There Can Be NO Debate....

None.
None at all.

Just TRY to tell me that there is a more famous band or musician, ever, than The Beatles.

Go ahead. Try.

But you'd be wrong.

Now, usually I am able to have a conversation of give and take, one where I offer my opinion, make my strongest argument, but take the feedback I am presented with and consider all the facts. If I've been particularly stubborn I might even go away and think awhile and then come back with a concession or two. Maybe even the "You were Right and I was Wrong and Now I Have to Sing a Song" song and an apology.

But not this time. Uh-unh. No way.

The Beatles are, hands down, no argument, the best and most famous band of all time.

Fact: More than 40 number one hits. That is only as the collective. That says nothing of the solo albums produced before and after the break-up of 1970. It says nothing of Wings or The Traveling Wilburys or Imagine.
Fact: 74 MILLION viewers watched them that first time they appeared on Ed Sullivan on February 9, 1964.
Fact: 6 full-length studio albums in 5 years, from 1960-1965. And 15 in the span of only 8 years. No wonder they burnt out in a decade.

There is still new merchandise produced with The Beatles likenesses, from all eras of their fabulous career. In September of this year a video game called Rock Band will be released, based on The Fab Four.

There are hundreds of video grabs posted on You Tube of them as The Beatles, of each of them separately, and of their various weavings in and out of each other's music. There are also scenes of their many films, and it appears, tons of old super 8 footage that someone has got their hands on and put up.

There are countless DVD's. They still have an active webpage and ALL 4 members have their own website in their name.

Yes, people, they are THE most famous band of all time.

But you want to know why ELSE I know this?

Because my 7 year old knows almost all of their music. Sarah knows who Richard Starkey is and that Paul McCartney is a "Sir". She knows that John Lennon and George Harrison have "perished" (her word for died), and that Paul is still handsome even though he is now a Grandpa. She knows about the 5th Beatle, even though she can't say who that is (and I don't think anyone else can either, though there is tons of debate. Was it Pete Best? Was it Phil Epstein? Was it George Martin? Is that another blog? Probably!). She knows that one of my favourite songs of all time is Eleanor Rigby, and she will not get out of bed weekday mornings before hearing "The Beatles for Breakfast" on our local Classic Rock station Q107. Which also has a "Beatles Break" which tickles Sarah no end.

And now, this same 7 year old, is doing her first school project on The Most Famous Band of All Time. And I have permitted her to say as much. Because it's a fact I believe unequivocally.

Want to argue with me about it? I could go all day?

Okay - you're entitled to your opinion. You are. But this one time, just this once, you've got to admit:

The Beatles are the best group of all time.
Okay?

Really, it's not that unusual.

Yep, ladies and gentlemen, it's snowing out there.

Supposed to snow for three solid days.

People are freaking out. People are depressed. People feel betrayed.

But really, it's just not that unusual.

I remember when niece Kelsey was born on April 22, 1991. Mom and I drove up the 410 in the wee hours of the morning and had a laugh because it seemed that every time we drove that route to be present for the birth of my sister's child, it snowed. Yes, it was snowing on April 22. And cold. After Kelsey was born we stood outside in the parking lot talking to her Dad Tom and we froze. I wished I had gloves. It was disgusting.

I also remember that first Jay's game. I remember that it snowed. Seen lots of images over the year of trying to find a white ball on a white outfield. How during points of the game the cameras couldn't even pick up the players in the outfield. Nuts.

And at the same time, there's always a last gasp, isn't there? JUST as we think we're past it. Just as we think we can take the snowtires off the car or put the boots into the back of the closet, bang! It gets us.

Carina says it is mother nature's late April fool's joke on us. That's a good way of putting it.

So it's Monday, which is bad enough. And it's cold, which we're all tired of. And NOW it's snowing on top of that.

Yuck.

But don't be shocked. Stranger things have happened. And with luck, this week WILL be Mother Nature's last gasp at the snow thing. And then we can FINALLY move on to Spring. And the promises therein.

With luck.

Have a good day all. Keep warm. And drive carefully.

Finally Blogging About Lost

All this time I have been blogging, I have managed to avoid the whole subject of that greatest of shows Lost. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that there are excellent theorists out there with incredibly intelligent and thought-provoking blogs. So why muddy the waters?

Well, finally I feel like I must speak. Not because something happened that makes me have to speak out, but because I guess I feel that I 'thought' the show was going in one direction, and Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindeloff pulled a 180 on us! Me. Me personally.

If you haven't seen the show lately and you don't want to know, read no further. In "talking the thing out", I am going to be frank and likely slightly spoilerific.

So.

Here we are approaching the big ramp up to the season 5 finale. The producers (Cuse, Lindeloff) have already named an end date of May 2010 for the end of the show. They did this last year at the end of the writer's strike, and when ratings were at an all-time low, and possibly at the start of the recession. Lost is a pricey show to produce.

I don't want to suggest that Lost has low ratings. It certainly is a very successful show. But for it's price, being shot in Hawaii, all those sets and extras and props and effects, it was getting costly. So Cuse and Lindeloff said, okay, we need 28 more episodes to tell this story and bring it to a satisfactory close. They were given the green light by home network ABC.

And the show picked up speed.

There were still character-centric episodes, but not one after another the way they once had been. The episodes seemed driven to telling the necessary details, like why Sayid is the way he is, why Kate kept Aaron for three years and then arrived at the decision to give him to his grandmother and return to the Island, like why Sawyer defends the Dharma Initiative now.

And the rest was the "Lost Lore", answering all those burning questions we've died to know these past 4 years. And we're getting our answers now. They're coming. Slowly leaking out like a painfully slow leak in a life raft.

First thing's first. Everyone wonders why Sawyer isn't as protective of his returning Losties as he should be. Everyone seems to forget that he only knew those people 108 days. Sure that shaped things to come, but he's been living la vida loca now for three solid years; found love and a life of respect and honesty. He's grown up. He's happy. So no freaken wonder the guy went WTF when they came back. I would too. And now we know that it is their return that is the thing that screws everything up. If they'd stayed away it would be fine. But no. They came back and started a cycle of events that it seems to me unravels the entire thing. THEY are the reason Ben Linus is eeeeevil with 5 e's.

So Sawyer and Juliet have my sympathies. Which is strange. Because until this last episode, I was for Jack. Not now. Unwitting though it might have been, Jack's refusal to operate on Little Ben is what drives Kate to take Ben to The Others. I know he didn't mean to, but he did. And that is what causes everything they've all been through for the last 4 years of their lives.

The only question is, what role does Christian Sheppard play in all of this? Clearly his body got smokey-ized, probably same with Claire and a good number of "the others". But why was it so important for him to get Jack back there to create such havoc? Maybe Widmore IS a truly bad dude. Shucks anyway. I wanted to be right about something.

But Cuse and Lindeloff have it in for me. Every single time I have come up with a theory I thought was strong and potential, they've done the whole Neslon Muntz "nahh-haaa" thing to me and left me feeling completely deflated. So now I have no idea. None. And it isn't sitting well with me. Because the rosy end to this saga, the end where people live happily ever after, I'm thinking was a utopia I built up in my head and it doesn't exist.

I've always thought Jack and Sayid to be the ultimate heroes of the show, despite being the most blemished and needing the most rehabilitation from past sins. But seems that it is Sawyer was destined for this. Spent 4 years being cynical, bitter, and slightly sneaky. Now it's him that can potentially save the world. Not my chosen heroes. Those guys are as faulty as the day the show premiered in 2004. And I am mourning this fact. Because I WANTED them to be redeemed. I wanted them to end up happy and fulfilled. But how can they now? Sayid shot a child. He drives Ben to The Others, back handedly. Richard Alpert said his innocense is gone. Sayid can't be redeemed now. Not knowing what Ben ends up growing up to do.

Same with Jack. He's trying, lord he's trying, to be careful not to do anything that backfires. And yet, there it is. He just did it. He did the one thing he was trying precisely to avoid. And once he knows it, he SHOULD be suicidal (again). He's as culpable as Sayid.

Diane made the point that they all end up having culpability in it. Kate, Sawyer, Jin, Juliet. All take part in driving Ben to Richard Alpert. None of them are willing to let him just die. True. But it wasn't any of them CAUSED Ben to need to be taken to The Temple.

So now I am completely turned around. Now I am wondering ever so slightly what the point is. They've come back and screwed up Sawyer and Juliet's utopia. They've turned Ben into the eeeeevil guy he'll forever be. They've made a mockery out of everything they were trying gallantly to do and be. And now none of them will be happy.

'Cause Phil the Security Guy has been hanging in the wings, noticing something reeks of the fishing docks at the end of a hot day. He's gettin' ready to pounce, which suggests to me a bad end for someone I care about.

I dunno. I've always ridden this roller coaster which is Lost, and I always will. I am in it until the end - so invested that nothing can drive me away. But I am feeling insecure about it at the moment. I am not sure I'm going to like it when the end comes. And I am POSITIVE that the season finale in May is going to make me Scream Out Loud and want to hurt the TV set.

I will spend the summer tearing my hair out. Of that I am certain.

So in that respect, a total smashing success for Cuse and Lindeloff.

And then I will have to own the whole series on DVD.

So thanks a lot Damon Lindeloff and Carlton Cuse, and JJ Abrahams, and Matthew Fox, Josh Holloway, Jorge Garcia, Daniel Dae Kim, Naveen Andrews, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Emmerson, Nestor Carbonell, Elizabeth Mitchell. Thanks a lot, gang. From the bottom of my skeptical heart.