November 9th 2006 marked the 40th anniversary of the day that Paul McCartney died. Or so some would have you believe.

The story goes that, on November 9, 1966, following an argument during a late-night recording session, Paul hopped in his car and drove off in a tizzy. (It was apparently that same night that John and Yoko first met.) At some point in the early morning, he was involved in a car accident that resulted in his decapitation. His bandmates and production company, thinking about the riches that they stood to lose, quickly buried Paul on a privately owned Greek island and replaced him with a look-alike who also had the good fortune of being an excellent singer and able to play multiple instruments. (And the bad fortune of hating Yoko.) Conspiracy theorists point out that around this same time the band stopped touring and started referring to themselves as Beatles (as opposed to The Beatles). And to further guard their secret, they placed hints of Paul's death in all of their songs and album art. Makes sense to me.

One of the most eerie clues is on the cover of the Sgt. Pepper album. On the bass drum, the words Lonely Hearts are across the middle of the drum in all capital letters. If you place a mirror across the middle of the letters lengthwise, it reads I ONE IX HE DIES (with a two-headed arrow between HE and DIES pointing up at the image of Paul and down to the grave around which the crowd is gathered). So I (Roman Numeral for one) ONE means 11 and IX means 9, thus the date 11-9, or November 9.

The problem is that, in England, the day is expressed before the month when shortened this way. So while this points to November 9th in America, I ONE IX in Liverpool is September 11th, which is a memorable date for other, more obvious reasons. So did the Beatles predict the terrorist attacks of September 11th? Not exactly.

September 11th also marked a major shift in the magnitude of Super Bowl halftime performances. U2 was the first to get a post-9-11 crack at the largest television audience of the year, and they did a pretty good job. So network executives had to find a way to top it the next year (Aerosmith, Nelly, Britney Spears) and the next, which was when Justin and Janet did their thing. After that it was all about a return to musical tastes that could be appreciated by those old people who had enough outrage and free time to complain about Janet in the first place. Which is why the first post-Janet Super Bowl halftime show was headlined by, you guessed it, Paul McCartney.

And along with the usual medley of golden oldies, Sir Paul did a song from his new album (groan!), the chorus of which was "I will fight for your right to live in freedom," a sentiment that won over the newly-conservative masses but pretty much made irrelevant a song he recorded years earlier, the chorus of which was "All you need is love." So maybe this really was an impostor after all. (And don't get me started about the irony in de-sexing the halftime show by turning it into a call for physical violence.)

Thus, although he probably didn't actually die on 11-9, a part of him did die on 9-11. And we've come full circle. (Take that James Burke!)