- Like
the actual Piano Man, this one also has major issues with alcohol. Unlike Billy
Joel, Donald Gould has never driven a car into a house - that we know of. Instead,
the weathered , emaciated former Marine become a YouTube sensation when a video
of one of his performances was posted on Facebook the other day and drew 1.5
million shares overnight. His skills are
noteworthy because Gould is homeless and plays for tips at pianos placed around
Miami as part of a public arts project. He became homeless seven years ago
following losing battles with drugs and alcohol and yet, he’s not bitter or
angry at the world. “What I hope to accomplish is to touch a lot of people, make
them feel good,” Gould said of his piano playing. “It passes a lot of time and
I’m homeless. That’s my hustle out here.” And everyone needs a hustle,
especially a man whose wife died of an overdose a decade and a half ago and
left him to care for a son of whom he lost custody about 15 years ago. His love
of playing the piano began as a child and he continued playing in college and
when he joined the military. Now, he plays at any one of the arts project
pianos set up throughout Miami, one of which is in front of Clasico Café and
Bar, owned by Raffaele Perna. Curiously enough, Perna said that while he
supports Gould, he is concerned about the giving response people have to
hearing him play. “We are trying to control the amount of tipping that happens
not because we don’t want them to be rewarded but they take the money and buy
booze and whatever they buy and then they come back an hour later and they
can’t even play the piano. That’s the heartbreaking part to it,” Perna said. So
enjoy the piano man’s show, but don’t put any money in his cup………..
- Chalk
another one up on the big board of sports irrelevance for Major League Soccer. The
second-rate soccer league that MLS officials continue to attempt to pass off as
great futbol to the losers who insist that the beautiful game will some day
take over American sports has made a habit of signing past-their-prime foreign
stars at the tail end of their careers and trying to use them to make the
league relevant. There was David Beckham, then their was Thierre Henry and now,
there is Italian has-been Andrea Pirlo. New York City FC finally made Pirlo’s
signing official to kick off the week and as fresh and relevant as Pirlo’s 2006
World Cup with his home country is, he doesn’t exactly bring his peak skills
with him. Sure, his world-famous beard might have some appeal to the hipsters
in Williamsburg and New Yorkers like to believe that whatever they have or just
bought is so much better than what everyone else has, but Pirlo isn't Beckham.
He doesn’t have the pop culture cache or name recognition - or celebrity wife -
of Beckham and the best thing you can argue is that he’s not totally washed up.
He did start in the 2015 Champions League final on June 6 and with his knack
for playing deep in the midfield and being a deft passer should make him better
than 99.88 percent of MLS players, although that’s more of an indictment of MLS
than it is praise for Pirlo. The “Keep calm and pass it to Pirlo” shirts that
are favorites in Italy aren't likely to fly off the rack in New York despite
the fact that he is a better passer than Beckham, so hailing this as some sort
of game-changing signing or indicator of MLS being a league the rise is
exaggeration of the most extreme sort……….
- United
States, take note. This is how you remove the ugly, hideous legacy of terrible
time in your nation’s past and it comes to you from Spain, where Madrid's new leftist city council says it will remove all
references to the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco in names of streets and
plazas in the Spanish capital. It’s a long-overdue move that greases the wheels
of a 2007 law calling for the gradual replacement of symbols relating to the
1939-1975 dictatorship, with statues of Franco and streets bearing the names of
his allies having been removed in recent years. City spokeswoman Rita Maestre confirmed
the revised plan to ask Madrid's residents to suggest new street names, with
details of that process still to be finalized. Whenever and however it happens,
it’s going to be a major undertaking. According to the Association for the
Recovery of Historic Memories, 170 Madrid streets still carry the names of
dictatorship officials. The impetus for this change came in May when Manuela
Carmena, a 71-year-old retired judge, was elected Madrid mayor in May, ousting
the conservative Popular Party. The Popular Party, aside from sounding like the
lamest and most square description ever of what happens on a Friday night when
all of the cool kids get their drink on at Kenny’s house because his parents
are totally out of town this weekend, was a defender of much of Spain’s
traditional legacy. Now that they’ve been ousted, it’s a great time to erase
what remains of that deplorable era and here’s hoping the ass-hatted
Confederate flag defenders of America are listening……..
- Aren't
Finns supposed to be polite, jolly people who eat reindeer sausage from
breakfast and survive some of the gnarliest weather known to man while keeping
smiles on their faces and sweaters on their bodies in layers? So why are these
people embracing a new law that will actually allow music
fans to seek a refund if they're disappointed by a live performance? Credit
this one to the country's Consumer Disputes Board, which inexplicably ruled
that ticketholders can get a refund if a performance is "well below
reasonably expected standards.” It’s a wholly subjective standard that’s
going to be extremely difficult to enforce and very easy for a performer to
dispute and it stems from an incident in Helsinki
during 2013 when an attendee at a Chuck Berry concert demanded his money back
after the legendary musician "seemed fatigued" during his
performance. Committee spokesperson Pauli
Ståhlberg explained the law and tried to make it seem like this wasn’t a recipe
for headaches and possible legal disaster. “Anyone seeking a ruling like this
is always spurred by a subjective opinion, but that's not enough to get a
refund,” Ståhlberg said. “What is significant is a generally agreed view that
the concert was a failure, as it was in the Chuck Berry case." He added
that the "issue of quality" is less relating to whether a performance
is "good or bad by some objective measure,” but rather the issue of
whether or not it “meets the consumer's expectations.” Again, Finns….recipe for
disaster. What happens if the fan trying to seek damages was six beers into
their evening when they decided the show sucked? Will there be a video review
of the show by an independent panel and how the hell do you expect to get
anyone to fork over damages in such cases? Crash and burn, Finland, crash and
burn……….
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