Rolling Stone Lists Top 100 Beatles Songs

And the number 1 best Beatles song is. . .

"A Day in the Life."

I.don't.think.so.

Pretentious, bombastic, and musically pretty uninteresting. "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" and "Fixing a Hole," also on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, are both better than "A Day in the Life," IMHO.

Beatle Bums

Ringo and John, with their trousers on.

For the Beatles collector who has everything, now something new: John's toilet bowl will be up for auction in Liverpool:

A porcelain toilet used by John Lennon between 1969 and 1972 is among the 303 lots going up for auction Saturday at the 33rd annual Beatle Week Festival in Liverpool.

"The toilet might be worth something, and it might not, but it is certainly one of the more unusual items we've sold," auction organizer Steven Bailey told the Daily Telegraph.

The toilet was in a bathroom at Tittenhurst Park, the English mansion into which Lennon and Yoko Ono moved after John's divorce from his first wife Cynthia. When John and Yoko relocated to New York in 1972, the house was sold to Ringo, who probably used the toilet as well. That means that this toilet might have support one half of the Beatle bums!

What a Nice Guy

Paul McCartney surprised former president Bill Clinton on his 64th birthday with a phone call and a serenade:

Sir Paul McCartney sang When I'm Sixty-Four down the phone to ex-US President Bill Clinton on his birthday this week.

The surprise serenade delighted the Democrat - who was only joking when he told advisers last month that a call from the Beatles legend would be the greatest present of all on reaching the age on Thursday. But his team took him seriously. As did Macca, 67, when they got in touch.

I hope Macca is still around to call me on my 64th birthday. . .

Group to Re-create Beatles' First Hamburg Gig

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' debut in Hamburg, Bambi Kino--Mark Rozzo, Ira Elliot, Doug Gillard, and Erik Paparazzi--will perform the songs the Beatles played half a century ago in four shows at the Indra Club on the Reeperbahn, beginning on August 17, 2010.

Go here for some samples.

Bambi Kino is probably a little better, musically, than the Beatles were in August 1960. Still, I wish I could be there.

Chapman Up for Parole Again

John Lennon graciously autographs an album for his murderer, December 8, 1980

Mark Chapman, confessed murderer of John Lennon, is up for parole (again):

The last time Chapman was up for parole, in 2008, the New York State Division of Parole issued a release saying his request was denied "due to concern for the public safety and welfare." He also was denied parole in 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006.

Chapman, 55, is serving a sentence of 20 years to life in prison for the shooting death of Lennon outside Lennon's New York City apartment on December 8, 1980.

He has served 29 years of his sentence at the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility, where he is held in a building with other prisoners who are not considered to pose a threat to him, according to officials with the state Department of Correctional Services.

He has his own prison cell but spends most of his day outside the cell working on housekeeping and in the library, the officials said.

For the past 20 years he has been allowed conjugal visits with his wife, Gloria. The visits are part of a state program called "family reunion" that allows inmates to spend up to 44 hours at a time with family members in a special setting.

Meanwhile, Julian, Sean, and Yoko Lennon have spent 0 hours with John since late in the evening of December 8, 1980. Presumably, if Chapman is paroled, he will be able to spend the next 30 or so years with his wife, a privilege denied to the Lennon family by Chapman's actions on that night nearly three decades ago.