There's Beatle books and T-shirts and rings and one thing and another

As is probably unavoidable there's a lot of Beatles stuff at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This reflects the Beatles' importance to the history of music as well as their bold frontiers in marketing potential. Anybody can have lyrics scrawled out on a pad of hotel stationery (which accounted for maybe one-eigth of all exhibits by volume); it takes a special sort of band to have their own coin holder. Or their own Beatles Book Monthly magazine, sold at 1s/6p (which, as that works out to 7.5 percent of a pound, shows something about the weakness of the pound or the strength of magazine prices since the mid-60s). Or --- and you know someone in the marketing department of 1963 thought this was the funniest joke ever in the history of time --- a Beatles Giant Comb, just perfect for handling those longhaired lads who riotously let their hair grow nearly whole two inches from their scalps.

(What was with the whole Beatles Hair Controversy, anyway? I realize I come from the opposite end of one of those great changes in society so I can't really understand it, in kind of the same way I can't figure how people used to wear fourteen layers of clothes before going out in the midsummer sun or took the divine right of kings seriously. Still.)

I didn't run across anything showing off the comically dated anti-Beatles propaganda of the time, or even trifles like Allan Sherman's ``Pop Hates The Beatles'', although maybe that was in an earphone stand which I skipped because I couldn't take in every single thing no matter how hard I tried.

I know somewhere in here were things showing off, like, John Lennon's luggage. There was also a temporary exhibit about the movie Help! which you remember for seeming like it comes from a different universe from A Hard Day's Night and Yellow Submarine. That exhibit showed off random quotes from the movie, an extended interview with an actress whose part was cut from it, and such amusing trifles as Official Help! whistles, buttons, and band-aids.

Trivia: At about 6:40 pm on 18 November 1903 the Panama Canal treaty, for the building of the canal and establishment of the zone surrounding it, was signed by United States Secretary of State John Hay and Panaman's ambassador Philippe Bunau-Varilla. Bunau-Varilla was a French citizen at the time. Source: The Impossible Dream: The Building of the Panama Canal, Ian Cameron.

Currently Reading: Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell.