#speedreader

[factcheckingmclennon]

harry nilsson quotes double feature: fact or fiction?

"Someone told me a few minutes ago they saw John walking on the street [once] wearing a sign saying – a button, rather, saying 'I Love Paul'. And this girl who told me that said she asked him, 'Why are you wearing the button that says ‘I Love Paul’?' He said, 'Because I love Paul.'" -Harry Nilsson

"I'm just like everybody else, Harry, I fell for Paul's looks." Harry Nilsson (on John)

these quotes get passed around unsourced, or wrongly sourced, constantly. so...

are these harry nilsson quotes about john lennon real?

shockingly, after getting an anon correction on the first one and then discovering myself on the second one through the world's most random search engine imaginable bc SOMETHING felt unfinished...... the final verdict for both?

...ish? the second one is sort of neutral bc it's taken a bit out of context but i'll get to that

let's get into it, because this one took me on a journey!

(and btw the sources on these were SUCH a pain in the ass to find due to lack of sourcing & wrong sourcing so i am on my hands and knees for these to get passed around w the proper sources now that they're in one place bc they're so good)

first of all, these quotes keep getting mixed up and messed around with different wording. which was my first road block on finding a proper source. second of all, they have been wrongly attributed to a) one single interview together and/or b) a rolling stone interview with nilsson. this made things aggravating. but in the end, an anon sent me the audio for the first quote and for the second one i FINALLY found someone a looong while back actually naming the book it's in & successfully found it!

made a post earlier concluding both were fake, but we just had to go a little deeper folks.

anyway, onto the good shit

who was harry nilsson? he was a friend of john's, specifically during his 1974 lost weekend era. they lived together for a while (along with others, including ringo!) and were pretty close.

"because i love paul"

this one gets misquoted the Most honestly like you'll find a bunch of different variations of it, but you can find it in a 1984 interview with geoffrey giuliano as such:

GIULIANO: Did he miss the Beatles? Was he mournful about what happened, over the, you know—? HARRY: Someone told me a few minutes ago they saw John walking on the street [once] wearing a sign saying – a button, rather, saying ‘I Love Paul’. And this girl who told me that said she asked him, “Why are you wearing the button that says ‘I Love Paul’?” He said, “Because I love Paul.” [laughs]  

(source) (and again, it's a tumblr blog, but given that it's audio, i'm marking it trustworthy. i just uploaded it to archive.org in case it ever gets deleted)

"i fell for paul's looks"

this one. this one was a goddamn journey and a half. this sent me on several rabbit holes and dead ends. the author of the last source said "nope it's definitely not from the tapes i found this audio from or i would've posted it too" and couldn't find the source either. no one had a source. until finally i found someone on a forum saying it was in the ballad of john and yoko published by rolling stone in 1984, in an essay titled "harry remembers" and thank christ it was on archive.org

so here's the full quote, found on page 236

"He spoke the way James Joyce wrote. And to me he was the Beatles. He was always the spark. In a late wee-hours-of-the-morning talk, he once told me: 'I'm just like everybody else, Harry. I fell for Paul's looks. George knew more chords, so he was in. And Ringo, he's just Ringo.'"

(source)

so this one gets a... true/neutral rating from me. why neutral? well, the "i fell for paul's looks" part is certainly there. but in the full context, he's talking about why he wanted each member in the beatles. basically, paul was the pretty face. however, he did say that verbatim and it is incredibly fucking gay imo. like specifically the "i fell for" wording is craaaaazy to me. but i do think the full context should be included if we're talking about it, as well as the actual source.

so no, they were not indeed both from the same interview. one isn't even FROM an interview. but they are both true! which is great bc i love both of these quotes and truly thought they were fake! pleasantly surprised on this one

now, take these with a grain of salt. the first quote is a third-hand source. it's nilsson recounting what some random fan told him john had done YEARS prior. the second one is a second-hand source and nilsson and john were like pretty infamous for getting drunk/high together. but the quotes themselves? certainly exist from harry nilsson, and that's the question. believe them if you want to, or leave them! i'm certainly taking them lmao

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: A HOUSE WITH GOOD BONES by T. Kingfisher.

Entering my Haunted House Era™, as part of my NaNo prep reading ignore how deep into October we are rn. I've really enjoyed Kingfisher's other horror (HOLLOW PLACES, my beloved!!), and I've heard good things about this one, so I'm excited to dive in!

[scarlet-sam-chaos]

me: so let's read toa

my brain: okay cool. sure. we do love apollo. we know half the plot from the memes anyway. let's do it.

me: so... let's see. we've read pjo, hoo-

my brain: have we though?

me: yeah dude like last year-

my brain: 6th grade. you read them all on speed run within a month in 6th grade.

me: yeah, like I said-

my brain: 6th grade was 6 years ago. ever since then you've been retaining all the knowledge solely through content you see in memes and fanfiction.

me: i-

my brain: you do not remember *anything*, just the vague plot and vibes have been doing it for you-

me: ... in my defense-

my brain: go read the entire thing from beginning. now.

me: ...yes ma'am.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

hey uh. what the fuck

[novatwilightanddusk]

Gem's session 7 task: Pass on the boogeyman curse

The actual task: Test your server mates reading comprehension skills

[falloutcoys]

my life for a storygraph and libby integration

[incohorace]

Ok I’m doing this but the author is on r/menwritingwomen or similar because I can’t write that well but I can write very very badly on purpose.

The swish of his purple hair sticking out over the frame of his glasses nodded slightly as he lifted his head to turn a page. “This is utter bullshit!” she exclaimed, reading over the hastily-written Aeneid essay of her companion. “You should have spent more time on this instead of drafting asked to your tumblr mutuals!” she tutted, her arm muscles rippling suavely. The sleeveless cut of his band tee and the plaid draped over the back of the chair made clear that this was a member of that crowd of classicists to peculiarly partial to the works of one particular poet from lesbos.

His purple hair bobbed once again in time with the breeze through the lavender outside the window, reminding her companion not of the pale imitation of nature compared to anneline dyes, but implanting in her mind the question of how many murex shells were required for the border on Caelius’ toga and whether or not they were farmed in antiquity because of their great value and the large number required for any sizeable product.

He wrinkled his nose: the essay truly was utter shite.

THIS IS GENUINELY SO WONDERFUL THANK YOU TUNA. my arm muscles are indeed rippling suavely as i critique essays definitely. and. the caelius toga purple border hair.............😁😁😁

[alectoperdita]

hmmm i should finish Word of Honor at some point

[skincareroutine]

i never realised that not everyone can bake until i saw this girls tiktok how do u fuck cookies up that bad.

[shadowgirl-and-her-ocverse]

nothing like playing an fps game and getting the harshest reality check of my life so far.

[hiddenramen]

hoe how tf did you read a 300k fic in less than 24 hours

cannot believe i have never dropped this lore on this blog but i'm a natural speedreader!

it generally takes me about two hours(ish) to get through 100k. this particular fic took me about six and a half total but i also kept going back to read parts i liked

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: ADHD FOR SMART ASS WOMEN: HOW TO FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR NEURODIVERGENT BRAIN by Tracy Otsuka.

I saw this on a new release promotional email and thought "well shit, that looks like my life, I should Investigate That™," only to realize it was a brand new hardback and I didn't want to pay $29 for 200 pages of information. Since I found out about it on release day, my next thought was, "Oh, I can check and see if my library has any copies!! We love supporting our libraries in this house!!"

Reader: They did Not.

But! I did find the "request a book" option on their website, and I entered this book, and I got a robocall within a week saying my hold was ready to be picked up! Y'all!! The library literally ordered this book for me (it was stamped into circulation one (1) day before they called me!), and now I have it to read! I love libraries!!

(book pic featuring the super cute coaster set @asexualbookbird made me that I love with my entire heart!!)

[municiberg]

Well. I just finished Suddenly Super. Really bad overall! Poor writing, very basic inaccuracies to info from the movies, and everybody is OOC except somehow Syndrome. There's this original villain in it named Mastermind, though, and I REALLY liked her, she's really fun. At the end of the book Mirage starts working for her, which also rules. Not sure what else to say. Terrible book! I don't recommend it.

[1o1percentmilk]

love the oddtaxi furries but this is truly the yap anime

[got-into-worm-by-mistake]

Khonsu seemed to notice, because he moved the column.  It intersected Eidolon’s forcefield, and Khonsu’s power won out.  The forcefield collapsed.  This wouldn’t be an effect Eidolon could contain.

This is not 'Worthy opponent' behavior. This is 'you're not worth my time' behavior

Sometimes I wonder how much Wildbow actually planned this all out, because part of me is starting to wonder if the 'Eidolon created the Endbringers because he needed worthy opponents' thing was actually like, a last minute scramble to let Scion beat Eidolon quickly and to explain the Endbringers because he realized whatever else he had wouldn't work?

Like, Worm really is pretty cohesive overall, at least in certain respects, though not in others, and I don't think it was last minute, and I get that like, a lot of it is that the Endbringers weren't supposed to work like this at all, so that's why they're so OP Broken and stuff, but...

Still.

[divorceblogger]

50 more pages until I get to claudia…