Are you familiar with the “game” Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon? My friends and family have a lot of fun playing this game with other celebrities, too, usually in the form of “You’re within six degrees of <<insert celebrity name>> because <<provide an explanation.>> (Okay, we’re weird, but it’s harmless, you know?)
Yes, I truly am within six degrees of Beatle John Lennon. (I’m not even going to go into the horrifying fact that my son recently unearthed that we are distantly related to Mark David Chapman, the man who assassinated Lennon,)
In October of 1971, John and Yoko Ono came to the city where I live for an art show at a local museum. They spent John’s 31st birthday here. They had an entourage, including Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, and May Pang*. There was an impromptu jam session in John and Yoko’s hotel room. Someone recorded it and made bootleg copies.
*May Pang is the woman Yoko Ono asked to “date” John while Yoko took a break from their marriage.
My husband obtained one of the bootleg copies on audio cassette.
Fast forward to . . . late 1980s, early 1990s. There was a collectors show of some kind at the local fairgrounds and my husband went. May Pang was there. TV Stevie told her about the bootleg cassette and she asked if he would make her a copy. She gave him her contact information.
There was one little problem: our cassette deck hadn’t worked in years. I had asked several times if we could get it repaired, but to no avail.
I should have changed my name to May Pang.
Suddenly the cassette deck was miraculously repaired. TV Stevie dubbed the bootleg and mailed it off to May.
So that puts me within 4 degrees of John Lennon.
An aside: Do you think I should ever let my husband forget how he dissed me but kowtowed to May Pang?
