BY YOUR GIRLS LIZ & LJ
YO Remember back to a million years ago when there was no Instagram and barely even iPhones and Liz and I wrote a nogoodforme column called Beatles Photo of the Week? Most of nogoodforme.com was deleted off the Internet by the same evil ghost who used to delete our posts off the blogging platform in the middle of our writing them, so I can't link to it or anything, but it definitely happened. Basically, it involved Liz and I posting a photo of the Beatles to the blog once a week and then writing cute and/or incisive shit about it. We've decided to bring Beatles Photo of the Week back from the dead and give it to SFW, only now it's going to be more like Beatles Photo of the Every Three Weeks to a Month, since that's just how we roll in 2015.
LIZ: I love how annoyed they look. And I've never thought of the Beatles as brother-like but in this picture I want John and Paul to be brothers, existing in a parallel universe where it's whatever year it is (1965?) and they're unfamous and the Beatles don't exist.
John's cooler because he's older. He's so much better at wearing that jacket! The rust hints at the red of his hair really nicely, and it was smart to leave the buttons unbuttoned. Paul hasn't learned how to wear his jacket yet but he kind of makes up for it with his bratty mouth, and the baseball glove + watch situation happening on his right hand. The glove was lying around somewhere and he picked it up and boredly put it on and then just kept it. No baseball was actually played that day.
I think what's happening in my John-and-Paul-are-unfamous-brothers alternate reality is it's a Saturday afternoon in late September and tonight they've both got dates. They're going to take their dates out together, like guys probably did all the time in 1965. What's New Pussycat? came out that year, so maybe they're going to see What's New Pussycat?, and then to some smoky red-leathery lounge-type place where the girls can drink pink squirrels or grasshoppers or sidecars or cuba libres. John and Paul will drink scotch, since I recently learned that scotch was the drink of choice for the 1965 Beatles. After drinks they'll take their dates home and have some post-date makeout sesh and then head back out again, to a diner, like in Diner. I basically always want all guys everywhere to comport themselves in a Diner-esque manner on some level - not so much in the being-dumb-and-crude-about-girls sort of way, but in a way that's about eating french fries and drinking Cokes and blowing smoke rings and joke-fighting with your friends about stupid bullshit till five in the morning.
At first I thought John would fill the Bobby/Boogie/Mickey Rourke role in Diner land, on account of his cool charming I-don't-give-a-fuck vibes. But actually he's probably more of an un-clownish Fenwick, the off-the-rails weirdo-genius who makes big trouble about Jesus. And there's really no place for Paul in the Diner universe, but for the purposes of this story I'll let him be Bobby. Paul can be the one to pick up the sugar shaker and pour the sugar straight down his throat, and then walk away looking very proud of himself, and end up with the chill and elegant girl who's always riding horses.
LJ: Even though they're not really brothers, they are, on some level, brothers. Bros, if you will. One of my great wishes is that the Beatles would have had access to contemporary slang in the middle of their being Beatles. I feel like John Lennon could have made some really on-point "bromance" jokes about the Beatles' legendary bromance. Some other words from the 2000s I wish I could hear the Beatles say include "aight" ("Meditation is aight, but it's just not for me," shrugs Ringo), "hella," "legit," "stoked," "that's just how we roll," "whatever" and any or all of its permutations, such as "whatevs" or even "whatevsies." If I heard George Harrison say "Whatevsies," that's how I would know I was dead.
John looks broey-er than usual in this picture; that is to say, barely broey at all, but still significantly broeyer than when he is, say, wearing a cape in the Something video and looks like he is about to throw a squirrel skeleton into a cauldron and then kick back with some absinthe and Chaucer. I think his broeyness stems from a tie between the memory of the Scotch he recently drank and his leg position. He's "manspreading," as it were. "Manspreading" is definitely a piece of contemporary slang that I could live without hearing the Beatles say. Same goes for "listicle."
Paul McCartney is the opposite of manspreading. That's the official name of his leg position, "the opposite of manspreading." Use it as you see fit. He has this really "Awwww Mom" vibe about him, like "Mom" is asking him to do a chore and all he wants to do is toss around the ol' pigskin with his ol' pal Johnny. Just kidding, I know that baseballs aren't called pigskins. The word pigskin just flowed really naturally from the character of "Aww Mom"- Paul McCartney that I was inhabiting as I wrote that sentence. He is obsessed with calling everything ol'. The other day, ol' Liz (I'm into it now) wrote this really genius tweet about how cute it is that Bob Dylan fangirls used to call him "Bobby" but the only people who ever called John Lennon "Johnny" were Ringo and George. But why does Paul not call John Johnny, do you think? Was it a respect thing, or is it just too familiar? Or maybe it's simpler than that, and he just doesn't think the name "Johnny" suits John, which is fair enough: I see him as more of a Jack, myself. Why John didn't go by the infinitely more rock-and-roll-sounding than square-ass John Jack is one of the great mysteries of the Beatles, in my opinion. What a wasted opportunity for old Jack Lennon.
PS: Just wanted to shout out the "What about the Beatles?" caption in the lower lefthand corner of this photo. Such a good question! What about the Beatles? What about the Beatles?
