Category / CULTURE

by Ed Achorn

The best Christmas movie ever

By Edward Achorn

In 1975, Jean Shepherd observed: “Can you imagine 4,000 years passing, and you’re not even a memory? Think about it, friends. It’s not just a possibility. It’s a certainty.”

If you’re asking “Who’s Jean Shepherd?,” you’re proving his point.

Shepherd, who died in 1999, was a big-time radio star from the 1950s to 1970s, and a “hip” Playboy writer (he did the magazine’s interview with the Beatles at the height of the mania).

Does anyone remember anymore what Playboy — or even a magazine — was?

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by Ed Achorn

Remembering John: a strange and brilliant man

By Edward Achorn

Forty years ago, on December 8, 1980, I was sitting in front of a computer in a newsroom, working on a story about a local meeting I had covered. A friend who knew I loved the Beatles yelled at me to check out the Associated Press alert.

“John Lennon wounded in New York shooting.”

Quickly, there was a follow-up: “John Lennon dead.”

I went home about 2 a.m. Then, finding it hard to do anything else, I got in my car, drove back to work, and wrote a column about what John Lennon had meant to me. It wound up on the front page.

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