Though I could take a 8:30 flight to La Guardia OR a direct flight from DFW to JFK that got us there only 1 hour after our scheduled arrival.

That sounded great! (Except for the part that they had to keep our CARRY ON luggage on the plane, because they took it from us to stow below due to the plane's small size.)

So, basically, despite filing a perfect description of our suitcases (brown with baby blue polka dots and a bow (the wife's) and mine (red with a yellow pompom), the hapless AA employee #1 entered this into the system: "brown suitcase with a ball." Thus began the multi-day process of calling AA and explaining the situation all over again (because the AA system apparently doesn't allow people to share knowledge) and being told that either a) they were in transit b) they were in Cleveland c) they were back in Dallas d) they didn't know where they were and, my favorite, e) the system said I'd already picked the bags up.

Mother Superior jump the gun

Then began the part where American Airlines refused to grant us reimbursement to buy toothbrushes, clothes or tampons (which I made them well aware of). American Airlines only offers reimbursement if they haven't located the luggage after 24 hours! So since, according to most explanations for our luggage's whereabouts, American "knew" where our luggage was, we were on our own.

Mother Superior jump the gun

Then came the call that "Perfect Delivery" had the red bag and was delivering it betweek 9 and midnight. Great. Then another call. They had the second bag and were delivering it between midnight and 1. Great. So we roll up to the delivery point (a friend's office with 24-hour doorman) at midnight, and they haven't received any bag at all. Over the next 40 minutes, three cell phones sit on hold with "Perfect Delivery"...no answer..but a sensual pre-recorded voice rubbing it in my face that "it's never a convenient time to have a bag misplaced." I know! "That's why I'm trying to get ahold of you!!!!"

Mother Superior jump the gun

I ask to speak with the AA manager on duty. I tell her the whole situation and, by this point, I'm a little frustrated. I tell her this. Tell her I've spoken with 15 different people to whom I had to explain the situation from scratch. I tell her I just want to know where my bags are, and no one can tell me. I tell her that I want to know I'm still valued as an American Airlines customer in some way shape or form.

She tells me that she's made a note in my file that I will NOT receive reimbursements for anything.

I ask her to note the following in my file as well: I am unhappy, upset, I haven't had my luggage for over 36 hours, there's no end in sight, I hope she flies Delta (to which she responds, "I did and they lost my bags!") and I'm going to have to go steal some more napkins from Starbucks to double as sanitary woman pads.

She cares not, and says "okay, sir."

Mother Superior jump the gun

The bags arrive at 5 am with a tattered form letter from the head of AA at JFK. "Sorry...blah blah blah...we strive for our customer service to lessen the impact of baggage loss when it occurs...blah blah blah...we're sorry...fly with us again!"

Happiness is a warm gun.

Yes it is.

Oh yeah, I hate guns, by the way. And I think the second amendment is stupid, antiquated and did I mention stupid? And I don' think that song is actually about guns at all. But, it sure was comforting to sing that song to myself while getting rAAped in New York.

But, despite all that, we had a blast in New York! More on this tomorrow!

With every mistake we must surely be learning...

Well, today is March 11. Do you know what that is? If you don't, you should be ashamed. It's Bobby McFerrin's Birthday!

You can see Bobby hiding there behind that red post thing. Come out, Bobby! It's your birthday!

I thought to commemorate the birth of our generations most talented noise maker guy since Michael Winslow, I dig up some McFerrin covers of Beatles tunes.

And boy, do I deliver. Check this one out where McFerrin bebops and scats a really cool rendition of "Blackbird." He utilizes some inward breathing that would make Tenacious D proud. But seriously, this guy is talented. So watch and learn:









For another example of how awesome Beatles + Bobby McFerrin is, listen to two bars of this rendition of "Come Together" from the George Martin CD of Beatles covers "In My Life."





But WARNING WARNING WARNING! Get out of the song after like 15 seconds before Robin Williams ruins this like he has ruined everything he's touched since 1997. I hate it when Bicentennial Man comes in and drops a load of wizzgigs and bolts all over the smooth carpet Bobby McFerrin just laid down for me.

This proves, once again, that Robin Williams is poison and, despite what George wrote in "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," we certainly are NOT learning with every mistake, if Robin Williams is still allowed to embarrassingly ruin movies AND music!

So, since it's raining in Dallas, since we're not surely learning from our mistakes and since I'm weeping after listening to that version of "Come Together," the apple today is George's masterpiece: "While My Guitar Gently Weeps."

It also doesn't hurt that my Pandora mix played two different versions of this song back to back this morning.



On a side note, did you know that in the original Beatles track for this tune, it's Clapton on lead guitar? John and Paul didn't want to record George's mournful, soulful little ditty. Faced with the Lennon/McCartney kibash, George rolled Eric Clapton out of bed and convinced him to come to the studio and lay down the guitar. Clapton's endorsement was enough for John and Paul, so the song was recorded, with Clapton on lead.

Jai Guru Deva Om.... Meditate on That!

Okay, so this is still old news, but after this I'm all caught up.

According to this CNN article, Paul and Ringo are going to team up with other music superstars including Eddie Vedder, Ben Harper, Moby and Sheryl Crow for a mega fund-raising concert supporting David Lynch Foundation's program, which has already taught over 50,000 kids around the world how to meditate. The Beatles learned to meditate on their famed trip to India in 1968 to learn transcendental meditation from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

I really don't have anything funny to say about this, because I think it's a good idea. The Lynch Foundation program "is to teach the meditation technique to a million at-risk children so they have life-long tools to overcome stress and violence and promote peace and success in their lives."

But, let's all hopefully push for less cryptic mantra selections.

I used to think "Jai Guru Deva Om" was actually saying "Jack will rule the day...om"

In fact, I still sing that in stead of the mantra. I especially liked my translation because it just had an ommmmmmmmmmmmmm tacked on the end for no reason.

But it's better then what some joker on the internet thought it was saying: "My guru's name is Love"

That's so dumb. Mine is way better.

Of course, the song of the day is "Across the Universe!"

If you thought love was an easy game to play, you ain't heard the Rock Band News

Some people at Entertainment Weekly thought that the first Beatles video game would look like this:

I, on the other hand, am not so dumb and always imagined that my first Beatles video game would go a little something like this:

Turns out everyone was wrong. Beatles Rock Band comes out 9.9.09! Freaking awesome! You can buy the game alone for XBox, Wii and PS3 for 60 smackeroos. Or get Beatles instruments and a special bundle kit for a lot more money. No word yet on the set list, but it's supposed to span their entire 10 year history.

But money's not important here. Money can't buy you love, unless you love the Beatles, which I do. So in this case, money can buy you love.

The game, which allows any old schmo to pretend to be a member of the greatest band of all time by fiddling around with plastic instruments that you don't really know how to play, is set to be titled "Rock Band: The Monkees Experience - Pretend to be the Beatles"

The song of the day is "Yesterday," since this is technically yesterday's news.