Did you know that Ann Coulter and Al Pacino are brothers?<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t know it until my wife told me. She\u2019d read it in a magazine on an airplane. So I Googled it and saw that everyone essentially already knew this, and nobody bothered to mention it overtly. I couldn\u2019t understand why.<\/p>\n
Then I woke up.<\/p>\n
Turns out Ann Coulter and Al Pacino are not related at all, and since Ann Coulter is, in fact, a woman, she\u2019s not anyone\u2019s brother. But somehow, in my dream, all of this made perfect sense.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what\u2019s so nifty about dreams. It\u2019s not the strange things that happen; it\u2019s the fact that nothing seems strange at the time. Individual dreams only last a maximum of about thirty seconds, so there\u2019s no time for exposition. You can be driving down a road made of orange peels and have a dandelion growing out of your nose, but the thing that catches your attention is that someone stole the Diet Coke from your cupholder. Then you wake up and it takes a few minutes to sort it all out.<\/p>\n
I only remember the dreams that get interrupted, like last night\u2019s Coulter\/Pacino incident. On occasion, I have fleeting memories of other dreams, but they dissolve if I try to bring them into focus. On my mission in Scotland, one of my companions kept a dream journal where he\u2019d write down what he\u2019d been dreaming immediately upon waking up. Then, before we\u2019d begun our scripture study, we\u2019d have a five-minute dream report. I\u2019d try to remember something, but usually it was just broad strokes, like \u201cI was flying\u201d or something.<\/p>\n
His were always much more specific, with funky details.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll never forget the morning when he described how he\u2019d walked into the loo only to find Bill Cosby smoking a cigar in his bathtub. When my companion told him to get out, he grumbled a bit and then stood up and left, leaving a tub filled with wet dog chow.<\/p>\n
You can\u2019t make that stuff up. At least, not consciously.<\/p>\n
_____________________<\/p>\n
The Cornells are not American Idol<\/span> freaks, but we\u2019re watching it off and on, particularly to cheer on the Utah folks. David Archuleta was back on his game last night, and it\u2019s going to take an awfully big upset to keep him from winning this thing.<\/p>\n What\u2019s interesting to me these past two weeks is how Beatles songs don\u2019t really lend themselves to a singing competition. None of the Beatles would have won American Idol<\/span> in their heyday, because while they were unique and distinctive, none of them were particularly showy vocalists. (Maybe Paul could have won it, but John? I doubt it. And certainly not George. Ringo? Ha.) Watching Idol wannabes sing \u201cYesterday\u201d and \u201cBlackbird\u201d underscored just how understated Paul\u2019s original vocals were.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the songs themselves that are the stars, not the singers. Or maybe it\u2019s that the singers are inseparably intertwined with the songs, making it impossible for anyone else to do them justice.<\/p>\n Michael Whatsisname\u2019s butchering of \u201cA Day In The Life\u201d is the perfect example. That song is indelibly Lennon with a smattering of McCartney in the bridge. Vocally, the melody is deceptively simple, and the original arrangement throughout the majority of it is pedestrian. It\u2019s the weird Beatlesy edges and unexpected transitions that make it unique, and none of them work in a cookie cutter, straight rock rendition thereof. It just comes across as scattered when it\u2019s ripped out of its context.<\/p>\n In addition, the songs that do fit the kind of singalong meme that Idol embodies are the early Beatles moptop tunes, which, to be honest, are thoroughly mediocre as standalone songs. So we had Ramiele singing \u201cI Should Have Known Better,\u201d and she was eviscerated by the judges for a dippy arrangement that they failed to notice was lifted note-for-note from the original recording. Chikizie\u2019s weird ballad\/hoedown version of \u201cI\u2019ve Just Seen a Face\u201d had a variation on the same problem \u2013 he was trying to gussy up a tune that wasn\u2019t very interesting to begin with.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also worthy of note that almost all the songs chosen on both Beatles nights were McCartney tunes, with just a couple of Lennons and a single Harrison \u2013 although, admittedly, \u201cHere Comes the Sun\u201d is one of the best Beatles melodies written by any of the Fab Four. Pop culture hails John as the supreme talent of the Beatles, but I think that has a lot to do with the strength of his personality and the fact that he died a tragic rock star\u2019s death. When you stack up the actual songs, you discover that most of the really great ones are McCartney\u2019s.<\/p>\n You can try to argue this, but if you search your feelings, you know it to be true.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not to denigrate John, whose \u201cStrawberry Fields Forever\u201d transformed the Beatles from a really fun boy band to the indelible icons they have become. But notice that none of the Idols chose to sing \u201cStrawberry Fields Forever.\u201d As a song, it\u2019s unwieldy and difficult and strange. Whereas \u201cYesterday\u201d has been covered more often than any other song on the face of the earth.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why David Archuleta could take a song like \u201cThe Long and Winding Road\u201d and make it something magnificent, but no one tried to do anything with \u201cI Am the Walrus.\u201d I guess it\u2019s too harsh to say one song is better than the other, but clearly, one stands on its own as a song, independent of its singer, and the other is forever locked in time with John Lennon and the Magical Mystery Tour. They\u2019re just two very different things. And only the McCartney things work for a show like American Idol. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Didyou know that Ann Coulter and Al Pacino are brothers? I didn\u2019t know it until my wife told me. She\u2019d read it in a magazine on an airplane. So I Googled it and saw that everyone essentially already knew this, and nobody bothered to mention it overtly. I couldn\u2019t understand why. Then I woke up. ... 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