It'll probably sound a bit trite to say so, now, but he was always my favorite, George.

I'm not going to front being some insane Beatle groupie type of girl. I'm not. I only own five of the albums (two on record, three on CD) and the DVD of Yellow Submarine, a movie I first saw when I was eight, a snowglobe of a scene from said movie that my brother bought me one Christmas. A few MP3s. Nothing more.

But, nonetheless, he was. There was something about him I always liked, even as a child, watching that movie, so long ago... If you've seen it, you'll know what I'm talking about. When all the Beatles are in that car, looking for him, and they think he'll be in that great room with the technicolor lions, the sitar music... when he instead is in their car, stealing it under their noses... There was something undeniably rock about that scene to a eight-year-old. Something I don't know I can explain.

I wasn't around when John died, obviously. The means were more tragic, of course, but it didn't really affect me, not like this. You sort of get to expect them to BE there, the other three. I mean, the Rolling Stones were heroin junkies, older than the Beatles, and are STILL touring. You just don't see it, George going first.

Or maybe you just don't want to.

I thought about making some photomontage thingy for this entry. But the thought was quickly discarded. It'd be trite, stupid, fangirlish. I'll be content in this. He was a good man. Besides writing my favorite Beatles song ("While my Guitar Gently Weeps"), he did so much more. Heck, he produced The Life of Brian. But there's more to it, really. Benefit concerts, the lot--the sort of stuff you admire Radiohead and REM for, now, he was doing back then.

I don't know how to word it, really, other than in the simplest.

He was my favorite, and now he's gone. No fangirly devotion coloring it. It just is.

And I can't help but wonder if he was the intended third. These deaths come in threes, and Heller, Kesey, Harrison seems one more for the books.