You Don't Watch a Whole Lot of News, Do You, Mr. Wayne...

Greetings, y'all. I trust you are doing well...

So I had another brief online chat with that friend of mine about The Beatles, and was again thoroughly castigated for being a Christian and not roundly condemning them. I know, on most levels, it doesn't bother me, but I do value both this friend and his opinion, so I've been doing some more digging into the Beatles, to see what is so offensive and/or evil about them. I sent for a couple documentaries about their history, and their early, formative years... and to tell you the truth, it's incredibly fascinating and inspiring to watch. I'm afraid I like them even more now that I'm learning more about them. They came so far, so quickly, and accomplished so much so young... it left me in an odd place... nostalgic for what I could have accomplished had I made different decisions in my youth, and actually inspired me to find something to excel at now...

Writing would be the obvious first choice - I have so much to learn about the craft, and I enjoy it muchly. But there are so many things that interest me, beyond writing. Music, acting, painting, drawing, cartooning... any of these I could give myself to, not for the sake of trying to become something, but simply because I have the interest, the desire, and a certain amount of talent/ability in each of these areas, which not everybody else has...

Anyway, I thought it interesting that I would, in all honesty, go into researching the Beatles with an open mind and try to be as objective as possible, and come away a bigger fan than I began as. I mean, I love a lot of their music, for the music's sake, and I know toward the end, they got into weird stuff... I haven't got to that part of their careers yet, in the two (multi-part) docs I have so far... one is called Composing the Beatles Songbook: Lennon and McCartney 1957-1965 and the other is Disc 1 of The Beatles Anthology. The anthology goes into far more detail about the early years, whereas the Songbook doc analyzes the music. Both are terrific. I look forward to getting more discs from both series.

Anyway, sorry to turn this into a commercial for the Beatles. The bottom line is that I found them inspiring, and it makes me want to excel at something. I'm not taking a shot at my friend - again, I value him and his opinions... that's why I thought I'd dig a bit deeper...

I suppose I could clutter this post up with my usual array of nonsense, but I think instead, I'll just post a couple more nice landscape pics and then go write. I see pics like these, and I go places inside...

And with that, I shall go. Until tomorrow, remember, I only have one question. Where is Harvey Dent?