The Slice: And to get here, they took a long and winding road

Here’s one from the “West of the Mersey” file.

For reasons that would take too long to explain, a friend recently went to see an alleged Beatles tribute band appearing at a downtown Spokane bar.

Before the show, he was surprised to encounter the lads changing into their Fab Four togs in the men’s room.

“Where are you guys from?” he asked, trying to be friendly.

Two or three of them did their best to affect English accents and said, “We’re from Liverpool.”

But one band member, speaking in an unmistakably flat American voice, added, “And Deer Park.”

Let’s hear it for the U.S. Postal Service: Our neighbor’s cat likes to bite postage stamps. Don’t ask me why.

Well, last week she got in and managed to chomp the heck out of the only two Liberty Bell stamps left on one of those $8.80 strips.

When confronted, she wouldn’t admit it. But I know it was her.

Anyway, my wife suggested that I take the thoroughly perforated stamps to a post office and ask that they exchange them for new ones. I declined.

So she did it. “They were mauled,” she explained to a counter clerk, perhaps thinking this came under some act of God clause.

He didn’t exchange them. But he had an idea. One stamp he declared still usable. And as for the other, he said we could bring it in with something to mail and they would hand-stamp an envelope for us.

The problem with office Oscars pools: To have a shot at winning, you have to pick nominees for which you have zero admiration.

And on the third Sunday, there was a void: It’s too bad there’s not a tie-breaker U.S. vs. Canada hockey game today.

Today’s Slice question: What do you do when you receive invitations to join online business-connection networks from people you don’t know?