Wilfair: Beatlemania

My head is full of the Beatles today (though it often is). The new Ringo Starr exhibit opens tomorrow at the Grammy Museum and I'm swinging by for a little peek. I'll also get to see him (!) say a few words during the event. He better not hum a few bars of "Octopus's Garden" because then this will be me:

You guys, I've always always always wanted to be in the same room as a Beatle. I'm also very excited to see this exhibit, because it includes the drum kit used on both The White Album and Abbey Road, two of the seminal records of my life.

Can I also say that Mr. Starr personally okayed the exhibit, the better to spread a message of love and peace? Dang it, this WILL be me today:

Reader Caitlin O. and I have chatted Beatles (hi, Caitlin O.! I'm drawing the curtain back on your Fab Four affections right here, right now -- hope you don't mind). We both have the same favorite Beatle -- George Harrison -- and we both agree that Abbey Road would play A LOT on the small system inside the Motel Fairwil lobby. (Gomery's choice; Monty's a fan of mid-catalog Beatles, but Gomery's all the later works.)

As a former Hotel Girl with a deep knowledge of front desks, I can say this: Not only are they excellent for neckties folding upon themselves and the resting of elbows but they make excellent impromptu drumming surfaces. Meaning when Gomery is working the Motel Fairwil front desk, and no one is in the lobby, he is finger-drumming -- that's drumming with both index fingers against the edge of a surface, of course -- to "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window."

Caitlin O. kindly and very astutely paired a bunch of Beatles's songs with several of the characters, but I think I'll leave off on Across the Universe, which she says (and I agree) is a good Fair and Gomery song, together.

If you have a favorite Beatles song, tell me! Someone please pick "Blackbird," please please please?

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Update: The event was so fun and my fangirl heart beats hard for Ringo! What a charmer. That man has TWINKLE in the eye, one of my favorite qualities, and he brought such a warm feeling to the room.

And did I tear up a little when he said that the times weren't *all* good with the lads but mostly? What an honest, heartfelt admission. Totally touching.

Goodness me.

Now if you've come around Wilfair HQ before, you know I do not often post photos of myself* beyond the corner reader photos.

But I'll share the snapshot below. It was a thrill to sit at a reproduction drum kit from a 1966 concert, for sure, but I'm sharing because of this: I'm holding invisible drumsticks, acting like I'm all cool or something.

Oh yes I am.

I think I'd like that to be in my obituary one day: Alysia was a fair-to-middling dancer, a solid anecdote sharer, and a disappointing pastry cook, but put her behind a drum kit and she'd pretend to rock out with no drumsticks at all.

And there's today's lesson, at least for me. No drumsticks? No problem. Summon the drumsticks in your mind and pretend like you're cool or something, even if you aren't. (I tend to land on the "or something" end of that equation.)