Your Portable Empire: How to Make Money Anywhere While Doing What You Love

Chapter 42. "Strawberry Fields... Nothing Is Real... Strawberry Fields Forever"

I've still got the 45rpm vinyl of that. If you're anywhere near my age, you probably owned one, too.

The label has that yellow and orange swirl that Capitol Records used.

Those swirly labels constituted the first early music videos. I used to put on stacks of 45s and sit, absolutely hypnotized, staring at the swirly labels spinning round and round and round.

And that was way before the "lost years." If I was high, it was from following the mosquito foggers around.

On the other side is "Penny Lane." The record label claims that both songs were written by "Lennon and McCartney," but that's legal fiction. "Penny Lane" is Sir Paul's melodic remembrance, and it lilts magically and hypnotically as it introduces you to the fabulous characters.

"Strawberry Fields," on the other hand, is all John Lennon. It's a dreamy, image-filled trip that doesn't make any sense at all if you read it with your conscious mind. I understood it immediately.

According to some amateur psychologists, you can tell a whole lot about a person if you can find out who their favorite Beatle was. Mine was John.

Now that they've released the Gulf of Tonkin documents, our worst fears have come true about the Vietnam "police action." Today's news is even more bizarre. Historians are going to have a hard time explaining this period of time, unless they understand hypnotism and persuasion psychology.

My more intelligent friends tell me to not read the ...