December 8, 1980...

...two college sophomores, riding in a beatup old 1965 Chevrolet Malibu, northbound on the Garden State Parkway heading back from what is now Richard Stockton University, are flabbergasted to find out that somebody had the utter balls to shoot and kill one of the Beatles. We later learn that Howard Cosell broke the news to most of the rest of the world during a Monday Night Football game.

It, of course, is twenty-five years later, and I don't know if we're any closer to the sort of world that John Lennon "imagined". But he did leave us some great tunes, both with the Fab Four and as a solo act. (We even forgive him the whole Yoko thing.)

Plenty of reminders of the day, especially if you listened to Jay Sorensen's morning show on WJRZ this morning. There's no bigger Beatlemaniac on our airewaves, and you know Jay's got the goods. I believe if you go to Allan Sniffen's fine WABC tribute site, you'll find sound files of what we listened to on 770 AM that evening.

Spookiest thing: before she died, Nancy rigged up this computer to play Beatles MIDIs at random on bootup. It played a MIDI of "Imagine" this afternoon. Of all days.