Off With His Youth

First, serious business: when they announced who was in Michael Jackson's will, I immediately joked that since he saw fit to leave me out of his will I was going to spill the beans on him ("That's it, Michael Jackson left me out of his will, I'm spilling the beans on him"). Today Paul McCartney felt compelled to make a statement in his blog that the media has fabricated the idea that he is angry that he was left out of Michael Jackson's will, that he never actually expected that he would be included. This related to articles about Michael Jackson returning the Beatles catalog to McCartney via his will, which was all fabrication. Easily another coincidence between McCartney and myself, unless you've been keeping track, in which case one will see not the slightest indication that this is the law of averages at work. As for the things Michael Jackson did in relation to me and my work, I will save that for another time went they aren't going around burying him and so on.

We All Live In A Beat-Up Old Red Car
Today is Ringo Starr's birthday, making that the main reason why the image I'm featuring at the end of this blog is Ringo from a section of "Uniform", a minor collage I made (and contained in my book of graphic artwork, "Go Eyes, Go!").

There are no small number of things associated with Ringo that never would have happened if not for me, the most significant being "Yellow Submarine", "Octopus' Garden" and "Photograph". Furthermore, Paul McCartney's music video for "This One" (a McCartney song that includes a contribution from my song, "Icicle", as does the Rolling Stones' song, "Almost Hear You Sigh", both borrowing from the same recurring part of my song) made use of another part of my "Uniform".

Nevertheless, there exists yet another reason why I felt prompted to feature this image today. First, fix in your mind the videoclip I'll be putting together in a month or so out of my 1993 "Mall Man" video, Steven Spielberg's most recent Indiana Jones movie, and Sean Daniel's most recent Mummy. Remember, both Spielberg's and Daniel's movies feature families reuniting and then going on an adventure together, and were released around the same time, and also, that Spielberg and Daniel are old friends and co-collaborators. Perhaps you can't fix this upcoming videoclip in your mind. Not even a clue? In that case you haven't been paying enough attention, because if you were smart, you'd already be close to knowing the point there to be made. Oh well, nevermind, I'll be coming back to this at some point anyway.

So yesterday I'm driving home from work, and I drive past Dreamworks Animation, which is on my way home, and two or three quiet blocks later this beat-up old red car drives by, conspicuous for several reasons: the driver's head barely comes up to the steering wheel; there's a baseball cap on his head (Giants, I think); and he looks like Spielberg. Now if you really task your imagination, you small-minded people with half a brain, you might consider it possible that an old beat-up red car could have the driver's seat reworked to lower how high up the driver's head appears. It would take a small fortune, yes, perhaps, I don't know, $500, but it could conceivably be done.

It being that the ending of the last Indiana Jones movie is Spielberg borrowing from my 1993 "Mall Man" video, as Spielberg occasionally does ("Minority Report", "The Terminal"), and it further being that it also has to do with a character retrieving someone's hat, just as the latest Mummy by Spielberg's friend, Sean Daniel (the first person from whom I learned of CalArts, the school I attended), includes a character retrieving someone's head, I naturally went home to see what day it was in history. Because that is how the game is played. And sure enough, it was the same day in history that Thomas Moore was beheaded.

So you see why it is really Spielberg (or someone with a nearly identical head) who wants me to use this image of Ringo today:

Happy Birthday, Ringo!