More Les Coole and the Cukes tunes! Welp, the latest single is out. And while I'd love to have a cue-in like the DJ at the 4-minute mark here:
I'll settle for my own "here ya go"... "Quitters"
What else is new out there among the gheorgherati?
FOGTB Lecky has an excellent new EP out called Pleasant Kingdom. It's an ear-opener. The guy who brought you this gem two years ago:
...now brings you this!
...and this:
School's nearly out, so expect some tunes from Dave/Almighty Yojo. His new EP The Shed should come out this summer. And then Live in the Shed, followed by Living in the Shed.
I've seen Rootsy's studio. It needs some action, dude.
Also, Marls Sings Bing should hit record shelves by 2022.
After one of the most potentially consequential weeks in recent American history, it's time for us to reflect on where we are, and prepare for what's to come.
Maybe it's time for that for some people. For us, it's Friday afternoon, and we found something that links together a lot of stuff that we like, so we're gonna share it.
Justin Trawick is a prolific DC-based musician and all-around good-natured performer. I've seen him play at my local joint a few times (shout out to the Tally Ho), and he never fails to give the audience their money's worth. He's the quintessential journeyman musician, fronting his band, The Common Good, hosting a podcast, playing solo shows, and relentlessly boosting the DMV's music scene.
Tim Kaine is the junior U.S. Senator from Virginia (and Lord in Heaven don't we wish he was the Vice President of the United States), a music fan, and an honest to Whitney FOGTB. (When I met Kaine last October during the Town of Leesburg Halloween parade, I told him of our mutual friendship with Whitney and his father, Harry. Senator Kaine offered warm regards for both, and confessed to actually liking them. Easy to believe about the father. Somewhat more surprising, the son. I'll leave out the part where I was dressed as Uncle Fester from The Addams Family when I made the Senator's acquaintance.)
Kaine is also an avid music fan who plays a mean harmonica, I'm told. Rolling Stone wrote in October 2016, "If elected, Tim Kaine will be the most music-savvy VP in American history." Fucking "if". Goddamn you, Rudyard Kipling.
That love of music is where this story gets interesting, from a Gheorghie perspective.
Senator Kaine teamed up with Trawick and The Common Good as part of an event the former hosted celebrating live music. The song they chose is...interesting. Almost as much as the way Kaine described it. Enjoy.
Really wish that was our Vice President, folks. Really, really do.
FOGTB Dave Fairbank has a lot of time on his hands, apparently, what with the beachside living and all. He sent me the following DM via Twitter a few days ago:
"I'm late to this, but you must find John Oliver's show from last Sunday (big chunk is on Sinclair Broadcast Group), but the kicker is at the end. A fabricated movie about the life of Warren Harding - takes too long to explain, just trust me on this - that includes one of your faves."
The show in question is Episode 107 of Last Week Tonight, Oliver's increasingly must-watch HBO commentary. And the Sinclair stuff is indeed worth watching, if you can carve 19 minutes from your busy schedules of kid-wrangling, imbibing, commuting, and fallout shelter digging. (I've included it at the end of this post for your rage-viewing pleasure.)
But the Fairbank-described kicker is in the eight-minute piece below, which really defies easy explanation. Let me just say that I've never been turned on by a scene featuring a wax president before.
Here's the piece on Sinclair Broadcasting. It'll piss you right off.
Real Tracy Murray, UCLA Bruin, Washington Bullet/Wizard, '93-'94 NBA three-point shooting leader. Not some ersatz Tracy Murray, or a Tracy Morgan, or a Traci Lords (though that might've been interesting in its own way). And @gheorghetheblog responded as only he could, running through the early 90s Bullets roster in an extended comic riff. My personal fave:
Team G:TB has extensive experience with NBA players, to be sure, but even we didn't expect the response we got from Murray. After a multi-tweet extravaganza that featured Don MacLean, Jim Lynam's cabbage smell, Rod Strickland's hot dog fetish, Cluj University, and Lost plot lines, real Gheorghe's former teammate gave us this:
As @gheorghetheblog later told me in an exclusive interview, Tracy Murray is a "good dude". (Contrary to what his twitter persona might lead you to believe, @gheorghetheblog is a man of few words.) Looks like we've got a new FOG:TB, one that actually happens to be a FOG, to boot.
Gheorghe: The Blog, winning friends and influencing people since 2003.
While we firmly believe that the content we provide here is more than enough to keep most right-thinking Americans (and the occasional Romanian) entertained, we do venture out from time to time to keep tabs on our friends. CAA: Life as a Mid-Major's Michael Litos consistently drops science about Colonial hoops, but he outdid himself this week with a proposal that would get league play off to a raucous start.
The idea: The CAA New Year's Bash, a "season opening hoopapalooza" that brings all 12 conference teams to one location for games on December 30 and January 1. Simple in concept, genius in terms of generating interest and excitement. (Genius may be a bit strong; would you settle for very, very cool?)
The CAA currently kicks off league play with a single, out-of-place game in December. The standings then freeze for three weeks or so until teams come back from Winter Break with a four-games-in-eight days frenzy. The Bash would mitigate the negatives from both while giving hoopheads a New Year's destination and the league an opportunity to showcase itself during a fallow period for college basketball.
Litos offers Philly as a site for the event. I don't hate the City of Brotherly Fuck Off as much as I used to, and it's a useful sop to the league's northern outposts, so I see the logic. And Philly's got great restaurants and nightlife, if you can ignore the locals. I've already pledged the entirety of G:TB's advertising revenue to the project, so we'd likely get a chance to sponsor a cocktail hour, or provide lanyards.
The only negative I see is that the idea's too good for the CAA to keep to itself. But that first year will be a doozy. Who's coming to Philly with me?
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