imkittymyers at hotmail dot com
Thursday, December 08, 2005
YEAH YEAH YEAH
I was never a Beatles' fan. Even as a kid I thought they were dopey. The only good thing about them was that they bugged the adults in my life :) Kinda like when Zappa liked Ozzy Osborne. (He actually wrote a report on Ozzy for his English class in junior high.) Soanyways, I'm not into this keening and gnashing of teeth over John Lennon's death and the anniversaries in perpetuity. I was sorry to hear someone was killed on the mean streets of NYC, yet again. I have never gone to the trouble of looking up the stats, but I think it's safe to say that there were other murder victims on December 8, 1980, in the Big Apple, some probably even more gruesome than Lennon's. I was sorry he left loved ones, but no doubt the other murder victims did as well. I won't bother with/argue with anyone as to why exactly John Lennon is any more friggin' special ... @#$%^&*
Uno momento. Take a deep cleasning breath. In with the good; out with the bad. siiiiigh. That's good. Yes, I'm much better now :)
Where was I? Oh, yes, idiotic adulation of a druggie pacifist.
Soanyways ... I was reading the NY Post online this morning and checked out John Podhoretz's column 'STARTING OVER' without even an inkling that it was about you-know-who. It begins innocently enough:
DEC. 8, 1980: I was 19 years old and sitting in a dorm room at the University of Chicago, watching Monday Night Football ...
Uh, oh! "Dec. 8,1980"? Crap! Can't I get through my morning at least without hearing about that limey?
Deep breath! Deep breath! Get a grip, Kitty.
Whatthehell; Podhoretz continues:
John Lennon wasn't an obsession or even a particular favorite of mine — already a reactionary, I preferred Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. But the high spirits of
his contributions to "Double Fantasy" were infectious and exciting.
Now here is where Podhoretz's column gets kinda interesting:
He had spent several years before the recording of "Double Fantasy" in a state of emotional incapacitation. The ostensible cover story was that he was being that new-fangled creature, a stay-at-home dad to his very young son Sean.
But inside the walls of his apartment at the Dakota, Lennon was evidently having a far darker and sadder time of it.
…
The Dakota, an unthinkably grand old building whose apartment walls were covered not by paint but by rich wood paneling, seemed like a suitably dark and sad place to live at the time, and not just because it had been the main location for the unforgettable Satanic thriller "Rosemary's Baby."
Until a startling cleaning job turned the Dakota back to the unexpectedly cheery yellowish brick in which it had been built in 1872, it was black with a hundred years of New York soot and looked like the castle of an unfriendly king.
My high-school friend Nina Solomon lived downstairs from the Lennons. Her apartment was overwhelming — startlingly beautiful, but forbidding at the same time. Like all middle-class Manhattan kids, I spent my teens hanging out with kids who lived in quarters so much fancier, more comfortable and geographically safer than my own that I was often sick with envy. That apartment in the Dakota was the one place I remember leaving with a sense of relief.
Maybe I have an overliterary imagination, but I can't help thinking that the grim interior life of John Lennon had been reflected back inside him by the dark wooden walls of his agoraphobic abode. "I'm doing fine watching the shadows on the wall," he sang, unconvincingly.
The Dakota is prime NYC real estate. And even though I'd find it difficult to peer through my peep hole at some of my neighbors, I'd be elated to have the opportunity just to live there. As it is, I'm shivering in a tiny home with the thermostat set at 60* as our 1940's vintage furnace operates, at best, at 50% efficiency. Unfortunately, the numerous clods of moss growing on our roof do nothing to help insulate against the cold. Still, I have it far better than many people. So I'm sitting here wondering why the inimitable Podhoretz wrote such a sappy piece. I mean, after all, Lennon didn't have to sprawl around his home in the nude. He could have packed up and moved!
Pee Ess: I just want it noted that I never took a swipe at Yucky Oh-No and her spawn.
PeePee Ess: Before you shed a tear for the Lennons, consider this poor family's loss. In two parts: Start here before you read the rest.
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