John Lennon

John Winston Lennon was born on October 9, 1940, in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, and he died on December 8, 1980, in New York City from a series of fatal gunshots to the head. He was 5'11'',  and before becoming a member of the Beatles, he was in a band in high school called the Quarrymen. I find this person to be most inspirational. He basically says give peace a chance and I'm all for that!
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006168/bio

Spouse

• Cynthia Lennon: August 23, 1962-November 8 1968, divorced, 1 child
• Yoko Ono: March 20, 1969- December 8, 1980(his  death), 1 child

Trade mark:

• Sarcastic wit, later granny glasses
• Songs about personal issues
• Songs with political/social themes
• Tattered army jacket

Trivia

• Father of Sean Lennon, from Yoko Ono
• Father of Julian Lennon from Cynthia Lennon
• In the 1985 TV movie John and Yoko: A Love Story, there was an actor named Mark Lindsay Chapman who wanted to play Lennon, but was denied the role because he had a similar name to Lennon's killer. So he later went on to play Lennon in Chapter 27
• When Rolling Stone Magazine debuted in November 1967, Lennon was the first one to make the cover, it was an image of him from the movie How I Won the War
• His murder was first announced to the world by US sportcaster Howard Cosell during NFL Monday Night Football. 
• Was killed as he was returning from the recording studio on Monday, Dec. 8, right outside his apartment building, the Dakota, by a crazed gunman named Mark David Chapman, who claimed to be a fan
• In 2001, the Liverpool Airport was renamed the John Lennon Airport
• Yoko Ono's photograph of John's bloodstained and cracked glasses from the day he was shot, sold at an auction in London in April 2002 for $13,000. 

John Lennon then

 Him and his aunt Mimi

John Lennon now

From the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club album

A Working Class Hero Is Something To Be

There are many covers of the Lennon anthem, including Post Apocalyptic Bohemian favorites: Richie Havens, Blind Melon, David Bowie, Cyndi Lauper, Marilyn Manson, Ozzy Osbourne, a moving version by Green Day.  This  is the version I am the most moved by:

Sad, Sad Losses

Have you ever noticed that alot of people have been passing away recently? Oe maybe not recently, maybe a long time ago and people may not get ovet the loss of them? Well, I've noticed alot of people, whether it be historical figures, people in the entertainment industry or others, have had some pass away unexpectedly, or from other reasons. Here are some of those people.......

Ritchie Valens. May 13, 1941-February 3, 1959. He was the first ever noted Latino rocker. He was the one behind was is known as Chicano rock, meaning rock music performed by American people of Mexican ancestry. It's so sad that Ritchie died in a plane crash, but that cold night, he wasn't the only one to die, The Big Bopper and Buddy Holly also died that cold night. They all died on February 2, 1959, Ritchie was the youngest to die, at 17 years old. Their passing is what inspired folk singer Don McLean's 1971 hit American Pie. and now forever February 3 will be known as the day music died.



John Lennon. October 9, 1940-December 8, 1980. For all who listen to The Beatles, he was the one who was sometimes called a troublemaker by some, but ended up being a very loving person. He was the one who married the artist Yoko Ono and they had a son from Lennon's previous marriage to Cynthia, named Julian. For some reason, some might say he had a thing for Asian women because he dated May Pang, who was an assistant for ABKCO records. But there was no reason for John Lennon to die. On Dec. 8, 1980, he was brutally and fatally shot in the head 4 times outside his apartment in New York, by a crazed gunman named Mark David Chapman. Sadly, he was already dead before he hit the ground. The man behind his murder will be lucky if he ever gets out. I look up to John Lennon because he wasn't afraid to be himself, and he believed in giving peace a chance. I say, right on John! Yeah, give peace a chance!



Princess Diana. July 1, 1961-August 31, 1997. It's so sad that this beautiful woman is gone. Her wedding to Prince Charles actually made news headlines and everyone tuned in to watch this beautful woman walk down the aisle with her beautiful dress. It was so nice to see someone as pretty as her getting married. You want to know something sort of strange? One of her sons, William, recently got married too, to a beautiful woman named Kate Middleton. She's a beautiful woman, it's so nice to see someone getting married and not having it look so dramatic, what I mean by this is when celebs get marrie over here, it's such a big deal. But when people heard about the marriage of this man and this woman, it was big news in England and it was refreshing to hear about 2 good souls spending time together like this. I bet it must have been hard for both of Diana's sons, William and Harry, to be there at their mother's funeral. It's always hard for a child to be at their paren't funeral. But she's free of any pain or suffering, she's up in the beautiful land above, being the beautiful soul she always was. The saddest thing is that she died in a car crash, and you want to know why the crash happened? Princess Diana was trying to escape the nutso paparazzi, I swear, those jackasses always do whatever they can to terrorize someone, and now the world lost a beautful woman to these, pardon my French, assholes! That's what paparazzi are, assholes!

         

Jim Croce. January 10, 1943-September 20, 1973. This folk singer was 30 years old when he died and best known for hits like time in a Bottle and Bad, Bad Leroy Brown. Him, musician Maury Muehleisen and 4 others died in a plane crash that happened on Sept. 20, 1973. After finishing a concert at Northwestern State University's Prather Coliseum in Natchitoches Louisiana, the crew was flying to Austin Texas for a concert, when despite good visibility, the plane did not gain enough altitude to clear a pecan tree near the runway and the plane crashed, killing all 3 on impact
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John Denver. December 31, 1943-Oct. 12, 1997. He was a country singer, and an avid pilot and photographer. He was most popular in the 1970s, and when he was flying his Rutan Long EZ plane, it crashed in to the Pacific Ocean, taking him with it and taking one of the best known country singers with it, despite having over 2700 hours of flying experience.



Martin Luther King Jr. January 5, 1929- April 4, 1968. This man was best known for his "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington D.C. This speech talked about uniting everyone together and about a world where skin color, race, religion, sexuality, etc didn't matter and about everyone coming together as one, which is a lyric from the song Imagine by John Lennon. Martin Luther King Jr was a nonviolent man, using the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi to spread the word about coming together as one, and he fought ever so desperately to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil means. He was staying in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel when he was standing on the balcony and he was shot. Nowadays, you can visit the motel where he was killed, but you can visit it today and see how the room looked before his murder. There was a man convicted of his death, James Earl Ray, he was charged and found guilty of his murder.



The reason I did a blog about those who have passed is we should never forget those who passed. Sometimes people take life for granted and before they know it, someone they love very dearly is passed away and they don't know it. We should live every day like it's our last and we should cherish the precious gift called life.

People who inspire me

There are quite a few people who inspire me, some because they believe in a world united, others because of giving peace a chance or trying to live a non violent life.

John Lennon, how he inspires me is all he wanted was a nonviolent life with someone he loved, Yoko Ono, he believed in giving peace a chance and tried to live a nonviolent life. How does he get repaid for that? He gets shot fatally in the back of the head 4 times by a crazed gunman posing as a fan of Lennon's. I heard that his wife Yoko, at least I think she was his wife, not sure, got a photo of the glasses that Lennon wore the night of the murder, they're all bloodstained and cracked, that must be hard on someone who loved him so much, pardon my French, but what the hell did John Lennon ever do to anyone? All he wanted was a nonviolent life and he gets paid back by getting murdered! But basically how he inspires me is I live a life of nonviolence, I've always been under the idea that violence never solves anything and it never does. You see how well that idea worked out, over the course of history, look at all the wars we have gotten into, just because we wouldn't let sleeping dogs lie.

How Martin Luther King Jr. inspires me is all he wanted was for all people from all walks of life to live together peacefully, to nonviolently coexist. But there were some out there who disagreed. How he inspires me is I've always seen people for the good in them, I never see any of the racist crap like their skin color, their race, their ethnicity, where they come from, etc. I see people for who they are, the nice person inside, I mean, we're all the same on the inside, we all bleed the same, we're all the same on the inside, we just come in different packages, that's what makes us unique.

Hobbies/Interests

Ah yes, hobbies. Everyone has one at least. I have alot of them, when I'm not in school, I usually have my head stuck in a book, or when I'm not doing that, I'm usually working on a puzzle or on a paint by number. In fact, I'm actually working on a puzzle, it's an Ed Hardy one, it looks like a tattoo of this Japanese geisha girl, And after I finish this one, I want to get one of The Beatles, I seen 3 I want to get and The Beatles White Album isn't one of them, they actually made a puzzle out of this, but the ones I want to get is The Beatles' Yellow Submarine puzzle, The Revolver album one, and the Let It Be album one.


Oh man, you should have been with me, my mom, stepdad and my sister right before Christmas. We were out at the mall because my mom and stepdad were trying to get ideas of what to get me and my sis for Christmas. They were both thinking about getting us puzzles and we went into this one place and it was a puzzle store, my sister wanted to get an Ed Hardy puzzle or a Gothic puzzle, so we ask this lady at the front desk if she can help, so she asks what kind of puzzle she's looking for and she says Gothic, so this lady takes her over to this shelf with Gothic fairy puzzles, and it's not what's she's looking for, so the woman asks her what music she listens to, and somehow she takes us over to where they have all these Beatles and John Lennon puzzles. It actually took me and my mom to convince this lady that she's not a Fab Four fan, I'm more of a fan of The Beatles than she is. We actually had to tell this woman"Lady, she doesn't like The Beatles or John Lennon, get it through your head!" This lady must have been dumber than a sack of rocks.


But anyway, when it comes to hobbies, I do pretty much anything creative, from reading books, to writing short stories, to painting paint by numbers, to doing puzzles. I like to do creative stuff because it keeps me busy. If I don't have a good book to read or a paint by number to do, I'm bored easily. When I was in high school, in my English class, we had this one assignment where we had to write a short story for our portfolio thing. I wrote one about these 2 cops investigating a mysterious murder in the South. Wasn't too bad, the teacher chose a few and mine was one of them to publish in a creative writing contest, won $200 on it, but it went right in the bank.


But when it comes to hobbies, I have alot. And as for interests, I have alot. One of them is foreign languages. I'd love to learn a few more, I'm quite fluent in Spanish, mainly because I had to take it to graduate from high school, but I thoroughly enjoyed learning this language. Unfortunately, my fellow graduates hated learning this language. They called it 'gay'. That's another thing, I hate when people use the word gay to say stupid. All they do is make themselves sound stupider. They don't understand what the word means. But anyway, learning foreign languages is an interest I have. I'd love to learn Italian, Chinese, Japanese, German and maybe Russian, a friend of mine says that I'm nuts for wanting to learn how to speak, read and write some of the most difficult languages in the known world, but I told her, I want to learn it. Another interest of mine is world cultures. Chinese and Japanese culture is so endlessly fascinating to me, all the little traditions, customs, and history related to that fascinates me. That probably explains why I'd love to go to China and Japan some day. And if possible, maybe live there. There are about 4 places that I would love to live in:
1. China: the culture fascinates me, so does the history, traditions, customs, and plus 2 of favorite actors are Chinese, Jet Li and Chow Yun-fat. So that shows I appreciate Asian culture.
2. Japan: same reason as China, the history, customs, traditions and culture fascinate me.
3. Australia: If I could live here, it would have to be 1 of 3 places along the coast; Brisbane, Melbourne or Sydney. They re right near the ocean and every night you can see the sun set over the ocean and every morning you can see the sun rise over the ocean, totally romantic.
4. London, England. For some reason, I'd love to live here because the culture here seems so similar to ours, but it has that feeling of being interesting. The only obstacle I'd have with that is the currency issue, from what I hear, the currency isn't dollars there, it's pounds, quid, etc. But the fun part part would be getting to learn how to adjust to that. I'd enjoy every second of learning about it.

30 Years Ago Today

The man who would become my Husband was driving us to rehearsal in his deminutive 1976 Honda Civic. We were driving in snow. When we heard the announcment that John Lennon had been shot in front of the Dakota, the future Husband had to pull over. We were sick with shock as we tried to catch our breath from the dismay & distress of the news. 30 years ago today. This is one of my favorite Lennon songs. It was written about Brian Epstein, the Beatles manager who was gay:

Here I stand head in hand

Turn my face to the wall

If You're gone I can't go on

Feelin' two-foot small

Everywhere people stare

Each & every day

I can see them laugh at me

& I hear them say

Hey you've got to hide your love away

Hey you've got to hide your love away

How can I even try

I can never win

Hearing them, seeing them

In the state I'm in

How could you say to me

Love will find a way

Gather round all you clowns

Let me hear you say

Hey you've got to hide your love away

Hey you've got to hide your love away

John Lennon

1967