Well today was an alright day. No vendors, no real estate agents. The stock markets all around the world are doing poorly and no one knows what will happen next. The government has cut interest rates to no avail, other countries have done the same. Pakistan is thisclose to bankruptcy and that will affect us somehow, one way or another.

Last night was nice. Juan came by again. Always good to have him around. Bill and I talked about his situation with his mother. She’ll be staying with his cousin for the time being. Awfully nice for her to offer and I know Bill is grateful.

He’s doing all that he can and he’s doing the best job possible. He’s totally stressed though. If anyone could use a puff, it would be him. But he’s not one to pass the dutchie ‘pon the left hand side.

We watched the usual programs that get our blood pressure rising. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report provided some much needed levity but still, it isn’t enough. A little less than a month until the elections, and then hopefully I can laugh again.

Does anyone remember laughter?

Today is John Lennon’s birthday. He would have been 68. I would have loved to have met him, but then again I probably would have embarrassed myself. I listened to a few Lennon tracks today. My favorite John Lennon album is probably Walls and Bridges, his last album of his own material before he retired for five years.

The vinyl edition had a really fun flip cover where you can change John’s glasses and face over and over. Also had a nice booklet with lyrics and drawings from his childhood and an excerpt about the Lennon name from an Irish lineage book, that stated that no Lennons ever amounted to much. It was signed at the end, ‘Oh yeah?, John Lennon’.

It was things like that that made me love him. You have to feel bad for Paul McCartney though. If he had to deal with being compared to John while he was alive, after John’s death the legend loomed larger than ever before and still to this day grows and grows.

John was definitely a flawed individual, and it’s been said he had a violent streak which probably fueled the fire for peace in his life, realizing that what inside of him and peace would be the only way to take care of that.

It would have been nice if John was able to follow his plans, to visit England again, to go on tour again. More records, perhaps they would have been great, perhaps not. We’ll never know. It did mean that the Beatles would never get together again which could be seen as a heartbreak. Or a relief since you really can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

In any event he’s probably frolicking around the universe, met up with George and Stu and Brian Epstein and Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix, my mom, Jet and Zed and Abraham Lincoln. That’s how I see it. When you die your essence or soul goes out and becomes part of the ever expanding universe and life flows on within you and without you.

This video is relatively new (at least to me). It features Rick Nielsen and Bun E. Carlos from Cheap Trick and Tony Levin from Peter Gabriel’s band and King Crimson. The track was rejected for the Double Fantasy album at the time and eventually resurfaced on the Lennon Box Set which is probably when the video was made with clips of John and his drawings sometimes interacting with the band.

Then there’s Well Well Well from John and Yoko at the One to One concert in 1972 at MSG

and here’s an oldie but goodie…