Do you take this (ahem) lady?

I’ve decided how, in the years to come, I am going to keep myself in the style to which I have become accustomed. I am going to marry Heather Mills.

I mean, think about it. She just got that cool and undeserved $50 million in her settlement with Macca. She is available. She just might want to share bed and board with a decent guy with no fortune.

The fact that she is an evil and sinister human being has nothing to do with it. She has $50 million. Then, I can stick with her for a while and when the denouement of the relationship comes about, I’ll be able to grab half her assets. After all, she did set the precedent in matters of flagrant money-grubbing, so she could hardly claim it would be unfair.

Of course, there is the fact that I am currently married. But, Wendy would understand, what with the $50 million and all. We could dissolve our marriage temporarily, with the objective being that we would reunite once sweetie-poo Heather and I were divorced and I had my hands on ‘my’ $25 million. Greed is greed, honey-lamb, and ‘you’ know what that’s all about.

I came up with that idea after reading a story about the Macca-Mucca divorce settlement and the comments of the judge in which he – albeit in dignified and judicial terminology – in essence called her a cheap, lying li’l money-grubbing scag – but in my nicer terms, y’understand.

Anyway, that also led me to thinking about Paul, and the whole Beatles thing. Who would have thought it would all come to this.

Paul, once known as the “cute Beatle” was never my favorite. Always found his songs a little too 'sweet.' Silly love songs, if you will. I was a John Lennon man. Wendy was a George Harrison groupie (not literally). Nobody was ever much a Ringo follower. Oh, everybody liked Ringo. He was sort of like the jester. Funny and amiable always was he. Not a creative force per se, but always there, suited-up and ready to perform. He was an excellent counterpoint to the mammoth egos of the rest. Ironically, he remains to this day not only a survivor (what with two of them gone), but effectively the least neurotic of the lot. Ringo knows who he is, and it has always worked for him.

I am old enough to remember the first time I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan way back in the dark ages of early 1964. I have to confess I was riveted to the black-and-white images of these four Brits who looked unlike anything that was familiar the North America of the time.

What I recall most of all was that they were not only musicians offering catchy tunes, but they were ‘entertainers’ as well, and that was something that set them apart. That and the attire – stovepipe trousers, narrow-lapeled jackets and skinny ties, pointy-toed ‘winklepicker’ Beatle boots, and, of course, those haircuts – a tonsorial offering that had theretofore only been sported by Moe Howard of the Three Stooges.

It was great. It affected one. I am not even sure why it affected one, but I felt a certain exultation in their presence. So did millions of other kids around the world. A new era had begun. That may sound like hyperbole, but it was truly a new era, much as Elvis had ushered in a decade earlier.

This was long ago. Long before flower-child pretentiousness, the Maharishi, the breakup of the group, Yoko, “more popular than Jesus,” Wings, Plastic One Band, wacky-assassin’s bullet, the sad demise of Linda McCartney, the sadder demise of George, and the hideous Heather.

No, maybe I won’t marry Heather after all. I’d rather have good memories. Sorry hon’. So, stop calling, OK?