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This book started sort of cute and funny with all the uncertainty and familiar chitchat, but now I just want to get on with it. I hate nearly every character.

Just when I was about to quit reading: The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves. Those lies keep us in jobs we hate, in marriages that suffocate us, and in places where we cannot thrive. It takes guts to change.

Very choppy writing. And what’s with the overuse of the word “wee”? Trying to demonstrate some Irish background?

I’m getting very strong White Noise vibes.

Unlike his band mates, Lennon was always subversive and relatively unstable. But the public saw only the witty, nonconformist side…Two days before he was murdered, Playboy published an interview in which he admitted to being violent toward women

For the first time in fifteen years, Muhammad Ali has the world spot light again.
…..
And one more thing: I’m still gonna find out who stole my bike when I was twelve years old in Louisville. And I’m still gonna whup him. That was a good bike.

I’m happy. I’m still pretty. I could have a black eye. Broken teeth. Split lips.
I think I came out all right for an old man.

The last months of 1979 are spent traveling the world with Veronica on a retirement tour. She has a favorite cockatoo that goes everywhere with her, requiring Ali to continue his labish spending-- including buying the bird its own first-class airline seat.

I've been doing it for 25 years, and you can only do so much wear and tear to the body. It changes a man. It has changed me. I can see it. I can feel it."

Breakfast each day is filet mignon and a gallon of orange juice.

“In addition to being married four times, Joe Louis began using cocaine, which led to heart problems and financial difficulty.”
Funny those are coupled together like that 😂

“Ninety percent of the people on this planet, especially in the West, were born out of a bottle of whiskey on a Saturday night,” Lennon will say.

He is there to see soul singer Ann Peebles. Yet the former Beatle becomes so drunk that he wanders through the audience with a sanitary napkin attached to his forehead, ignoring the singer he came to see. As Lennon departs, a waitress heckles him for leaving a poo tip. "Do you know who I am?" he demands. "Yeah," says the waitress. "You're some asshole with a Kotex on your head."

"I wasn't going to tell you, but I'm breaking the group up. It feels good. It feels like a divorce."

"Dad could talk about peace and love out loud to the world, but he could never show it to the people who supposedly meant the most to him: his wife and son. How can you talk about peace and love and have a family in bits and pieces--no communication, adultery, divorce? You can't do it, not if you're being true and honest with yourself."

"I always feel let down about the police," Ringo will recall. "...when they came up, I was playing away, & I thought, Oh, great! I hope they drag me off- Get off those drums!-because we were being filmed and it would have looked really great, kicking the cymbals and everything. Well, they didn't, of course; they just came bumbling in: You've got to turn that sound down. It could have been fabulous."

In the midst of all this, Parker suffered a severe fall at RCA's LA offices while stepping into an elevator. He broke his right shoulder & was unable to get up. The elevator door repeatedly opened and closed as he lay in the entrance.

in 1968, a journalist asked Parker about his outrageous commission: "Is it true that you take 50% of everything Elvis earns?" Parker's response: "That's not true at all. He takes 50% of everything I earn."

At four a.m., the crowd still numbers three hundred when a car plows into the mourners, killing two. The drunken eighteen-year-old driver is arrested two blocks away, one lifeless body still on the hood of his car.

At three p.m., the Graceland gates are opened. Fans begin the slow procession to view the King. Dozens faint in the hot sun. Memphis police wade into the throng, handing out water. One man suffers a heart attack. A pregnant woman goes into labor. Before authorities order the gates closed at six p.m., thirty thousand people will make the pilgrimage.

The primary question going forward is: What will kill him?
Everything.
Elvis lives in chaos.

"Elvis enters the Oval Office wearing a purple jumpsuit, a gold belt buckle, & amber sunglasses...Elvis talks of Communist brainwashing & of the use of marijuana. He talks of being accepted by hippies & Black Panther radicals alike and says he is happy to go undercover to help Nixon. "I'm on your side," Elvis sincerely informs the president. Nixon turns to an aide. "Can we get him a badge?"

On Colonel Tom Parker: "One favorite scam was painting sparrows yellow and selling them for a higher price as canaries." 😶 SERIOUSLY?!?!

And in the telling we'd close the distance between us.

We both laughed until we could pretend our tears were from the hilarity.

"Really, if you hadn't wrecked, it wouldn't have been dramatic and romantic and lovely."

Mainly he didn't say no. Not once.

I couldn't breathe. If I breathed, I would cry. All right. I would talk to__ without breathing then. I would breathe later.

"I love you, Mama," I blurted out in the nick of time. "You know I love you, too, Sister." Her voice was uncluttered, dry and clear as the prairie sky. She didn't hesitate. Not even for a second.

"He's about a smart ass."