Clapton to quit touring. Tom Petty likes toi play a wide range of venues. Paul McCartney's next album. Producer Phil Ramone hospitalized. "The Tonight Show" drama. Digitalized snail mail. Shady origins of popular board games.

ERIC CLAPTON

Eric Clapton says that he will quit touring when he reaches 70 in 2015. Clapton, who kicks off his next string of North American dates on March 14th in Phoenix, Arizona, explained his decision to Rolling Stone, saying, "The bit onstage, that's easy. If I could do that around my neighborhood, that would be great. You have guys in Texas that play their circuit, and it keeps them alive. But for me, the struggle is the travel. And the only way you can beat that is by throwing so much money at it that you make a loss. So the idea is I'm taking a leaf out of JJ (Cale)'s book: When I'm 70, I'll stop. I won't stop playing or doing one-offs, but I'll stop touring, I think."

Over a decade ago, during his 2002 world tour, Clapton said  that he's been eying a slow retirement from the concert arena: "I mean, I know I'm probably gonna go out again, in dribs and drabs, but that tour was. . . I mean, I wrote that in the program -- I don't think I can do this anymore."

See Clapton in Houston March 16th at  Toyota Center

TOM PETTY

Tom Petty says that playing a wide range of venues is a good thing for him and the Heartbreakers. The band will take a break from their current sessions for their upcoming album due out this year, to play a six-week spring and summer run. Petty talked to Rolling Stone about the tour, which features the band playing residencies in such intimate places as New York City's Beacon Theatre and L.A.'s Ford Theatre, saying, "This is a good thing to do every now and then. It gets the band members in tune with each other in a way that you don't get on a big tour. There's a different challenge than you're used to. We got together the other night, the band and I, and everybody is up for this. There's no telling what we'll do."

Although Petty hinted that the Heartbreakers may bust out a few tunes cut during their recent album sessions, playing unreleased material in concert isn't his favorite thing: "I'd rather people heard the record before we perform the songs, but I also like the songs and want to play them. If they're sounding really good and I get the okay from the head office, I'll do it."

Despite the fact that the Heartbreakers have pretty much achieved everything a rock band can ever hope for, Petty remains committed to shaking things up in an effort to keep the band a working and touring live ensemble: "We want to keep this thing fresh, and we really believe in this music - -this rock 'n' roll music -- that we're playing. And we want to keep it fresh and contemporary, y'know, and avoid any sort of routine to it."

PAUL MCCARTNEY

The long wait for Paul McCartney's followup to 2007's Memory Almost Full album might be coming to an end. The usually reliable Wogew.blogspot.com reported that McCartney has recorded over 50 songs for the set with various producers and that the project is set to enter the mixing stage early this month, adding: "Some last new tracks have just been recorded, All the strings have been added on some tracks thanks to Giles Martin as producer and (his) work at Air Studios recently."

The album will probably be released after the June reissue of McCartney's 1976 triple-set live collection Wings Over America, with the site adding"Between three possible titles for the new album, one seems to emerge at the moment, with the concept of the cover: it's Pop Up, a mix of the old children 3D books full of surprises and the pop up on a computer which can surprise at any time."

PHIL RAMONE

Legendary record producer Phil Ramone has been hospitalized in Manhattan after suffering an aortic aneurysm, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The 72-year-old Ramone was placed in critical care for the aneurysm, in which the aorta swells to 1.5 times its normal size, and runs the risk of rupturing and ultimately death.

In 2007, Ramone published his memoir, called Making Records: The Scenes Behind The Music. The book chronicles his sessions with such superstar acts as Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, and Rod Stewart, among others.

THE TONIGHT SHOW

Drama over hosting The Tonight Show could be set to resurface, with a report from The Hollywood Reporter that NBC is set to announce Jay Leno's retirement and that Jimmy Fallon will take over as host of the iconic late night show. The paper cited two high-level industry sources as saying the announcement is expected in May, and that the 2013-2014 season would be Leno's last, after which Fallon would leave his current post as host of Late Night to take over The Tonight Show in the summer of 2014. The Hollywood Reporter cited its sources as saying NBC is making the move partly out of concern about the competition on ABC, which moved younger-skewing Jimmy Kimmel to 11:35 p.m. in January. NBC denied the report, while FoxNews.com cited Leno's rep as saying, "We do not speculate on rumor."

SERVICE THAT DIGITALIZES YOUR SNAIL MAIL STARTING UP

A new service called Outbox says you stop checking that pesky mailbox if you so choose. The service promises to come to your house, collect your physical mail and scan it so you can read it on any device you can read e-mail on. Outbox charged 5-bucks a month for its service which includes a feature that will alert you to items they think qualifies as junk. Outbox also says it allows to user to flag certain items they may want returned to them, such as a birthday card or a package. There are a few other services in existance already that offer similar services, and currently Outbox is only available in Austin, Texas. (Yahoo)

SHADY ORIGINS OF FIVE POPULAR BOARD GAMES(Yahoo):

1) Monopoly and The Quakers. You may have heard Charles Darrow invented the game, but that's not entirely true. A Quaker named Lizzie Magie, in fact, first created the game in 1904 to showcase the evils of property ownership (the original title was "The Landlord's Game".) Magie was a supporter of the Quaker tax reformer Henry George, and the game focused on players extorting one another. Once the game took off, Parker Bros. learned its true origins and had to do some damage control. It bought the rights for $500 from Magie, who believed her original game would finally be distributed to the masses. And it was, though only for a couple hundred copies, at least, before it was discontinued. Turns out people had more fun with Darrow's tweaks to the game.

2) The Hard Life. The original Game of Life was a lot darker than the one we know today. Created by Milton Bradley himself, the game was originally sold under the name of "The Checkered Game of Life" during the Civil War. Less a whimsical journey and more a moralistic lesson, it was meant to teach virtue and principles to children. Before there was payday, there were squares that included poverty, disgrace, and gambling to ruin. The game even came with a "Suicide" square -- which, if landed on, marked your last turn.

3) The darker side of Clue. Anthony E. Pratt was a fire warden during World War II. While walking his beat one day, he thought back to a favorite pre-war game he and his friends used to play called "Murder!" "Between the wars," he once said, "all the bright young things would congregate in each other's homes for parties at weekends. We'd play a stupid game called Murder, where guests crept up on each other in corridors and the victim would shriek and fall on the floor." He transformed that somewhat morbid real-world distraction into a board game. The original version, though, was a bit harsher than what we play today. In addition to the gun, rope and other murder weapons, it included an axe, syringe, shillelagh, poison, and even a bomb.

4) Scrabble's Poe past. If it weren't from his love of master of the macabre Edgar Allen Poe, Alfred Butts might never have developed Scrabble. The game, which has been a valuable resource in teaching spelling and vocabulary to kids, was born when creator Butts was reading Poe's "The Gold Bug," a story that involves figuring out a code based on how frequently letters are used. Butts decided to tweak that a bit and sat down to count out how frequently letters appeared in an issue The New York Times, which was quite the undertaking. He called the game Lexico and spent more than 16 years waiting for it to take off.

5) Chutes and Ladders (and murder and lust.) If it seems like this immensely popular children's game has been around forever, there's a reason: it has. The concept has been traced back to a Hindu game called Leela -- a game of self-knowledge -- as well as an Indian game called Daspada. Leela was created by Hindu scholars with the intention of teaching moral values. Daspada came about in the second century with a similar purpose, but using ladders to represent virtues and snakes to represent vices (hence the title 'Snakes and Ladders' in the U.K.). Those vices were serious business, too. Included among them in Daspada were Vulgarity, Drunkenness, Murder and Lust. Yikes.

Thanks for listening to The Eagle while you work. Keep it fabulous, Houston!

xoxo,

Jennifer Tyler

Fabulous Mid-Day Diva & Rock N Roll Cowgirl