As of October 20, Ringo Starr will be too busy to answer his fan mail. Starr, who now makes up 50% of the Beatles, has asked fans to “not send fan mail to any address that you have. Nothing will be signed after the 20th of October. If that is the date on the envelope, it’s gonna be tossed.”
In the spirit of Ringo, Owl&Bear would like to ask you readers to please not send us 25% of your monthly earnings.
that’s some funny sh*t there. one of the best commentaries i’ve read in a long time.
I stand corrected. I can respect anyone who spends all day Beatling his meat. Or his mail.
Unfortunately, Harry, I think most people are misinterpreting Ringo Starr’s message. As most of us know, British English and American English are deceivingly similar and the result of the languages colliding can be a homonymous disaster. When the Brits queue, they line up; when an American does so, he’s adding a movie to his Netflix Queue. A lift for the Brits is an elevator, whereas for us it is an elective surgical procedure performed on the breasts or face. Now, more to the point, when Brits toss, they don’t throw something aside or into the bin (the Brits’ word for garbage can) the way Americans do. To toss, for the Brits, is to masturbate.
It may seem like Starr is admitting that, with the help of fan mail, he will become an incessant masturbator on or after October 20, but this another misread. Starr says the following: “If [the 20th of October] is the date on the envelope, it’s gonna be tossed.” Essentially, when Starr says it’s gonna be “tossed,” he is saying that he’s going to masturbate fan mail; not to it, but try to actually masturbate the mail itself.
That’s the British interpretation of the statement. Though Starr is one of the United Kingdom’s lesser valued treasures, he’s still a Brit. As such, it’s pretty clear that his message must be understood with that in mind.
If, perhaps, you think Starr is attempting to talk to Americans on our level–i.e., down to us–the interpretation is a little different. For us, he’s simply given a deadline for when he’ll transform into a tosser, a guy who throws stuff away–not a furious masturbator as the Brits would assume.
Whatever he meant, the message is surely Starr’s admittance of a bizarre parcel fetish.