The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

Seen last night at The Dirty Shame, a lovely dive bar in Ybor City. They could’ve extended the rhyme with “Try the alley / But don’t let the cops see”.

Governor Larry Hogan (a Republican, of course) announced on Thursday that $68 million lawmakers set aside for schools will now go to the state’s pension system, of which Baltimore would have received over $11 million. He explained the decision by saying “there is no magical pot of money”.

State officials did approve something for young people: a $30 million, 60-bed jail to house Baltimore teenagers charged as adults, a step to address years of concern about the practice of housing young city defendants alongside adults. In doing so, they were violating the law by keeping the youths in the same facility as grown-ups, where teens often are secluded and do not receive school or other services while incarcerated. See? Go to jail, get funded education!

Of course, you need more police to put people in jail, and that’s been taken care of, too. Governor Hogan also announced that he’s diverting funds meant for an art center to state police. “I am a huge proponent of the arts, and the first lady is a former member of the Anne Arundel County Arts Council. But in the current environment, a State Police barrack in our state capital and adequate funding for public safety in Annapolis must be the priority.”

And the way he’s going, that current environment he speaks of will be around for a long time.

The lesson to learn from Baltimore and Maryland is this:

Yesterday, the world lost the Blues Man’s Blues Man. B.B. King died yesterday in his sleep at the age of 89.

Anyone who’s ever thought about playing the blues or its descendants even half-seriously has listened to and “borrowed” a lick of two from his playing. You’ll hear a lot of guitarists go on about how they borrowed a trick or two from him, but I’d wager that at least a couple of keyboard players — me included — were inspired by King. A good number of my own organ, synth and accordion blues scale runs, pitch bends, and bellows shakes come straight from playing along to recordings of Lucille (both the song and the guitar after which it’s named). I used to own an Ensoniq EPS sampling keyboard with samples from King’s How Blue Can You Get?, and so did Primitive Radio Gods, because they used them in their 1996 single, Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand.

Rather than go on about his life, I’ll simply point you to article on him in Wikipedia, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, and The Washington Post, as well as Javier Alor’s collection of 79 B.B. King YouTube videos. Pour a bourbon, crank up the volume, play it, and drink to B.B. King.

Need to know what this is all about? Check out this story.

Photo by Kiki Coulouras (@keeeks37). Click the photo to see the source.

East Lake High, my wife’s old high school in nearby Tarpon Springs, had its “only in Florida” moment earlier this morning when students reported an alligator skulking around campus. Gators typically hunt at dusk or night, but we’re pretty close to mating season, when they get a little more bold than usual.

The gator was reported to be about 5 feet long. Students were gathered into the school’s gymnasium while a professional trapper rounded it up, taped its mouth shut (gators’ jaw muscles have great strength for snapping shut, but not for opening), and hauled it away.

Here’s some video of the trapper in action:

Footage from the local FOX 13 News.

In other local news, IT WOULD APPEAR THAT IN THE PURSUIT OF BREAKING NEWS, A LOCAL NEWS REPORTER’S CAPS LOCK KEY IS STUCK:

According to the BBC, North Korea’s Defence Minister Hyon Yong-chol has been executed for showing disloyalty to leader Kim Jong-un. It’s reported that Mr. Hyon’s specific acts of disloyalty were:

• Falling asleep during an event attended by Kim Jong-un
• Not carrying out instructions.

Let that be a lesson to you millennials out there slacking off!

However, the most “North Korea” thing about the whole incident is the report that the execution was carried out by anti-aircraft fire.

Seriously, Kim, you’re already short resources as it is — a traditional firing squad would’ve saved time and money, and you could’ve billed Hyon’s family for the bullet after, Mao-style.