The plan to watch a movie tonight was called off on account of Charles Dickens. I am thoroughly hooked on "Dickensian", binge watched four more episodes this evening, and plan to finish it off straight through. I have completed ten of the twenty episodes and I will watch the second ten over the course of the next three nights, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Then I will commence with more movies after that. The characters in this saga are too compelling to set aside, especially "Detective Bucket", played by Stephen Rea, and the sociopathic, Iago-like "Mr. Compeyson", played by a young actor named Tom Weston-Jones. These two seem to be steering the story, but we are only halfway through and surely anything can happen with such a large cast involved, each character with his or her own motivations and the intertwining relationships that are weaving them all together. It's a great show, and you've got to love some of the names Mr. Dickens came up with, like "Mr. Bumble" and "Mrs. Biggetywitch". English folks really did have some funny and unusual surnames in those days, so perhaps the names of the characters are only a slight exaggeration.
Today I bought a ticket to see Paul McCartney at Dodger Stadium next July. I was torn about going, because as you know I am so tired of attending concerts by myself, and I've probably been to close to 1000 concerts in my life, and as much as I love going, there are a lot of things I don't love anymore, like the traffic and the parking, and of course the demands of my job that factor in. Also, I haven't been to a stadium concert since the '90s (Pink Floyd at the Rose Bowl, the greatest concert of all time), and while this will not be a big festival general admission type of deal, it will still involve a huge traffic jam of 50,000 people. I was thinking, "you don't have to go".......
But I do almost everything on intuition these days. And my inner voice was saying, "but it's Paul McCartney. He will be 77 years old when he takes the stage, and who knows how many more tours he will do"?
The main factor was that The Beatles were the first major non-parental influence on my life. I was three and a half years old when they hit American radio with "I Wanna Hold Your Hand". My sister Vickie became an instant Beatlemaniac, and one of my earliest memories is playing her copy of "Meet The Beatles" over and over again on her little plastic record player. If you are my age, you remember the type of player I am talking about, a box-like apparatus that opened up to display a turntable and an arm with needle, a very sharp and heavy one at that! I was just a very small boy, with a little brother about to be born (Chris came along just a month after Beatlemania began), and one of the first things I ever accomplished in my life was to learn how to put a record onto a turntable and then to put the needle down.
And I was compelled to learn this, because The Beatles sound was like magic. A kid who is three and a half is not analyzing anything. He is not wondering if the band is "cool". He is only going by his kiddie urges, and that's what I was doing with my sister's copy of "Meet The Beatles", and her plastic turntable with speaker built in.
I could go on and on about those memories, so powerful are they, and that experience started me on the course of my life - or one course, anyway - which was the pursuit of music. The Beatles did that, and while John Lennon was my first Favorite Beatle (and you had to have a favorite back then), I was also just about split on John with Paul McCartney, who had a whole different style.
I was just a kid, and a small one at that, but The Beatles were the first gigantic influence on my life, besides my parents and family.
And I guess you could say that a Beatles concert was almost the first one I ever attended, because in August 1966, I rode in the car as my Dad and Mom drove my sisters to the same Dodger Stadium to see John, Paul, George and Ringo play one of their very last live shows there. It was the second to last concert they ever played, not counting the impromptu rooftop gig in 1969.
So once upon a time I got close to a Beatles concert, to the parking lot of Dodger Stadium fifty two years ago. Who would have imagined that Paul McCartney would be coming back there to play, fifty-three years later as of next Summer?
Fifty three years later. So that was why I had to buy a ticket, despite my growing dislike of going everywhere by myself and my general abhorrence of traffic and giant stadium shows.
I had to see Paul McCartney, who I have never seen before. To see him will be a first, and will take me full circle, from being three and a half and playing "Meet The Beatles" on the plastic turntable, to becoming a huge music fan and attending 1000 concerts in the 53 year interim, to finally having the chance to see A Beatle live, and Paul McCartney at that, the most celebrated songwriter of all time.
I wish I wasn't going alone, but I'm glad I'm going. My concert career will have come full circle.
That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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