Pen-Elayne on the Web

Formerly Questionable Milestones

My husband, who's much more into Beatles trivia than I'll ever be (Teresa, we do need to get him and Patrick together for a trivia-off one of these days), assures me that the upcoming 40th anniversary of the Beatles coming to America (mark your calendars, festivities start February 6) is indeed a major milestone, focusing attention on the group in an order of magnitude that skyrocketed their popularity worldwide, even in the UK. I thought that Avedon had led me to this article about finding Marsha Albert, the woman responsible for "triggering Beatlemania" in the US, but I couldn't find the link on her blog (so if it wasn't her I wanted to apologize to whoever it was for not mentioning them). However, she did lead me to this what-if-there-were-fan-blogs-in-1964 site whose conceit is that it's supposedly written by someone who looks and sounds like one would imagine a young Marsha Albert did. I have my suspicions, of course, since the top banner saying "Click here to read the whole story!" takes you to an ad for Bruce Spizer's book, so I'm guessing the blog is either Spizer or his publisher utilizing a clever way of promoting the book. Still, it's kinda fun to read, so I'm not complaining.

Surprisingly, neither can I complain about the NYC Subway Centennial, which at first I thought was as much of a misrepresentation as the 150th anniversary of Central Park. As I noted back in May of last year, that supposed anniversary "actually commemorates the city's endorsement of the idea of the park and subsequent beginning of the land buy-up 150 years ago, not the park's true opening in 1858." But no, according to the MTA's website, "In March 1900, ground was broken in Manhattan for an electric-powered subway... the subway opened on October 27, 1904." So we may be celebrating about nine months too early, but by gum at least they have the year correct this time (and hey, give us a break, it's cold here and we're kinda bored)...