Revolution, liberty, discovery, and moral courage.  These were themes prevalent in Ted Kennedy’s eulogy for his brother Bobby, after his insane assassination in 1968.  Drawing directly from one of Bobby’s greatest speeches, Ted quoting Bobby, said that, “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.  And crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” Well, I don’t know about you, but that’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever heard or read.  To me, it encapsulates the frontier thinking that marked the cultural and social revolutions going on in the 1960s.  Bobby originally gave that speech in apartheid afflicted South Africa in 1966, where racism and intolerance were raging.  Ted’s eulogy for his brother was also perhaps his finest moment and speech, summing up his brother’s life by stating that “his brother not need to be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life,” and that “he be remembered as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, and saw war and tried to stop it.”  It’s at this point, where Ted’s voice begins to quaver, and he delivers Bobby’s greatest thought ever, “some men see things as they are, and say why, I dream things that never were, and say why not.”

As part 11 of my youtube favorites rolls on, we reach the slightly stranger section of my favorites list.  From here on out you’re gonna see more odd videos like this “peppered” in with the more traditional music videos and performances.  This is a video someone made of an original Sgt. Pepper vinyl’s inner groove.  Now for those who don’t know, as a bit of a prank, the Beatles included a groove of hidden music at the very end of the vinyl, on side two, that would play on infinitely.  Well, that is if you have an older record machine that didn’t reset the needle when it reached the end of the groove.  Most people know this groove from their Sgt. Pepper CDs, which just include a snippet of the groove that lasts about 30 seconds. Perhaps the funniest thing about the groove is how the Beatles included a high pitched dog whistle that humans can’t hear, hoping to send the world’s canine population into a frenzy when the record ended.    Anyway, the “music,” is a  bizarre backwards abstract kaleidoscope of psychedelic noise.  You can hear the Beatles shout something, but what?  Well, if you play the groove forwards, it sounds like Paul is saying, “never could be any other way,” but played backwards, it sounds like, “We’ll fuck you like you’re Superman!”  Hmm, legend has it the Beatles had no idea their groove blasted out such a hilarious message until Paul let some Beatle fans in his house where they proved it to him.  Whether he made good on the promise presented in the groove is unclear.