For centuries now we’ve all wondered what would happen if a drunken Ringo Starr were to make sweet love to a liquored-up Mickey Mouse. For most of us the answer is obvious – Pluto would move out.

We’re not really sure if it’d be genetically possible for them to breed – but a kid eventually born with the mouse’s ears and Ringo’s sniffer, well he’d have a tough time in grade school.

Of course they’d never actually mate for some reason we can’t put our fingers on, but they could collaborate in other ways – like in Disney’s upcoming remake of Yellow Submarine.

Nowadays when we think of the Beatles we think of baby seals turned inside out and smeared all over Indian huts. We’re really not sure why. That or we think of their fans finally understand that Ringo doesn’t even like them. It’s sad on both counts, really.

And when we think of Disney we think of them afloat in a huge ocean on a Pixar buoy, to be quite honest.

But as far as thinking of The Beatles and Disney both at the same time – well that’s something we’ve never done. Robert Zemeckis has though. Variety says he has, anyway:

“Disney and director Robert Zemeckis are negotiating to remake “Yellow Submarine,” the 1968 psychedelic animated film based on the music of The Beatles…The hope is to have “Yellow Submarine” ready to premiere around the 2012 Summer Olympics, which begins July 27 in London.”

“Think Mulan but with a mustache,’ Zemeckis is quoted as saying, ‘also Donny Osmond will have nothing to do with production, and good gosh we wouldn’t touch Eddie Murphy.”

That’s surprisingly rude, Zemeckis, and frankly we didn’t know such harshness could spring from your lips. If you said that at all that’s very rude. You probably didn’t say it. It’s fiction.

Well all we can say is the London Olympics are very lucky to have such an important musical film readied just for them. For fear of feeling left out, Disney’s remaking the Monkees’ Head for Vancouver 2010, Dreamworks is pushing out Eddie & the Cruisers III: Still Cruising Again for Sochi in 2014, and paramount is redoing just the dance scene from the first Back to the Future pic.

That one’s not so much for any specific Olympics as it is anybody willing to pay for admission to it.

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When Hecklerspray finally leaves this mortal realm it’ll probably be in a hail of gunfire as we bravely rescue babies from poor people who can’t afford them anyway.

Strange they could afford all those bullets though.

Still, don’t call us heroes. It’s not anything you wouldn’t do if put in the same situation. Unless of course you wouldn’t – in which case we’d be totally fine with the ‘hero’ tag. In fact, you can even build us a monument.

Get us one better than George Harrison’s though, won’t you? We couldn’t bear to see our sweet memory trampled so callously under-foot.

When 15-year-old George Harrison first conceived the Beatles as he sat dressed in a hooded cloak by candle light in a dark room covered in pentagrams and decapitated cats, he probably had no idea what an influence his band would become. Aside from Eddie Vedder’s solo projects, the music he and his friends would eventually make would touch every musical group spawned after it.

And darn it all it’s about time the world took notice. Harrison has recently received a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Although his corpse was dragged out for the mandatory photo-op, it said nothing indicating any level of gratitude. This is acceptable only because he’s dead.

MSNBC tells us about the exciting day:

“Hundreds of George Harrison’s biggest fans and best friends, including Paul McCartney and Tom Petty, turned out Tuesday to see a posthumous star for the quiet Beatle unveiled during a raucous celebration on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Fellow former Beatle McCartney stood next to Harrison’s widow, Olivia, and son, Dhani, as the star was unveiled in front of the landmark Capitol Records building.”

Harrison died of lung cancer in 2001, and some argue it may have been for the best that he not live to see Paul McCartney marry and divorce a one legged banshee, Ringo Starr begin to passionately hate all his fans, or Phil Spector looking small under a wig as he gets dragged off to prison for the rest of time and eternity.

We barely lived through all that ourselves – and we’re not even sick or anything. We can’t imagine what that kind of turmoil would have done to Harrison’s already weak heart. Or lungs.

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]]> http://www.hecklerspray.com/george-harrison-gets-additional-tombstone-or-something/200932547.php/feed 0 http://www.hecklerspray.com/paul-mccartneys-got-a-new-way-to-kick-the-beatles-in-the-nuts/200817263.php http://www.hecklerspray.com/paul-mccartneys-got-a-new-way-to-kick-the-beatles-in-the-nuts/200817263.php#comments Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:00:09 +0000 Stuart Heritage http://www.hecklerspray.com/?p=17263 With The Beatles Anthology, Let It Be Naked and that horrible Cirque Du Soleil thing, Beatles fans have never been left wanting.

But now Paul McCartney has dreamt up a brand new way to make even the most ardent Beatles fan drop to their knees and scream “Stop it! Stop punching it! It’s already dead!” at him – he’s going to release the never-before-heard, experimental 14-minute Beatles track Carnival Of Light.

Carnival Of Light is, of course, probably most famous for being just about the only Beatles track to not be included on The Beatles Anthology because George Harrison and Ringo Starr thought it was rubbish. And look at some of the stuff Ringo Starr has released – he’s essentially saying that Carnival Of Light is even worse than Snookeroo.

The Beatles all had their own individual ways of making people dislike them. John Lennon had Yoko Ono, Ringo Starr had his obnoxious refusal to sign autographs and George Harrison had Got My Mind Set On You. But Paul McCartney has really put the effort in, turning people off by going over and above in his efforts to rape the carcass of The Beatles harder than anyone else thought possible.

We thought that Paul McCartney had already reached the bottom of the barrel – what with Rock Band: The Beatles, the horrible Love mash-up album and Let It Be Naked, a nightmarish ‘What The Beatles Would Be Like If Paul McCartney Had His Way’ vision to which the only logical conclusion is a Paul McCartney’s Greatest Hits Of The Beatles album that contains Maxwell’s Silver Hammer 13 times in a row and a version of Love Me Do without any mouth organ on it – but we were wrong.

And that’s because Paul McCartney has decided to release Carnival Of Light – an experimental Beatles track from 1967 that goes on for 14 minutes and is presumably unreleased because it’s a pile of unlistenable self-indulgent twaddle. But anyway, The Observer reports:

The track, a jumble of shrieks and psychedelic effects, is said to be as far from the melodic ballads that made Sir Paul McCartney famous as it is possible to imagine. But now McCartney has said that the public will have the chance to judge for themselves. ‘It does exist,’ McCartney says. The former Beatle confirms that he still has a master tape of the work and says he suspects that ‘the time has come for it to get its moment’.

We’ve decoded that last sentence in the hecklerspray labs, and we’ve figured out that it actually means “Heather Mills took so much of my money that I’m prepared to release anything, even a drug-blattered tuneless dirge from 41 years ago that lasts for half an episode of EastEnders, so long as I can get some of my beautiful, beautiful money back.”

But who knows how Carnival Of Light will be released. Will it be included on a new album of Beatles rarities? Will it be released as a standalone download? Or will it be renamed See John Lennon? See? I Came Up With This A Year Before Revolution 9 And You Still Get Called The Arty One! I’m The Arty Beatle! This Is So Arty That Nobody Will Ever Listen To It All The Way Through More Than Once. So Shove That Up Your Arse You Dead Idiot? Nobody can really say for sure.

But it’ll definitely be the last one.

Paul McCartney has chosen to summon up all the energy in his wrinkly little body to call on his fans to boycott McDonald’s. Not because of the deforestation caused by the fast food industry’s mass farming practises, though, or McDonald’s aggressive child-centric marketing, or even the potential health risks inherent in a predominantly fast food diet.

No, Paul McCartney wants everyone to boycott McDonald’s because someone put a photo of Paul McCartney up in a Liverpool branch without asking him first. Come back next week, when Paul McCartney tries to ban abortion because he heard that someone who aborted her pregnancy once hummed three notes from Love Me Do for one and a half seconds in a shower on her own in 1975.

People often give John Lennon all the credit for being the political one in The Beatles, but that overlooks a vast portion of Paul McCartney’s oeuvre. Give Ireland Back To The Irish, for example, was a bloodied warcry for the abolition of crappy Irish-themed funpubs. Hi Hi Hi was an impassioned called for the legalisation of Hi-Tec trainers. And Dance Tonight was a thundering commentary on the uneasy political friendship between Pakistan and India, and not a cacky load of bum wanked out on a mandolin in five minutes like you thought.

Lately, though, Paul McCartney has been flexing his political muscles with a little bit more might than usual. He invoked the wrath of fundamental Islam by playing a concert in Israel recently and, what’s more, he was slightly rude about Gordon Ramsay in a supermarket magazine, too. Paul McCartney has got the fire back in his belly, that’s for sure.

And now Paul McCartney has picked his next target – McDonald’s. As a devout vegetarian, Paul McCartney has long since spoken of the environmental cost of humanity’s passion for meat, but that’s not why he’s angry at McDonald’s. Nor is it because the meagre vegetarian options on sale at McDonald’s all taste like slurry.

No, Paul McCartney has decided to go after McDonald’s because one branch in Liverpool has a picture of him in it. The bastards. Paul McCartney’s serious, too – he wants all his fans to boycott the restaurants, as The Telegraph reports:

The singer was said to be furious after discovering pictures of the Beatles had been placed prominently in a restaurant in his home town. A spokesman for Sir Paul said: “What sort of morons do McDonald’s think Beatles’ fans are. It’s ridiculous and insulting to use images to peddle hamburgers. Fans should boycott Mcdonald’s, and not just in Liverpool.”

It’s good that the spokesman managed to say “Beatles’ fans” and not “fans of Paul McCartney’s solo work,” isn’t it, because that’s the difference between a large percentage of the world’s population and a couple of old ladies with bad hearing who drink at Starbucks more often than they probably should. That would have probably been quite a crappy boycott, to be honest.

Anyway, we think that McDonald’s branches having pictures of their towns’ favourite sons is a brilliant idea – because that way people in Birmingham could eat their burgers under big pictures of UB40, residents of Brentwood could order their Egg McMuffins next to pictures of Chantelle from Big Brother and everyone in Nottingham could utilise the McDonald’s free wifi facility with several giant portraits of Dr Harold Shipman looming at them from every surface.

But still, we should probably do what Paul McCartney says and boycott McDonald’s. Otherwise he might try and kiss us, and that’d be like kissing your granny. Bleurgh.

After all, it was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who introduced The Beatles to Transcendental Meditation and is therefore responsible for that rubbish George Harrison song on Sgt Pepper that everyone skips. Is Maharishi Mahesh Yogi the fifth Beatle, or even the sixth Beatle, or the 18th Beatle?

No. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is none of these things. Because he's just died.

Everyone's dying at the moment, noticed that? Heath Ledger and Jeremy Beadle are both dead, that rapper bloke died because he couldn't stop drinking cough medicine and now 91-year-old Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has died, too. And his death has hit us the hardest, because nobody expects 91-year-old men to die. It's just not on. Yahoo reports:

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a guru to the Beatles who introduced the West to transcendental meditation, died Tuesday at his home in the Dutch town of Vlodrop, a spokesman said. He was thought to be 91 years old. "He died peacefully at about 7 p.m.," said Bob Roth, a spokesman for the Transcendental Meditation movement that Maharishi founded. He said his death appeared to be due to "natural causes, his age."

Despite having followers such as David Lynch, Donovan and Mike Love from The Beach Boys, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi never stopped being a controversial figure. After an alleged incident with Mia Farrow at his Indian retreat, John Lennon felt obliged to write the stinging Sexy Sadie ("You made a fool of everyone") about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, while others have noted the hypocrisies of a man who preached the evils of materialism and earnt himself millions of dollars in the process.

The death of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was anticipated, even by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi himself – in 1990 he moved into a Dutch monastery and only spoke to people through video, even those in the same building as him. And it's reported that in January Maharishi Mahesh Yogi fell silent and was never to speak again.

But for all his eccentricities and accusations of fraud, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has left a lasting imprint on the world – if The Beatles hadn't gone to stay at his Indian retreat in 1968, Donovan would have never taught them how to fingerpick their guitars and nobody would have written Dear Prudence. That's important stuff.

Plus he had a cool MySpace page, too. Well, cool if you like crayon drawings of Bodhisattvas. Which we're not sure that we do, to be honest.

Read more:

Beatles guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi dies – Yahoo 

And he wasn't the only one with a slightly unnatural obsession for John Lennon's hair – because this week an auction sold John Lennon's hair for $48,000. Not all of John Lennon's hair, you understand – that would be creepy – but just a lock of John Lennon's hair. A lock of John Lennon's hair in a bag that you can occasionally open and sniff, pretending that you and John Lennon are such close friends that he can put his hair in a bag and let you smell it. And that's what the mystery hair-buyer will probably do – either that or blast it into the sun, thereby creating an evil nuclear-powered John Lennon to brutally enslave the world with, like in Superman IV.

It was the anniversary of John Lennon's tragic death last Saturday, and nobody really seemed to notice. We blame Yoko Ono, obviously – not only did Yoko bugger things up by opening her John Lennon Light Tower two months early but she also failed to mark the anniversary in the traditional way, by letting a mental Turkish employee inject her with poison in her sleep. Shame on you, Yoko.

But fortunately not everyone forgot to mark John Lennon's death this week. Fans from around the world paid their respect to John Lennon by listening to his music, soaking in his peaceful Utopian worldview and selling clumps of his hair for enough money to buy a couple of good quality horses.

A lock of John Lennon's hair sold at auction by Gorringes this week for $48,000, smashing the original estimate of $6,000. Now, it might sound a lot, but is it something that you can put a price on? Really? John Lennon's hair? After all, mix the hair with some mosquito blood and you'll be able to start your own tropical John Lennon safari park where people can pay to see all sorts of John Lennons in the wild, like the angry beclawed carnivore John Lennons, the docile giant herbivore John Lennons and the John Lennons that look cute but then suddenly turn vicious and blind you with hawked-up globs of sticky acid. It's an investment, if anything.

Gorringes spokeswoman Francesca Collin is certainly pleased that a manky wodge of dead man's hair was capable of making so much money:

"It is astonishing that there is still so much interest in the Beatles and the sale goes to prove that John Lennon is still an icon. To have some of Lennon's hair along with a signed note from him really does give it fantastic provenance and authenticity."

However, John Lennon's hair wasn't the only piece of Beatle hair memorabilia to sell at the auction. A photo of the group that George Harrison had signed "George "Dandruff" Harrison" went for $13,000. And 18 giant potato sacks full of every single public hair that Ringo Starr has ever grown, from the first flush of puberty to the present day, was also snapped up by a mystery bidder for 12p and half a packet of Polos.

Read more:

Lock of Lennon's Hair Sells for $48,000 – Associated Press