Those of you who have read my book The Chronicles of Blarnia: The Lying Bitch in the Wardrobe--and that's everybody, right? RIGHT?--know that I have offered a bounty of GBP100 to any reader who could find ten similarities between my powerful, touching, truly original book and a sleazy rip-off written decades before I was even born. (I think the author's name was Lewis something; I don't think many people know about him today, much less read his books.)

To my utter amazement, several readers--obviously possessed of keener faculties than mine--DID discover ten similarities! I've read all the lists they submitted, and though I think they're pretty nit-picky, I am prepared to pony up. As per the rules, a random winner was picked from all the winning entries.

So, the winner is:
Algrene Pullings of London!

Here's Algrene's list:
"1. Both the books 'The Chronicles of Blarnia' and 'The Chronicles of Narnia,
the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' begin with four siblings, (two guys
and two girls) being sent away from home into the British countryside.
2. In both books the youngest child, whose name begins with 'L', is a girl,
and who is often referred to as 'Lu' or 'Loo', depending on how one wants to
spell it, enters another world with the help of a wardrobe and meets a faun.
3. In both books Lu/Loo's story about another world is not believed by her
siblings.
4. In both books the second youngest child who is a boy and often referred
to as 'Ed', and who is also a deccided pessimist, manages to get through to
Lu/Loo's 'magical world'.
5. In both books Ed meets a Witch who is ruling the country he has got to
with a despotic tyranny and in both books he warms up to her.
6. In both books the Witch has caused a permanent winter.
7. In both books the four children eventually find themselves in the magical
world earlier described by their youngest sibling.
8. In both books they then meet a beaver who lures them home and they, being
wonderful and innocent adolescents, follow.
9. In both books a sort of rebellion against the Witch is brewing, led
(maybe reluctantly, but still led) by some sort of feline creature.
10. In both books the four siblings are coronated, grow up, and then get
back to the conventient hole between the magical world and the UK.

I could go on, and on and on. If I have to say the world 'in both books' one
more time, I will throttle someone."

Cry me a river, Algrene. At least you don't have to fork over a hundred pounds. That's real money. Maybe if I sue Lewis What's-His-Name, I can make some back. Somebody told me that his book is a Christian allegory, and I TOTALLY INVENTED THAT. The nerve of some people!

Anyway, I gotta go eat Christmas dinner with my in-laws. Thanks to everyone who entered, and apologies to those of you who didn't win, especially the person who was going to buy a Louis Vuitton bag. That is a noble goal, and I wish you the best.

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...where wives like mine can surf to sites like fuckchristmas.org. If your tank of fulminating rage towards FOX and fundies is a little low, stop by and top it off.

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...and a dash of MADNESS.

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...to Richard Pryor, who died today in Los Angeles. (I was at home asleep when it happened, honest.)

For my money, Richard Pryor was the best stand-up there ever was. Other comics were as charismatic (Lenny Bruce?); as honest (Mort Sahl?); as perceptive (Bill Hicks?); or as good at characterization (Lily Tomlin? Jonathan Winters?); but Pryor combined it all. People often talk about Richard Klein as being the standup's standup, but for my money NOBODY ever touched Richard Pryor. He'd make you laugh hard, then think, then sympathize with behavior and attitudes very different from your own. Then he'd make you laugh some more. In that his humor made you feel more human and more connected, instead of better than others and distanced from them, he was undoubtedly a genius. If there's a heaven, he belongs there.

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Dudes, dudes, dudes--it's just an opinion. And PLEASE: sign your comments. Don't make me argue with the aether. (Thank you, Devin. I am chuffed that you, as a true Beatle expert, thought I made some sense.)

I know about and have considered the "phony" aspect of it all--the Esquire article of October 1980 which painted Lennon as a hippie mogul, etc (I would argue that it was Yoko who was interested in accumulating money through slick operating, not Lennon). MDC said at the time he thought Lennon was a "phony," although perhaps a hypocrite is what he was really getting at. And there IS a definite dissonance between the man who sang "Imagine no possessions" and the reality. Lennon was not Gandhi, no matter how hard Lennon, Inc. now attempts to make him so. The approved vision of Lennon is one of right action through consumption, and I don't agree with that.

Not to be provocative, but here's what I'd say in response to Anonymous: my theory was "personal" to whom? John Lennon? Lennon's dead, so he doesn't care. I claim no special insight besides reading and thinking about him. You, I assume, didn't know him, either. And even if you did, so what? The interesting question is: why the hell do either of US care? Because, I would argue, that this stranger created a vision in our heads of real intimacy, of a personal connection with him via the mechanism of mass-media. Which was a fantasy, NOT a reality. Mass media cannot deliver real intimacy, which is by definition a one-to-one thing.

Some people really love Lennon's Beatle persona, of the super-sharp, witty working-class kid made good. (He wasn't exactly working-class, not like George or Ringo, but that's the persona.) Some people really love Lennon's Rock 'n' Roll Rebel persona, the one that Brian Epstein supposedly "tamed" and Paul McCartney supposedly gelded with songs like "Maxwell's Silver Hammer." Some people really love the Liberated Soulmate persona, where John and Yoko fused into one person. Some people really love the Political Activist persona. Some people really love the Devoted Father persona. And some people really love the Taken-From-Us-Too-Soon persona; which of course can't be laid at the feet of Lennon, but has the same relationship to the real person as all the other personas do--it ain't it.

Lennon couldn't play these roles without some part of him believing them, at least for a time. But when you add all this up, what do you get? You get a deeply appealing, deeply fractured individual. Someone who--in my opinion--was deeply, desperately attractive to people who did not know him at all, and became much less appealing the closer in you got. Because Lennon was--in my opinion--in a state of psychological crisis for most of his life.

The more you dig at Lennon's character, the more unresolved you find that it is. He was very smart, yes. Also really talented, certainly. But under this, unchanged by success, there is a desperation in his life--first for fame, then for drugs, then for Yoko, then for political relevence, then for perfect parenthood--and always for authenticity. Lennon encouraged MDC to judge him a "phony" because authenticity was the message of his post-Beatles persona. That's why he wasn't Paul McCartney.

Finding out "who you are" is a lifetime project for us all, and the real shame about Lennon's death wasn't that the Beatles didn't get back together (as happy a moment as that might've been) but that John Lennon the person never got a chance to become a true, fully functional adult. He was getting there--you can hear it in his interviews of 1980; there's less boilerplate, and more healthy perspective. But in many ways, he was still struggling with the same stuff he'd been fighting since he picked up a guitar. He was still using drugs. He was still freakishly dependent on Yoko. He was still prone to messianic flights of fancy. Lennon had a long way yet to go, and in my opinion, needed nothing so much as some gut-wrenching, utterly honest, utterly private years with the right kind of therapist. (By the way, I'm more than willing to admit that as usual, what you think of Lennon has more to do with your own beliefs and reality than his. That is what made him iconic--like JFK, for example.)

Lest you think I'm being too hard on the poor fellow, keep in mind that I also believe that Lennon was largely reacting to demands and pressures the scale of which none of us could ever understand. He had messanic tendencies because people treated him like a messiah. He had easy access to sex and drugs and booze and God knows what else from the age of 21 on; any one of those things can warp one's personality, as well as provide an easy escape from psychological problems better faced. Furthermore, I don't think that Lennon avoided the syncophants any more than Elvis did; I suspect he was trapped in the same cycle of using/being used that superfamous people are. AND, until 1966 at least, and maybe a lot longer than that, he was forced to work--and produce creative material--on a killing schedule. So my primary feelings towards Lennon aren't disapproval, but wonder that he held up so well, and respect for the toll all that must've taken on him. And sadness, too, for some of the choices he made.

Some of my sadness is the selfish brand of the fan; I think had he ever gotten enough of the right kind of help, he would've produced even more fantastic music. Whenever he took a step towards mental health--whether through TM or through Janov and primal scream--his work flourished. But most of my sadness is that this person, who I feel no little gratitude towards, thanks to the pleasure the Beatles have given me, died without truly relieving himself of the psychological burdens he obviously labored under. He deserved better than what he gave himself, not because he was special, but because nobody deserves to suffer needlessly. We all make ourselves suffer, and if people studied the life and works of Joe Blow as closely as they do that of John Lennon, they'd see similar--but different--pressures and compromises and pain. So when I think of John Lennon now, the message I get isn't "be a Beatle and make people love you" (the message I got when I was a kid) or the Yoko-approved Prince of Peace piffle that I think Lennon would've snickered at (all the way to the bank and reliquary), but a reinforcement of how important it is to examine yourself courageously, to be humble in the face of your own shortcomings, and for the good of yourself and those you love, work on those shortcomings in an effective way. To live in reality, to accept reality, and (I hope) eventually come to love reality.

Not a bad lesson, I suppose... And as always, it's just my opinion.

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Those of you who know me know that I am really the biggest Beatles fan possible. Thank god listening to Beatles doesn't make you fat, or rot your teeth, or give you cancer, because if it did, I'd be one huge, toothless, cancer-ridden SOB.

So it goes without saying that I've read nearly every Beatle book worth reading (no, not Spitz yet--I'm saving that for Xmas; and yes, Albert Goldman, which I didn't find so unbelieveable or scandalous). It also goes without saying that John Lennon has always been the Beatle that most interests me--with George, ever the dark horse, making a late charge. Naturally I've been thinking about John Lennon today, 25 years after he was murdered, so here are some thoughts for anybody who cares to indulge:

1) Lennon's death was a senseless act, but in retrospect it wasn't all that surprising. You live like an archetype, you die like one too; I think Lennon grasped this and didn't expect to die in his bed. In fact, I think it's rather more surprising that none of the Beatles were shot when they were Beatles--I can think of no bigger testament to the uncanny good fortune those four enjoyed. There were, we know now, many death threats, but obviously in the Sixties and Seventies entertainers did not hold enough weight in people's psyches to merit murder; only politicians were so psychoactive. This is not to say that the Beatles didn't arouse sufficient love and hate, but there was clearly something in our human culture back then that prevented us from making the connection. That changed with Lennon, or maybe Bob Marley (who was wounded in the late 70s for coming out in favor of a politician). The risk of murder seems to be related to grasping for, then achieving, a certain kind of relevance and importance; just the kind that the post-Beatles Lennon founded his career upon.

2) Lennon's death was intimately related to his greatest talent; he was expert at making you feel you knew him. Sure, a lot of his success--especially with the Beatles--was about the music, but from about 1966 on, he wasn't as much a musician as he was John Lennon, the approachable icon. Think of the songs he's remembered for: Help!, In My Life, Strawberry Fields, Imagine, the whole of Double Fantasy...These are all the work of a consummate performer PRETENDING to give you, the special fan, a glimpse of secret pain or dearest wish. Lennon invented and perfected pop song as heart-to-heart, and he didn't hide it in poetry like Bob Dylan, either. Murder is an intimate act, and I believe that if Mark David Chapman had not felt he knew John Lennon well through his music and his public statements, he wouldn't have murdered him. The irony of it is that the public Lennon was just an act--as are all public personas--but in Lennon's case, I think he'd been doing the act since he was so young, and had gotten so much from doing it, that he was constantly losing track of the real him. For a decade at least, Lennon's persona had insisted on being taken seriously. Whatever else it is, murdering you is taking you seriously. I expect that would've become less and less important to him as he aged, and maybe he would've been less and less liable to provoke violence, too. Nobody's shot Pete Townshend or Eric Clapton or Mick Jagger. Lennon's murder, like the Beatles success, was a confluence of factors a long time in coming, in retrospect almost inevitable.

By the way, Lennon fans are encouraged to check out "Free As a Bird: The Dakota Beatle Demos." A little solo Lennon goes a long way for me, but that bootleg of home demos from 1975-80 is the best.

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Roller coasters: yes.
The "scrambler": yes.
The buccaneer: sure.
The plunge: 'salright.
The ferris wheel: NO.

I am working on so many web goodies you wouldn't believe it. Sorry it's taking so $@#&ing long.

If you're in the UK, why not buy "The Chronicles of Blarnia"? You're probably going to hell anyway.

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