It was 25 years ago today that John Lennon was murdered in New York City. VFLOAB wasn’t even born yet, but Lennon and his music has always been enjoyed by this fair writer. I was about 8 years old when I ‘discovered’ a tape of Help (Abby Road was on side two) that my dad had made. I would wear that tape out over the years with my sister. From Help my parents either bought the other Beatle albums on CD or played what tapes and records they already owned and by the time I was in 4th or 5th grade VFLOAB owned and knew pretty much every Beatle song.
VFLOAB missed the cultural and social impact that Lennon and the Beatles made upon the world, but the music lives on and we can all enjoy it to this day. I think we all have our own favorite Beatles songs, and then little sub categories like our favorite Lennon (Cry Baby Cry) song and favorite Harrison (Something) song and our favorite Paul McCartney song (I Will), and we debate and admire the greatness of those songs. I know I use Lennon as a vehicle to try and gain an understanding of what that music meant to people at the time, which is a hard thing to do if even possible. But no matter, it is not difficult to enjoy and admire the greatness of Lennon’s music and listen and watch in awe of the images of Lennon the man. He is defiantly one of those people that I think if you didn’t ‘grow up with’ or experience at the time that you lose some sort of understanding. A lot like JFK (of course completely different people). To hear others speak of Lennon it is almost as if they are speaking about a human that was not only larger than life, but someone that they understood and who understood them. He was a person who could say and do things so much more eloquently than they could even believe. He was not only a man of his times, but a man of all time, yet at the same time he seems to have wrapped himself and become the times that he lived in. VFLOAB would even venture to say, with confidence, that Lennon was an intellectual and one of the best means of producing his message was through song and music. He is, without a doubt, one of the grandest figures of the 20th century. He is a hero to the pop culturalist, music professor, media, girls, men, and humans every where.
The White Sox traded Damaso Marte to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Rob Mackowiak this morning in a deal that I just love. Mackowiak is a left handed bat who can play third, first, or the outfield corner positions. He’s the perfect insurance policy for Dye (who has a history of spending time on the DL) and Crede (who has a bad back) and should probably appear in 100 games this year. The move probably means that Timo Perez’s and maybe Willie Harris’ days with the White Sox are over.
As for Marte, he was expendable because of the season Neil Cotts had and his bizarre situation with Ozzie during the last month of the season when he was kicked off the team, then wasn’t kicked of the team... so the writing was on the wall back at the end of the year that Marte wasn’t going to be back. And finding a second left handed arm in the pen shouldn’t be too hard. (btw, I’ve got more thoughts on the Winter meetings and shite like that, but I’ll wait until the weekend or something to write about ‘em).
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