29 years ago today this news shocked the world: “On the night of 8 December 1980, at around 10:50 pm, Mark David Chapman shot Lennon in the back four times in the entrance of the Dakota apartment building. Earlier that evening, Lennon had autographed a copy of Double Fantasy for Chapman who had been stalking Lennon since October.“
It’s true that we kill our prophets and Lennon was no exception. As Lennon traveled the road of fame and fortune he began to see the world for what it was. An entire generation awakened with him realizing that the world must be changed. Although the tide rose toward genuine social and spiritual change in the 60′s, that wave rolled back never quite reaching the shore.
Lennon’s memory lives on and his dreams of peace can still be realized by our generation. It’s not too late. We just have to want it and act.
A friend emailed this to me this morning and I was really impressed. It’s an amazing little piece of animation about a person I love. I can’t really rewrite the description any better than it is already written so here it is (enjoy): “In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.”
12/16 HITCHENS DIES Outspoken author and pundit Christopher Hitchens passed away yesterday at the age of 62 after succombing to a long battle with cancer. His honest and bravado opinion that rarely favored one side versus the other but was instead often a cry for ‘reason’ will be missed.
11/23 BURZYNKSI CLINIC Is there an alternative, non-toxic treatment for cancer? Dr. Stanislaw R. Burzynski seems to think so and has been experiencing higher rate of success than the current accepted practice of treating cancer.
11/23 TALKING TO MACHINES “What can machines tell us about being human? This hour of Radiolab, Jad and Robert meet humans and robots who are trying to connect, and blur the line.” Listen, read and learn here.
07/26 LUCIAN FREUD DEAD Artist Lucian Freud, known for his thick application of paints in painstakingly created, highly stylized portraits, has died at the age of 88, his publicist said Thursday. He died Wednesday night of an unspecified illness at his home in London.
