The Twelve Days of Gheorghemas: Day 12

On the 12th Day of Gheorghemas, Big Gheorghe Gave To Me:

12 Appreciations
11 Months of Gheorgheness
10 Awesome Auction Items and Much Much More!
Nine things worth dancing over
Three Genetic Tests on day 8.5
Eight Things I'm Thankful For
Seven Books for Reading
Six Top Episodes of Ted Lasso
Five Beers and Tunes
Four Resolutions
Three Gheorghemas Gifts to Give Yourself
Two Stones of Weight Loss (Your Mileage May Vary)
and Running Gags with Quatro Kitties

Welp, here we go.

December 2, 2008: In acknowledgment of our 1,000 G:TB post, the brains behind Gheorghe: The Blog brought you Gheorghemas I. The original. Teej in a "Simspon" jersey. Mustache photos. Breast milk. Videos that no longer work. Pictures of us from 1999. And Dennis!

December 31, 2008: I post the first of what will be a series of eventually redundant Day 12's, all focused around my appreciation for my life and what fills it, leaning heavily on you clowns. Set to my favorite tunes released that year. 

It's interesting to look back on that post from 13 years ago and think about all that has changed in my life. Turns out that one of those changed things is not my taste in music. And mired in the morass of the Great Recession, there was a general malaise, but a plea for optimism.

March 25, 2013: I drag my feet on closing out Gmas V until this hideously late date, cuing up the perfect Shel Silverstein poem in the process. My excuse? I got married that January! It's interesting to look back on that post from 9 years ago and think about all that has changed in my life. (Spoiler Alert: that marriage didn't take.) We had come out of the economic doldrums by then (we, not I), but there was a long road ahead. Thank goodness for G:TB.

So here we are at the belated close of Gmas XIV, and I'm feeling much better than I did in either of those eras. As such, there's no reason to depart from the 12 Appreciations (with 2021's Musical Accompaniment) theme for Day 12.

12 Appreciations During Extended Gheorghemas

1. A Christmas Story

"Mine Forever," Lord Huron

"I Don't Live Here Anymore (feat. Lucius)," The War On Drugs

"Face Down In The Moment," Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats

I had the best Christmas in memory, perhaps ever, and certainly the best in nearly 20 years. Some of you may recall my Xmas Eve-Eve post in which I eagerly anticipated the holiday with my college-aged daughters for the first time since they were in elementary school. In retrospect, I put lots of hype and pressure on myself to have make sure it was great.

We crushed it. The holiday was an absolute blast. The Christmas Eve party was tons of fun, well attended by family and friends, and despite a lot of work going into, we had more even revelry than our guests. 

The picture of the table doesn't even do the festivities justice, as there was a whole other table full of meatballs in the crock pit, bacon-wrapped scallops, pigs in a blanket with honey mustard/Tabasco ketchup/Chick Fil-A sauce offerings and more.

Christmas Day was beautiful. I overdid it on gifts for them, because of course I did. They were all smiles. And hugs. And gratitude. 

And then it was over. But I still feel like I'm basking in the last embers now. Happy to have waited on Day 12 if only to extend this warm feeling just a little longer.

2. Game for the Gamecocks

 "What You Say," Cold War Kids

"Bed Head," Manchester Orchestra

As some of you know, my girls go to the University of South Carolina. Had you asked me five years ago to put odds on where they'd be going, those odds would have been super long on USC. I'd have bet on a Virginia state school, maybe a DC school, maybe College of Charleston or even Rollins College.

Sometimes shit just works out well. I'm knocking on wood here, since I only have a freshman and a sophomore there, but wow, did I get it wrong... and they got it right. They both got 4.0's as first-year students, and when their grades came in during Gheorghemas, they shamed my my undergrad performance. They've made wonderful friends. They love Columbia and the campus, and football

games, and now women's basketball, and just good times. Plus they're together, which has meant more than I even realized it would.

If anyone wants to join me there for a road trip for weekend, saddle up. Last weekend Widespread Panic played there and I was a late scratch (owing in part to needing to save some scratch), but more shows are on the docket. And sports. And southern hospitality and cheap suds. Ask Mark.

Also, if you go, sometimes things like this happen:

3. Feels So Good Feelin' Good Again

"Heartbeat Of America," Billy Strings

"Come To The Ball," The Rolling Stones

Since just before Gmas started, I saw a football game in a large stadium. (Clemson 30, USC 0. Not good. more recently, I saw a concert in a fairly large arena. (Billy Strings. Fantastic.)

So either I'm phenomenally irresponsible or the the world is returning somewhat to semi-normalcy. Or

both, most likely.

Here's hoping there's more of this in our immediate future. Rob and I have tickets to a They Might Be Giants show in DC that was originally scheduled for 2020. (I just realized that they rescheduled it for the third time for March 5, which is not enormously convenient.) I made the tough call to forgo JazzFest this year and instead take my girls and gf and her kids to the City That Never Sleeps in May. That should be a good one. 

More to come, but for now, with 2020/21 in the rearview, it's a joy.

4. Once In A Lifetime

"Sanctuary," Hiss Golden Messenger

Building on that, in December I was invited to a shindig at one of my favorite spots, the local and historic Naro Cinema. I've posted before about times I spent there with Jerry, Fred, and Seth & Scott on the screen in recent years. But many moons ago, I used to hit the Naro every few weeks or so for their Friday Night Late Show at 11:30pm. When I was in high school, the Late Show rotation looked a bit like this:

• Rocky Horror Picture Show
• The Song Remains the Same
• Pink Floyd: The Wall
• Stop Making Sense

They'd mix a few others in on occasion, but that was usually it. And our gang of friends was good for being there for the latter two a few times a year each. I still remember getting busted trying to walk in with a jean jacket full of wine coolers at age 16. (They only took half of them... score!) The Wall still gets under my skin after some papal ballots, especially the scene where the orphaned kid (Roger Waters as a lad, presumably) gets rejected trying to hold another mom's hand on the playground. Yeesh.

And Stop Making Sense. So good. My buddy Dave yakked in the downstairs bathroom where I currently reside when we were sophomores post-SMS. Ruined a nice hand towel. But it was still great fun.

Anyway, they only play Rocky Horror at the late show these days, sad to say, but smack in the middle of Gmas, a good friend rented out the Naro and aired Stop Making Sense. I bought O'Connor beers instead of smuggling Bartles and Jaymes. We drank and danced and watched one of the great rock films of all time. Total blast. Let's do shit like that again, please!

5. From the Hague to the Wharf...

"Penny Baker On the Air," Les Coole and the Cukes

You know what else came back during this time? ORF Rock! Our little college radio show peaked some years back, and the past few years have presented a series of hurdles that have precluded us from getting into the studio at WODU. For a little while, my co-host Penny Baker and I definitely considered ORF Rock to be a thing of the past. 

Fear not, faithful fans. We have returned at long last to dominate the internet airwaves for one hour a week with 14 or so rock songs typically not getting radioplay and some goofy banter. Oh, and some music trivia and theme contests. We're now on the air on Tuesdays at 7:00pm. Tune in if you're otherwise unoccupied. We usually kick it off with the ORF Rock theme song:

6. Radio, Radio

"Virginia Beach," Hamilton Leithauser and Kevin Morby

And sometimes one thing leads to another, and worlds collide. We're friends with a "real" radio DJ with an even goofier DJ name than Les Coole. "Woo Woo" has been one-half of the morning tandem on local 94.9 The Point for many years. And on 2/22/22, a mash-up for the ages happened.

Les Coole & The Cukes · Penny Baker And Les Coole on 94.9 The Point - 2/22/22

Okay, so it was a lot cooler for us than for her and her co-host Mike. They humored us for 30 minutes of storytelling, silly banter, and talk about music. It was a lot of fun, and they promised to do it again soon.

In high school I was an intern for the on-air guy at the local public radio station, WHRO. In college, once or twice Dave and I sat in with our buddies Ethan and Dan at WCWM. (I mean they played Random Idiots, for Pete's sake.)  I've been interviewed for work on Norfolk State's radio station and a couple of others around the way. But this was different, a half-hour out of their show dedicated to our little radio show -- and some shameless plugs for Les Coole and the Cukes. Loved it.

7. So Very Less Cool

"The Bandit," Kings of Leon

In December, the aforementioned one of the several G:TB house bands, Les Coole and The Cukes, released our ninth single. This one continues the "beauty of modern technology" phenomenon. The bass track came from a buddy I grew up with, and the guitar work that serves as the basis of the song came from the man who serves as the inspiration of the lyrics, our William and Mary crony "Mayday" Malone, aka Mr. Misanthrope Haiku. Even though I saw neither of them in person in 2021. Pro Tools, Dropbox, etc.

Here's some more egregious self-promotion... Mayday.

8. Celluloid Heroes

"Walking at a Downtown Pace," Parquet Courts

Also to be filed under "Crawling Out of COVID," I went to see a feature film in a movie theater for the first time since... well, I honestly cannot remember. I'm reasonably sure that, apart from seeing a few documentaries at the Naro, I haven't seen a movie in the theater since The Hangover in 2009. That's saying something, right?

I saw Spider-Man: No Way Home. Neither a graphic novel geek nor an art house goon who eschews superhero films, I highly enjoyed it. And the way they intertwined old Spider-Men? Well, I'm a sucker for that. I half-expected to see the version of Spidey that I watched the most eagerly in my life... the one seen below. (Name the future star at 1:26.)

9. Giving the Gift of Gift Ideas

"I Don't Mind," Lindsey Buckingham

"What About Everything? [Live]" Carbon Leaf

Day 3 of this Gmas featured the much-heralded Zman bestowing upon us another round of what has become a recurring feature. (BTW, Z has done a really nice job of keeping multiple such features actually recurring, when this blog previously had a long history of launching recurring features destined never to recur.) The one I refer to was the gift suggestions for Mother's Day, Father's Day, and Christmas/Gheorghemas gifts.

I, for one, listen to Z. For Gheorghemas:

• I went in on a Peloton bike with the gf. It's at my house, since she'll travel to work out and I won't. I've hit a slowdown of late, but I'll get it back.
• I also bought her some Glerup slippers. She digs 'em. (She also digs her Ember mug.)
• I got both of my parents out of the dark ages and into Spotify subscriptions. Right before Neil Young and Co. made that seems less cool. (Not Les Coole.)

The Bonobos weren't available in my size, Maybe next time! 

10. Girlfriend Is Better

"Let's Talk About Love," Aloha Salvation

"Heat Waves," Glass Animals

Speaking of whom, if I'm reviewing the appreciations I had during Gheorghemas, the love of a good woman is up there. It was just three years ago that I described my romantic state of affairs in a not-so-appealing way during Gheorghemas XI. Anyway, another flurry of wonderfully thoughtful gifts came my way courtesy of mi inamorata. (She tried, but both the Bonobos and the '69 Butternut Yellow convertible Impala weren't available.) Among other great presents was a chunklet-style (also called Chick Fil-A or Sonic style) ice maker for my kitchen. It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend you picking one up.

We also made a formidable team (along with the young folk) for the banner Xmas Eve party... and then she treated us to an oceanfront hotel suite for NYE. Beyond the generosity, there's an element of being about the most decent person anyone's ever been to me, so I got that going for me. And I appreciate the hell out of it.

And that's all I have to say about that.

11. Appreciation x 10000000

"Freaks," Surf Curse

I can't thank the Gheorghe team enough for giving me Day 12 every year... and then letting me drag my feet and abuse the privilege. Feel free any time to allocate it differently next go-'round. 

But in the meantime I have sincerely appreciated the honor. Cheers, friends.

12. Johnny Was

"Japanese Trees," Modest Mouse

"Sinking Feeling," Wavves

"The Hardest Cut," Spoon

"BRIGHTSIDE," The Lumineers

"Ashes to Ashes," Boise Cover Band (Built To Spill)

Normally, I would close with the appreciation above. But some things are special.

We already spent some Gmas time memorializing our friend, both here and in Williamsburg. And when we did the latter... well, there's nothing quite like the visual. All I will say is that we dusted off a couple of our tried and true moshables from the late 1980's and early 1990's to appropriately usher our man Johnny into the great beyond.

You're welcome. And God bless.

Here's the full list of 2021's best for you...