By Smaktakula

Some call it ‘The Day the Music Didn’t Die,’ and for others it is simply ‘Ononacht.’ In Germany the holiday is known as Tag der toten Hexe, and goes by Tiempo de Quietud in Mexico. In Chad it’s a complicated series of clicks. This auspicious date is known by myriad names throughout the world: regardless of what it is called, nearly everyone remembers the event through the same blood-hued image of a deranged, frozen-fish wielding John Lennon beating to death a wailing Yoko Ono.

New Yorkers will recall how the biting cold which had settled over the city on that December day in 1980 was almost magically dispelled as the happy news began to spread throughout the city: Despised succubus Yoko Ono was dead, beaten about the head and face with some kind of fish–possibly a cod or grouper, and then stabbed twenty-eight times with a glass chrysanthemum. The news that John Lennon was the sole suspect in the slaying was met with little surprise, but much empathy.

Initially, authorities were reluctant to pursue charges against the legendary singer.  Said a police representative, “We scoured the scene looking for any shred of evidence that Ms. Ono’s demise was simply a happy accident; we had our best men on it. I may have my own feelings on this matter, but the law is very clear: if there’s a dead body, we’re required to find a perp. And since Mr. Lennon was discovered at the scene crouched weeping over Ono’s battered carcass and bathed in her eerie greenish blood, there wasn’t much I could do.”

Lennon was acquitted after a two-month trial, his legal team having mounted a spirited and successful justifiable homicide defense. Although this verdict proved only slightly controversial in 1981, it is unanimously heralded today, as Ono’s death removed the final obstacle preventing a long-awaited Beatles reunion. Sadly, the Beatles’ comeback album, Still Lettin’ It Be, proved a commercial and critical failure, the majority of which was attributed to Ringo Starr’s drum playing. Today, however, the album is remembered more fondly, particularly as only two of the Beatles remain alive–Ringo died along with Cyndi Lauper in a 1986 murder-suicide pact, and George Harrison was slain two years later by crazed fan Ross Perot.

Yoko Ono is  a relic of a horrible and best-forgotten past, who, if she is remembered at all, is known as the Delilah who nearly destroyed the greatest rock & roll group of all time. We can be grateful, however, that she did not succeed, and imagine instead a world where it was Lennon rather than Ono who was slain, and where the shrieking, talentless howler monkey lived on leech-like upon the great man’s legacy. Such a possibility is too depressingly horrible to even contemplate.