The Beatles
A lock of John Lennon’s hair sold at a London auction house for $48,000. It was estimated the hair would sell for $4,000 to $6,000. The hair — inside an autographed copy of Lennon's book "A Spaniard in the Works" — sold to an unnamed telephone bidder. Lennon gave the book and the lock of hair to Betty Glasow, the Fab Four's hairdresser during their heyday. He wrote in the book, "To Betty, Lots of Love and Hair, John Lennon xx."

Last weekend, I saw 1964 – the Tribute playing favorite Beatle tunes and inviting the audience to sing along and “Twist and Shout”. The 4 were very talented, particularly the guitarist “George”. They’ve been playing for 24 years and having a blast. The audience ranged in ages from kids to 70-year-olds.

Dancing traffic cop, Providence, RI
During December, Tony Lepore comes out of retirement to dance holiday traffic direction.

Merriam-Webster’s 2007 word
“W00t," a hybrid of letters and numbers used by gamers as an exclamation of happiness or triumph. “It shows a really interesting thing that's going on in language. It's a term that's arrived only because we're now communicating electronically with each other," President Morse said. By the way, both “W00t” and the name Morse are in the 1990 movie Pretty Woman starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. She startles her date's upper-crust friends with a hearty "Woot, woot, woot!" at a polo match.

Pet Spending Up
More Americans own pets than ever before, and they're spending more money to keep them healthy, according to a survey released by the American Veterinary Medical Association. The number of U.S. households with pets climbed to 59.5% of all homes. By comparison, about 35% of U.S. households have children, the Census Bureau says.

The survey, which is done every five years, also found that about two-thirds of pet-owning households had more than one pet, and just over 20% owned at least five. There are almost 10 million more feline than canine pets in the USA.
Pet owners are spending more on medical care. Veterinary expenditures for all pets were estimated at $24.5 billion in 2006. In inflation-adjusted dollars, Americans spent $22.4 billion in 2001.

This represents "the high-tech care that pet owners are demanding and willing to pay for," DeHaven says. "Diseases that once would have been difficult to treat — diabetes, heart disease, cancer — today are very treatable. We're even putting pacemakers in dogs."

It's also a measure of the "animal-human bond," he says. Nearly half, 48.7%, of pet owners consider the animals to be members of the family. All that care means pets are living longer. Today, 44% of dogs are older than 6, while in 1987 it was 32%. For cats, it's 44% over 6 vs. 28% in 1987.

Although there more pet cats than dogs, more families actually have dogs. Counting by household, 37.2% are dog owners, compared with 32.4% with cats. But cat owners have more of them: 2.2 per house compared with 1.7 for dogs.
Turtle ownership jumped 86% from 2001, to a pet population of 2 million. The survey involved 47,842 American households.
Source: USA Today