So I’m getting a little desperate on this Beatles thing. And I know I should know better, but whatever, I decided to call Ringo. I knew he couldn’t do anything to help. The poor guy makes Ozzy Osbourne look like a genius. But anyway, I call him up, I ask him if he has any idea how the talks are progressing on his end, what’s the latest, and so forth. He tells me — I am not making this up — he tells me, “Yeah, you know, I think the latest thing we’ve been talking about is maybe we’re just going to sit out this whole digital thing and wait for whatever comes next. I mean we’re so late at this point maybe we should just skip it and wait for the next thing.”

I’m like, Dude, what’s the next thing? He says, “I don’t know. You’re the computer nerd. You tell me.” I tell him that as far as I’m aware there isn’t any next thing after digital downloads. He goes, “Aren’t you supposed to know stuff like this? And if you don’t know what the next thing is, how am I supposed to know?” I go, Ringo, I don’t think there is going to be anything next after this. He goes, “Oh there’s always something next, innit? We had the vinyl records, and then the cassettes and the eight tracks, and the CDs, and now there’s your iTunes, but really I think we’ve missed that one. We’ve just waited too long. So we might as well just try to jump forward and get on that other thing.” I’m like, What other thing? He goes, “Whatever it is that’s coming next. I don’t know. You should talk to Paul. I think he knows. By the way, I keep getting this error message on my computer. Do you know what that means? How do I fix that?” (Photo courtesy of Burt Hammer, Hammer Agency.)