mb palaver

IrishPalaver: Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake

Hi all -- long time no blog!   But I had to come back to wish you a happy St. Patrick's Day, and to suggest this delicious chocolate Guinness cake, courtesy of Nigella Lawson.   You bake the moist cake -- made with cocoa, butter, Guinness, and sour cream -- in a springform pan, and then top with icing made from confectioner sugar, cream cheese, and heavy cream, so that, as NIgella says, "it resembles a frothy pint of Guinness."  Cheers! 

TheaterPalaver: Little Thing, Big Thing

If you're sticking around DC for Thanksgiving weekend, you have four chances (Friday, twice Saturday, and Sunday) to experience Solas Nua's latest production, Little thing, Big Thing.  Two actors take on a dozen or more roles in this funny, suspenseful, and insightful buddy caper (involving a petty thief and a Scottish nun in Ireland via Nigeria).  The play is staged in a theater in the back of a gallery on G Street near Gallery Place.  These performances are too good not to be given to packed houses.  And the theme is timely, focused on the importance of taking what little steps you can to effect big changes in the face of corruption.  You can find tickets here.

BooksPalaver: Bloomsday reading at Petworth Citizen

You still have about 15 hours to drop in on a marathon 30-hour reading of Ulysses at the Petworth Citizen and enjoy a coffee, a whiskey, or a bite with other Joyce fans on the 111th anniversary of the day Leopold Bloom wandered around Dublin.  Who knows what other Ulysses fans you might run into?

 

Photo by Eve Arnold, from openculture.com.

DCPalaver: Murphy's Irish Pub Closes in Woodley Park

 

I'm glad I read popville on Friday or I would have missed my last chance to hoist a Guinness at Murphy's Irish pub in Woodley Park.  Murphy's Woodley Park location opened on St. Patrick's Day 1986, and closes its doors for good tonight.  In truth, I always wished Murphy's was better than it was.  I hoped it would turn into something like a local version of the old Red Onion in Monroe, Ohio, a neighborhood tavern that happened to serve fantastic food.  But I've spent many enjoyable evenings at Murphy's, and I will miss having an old school bar in the neighborhood, and the cozy fireplace, and the snoozing leprechaun.  I want that snoozing leprechaun!  I hope the staff is able to find new jobs quickly.

 

 

 

MusicPalaver: New Irish Music Galore!

Maybe three new CDs by Irish artists don't count as new music galore, but galore comes from the Irish “go leor,” and is fun to say.  Here are my extremely quick, non-thoughtful takes from a quick listen to each.

 

Sinead O'Connor, "How About I Be Me (and You Be You)?"  Good album, with a lot of interesting lyrics, though intense at times (surprise!).  But the opening track, "4th and Vine" is pure fun.  The very end is so religious I felt I could either skip Mass this week, or I need an exorcism.  I'm not sure.  I like the title.

 

 

 

The Cranberries, "Roses":  Very mellow.  "Zombie" this isn't.  The lyrics range from banal love songs to was she on drugs when she wrote this or what?  But the sound is lovely.

 

 

 

 

The Chieftains, "Voice of Ages":  This album is heavy on deedly-dee and country music, two of my least favorite genres, but "School Days Over," with The Low Anthem (whoever they might be) is terrific.  They performed it on Letterman last week.  I can't think of another TV venue where I more enjoy watching a good musical performance, because Dave seems genuinely honored to be in the audience.  Check out the clip below -- Dave congratulates The Chieftains (presumably on their 50th anniversary as a band) and says "What a wonderful organization!"  As usual, the Chieftains collaborate with a number of musicians on this album, including Bon Iver, The Civil Wars, The Decemberists, and the Carolina Chocolate Drops (mmmmm).

 

 

TheaterPalaver: Yea Yeats!

If you're looking for a literary way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day this weekend, Scena Theatre is staging readings of three plays by William Butler Yates on Sunday.  Purgatory, At the Hawk's Well, and The Death of Cuchulain will be read at the H Street Playhouse at 7 pm.  Tickets are $20.  I've always liked Yeats, even if this photo, on a poster of Irish writers at Moran's, always reminded me of Dan Akroyd.

Now that I've low-browed Yeats, let me offer one of his best known poems:

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 

 

BookPalaver: Happy Bloomsday #107!

In honor of Bloomsday, here's a photo (taken in 1999) of Davy Byrnes pub, Duke Street, Dublin, where on June 16, 1904, Leopold Bloom

entered Davy Byrne's. Moral pub. He doesn't chat. Stands a drink now and then. But in leapyear once in four. Cashed a cheque for me once.

(Quoted from the full text of Ulysses, at Project Gutenberg, which you can read online for free when you're, you know, bored at work.)

TheaterPalaver: Swampoodle

I don't know what to make of Solas Nua's latest theater offering.  The Washington-based Irish arts organization is staging a "promenade show" called Swampoodle, starting this weekend.  All their website gives by way of description is:

It's the question on everyone's lips: What on earth is Swampoodle? A rundown part of town where the Beatles sang and the girls screamed? An underground ghetto where the Irish fought and died? A beat-up urban Cathedral where Malcolm X lectured the Nazis and Nureyev danced? There's only one way to find out!

Warning! Swampoodle may contain eye-popping high-wire feats, roller derby smack-downs and scenes of a spectacular nature.

Please note that this is a promenade show and the audience is not seated.

As far as I can tell, you wander along with the cast inside the U-line arena -- which was renamed the Washington Coliseum n 1959 -- where, according to Wikipedia, the Beatles played their first concert in the U.S.  More importantly (presumably), from Solas Nua's standpoint, it's located in the area of DC once known as Swampoodle -- an area settled by Irish immigrants in the 19th century fleeing the potato famine.  Again, according to Wikipedia (so it must be true):

The name Swampoodle is attributed to a newspaper reporter covering the ground-breaking of St Aloysius Catholic church in 1857, who referred to the land at the site on North Capitol and I street as containing numerous swamps and puddles - which often occurred when Tiber Creek overflowed its banks.

I've lived in DC for most of the past 31 years, and don't ever recall hearing this term, which may be reason enough to check out Solas Nua's potentially bizarre show.

Swampoodle
Friday, May 20- Saturday, May 28
Tickets are $16

Audience members requiring special assistance should contact the Solas Nua office directly at (202) 315-1317 so that arrangements can be made.

MusicPalaver: Pandora, Begorrah

Photo of MB, Dubliner, two Guinnesses, and a Smithwick's,
at The Bailey, Duke Street, Dublin, by Mike, 2005

 

Pandora is offering three Irish-themed channels, just in time for St. Patrick's Day.

• "Irish Pub Rock Radio" is fun, at least in small doses, though your neighbors may kill you if you don't keep the volume down.  It's lots of Pogues (whom I've had a special place in my heart for since my friends met them in the Hotel Helix lobby a few years ago and they left tickets for us at the 9:30 Club box office), Dropkick Murphys, The Chieftains, Black 47, Stiff Little Fingers (whom I only know from my Belfast friend Joanne), and the like.  Nary a green alligator in sight so far, thank goodness (memories of a roomful of people upstairs at Murphy's in Old Town twenty years ago booing me and my youngest brother and his friends for not joining in).
• "Irish Pop" carries U2, the Cranberries, Sinead, Van Morrison, and an awful lot of music that sounds suspiciously boy band-like (though I must confess I love Ronan Keating's version of "When You Say Nothing At All," plus he's cute as a button).
• "Celtic Radio" tends toward the diddley-dee.  You've been warned.

They can be found under "Themed" stations under the genre stations list.  Or if have more energy, just create your own mix, starting with your favorite Irish artist or song.  And have a happy St. Patrick's Day!

 

RandomPalaver: The Christmas Story (and Others) from the Mouths of Irish Babes

For a different take on the Christmas story, here it is as told by young Dublin students in 1960, and animated by Brown Bag Films as part of a series of short films called "Give Up Yer Aul Sins."  The first video below is the birth of Jesus, and the second is the annunciation and the birth of John the Baptist.  The first video in the series, itself called "Give Up Yer Aul Sins," on the life and death of John the Baptist , was nominated for a best animated short film Oscar in 2001.  Brown Bag was also behind Grannie O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty, nominated for the same award this past year.

Thanks to mysterywriter for introducing me to these videos.  Have a wonderful Christmas all!