This ensemble was actually available for purchase at one point — the toilet ensemble and curtain were available for…$225?!
To celebrate our seventh anniversary, we took a a Thursday-to-Sunday road trip to St. Augustine. We had a great time, mostly because we had each other for company, but also because we brought this lucky charm, which made for an interesting Saturday night:
Celebrating another anniversary
We started the evening here — Sainte-George Restaurant:
It’s a place known for its European cuisine and its outdoor deck with a view of St. Augustine’s fortress, Castillo de San Marcos, and the Matanzas River.
We’d lucked out with our early reservation and were able to get an outdoor table with a view of the fort, river, and partygoers wandering (or stumbling) down the pedestrian-only St. George Street.
“What do you want to do now?” Anitra asked after we finished dessert.
“I figure we should walk around and see where the night takes us,” I said.
With that, we got up and started making our way out of the restaurant. We was starting our way down the stairs when someone called out: “Hey, you with the accordion!”
It turned out to be a table of eight, two of whom were celebrating their twentieth anniversary. We told them that we were celebrating our seventh, and it was congratulations all round.
“Here, let me play something for you,” I said, playing the first fitting song I could think of — Praise You by Fatboy Slim. It got applause not just from the table but the rest of the room, and the couple insisted on giving me a $20 bill by way of saying thanks.
“Looks like they covered the first round of drinks!” Anitra said as we walked out.
Bagging a discount
We started walking southward on St. George Street and saw that Cotton St. Aug was still open.
“Do you want to take a look?” Anitra asked.
“I’d love to check out their aloha shirts.” I replied, and we walked in.
We were greeted by the manager, Bridget, and struck up a conversation. Of course, the question came up — “Could you play me a song, please?” — and I went with the crowd-pleaser, Britney Spears’ Baby One More Time, which she recorded on video with her phone.
After the performance, Anitra started checking out their sizable selection of Anuschka hand-painted leather handbags. She picked out the “Lighthouse” design pictured to the right. As Bridget rang up our purchase, she looked at us, said “for the entertainment”, and gave us a discount.
“We’re on a bit of a roll tonight,” I said. We continued on our way south.
Turning music into free drinks
As we walked past Casa Monica (pictured above), a guy came up to us and talked about a friend of his who played classic rock on the accordion and asked if I did the same. I answered by playing AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long.
A couple overheard the performance and asked if I could play it again so that they could capture it on video for their friend. I obliged, and they invited us inside to buy us a drink at Casa Monica’s lobby bar, the Cobalt Lounge:
We enjoyed our drinks, and after a day that included climbing to the top of St. Augustine Lighthouse, touring Flagler College and the Lightner Museum, and miles of walking, we figured that we’d quit while we were ahead and call it a night.
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R.I.P. Gerry O’Kane
If you were a local in Kingston, Ontario, Canada in the ’80s and ’90s and enjoyed a pint (or more) of Guinness, chances are you saw Gerry O’Kane play a couple of sets of traditional Irish tunes, along with some of his originals.
I love live music as well as dark and rich beers served in cosy pubs, so I managed to catch Gerry during my first year at Crazy Go Nuts University, at a then-new pub called The Toucan. A couple of years later, I’d live in an apartment above that very same pub, which was near another pub called The Wellington, and Gerry played both places often.
Sooner or later, if you were a student at Crazy Go Nuts University and had any semblance of a life, you’d end up at a Gerry O’Kane show, where you’d learn to shout “Macintyre!” at the appropriate moments of The Old Dun Cow…
Later on, when I graduated and moved back to Toronto, I was still able to catch him when he came to town and played at places like The Monarch:
I learned a lot watching Gerry: how to read and banter with the audience, handle the usual cock-ups that will happen during a live musical performance, and of course, I also got a feel for what made traditional Irish music distinct.
It’s largely because of Gerry that I’m familiar enough with the Irish folk repertoire that I can passably back up Irish trad bands when called upon to do, as I’ve done a handful of times, including a couple of numbers with The Jackdaws:
Gerry suffered a stroke in late January, and he passed away earlier this week. Requiescat in pace, Gerry, and thank you for all the music.
More about Gerry O’Kane
- Here’s a playlist of live recordings of a performance at The Wellington.
- You’re not really Canadian until you’ve joined in on the chorus of Barrett’s Privateers:
- Gerry’s site, which includes the merch page, where they’re promising to release the “Sex and Drugs and Traditional Folk Music T-shirt”. I’m writing them about buying one.
- Hear more Gerry on Bandcamp (and buy his album!)
- The Irish Rover, from his album, The Nostalgia tapes:
Arnie posted a video of an intense, impressive, and impassioned speech to the Russian people and government. It cites his connection to Russia through his idol, Yury Petrovitch Vlasov, multiple world record-breaking weightlifter, his work on Red Heat — the first American film to shoot on location in Red Square (and hey, who doesn’t remember “COCAINUM!”?)…
…and he even cites the story of his father, Gustav Schwarzenegger, who was a Nazi Brownshirt and took part in the attack on Leningrad in WWII:
Now let me tell you: When my father arrived in Leningrad, he was all pumped up on the lies of his government. And when he left Leningrad, he was broken, physically and mentally.
He lived the rest of his life in pain. Pain from a broken back, pain from the shrapnel that always reminded him of those terrible years, and pain from the guilt that he felt.
He also commends the people in Russia who are protesting the war, commending them for their courage (remember, protesting the war can land you a 15-year jail sentence).
The video is subtitled in both Russian and English. It was originally posted on Twitter, but copies have been floating around in various places online, and it will probably become hot “samizdata” if it hasn’t already done so.
As long as we’re watching Arnie sending important political messages, let’s watch his message on the Capitol riot of January 6th, 2021:
Wait — people ask for refunds for darkness?
Here’s the text of the poster, with all its oddly abitrary capitalization (a growing phenomenon) faithfully recreated:
THE BATMAN
Movie
This is a Dark Movie and will
have a lot of Dark Scenes.
We will Not Issue any Refunds
or Re-Admission Tickets due to
DARKNESS as the Studio
informed us this will be a Dark
Movie.
Of course, you can’t properly mention “Batman” and “DARKNESS” without this playing this tune:
Before you buy into yesterday’s statement by Eric Trump — the dumbest of Donald Trump’s sons (and he’s up against some stiff competition) — that Putin’s KGB training allowed him to see that Trump was a strong person…
Eric Trump: Putin was in with the KGB. He can read people and he could tell that Donald Trump was a very strong person pic.twitter.com/1BqhstcUMP
— Acyn (@Acyn) March 15, 2022
…consider for a moment these recent headlines of Trump’s inability to criticize Putin in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine:
- Rolling Stone — Trump Refuses to Condemn Putin Despite Sean Hannity Practically Begging Him To
- Washington Post — Sean Hannity’s remarkable, failed attempts to get Trump to call Putin ‘evil’
- The Guardian — Trump ‘admired’ Putin’s ability to ‘kill whoever’, says Stephanie Grisham
- Vanity Fair — Despite Hannity’s Best Efforts, Trump’s Mouth Is Incapable of Forming the Words “Vladimir Putin Is Evil”
- Politico — ‘I got along’: Trump avoids criticizing Putin
- The Atlantic — Congressional Republicans Have Found Their Red Line
- The Wall Street Journal — Putin’s Groupies Walk Back Their Praise
- New York Magazine — How Trump and Putin Have Been Allies Against Ukraine
- The Independent — Trump dodges opportunity call Putin ‘evil’ in Hannity interview
- CNN — Trump has been on Putin’s side in Ukraine’s long struggle against Russian aggression
- The Daily Beast — Even Hannity Can’t Get Trump to Admit Putin Is ‘Evil’
- Business Insider — Stephanie Grisham says Trump greatly admired Putin and ‘wanted to be able to kill whoever spoke out against him’
- Business Insider — Ex-Trump national security advisor John Bolton says ‘Putin Saw Trump doing a lot of his work for him,’ so he chose not to invade Ukraine
- MSNBC — Trump demurs when encouraged by an ally to criticize Putin
Eric Trump is right, but not in the way he thinks. Putin did read Trump correctly, but Putin’s assessment wasn’t that Trump was a string person, but quite manifestly the opposite. Putin knew he was dealing with someone who was half-man, half-marshmallow.
Just look at the differences in their body language at the 2018 summit in Helsinki, where he chose to listen to Putin over the FBI about Russian election interference:
Trump has said far worse things about allies than he has about dictators. He admires dictators, in that way that weak people admire brutality, in the hope that maybe one day, they’ll get to be the oppressor. That’s not strength at all.
Also worth reading: A whole lot of links on Trump, Putin, Russia, and Ukraine
In the video above, Irina Maniukhina, a professional pianist in Bila Tserkva, a town 80 km (50 miles) south of Kyiv, said goodbye to her home by playing her piano before fleeing from further attacks.
I can’t blame her — if it were me, I’d also play it one last time, too. Her playing is quite good, and she’s not playing easy pieces, either.
A bomb had landed about 10 meters (about 30 feet) from the house, which was still standing but strewn with debris. With the notable exception of one of its “G” keys, the piano seems undamaged and only a little scuffed.
Maniukhina started by playing the first few bars of Schubert’s Impromptu Op. 90 No. 2, followed by Chopin’s Etude Op. 25 No. 1.
(It should be noted that Chopin fled Poland shortly before the November Uprising, a rebellion against the Imperial Russia.)
Her daughter Karina recorded the video and shared it on TikTok, where she captioned it with “Do not judge, my mother is a professional pianist and decided to play to let go of this case.”
As her mother played, Karina walked through the house to record the destruction. Here are some stills from that portion of the video:
Here’s a report that includes quotes from Karina: Ukrainian mum defiantly plays piano to ‘say goodbye’ to bombed home in heartbreaking clip.
An excerpt:
Karina said that her mother wanted to play to help forget about the war.
She said: “It wasn’t a sad moment. My mother just wanted to let go of unnecessary thoughts, and I remembered events in our house with a smile.
“She wanted to forget about the war and her worries for our safety. She’s been playing all her life and she even graduated as a pianist.
“Since there was a lot of ash and dust in the keys and everyone was in a state of shock, she could not play for a long time.”
