Fab Four Quotes

Mr. Mitchell should stop worrying and put Steph in charge. She will be good at this; she has the party planning gene in her family. I swear, they always have the entire familia over for every occasion. All her tias, tios, cousins, friends, ninas, and ninos go to her house for practically anything. Every day is a holiday at Casa Ayala. Anyway, we’re placed into committees, which totally sucks, because the fab four get split up. Keesha and I get selected for Activities, while Amy and Steph are slated for Rally committee. All the upperclassmen say these are the best committees, and we should feel lucky.

So now I was a beauty editor. In some ways, I looked the part of Condé Nast hotshot—or at least I tried to. I wore fab Dior slap bracelets and yellow plastic Marni dresses, and I carried a three-thousand-dollar black patent leather Lanvin tote that Jean had plunked down on my desk one afternoon. (“This is . . . too shiny for me,” she’d explained.) My highlights were by Marie Robinson at Sally Hershberger Salon in the Meatpacking District; I had a chic lavender pedicure—Versace Heat Nail Lacquer V2008—and I smelled obscure and expensive, like Susanne Lang Midnight Orchid and Colette Black Musk Oil. But look closer. I was five-four and ninety-seven pounds. The aforementioned Lanvin tote was full of orange plastic bottles from Rite Aid; if you looked at my hands digging for them, you’d see that my fingernails were dirty, and that the knuckle on my right hand was split from scraping against my front teeth. My chin was broken out from the vomiting. My self-tanner was uneven because I always applied it when I was strung out and exhausted—to conceal the exhaustion, you see—and my skin underneath the faux-glow was full-on Corpse Bride. A stylist had snipped out golf-ball-size knots that had formed at the back of my neck when I was blotto on tranquilizers for months and stopped combing my hair. My under-eye bags were big enough to send down the runway at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week: I hadn’t slept in days. I hadn’t slept for more than a few hours at a time in months. And I hadn’t slept without pills in years. So even though I wrote articles about how to take care of yourself—your hair, your skin, your nails—I was falling apart.

review the lists that follow to see what falls into the Fab Four categories: • Protein: 4 to 6 ounces for women; 6 to 8 ounces for men. • Fat: 2 tablespoons. • Fiber and greens: 2 to 4 cups fibrous green vegetables. • Fruit: ½ cup maximum. It’s best to have it in the morning (preferably in your Fab Four Smoothie), so your body has a chance to metabolize it in the liver and the space to store it. Snack or dessert is okay, too, but not all three. • No more than one serving of a starchy carbohydrate per meal (such as 1 tortilla or ¼ to ½ cup gluten-free grain). • Reduce dairy (such as yogurt or a hard cheese) to 1 to 2 servings per week or less.

FAB FOUR FISH POCKETS If you tend to stay away from preparing seafood, start with this easy-to-make recipe. Makes 2 servings 4 to 6 ounces fish of choice (salmon, halibut, sole) 1 to 2 cups chopped vegetables of choice (zucchini, summer squash, asparagus, broccolini) 1 tablespoon aromatic of choice (garlic, onion, shallot, chives) 1 tablespoon minced fresh or dried herb of choice (parsley, thyme, sage, herbes de Provence, cilantro) 1 tablespoon fat of choice (olive oil, melted coconut oil, melted butter)

Twenty years after that first recording in the laboratory, a cascade of well-controlled experiments with monkeys and later with humans (different kinds of experiments, for the most part; no needles inserted through skulls) have confirmed the remarkable phenomenon. The simple fact that a subset of the cells in our brains—the mirror neurons—fire when an individual kicks a soccer ball, sees a ball being kicked, hears a ball being kicked, and even just says or hears the word “kick” leads to amazing consequences and new understandings. THE FAB FOUR We now know that about 20 percent of the cells in area F5 of the macaque brain are mirror neurons; 80 percent are not.

Johnny Otis died in 2012, aged ninety, having achieved more than most of us could hope to if we lived five times that long, and having helped many more people to make the most of their talents. He died three days before the discovery of whom he was most proud, Etta James, and she overshadowed him in the obituaries, as he would have wanted.

The death of their manager Brian Epstein was the beginning of the end for The Beatles. While Yoko Ono did try to fill the power vacuum and exacerbate the cracks created by Epstein's loss, she was not solely responsible for The Fab Four's demise. As with every big event, there are many actors, factors and complexities at play and no one simple explanation for everything.

Heroin was a major factor in the escalating problems. As Barry Miles observed of Lennon: ‘He was on edge, either going up or coming down. The other Beatles had to walk on eggshells just to avoid one of his explosive rages. Whereas in the old days they could have tackled him about the strain that Yoko’s presence put on recording and had an old-fashioned set-to about it, now it was impossible because John was in such an unpredictable state and so obviously in pain. Yoko sat right next to him while he played, ordering Mal Evans to fetch her food and drinks and, worst of all, adding her unasked-for comments and musical suggestions, thoroughly inhibiting the other Beatles. Most of John’s attention was focused upon her instead of the other three Beatles. The Fab Four had become the Fab Five without the other three ever being asked if they wanted a fifth Beatle.’⁠414

Burroughs inspired McCartney to cut in found sounds on Beatles recordings, including alarm clocks, automobile horns, and circus atmospherics. This, in turn, gave Brian Wilson—whose Beach Boys were locked in a kind of cross-continental musical arms race with the Fab Four—the gumption to add barking dogs and bicycle horns to his own masterpiece, Pet Sounds. The formal name for such experimental composition is musique concreté.