Eight More Reasons the Beatles Broke Up

* Paul's Rickenbacher ate his Hofner.

* That gay episode between John and George Martin in Barcelona.

* Paul thought Julian Lennon's name was Jude.

* Ringo couldn't shake off that gang of Indian priests after him for his ring with the giant ruby.

* The cops discovered the band's dog-fighting ring in Surry County, Virginia.

* Paul was dead.

* Yoko should should have been named O-yes instead of O-no.

* I was only four years old when they broke up--too young to help!

(First ten reasons are here, but they're not very funny.)

Enjoy it now, while you can still get a seat

Remember when the Bravo channel was just starting out, and all it did was show a bunch of great foreign films and almost no commercials, but hardly anyone watched it, so you felt all the effort that went into it seemed a little, well, pitiful? As we all know, Bravo began to gather steam, gradually rolling out the makeovers, the chefs, the runways, the decadent housewives, and about 37 minutes of commercials per hour. It became the center of the gay-television universe (which means that your mom watches it).

I like to think I'm doing something similar with this blog. No, my blog is not going to turn out to be gay. Let me explain. At the moment, this blog might seem a bit "early Bravo" pitiful, with all the tidy, often slaved-over posts with zero comments, as well as my having only one follower (who happens to live in my house). Just know that I have told almost no one yet that I am blogging. When I do, we may have ten, twelve readers for this thing.

Anyways, I now have a second blog. Because you can't argue with success.

Faucet's fixed

Well, looks like the plumber came, because the Water History web site in my links column is now working again. My many readers and I are happy to see it flowing again. The pipes were shut for a long time, and we all got pretty thirsty.

Hey, everybody, meet my new friend--Agnes

Email from earlier this week...

SUBJECT: I hope my mail will meet you in good conditions.

Hi dear,
How are you today? My name is Agnes Donaldson, i hope that every things is ok with you as it is my great pleasure to contact you in having communications with you, please i wish you will have the desire with me so that we can get to know each other better and see what happened in the future.

I will be very happy if you can write me through my email for easiest communication and to know all about each others, and also give you my pictures and more details about me, here is my email [address] i will be waiting to hear from you as i wish you all the best for your day.

your new friend,
Agnes.

The list all the world has been waiting for

My baker's dozen films of the decade:

There Will Be Blood
Mulholland Drive
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Memento
United 93
Zodiac
Brokeback Mountain
Royal Tennenbaums
Un Prophet (France)
Spirited Away (Japan)
Before Sunset
Election
The Fellowship of the Ring

Plus these other fine films (please go and see them sometime): The Pianist; Control; Children of Men; Sideways; Traffic; A.I.; Gosford Park; Revanche (Austria); Black Hawk Down; Dark Water; No Country for Old Men; Mystic River; Let The Right One In (Sweden); Master and Commander; The Departed; Talk to Her (Spain); 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (Romania); Sexy Beast; Y Tu Mama Tambien (Mexico); Cache (France); The Lives of Others (Germany); The Dark Knight; Pan's Labyrinth (Mexico); Anchorman; Waking Life; Gerry; Far from Heaven; Munich; Amores Perros (Mexico).

Not if, but when

The writing could be more penetrating but, as the sole readily-available account of Stanley Kubrick's never-made film about Napoleon, this turn-of-the-millennium Salon article is about as essential as footnotes get. Hung up by budget concerns and the subject's bad track record at the box office, the film, as we all know, was never made. Kubrick used some its ideas in later works--not only in the obvious Napoleon substitute, Barry Lyndon, but even Eyes Wide Shut, whose strange idea of a good time had its roots in erotic scenes first conceived for Napoleon.

As a young film punk, I actually scored a used copy of the Joseph Gelmis book of interviews with film directors that the article refers to, and it's both fascinating and pitiful to listen to Kubrick talk about when--not if--he is going to make his Napoleon film. His failure to see it through deprives us not only of another (potentially great) Kubrick picture, but also alters the shape of his life's work: there is, for better or worse, no obvious go-for-broke shot at a masterwork, no dream project. Sometimes such all-in bets work out, and sometimes they do not, but they sit at the centers of artists' careers like Kilimanjaro. With 2001 reluctant to be nudged into the centerpiece role, Kubrick's career is just one long, weird, mostly fine, always dogged trajectory. Which may be just as well.

For those of you with a few extra bucks to spend, Taschen has published a $560 limited-edition book on the making--or, in this case, non-making--of the film.