Just so the 10 hours long journey through the carreer of the fab four comes to the end. "The White Album" isn`t a collective work by the band anymore, but it still has many beautiful songs upon it. The tension in the band has become really bad, and the making of "Let it Be" which was supposed to be a film of them making an album becomes a real horror - with nobody liking what the rest did. Ringo leaves the band, but comes back again, the same happens to George. The songs are simply beautiful, despite all the problems in the band. The arrival of Yoko in John`s life is probably the biggest problem which the band faces. This doesn`t mean that John can`t come up with great songs anymore, but the Beatles as a band have almost died by the time. Still they do the legendary performance on the roof, which was simply superb. Later the Beatles reunite to record "Abbey Road" being almost sure that it`s the last album, therefore they were much more relaxed and each one of them did their best. There`s also the video to "Free as a Bird" - but that song sounds too little like the Beatles and too much like Tom Petty (I wonder whether Jeff Lynne of ELO also produced Tom Petty). And the last words of John in this film are just so cool: "It`s just natural. It`s not a great disaster. People dramatise like it`s the end of the world. It`s only a rock band that got split up. It`s nothing important." Isn`t it really?

The summer of love has started, although it probably wasn`t the way we think about it now. George even went to the States but he didn`t like those drugged kids thus deciding to stop taking LSD himself. When the Beatles were with Maharishi (an Indian spiritual person) in India their long time manager Brian Epstein died of an OD (or something like that) thus starting all the really big trouble (probably the previous big trouble was Lennon saying that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus - although I find that to be completely true). But now they decide to start all the shit they can start - they make the "Magical Mystery Tour" film. The idea behind it was probably not that bad, but what came out of it was quite horrible indeed (apart from the performances of "Your Mother Should Know" and "I`m the Walrus"). "Yellow Submarine" cartoon on the other hand totally rocked, but the whole "Apple" thing went completely nowhere, and I guess it was said right in the "Rutles" film: "At one stage they were losing money faster than the British government."

The sweet milk in the lives of the Beatles starts turning sour. They get booed from the Phillipines because of not going to a party of the local dictator. Thus the Beatles managed accidentally (for they didn`t go there just because they were lazy) to avoid losing their face by playing for the dictator. The Beatles decide to stop touring for nobody listens to their concerts but only screams by looking at them. The Beatles record "Sergeant Pepper" - a real milestone in modern music which showed that rock`n`roll can be much more than just music for dancing. "Penny Lane" and especially "A Day in the Life". The latter is probably the greatest song the Beatles ever did, and boy did they do many great songs. This song was also the very first one to feature the line "I`d love to turn you on." What was also cool was Paul admitting to reporters of using drugs. But it was cool - they way he did - saying that it was the reporters and not him who talked about him using drugs thus telling the youth that their idols were on drugs and supporting them taking drugs themselves.

The Beatles play at the "Shea" stadium in the States. Overall their performance seems to have been quite a good one - and they don`t do only the popular numbers anymore, the recording quality certainly could have been much better, but it isn`t so there`s nothing that can be done about it. John goes a bit wild on there - stars playing the piano with his elbows and acting like he was crazy. Then the Beatles meet Elvis (although there`s no footage of that visit). But there`s one thing I didn`t know - that Elvis was actually supporting the idea of banning the Beatles in the States, so they wouldn`t spoil the american youth - and there even was an ugly photo of Elvis shaking Richard Nixon`s hand. "Norvegian Wood" introduces the sitar to popular music - that song isn`t performed live, but it`s still that big of a classic that I simply must mention it. The Beatles stop doing TV performances and start recording promo videos of their singles - as a matter of fact in this way they started the concept of music videos - cool. We reach "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver" - thus coming very close to the best (imho) period of their carreer. They go to Japan and it turns out that they don`t sound too good - because the audience isn`t that loud therefore their mistakes can be heard.

We now reach the mid point of this massive documentary. The Beatles do Hollywood Bowl, go to America for the second time, get the MBI (member of the British Empire) from the Queen, John does some silly stuff on the stage (I guess, this may have influenced Monty Python`s Flying Circus, but I`m not really sure about that). After that they do the "Help!" film, which is a complete silliness. But now I know the reasons for that - the Beatles simply asked the scriptwriters to insert scenes in regions they had never been to - so they go to the Bahamas and skiing in the Alps, not caring too much about the plot of the film. And then there was the problem with the drugs - none of them was capable of remembering his part. But the most interesting part is Paul telling how he wrote "Yesterday" which came to him in a dream of his and he later was sure that he had heard the melody somewhere, for such a beautiful can`t come in a dream. And the other Beatles made some fun of this song as Paul`s solo number like introducing the song: "And now for Paul McCartney of Liverpool - opportunity night..." - and so he`s left alone on the stage with his guitar. And then there`s a cool introduction to a song done by Ringo who says: "There he is - all out of key and nervous he`ll sing "Act Naturally" - Ringo!" - a nice way to introduce himself.

The Beatles go to America for the first time, play the Ed Sullivan show, instead of lip-synching we get some pretty low quality live performances (because of the sound quality). The Beatles make their first movie. The best part is probably Ringo telling, why his performance was better than the others - it`s because of him having a hangover most of the time, therefore he didn`t need to act to show himself feeling miserable. Since I find that particular film quite good, the story of making it is also interesting for me. After that the Beatles go to Australia and do some shows back there. The music isn`t still what I want it be - because we don`t come past "A Hard Day`s Night" stuff. But it`s interesting to see and hear what the Beatles were like live, why those little girls got crazy from their performance. Probably I wouldn`t go mad but they still were a pretty good live band, especially concerning that they never could hear themselves during the performance.

Have you ever considered that the world outside your head never existed? That you were the only real person in this world and everybody else was just a part of your imagination? I certainly have. In this book the main hero who doesn`t even have a name accidentally discovers that there once was a philosopher named Gaspar Langenheart, who started a theory that he was the Creator of everything. And this hero starts looking for information on this philosopher, but it turns out that there`s there little to find. Not many people considered him significant, and more than that - there was no real proof that he ever existed and ceased to exist. But what happens is that the main hero partly becomes Gaspar himself, and its a thing like that - every 50 years a man jumps out of nowhere and starts digging up information on Gaspar Langenheart, thus prooving that the man was something like God and that he couldn`t die. Or could he? The book digs deep but manages to stay entertaining. It`s one of the best novels I`ve read this year, without the slightest doubt.

Oh, boy, what made me think this film had only two parts? It turned out that there was eight of them! That`s quite a lot - something like 10 hours of film about the Beatles. The second part actually was less interesting than the first one. Why? First, because I already knew some bits about the first year of Beatlemania. Then - the crappy live performances were substituted for great lipsynching performances. I`m not really sure whether the Beatles really never played live or the audio quality from those recordings is that bad that it didn`t get on tape. Whatever. But there was one really cool thing that stood out. When the Beatles did a performance at the Queen`s ball John before playing "Twist and Shout" said that they would need the help of the audience for that: "For the people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands. And the rest of you, if you just rattle your jewelry." That was pretty good. An appearance of them on a stupid comedy show was also fun. What else? There was a lot of unsuccesful takes in the studio, including a dialogue like this one: "Paul forgot to sing." - "God, I`m sorry. I was just watching George..." or "Don`t slow down for christ sakes... or I`m giving you no more drugs."

I guess very few concerts with close to no spectators at all ever had a guest list as impressive as this one. Could you believe that along with the Stones who organised this even the stage was walked by (in ascending order) Marianne Faithful, Taj Mahal, Jethro Tull, The Who and The Dirty Mac (a supergroup of John Lennon, Mitch Mitchell (Jimi Hendrix drummer), Keith Richard and Eric Clapton). Most of the performances are more than awesome. Although there are som major problems as well. First, Jethro Tull don`t play the music - only Andersons singing is done live (although we actually get to see Tony Iommi - the future Black Sabbath guitarist - on their line-up), but whats worse is that "The Dirty Mac" after doing a beautiful version of "Yer Blues" are joined on stage by a violin player and... Yoko Ono. After that conceptual shit begins - Yoko screams, the violinst plays something totally unlistenable, and that is supposed to be called art. Anyhow, the Stones own performance is good - they do "Sympathy for the Devil", "Jumpin` Jack Flash", "Parachute Woman" and one more song. "The Who" on the other hand play a part from their rock-opera "A quick one" and it`s also good, especially I dig Keith Moon bashing those drums like only he can. Overall - a good performance, and wasn`t it for Yoko, it`d be even great.

Buying this book I had my doubts. A book that`s called "A pervert" isn`t always good. But my intuition was correct this time. And I`m very happy about it, for before this book I had no knowledge of Mr. Schmitt whatsoever, but now I`ve become a real fan of his. The figure of Dennis Diderot is known to many people - he was one significant philosopher, even I have read a book entitled "Ramo`s Nephew" of his, although I don`t remember liking it very much. Still in this play we see him as a fighter for freedom and for pleasure. And we see that a philosopher can believe in things that don`t match one another at all. Diderot`s portrait is made by a young female artist named Trebouche but the cheeky thing is that he`s portrayed naked. And he wants to make love to her, but gets interrupted by lots of different people the whole time. Starting with his wife who`s had enough of him cheating on her, then there`s his daughter who wants to have a child from a friend of Diderot`s, and that`s not all. Diderot also tries to write something about morality for his encyclopaedia but he never quite achieves that, for every next thing that happens to him shows to him that morality isn`t what he thought just ten minutes ago. This is most surely a complete comedy, without any signs of drama, and its almost the perfect comedy, where dialogues are sharper than Albert Einstein.