Been hungry for more Steve Jiff? Well, too bad. Episode 2 isn’t finished yet. But if it were, it would join episode one ON DISPLAY NOW at the brand new site, stevejiff.com. Go see episode one, then stay tuned, because IN YOUR LIFETIME you will see new episodes of Steve Jiff’s Morning Shenanigans. Promise.

Neil Aspinall, the concierge to the Beatles, has died. Bummer. From the AP:

LONDON, England (AP) — Neil Aspinall, a longtime friend and business associate of The Beatles, has died in New York City at age 66.

Neil Aspinall stepped down last year as chief executive of Apple Corps.

Aspinall’s death was announced in a statement from surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, the widows of John Lennon and George Harrison, and the band’s Apple Corps Ltd. company.

Aspinall died at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he had been receiving treatment. A British newspaper reported Sunday that McCartney had flown out to see him just before his death.

The statement said “all his friends and loved ones will greatly miss him but will always retain the fondest memories of a great man.”

Aspinall stepped down last year as chief executive of Apple Corps, the guardian of the Beatles’ commercial interests.

A Liverpool school friend of McCartney and Harrison, Aspinall was The Beatles’ first road manager and would drive them to gigs in his van.

He later became their personal assistant, and in 1968 was given a management role at Apple Records, the band’s own record label.

As head of Apple Corps, Aspinall was executive producer of the hugely successful “Beatles Anthology” album and was behind other successes, including the “Beatles One” album.

“As a loyal friend, confidant and chief executive, Neil’s trusting stewardship and guidance has left a far-reaching legacy for generations to come,” the band’s statement said.

Like I said, this blows. Neil was the guy who had to keep Apple running while everyone else was out taking acid and coming up with crazy ideas and running around with Indian Mystics. Somebody had to pay bills, wake up hungover Beatles, squirrel women around, and get everybody to the gig on time. When John hired an Acid casualty named “Magic Alex” to build them a new studio, and when the project of Alex’s magic turned out to be a worthless mess that no one could use, who was there? Who had to rip everything out? Neil. That’s who. What about when they kicked out their crappy drummer right when they were starting to get famous, and no one wanted to talk to him because they were too embarrassed? Who do you think had to face Poor Ole’ Pete Best after his Sacking? Paul? No way. Neal.

He was always having to do stuff like that. Constantly. He was one of their best friends, and in the case of Paul and George, had been since childhood. He was there in the beginning, and was there in the end. And after everybody went home, and stopped being Beatles, Neal was still there, doing the things that needed doing.

If you want to know any more about this remarkable guy, check out this really good Wikipedia article.

Brain Pan will be taking a vacation until after easter. In the mean time, keep yourself entertained with this fun little website that tells you how many people in the United States share your name. Check it out :

How Many of Me

This little gem was recommended to me by a friend, and is a spectacular rare video of geeks in their natural habitat. Ladies and Gentleman, I present, CARDBOARD STAR WARS:

Warning: If extreme displays of geekiness make you sick to your stomach from embarrassment, in a Jon Favreau answering machine scene from Swingers sort of way, then maybe you should just skip this one.

Yes. I agree. The internet is wonderful.

WOO HOO!!!!! It’s Pi day!!!!!

Look. Pi in a pumpkin:

And see this? It’s a link to a website that has Pi figured to 1,000,000 decimals. Isn’t that fun??!?!?!?!

Yeah.

I’ve got great news for all you primary debate fans! Go on. Read the press release:

Today, Barack Obama accepted invitations to nationally televised debates with Senator Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia on April 16th and in North Carolina on April 19th.

The Pennsylvania debate will be hosted by ABC News and held in the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on Wednesday, April 16. The North Carolina debate, hosted by CBS News at a location to be determined, will be hosted by CBS and moderated by Katie Couric and Bob Schieffer.

Eh. Really? What else is there to talk about? Haven’t we covered EVERYTHING, at length, of interest to anybody anywhere? We have even gotten to the point where actual professional reporters and highly educated experts are reduced to talking about whether or not “denouncing” is the same as “rejecting”. What will these debates BE exactly? Probably another opportunity for the candidates to try to score tiny, largely meaningless points off of each other. Unless one candidate drops and F bomb or says something crazy about the Illuminati being responsible for 9-11, it will serve only as cable news fodder for two days, and fuel for a couple of cheap shots. I’ll pass.

This is all getting very tiring. How long are we supposed to humor Hillary Clinton before someone has to finally tell her that she has lost this election?

It’s like the old cold war military doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction. This is the idea that full scale nuclear war between two very powerful countries would likely result in the total destruction of both parties, as well as most of the planet. This fact is supposed to deter competing nuclear countries from using such weapons because they would at that point become objectively ineffective. Nobody wins if everybody is dead. Simple.

The only reason, given the harsh deterrent, that anyone would go ahead and WAGE such an obviously disastrous war, would be not to WIN a conflict, but to prevent anyone else from winning. It’s not victory, it’s spite. Arrogance. The vengeance only possible through the anger of failed ambition. You destroy the world to keep anyone else from winning it.

So yeah, the Hilliary Clinton parallels are pretty obvious. The more she fights, the less there is to win. The more she demoralizes the party, and divides the party in order to win the nomination for herself, the less chance whatever nominee we wind up with has to actually win the REAL contest. It’s all in the polls. Since she has started her little tirade, her desperate grasp for political power, both candidates have slipped from consistently beating John McCain to him beating both of them. This won’t get any better. The nastier this gets, and the more filth she throws into the campaign, the worse things become for the Democratic Party. And at the end, after she’s either through trying to destroy Barack Obama, or successfully destroyed him, whoever emerges will be the only one covered in dirt. John McCain will be tanned and rested, organized and armed, and we will be tired, and bitter, and torn apart by internal party divisions.

Can we pull it together and beat McCain? Sure. Unless things get too bad, and all the new people that have been turned on to the process get turned right back off again. Then the damage to the country won’t just be limited to the time frame of the election, but will be a hearty investment in disillusion and disgust for years to come. When the only way you can win an election is to turn people off, then it’s time to consider if losing, and doing it with dignity, is better than winning, and sacrificing decency and your ideals to do it.

I could be wrong though. Maybe it’ll all be fine. Maybe this is a dark little bump and we’ll all forget about it when the election is over, and we all move on to other topics. Maybe. But there are also some things you can’t take back. We’ll see I guess.

A new episode of Fat Robot Radio is up right over here. Clocks in at around half an hour. And really don’t you have one measly half hour to sit back and listen to an episode of the best podcast IN ALL OF WORLD HISTORY!

Too much? Probably. I mean really, how would you even evaluate what would constitute the “best podcast in all of world history?” That’s absurd. I’m not even sure they have rankings for these things. And even if they do, how fair is that process? On what criteria would such a ranking be based? Who is to determine such an asinine thing? Yeah. What does being the “best” mean anyway? Does that mean all the other podcasts are crap? There are probably a lot of quality programs out there. All of them worth a listen. I can’t think of any of them right now, but they’re OUT THERE. Maybe. Probably.

Anyway, ours is funny too, so give it a listen.

We are pleased to announce that Brain Pan has been listed as the One Hundred and Fifteen Thousand, Eight Hundred and Fifty First most popular Blog on the internet.

WE DID IT AMERICA! WE REACHED THE BIG 115851 BABY! THIS ONE’S FOR YOU!

So yeah. We’re stoked. Maybe, one day, if we all pull together and work hard, we might break into the five digit range. WATCH YOUR ASS NUMBER NINETY NINE THOUSAND, NINE HUNDRED NINETY NINE! WE”RE COMING FOR YOU!

And to prove that we’re not full of crap, see the listing HERE. (Hint- It’s way down the page. Way down.)

And here is #99,999, just so you know who the dreaded enemy is.

Lovable nut-case Mike Huckabee has dropped out of the presidential race, a few minutes after being officially beaten. Yeah. I don’t care either. He was out a long time ago, and this is just a little bit of scene stealing theater. The facts are these: John McCain is the Nominee. It’s whoever wins the bloodbath on our side, versus John McCain. I think Mr Magoo will do a little better than I previously gave him credit for, but this time around the Democratic Party could run a stuffed Armadillo, and would put up pretty good numbers. Luckily, this year they can do a little better.

DID YOU KNOW: Whittier, California is home to both Richard Nixon’s alma mater, and the largest landfill in the country. I like that for some reason.