However, today is the 20th anniversary of John Lennon's assassination. Given that Lennon was a cartoon character in both the limited-animation TV series The Beatles and the feature film Yellow Submarine,I hope I have enough of an excuse to include my thoughts on what this milestone means to me.

I was just a kid when Lennon was killed, but I lived in New York City and I vaguely knew who the Beatles were. I wouldn't have known them at all if it weren't for Yellow Submarine. My grandfather loved the film,and I remembered watching it on TV with him when I was a little boy.  And so, like many people who were born after the Beatles broke up, I knew them first from films. Although  I went through a serious Beatles phase in high school later on, my truest musical heroes were heavier bands like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. Nowadays, I listen more to classical music or technopop than rock.

And yet, everytime I pick up my guitar to practice, one of Lennon's riffs comes out in the first few minutes. Sometimes it's Ticket to Ride. Sometimes it's Eight Days a Week. Sometimes it's I Feel Fine(even thought I heard the Ventures' version long before the Beatles'). Sometimes it's none of the above. It's very hard for me to put into words how Lennon's music is so ingrained in me. There are times when I can't imagine a time when his songs didn't somehow exist. There are other times when I wonder why we take wonderful things like well-written music for granted.

Which is how I am trying to tie Lennon's death into this webpage.

Too often we all take wonderful pop culture accomplishments for granted. We don't appreciate how magnificent Pixar's animation is until we we sit through journeyman computer graphics in TV commercials. We don't appreciate how talented certain voice actors are until we suffer through the largely anonymous and talentless personnel that are hired to dub most anime in the States and Canada. We don't appreciate how gifted the classic Disney animators were until we watch the limited animation of Scooby-Doo or, to be fair, The Beatles. Like many critics, I am more guilty of this than most of you. I adopt a cynical, skeptical attitude towards most of what I see and sometimes I spend more time, well, criticizing than praising. One thing Lennon's death - or Kurt Cobain's, or Freddie Mercury's, or Keith Moon's - teaches us is to "seize the day" as Robin Williams used to say. Enjoy what you have while you have it. Nothing is perfect (Lennon might say that "nothing is real") so why not enjoy what you can? The here and now is important. Appreciate it.

So how did I spend the day? I didn't spend it mourning. I worked. I laughed. I spent time with my younger research assistant, whose memories of Lennon are probably even fuzzier than mine. And I celebrated my goddaughter's birthday. Life, as Lennon once sang, is what happens while you're busy making other plans. Go out there and live.