Irish Blatherings: Dooblin!

I AM NOT CERTAIN BUT I BELIEVE LAURE BECKER WAS HAVING A MARGARITA... IN IRELAND!

Soooo...I arrived at the beautiful Dublin airport to meet my daughter.  It had not been a bad plane ride over once we got on a new (unbroken) airplane.  On the trip over I was sitting with a very pleasant guy who lived in Dublin who as he was telling me about (it was 90% unintelligible to me because of his accent and because I am old) Dooblin just kept saying it like that and so… so did I.  I originally was supposed to arrive an hour before my daughter who was meeting me there from Cambridge but with my flight delay I texted her and she said she would find me.  I cleared customs quickly and easily and when I came out, she was not there.  Moments like this are when I realize that my wife does everything and that I am (at best) a parasite that lives on her gifts for organization and planning.  Conversely my daughter is half me.  We were going to meet each other.  How hard could that be, in a foreign airport… where your phones don’t work?  My first temptation was to call my wife… she could sort it out from 5000 miles away...right?  I turned on my phone hoping against hope for free WiFi and VIOLA!  I texted her.  She was in the wrong terminal at arrivals.  She found me in 5 minutes.

We went to get our rent a car and ended up with a slightly used Renault.  I had the sense to get an automatic transmission figuring driving on the wrong side of the road would be challenge enough (which, by the way I was correct about).  My daughter had been responsible for making our accommodations (when it was clear i would not be) and she sensibly found us a room for about 100 bucks a night which I didn't think was too bad.  What she had not realized was that it was as far from Dublin proper as say… Chesterfield is to downtown St. Louis.  Oh well.  We were staying in a place called Balbriggan which I quickly stopped trying to say, instead referring to it as Bilbobaggins.  It was 20 minutes from the airport and I will once again defer to another time to describe driving there which for my jet lagged ass could best be described as…”horrific” and for my poor daughter…”more so”.

We finally screamed in Balbriggan with my mirror clipping the mirror of a parked car.  I was of course pleased that the thump was not me hitting a warm body.  We swung into the garage attached to the hotel and garages are a challenge just like the road because you must… keep to the left.  But we parked and found our way into the hotel which was pleasant.  Were able to check in quickly and I was able to grab an Irish Times and we retired to a reasonably comfortable adequately priced room.  It would be a fine base of operations.  We discussed the options for getting to Dublin and we were assured the train station was a 5 minute walk and so… we were off!

BILBRAGGIN BEACH

Walking to the train station we purchased tickets round trip without incident.  One of the interesting things about Ireland is that unlike England they have adopted the Euro.  I had the foresight before I left to go to US Bank in Clayton and get a couple of hundred dollars of the currency which is always worth more than a $1.50 but less than $2.00 in my limited experience.  You can use most ATM cards to get dollars but there are fees involved and there is always something to be said for landing with walking around money.  The train station in Bilbraggin is on high ground looking down on a huge beach which is kind of in a bay which leads to a little channel.  Tide was out and there were a bunch of boats just sitting on the ground in the dry channel.  In Europe, the trains run on time and ours showed up pretty quickly and we hopped on and headed south.  The train tracks had a reasonable amount of time on the coast where I guess you overlook the “Sea of Man” which in retrospect seems rather pretentious or perhaps even ominous.  In any case, a lovely train ride, 20-30 minutes landed us in Town Center.  Both cities I was in identified the downtown area as “Town Center” and signs would direct you there which was helpful in each case.  Laura had found us a map and since our phones didn't work she was our navigator.

I had forwarded to her the name of a well reviewed Celiac Friendly restaurant and we made towards to for a late lunch.  The Millstone.  It was excellent and I ate some delicious fish thing and then had piece of beef which was represented to me as a Hereford steak.  Hereford Beef is very big and well advertised in Ireland but generally I would say their meat sucks.  I might hate the idea of factory farming, antibiotics, Monsanto,  and what not but we have unbelievable beef in our supermarkets and restaurants, well marbled, properly fatted and delicious.  I did not find the same to be true in Ireland.

Then we walked.  What a nice, beautiful, friendly, attractive interesting town.  Once again speaking some semblance of English is awesome and we were able to ask stupid questions and get patient answers.  Even though the iPhones did not work we could use free WiFi in abundance to look up and find our way to our next stop.  Over the two days we visited a lot of places.

From my perspective they had great shopping. For me that generally means Cigar stores ( for Cubans) and cheese mongers (for all varieties of cheese).  We did not want to do too much on the first day so we just bummed around.  We walked by the Olympia Theater where I was unable to get tickets for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros on line.  We walked in and the nice lady behind the window said “we just had a cancellation” and were able to grab two tickets.  Better to be lucky than smart.

We made our way across town to the Jameson Distillery.  It is a lovely, touristy place.  Being tourists we looked in the gift shop and then we took the tour.  Now I don’t know what experience you have with distilleries but as a veteran of the bourbon trail and having spent a few weekends in Lexington and Frankfort…. distilleries are all pretty much the same and even though there is some slightly more than rudimentary physics involved all distilled beverages are made in pretty much the same way.  Jamieson, we were quickly, and then repetitively told, was “triple distilled”.  Every distillery has a wistful story about the product that is lost through evaporation when manufacturing their product and here is was “The Angels Portion”.  In Kentucky that share belonged to the devil.  We did a tasting which was a nice affair and did nothing to particularly enhance my love of Irish Whiskey.  I did learn one thing and that is that Irish Whiskey and certainly Jamiesons the grain is heated with a smokeless source, formerly anthracite and now natural gas.  Scotch, tastes like smoky scotch because they roast the grain with peat and that produces a lot of smoke.  It was a fine way to kill and hour or so.

We called it a day and headed back ready for a full day the next day and we got up and had an Irish Breakfast (sausage, eggs, pudding, tea) at our hotel and headed back to town.  Now I always like to look in bookstores wherever I go and so with the help of Google I had located a few of them.  I believe that sooner or later they will all cease to exist so… I go and pay homage. Chapters bookstore did not disappoint.  I like to collect foreign first editions of my favorite authors but alas, they were not in the offing here either in their new or used section.  Still, it was a nice massive place with a great feel and my daughter milled around patiently more or less.
A BAR IN TEMPLE BAR

We got lost and turned around more than once but found a gluten free pizza place for lunch that was nice and then found a beer (also gluten free) for me in the Temple Bar area.  Temple Bar is confusing because it is an area, a hotel, a bar, a hostel and so a lot of things are in “Temple Bar”.  So we drank a little and I got speak at length to a bartendress who essentially convinced me that I needed to spend the second half of my trip in Galway.

That night we went to the Olympia see the concert.  Despite it starting late due to a power outage it was a great show.  The Olympia is just a gorgeous two balconied, intimate venue and it was a great end to the night… other than the fact that we got badly lost driving back to Balbriggan.

The next day we made the obligatory pilgrimage to Guinness.  Now I cannot drink beer anymore and I still have a loyalty to St. Louis beers from when Anheuser Busch was still “our” beer and more recently to Schlafly which is now “our” beer.  But everyone said we had to go, if nothing else for the view of Ireland from the 7 story tower shaped like…*deep annoyed sigh* a pint glass.  We looked at the gift shop, heard the beginnings of the self guided tour and blew through 7 floors in about 20 minutes.  The Anheuser Busch tour puts it to shame and even the Samuel Adams tour in Boston was far superior.  Beer, like spirits is pretty much always made in the same way but like the “triple distilled” Jamiesons and the “beechwood aged” Budweiser, Guinness thing is that their barley is roasted. *yawn*.  The tasting room up top though was awesome and the view spectacular.  I sipped my water and gave my daughter my beer ticket so she could have two.  I did have the blessing of watching an experienced server put their logo in the froth on top of a glass.  You should go and skip the tour.  Just take the elevator straight to the top.  It is a no brainer.FROM THE GUINNESS TOWER
THIS IS THE PATHETIC GUINNESS VERSION OF A CLYDESDALE!
We visited St. Patricks Cathedral and the Irish Gallery and the Irish Library.  I could wax poetic but really we blew threw them as only Beckers can without paying a lot of attention but just trying to take it all in and check it off our list.  That is a stupid way to visit such brilliant, ancient historical places but, we are what we are and in the end I was in Dublin, hanging out with my daughter and didn’t really give a shit about where I was at.  It could've been Gary, but I was happy it was Dooblin
ST. PATRICKS CATHEDRAL

Irish Blatherings Part Two: International Air Travel For Grumpy Old People

Soooo...flying.

I have come to hate it.  With a passion.  I do not know when it happened.  There was a magical time about 15 years ago when I was flying all over the country taking depositions.  I was a TWA preferred traveler and I would walk up and they would take my ticket and light up thanking MR BECKER for traveling with them and asking if they could please bump me up to first class because they had seats available.

Only later did we figure out that this was a formula for a failing airline.

After that was 9/11. You could not longer walk to the gate unmolested and instead had to go through a security regime that was constantly changing, demanded long lines of people and succeeded in dehumanizing us...just a little more.

After that we lost being a hub because American bought TWA, lied to us (not that we could have done anything about it and told us they would keep St. Louis a hub, and promptly shut us down.  Looking back it was clearly the blow that moved us solidly out of the first tier American cities.  In my life we could always kid ourselves and say that although we were no New York, L.A. or even Chicago.  We were right there with the rest.  No more.  Arguably Austin Texas and Charlotte and Phoenix and Minneapolis are all more relevant than us.  We are the new Kansas City.  Oh the humanity!

I needed to get to Ireland to visit with my lovely daughter.  We were planning to spend the weekend in Dublin.  My wife used frequent flyer miles (these are relics from our American Airlines Master Card) and are at this point ONLY valid for international flying since the only sensible way to fly in or out of the Lou is on Southwest.  I knew I was flying internationally so I arrived an hour and a half ahead of flight time being dropped off by a co-worker.  I went to the American Airlines portion of the airport.  There was one huge line but people were going to kiosks and I followed suit, still waiting in line.  Using the counter intuitive machine it recognized me and I scanned my passport and gave them itinerary and then was told I needed to see a gate agent.

That line had 40 people in it and was not moving.  The employees helping at the machines spoke very little English (how does that happen?) One of them suggested I was rejected because I did not have a Visa for Ireland?  This caused greater panic, along with the line not moving.  My 40 pound bag was being kicked along and I looked at my tickets… which were US AIR tickets.  Evidently they are merging with American Airlines.  That line was very short and I am happy to announce that I shortly had two boarding passes and was headed for the security line.

The security line is so many bad things.  I tend to obsess about things I cannot change because I am of course, an idiot.  I do not know why the security line fills me with anxiety.  I am not (to the best of my knowledge) a drug mule.  I have not (no matter what my former partners might allege regarding an odd trip to Turkey) taken briefcases full of cash onto a plane.  Why am I so full of anxiety?  I think it is just the mere submission to authority.  Inflexible, all powerful authority.  I am 53!  I have a job.  I have raised children!  But I have to line up with humanity and treated like a suspected criminal, every time I fly.  All to “keep us safe”.  Granted, the terror instance of 9/11 would have been thwarted by the locked cockpits now mandated but we have to be criminalized and marginalized to “keep us safe”.  So I line up and it is always a long line.

You enter.  You read about the ban on liquids and sometimes have pictures of the proper size bag.  Often they have a nice display of liquids seized like heads on a set of poles as an example to the bad folks who might consider such a crime.  You wade forward watching the actual security lines ahead because this is just a line to wait your turn, so you can go get into another line.  When you reach the end of the first line you show your ID and boarding pass.  I have my Passport out.  It is a nice picture, at least 10 years old of me in a suit, considerably heavier than I am now and more substantial.  I am dressed in chili pepper chef pants which look like PJ’s because I intend to sleep on the transatlantic flight.  He takes a really long time to look at me, look at the picture, comment on how I am dressed and move me along.  Sometime they scrutinize my license.  Sometimes they make marks on your boarding pass which is...ominous.  But I pass.

You then have the dilemma of which machine to cue in front of.  You look for families to avoid and people in wheelchairs.  You think you're smart but you are not.  There is no rhyme or reason to how quickly the lines move and TSA sees me, recognizes my anxiety and everyone in the line I have chosen is either a suspected terrorist, an idiot who has never flown before, or...just an idiot,  There are things we all should know by now:

1.    Laptops flat down in the bus tub

2.    Shoes off and in the bus tub

3.    Jacket off and in the bus tub.

4.    All metal out of your pockets (yes your change too!  That has some metal in it

too! IDIOTS!)

5.    Belt off and in tray

But the people in front of you always act baffled by the whole procedure.  I mean, I only fly a couple times a year but the itinerary really has not changed for a while.  They inevitably do not have their shoes off.  Are still wearing their belt, try to go through in their jacket, forget to remove their laptop from the bag...or ALL OF THE ABOVE!  I am grateful to not have a gun.  When it is my turn I walk up, smile and now walk into sometime type of tube which allows them to see all of me.  I spend a moment thinking about how sad it must be for someone to have to be seeing all of me.  I stand there the yellow feet are placed.  I hold my hands over my hand like a professional.  I walk through, expecting to be detained for additional searching.  Typically this happens because I did not sterilize my bag prior to the trip and remove things like… wine bottle openers.  Why are wine bottle openers in my laptop bag?  Why not?

Once through security I get to dress myself again with the other prisoners… travelers...whatever.  Now hopefully I have already eaten.  For some reason almost every airport but certainly Lambert has made an affirmative decision that once you are through that gate, the only thing you are entitled to is expensive prison food.  It is all bad.  Do they even have Chili's outside of airports?  I hope not.  Awful little sandwiches in plastic clamshells with brown lettuce on soggy bread.  Starbucks is obligatory for 3 dollar iced tea.  If you are gluten intolerant there is literally nothing to eat but the choices are so poor I have become grateful for this.

You go to the bathroom because you think it is intelligent to go before you get on the plane.  Your bowels after all, are not what they once were.  You walk into a crowded area where men wrestle with pull on bags which they to watch while they pee, and they pee while wearing their carryon bag over their shoulder.  Urine is everywhere.  The only bigger mistake is to go into the stall which is cleaned weekly.

Then off to your gate.  You are now totally at their mercy and this is where the arbitrary decision is made to delay and/or cancel your flight.  I used to think they only did this for me but I have compared notes and it seems to happen to almost everyone.  Because the airlines have gotten so much better at math they pack the flights and the flights that are not packed tend to get canceled.  So you move to another gate and wait.  Because you are in an airport there is no place to lay down.  This is of course to discourage the homeless people who in the past might have bought airline tickets, pushed their grocery carts through security and then hung out in the airport panhandling for a few weeks.  Seriously, why do their have to be armrests between every chair on a bench of chairs.  Additionally, why are their no outlets when everyone is traveling with a laptop and a smart phone? Why indeed?  I blame Obama.

Then they start to board.  The Southwest Airline cattle call has become my preferred way to board.  If you call 24 hours before you can almost always get into the B Boarding group and have a good shot at missing the middle seat.  Other “legacy” airlines insist on the boarding zones.  These are done on a nonsensical basis which guarantees the longest possible boarding but since you have a seat guaranteed who cares… unless you are one of the assholes who “doesn't check bags” because they “don’t trust the airline”.  You trust them to maintain a fly a plane so you will not be killed.  You don’t trust them with your bag.  Genius.  These people typically have their over large wheeled bag, another carryon bag AND their laptop bag.  SONS OF BITCHES I HOPE YOU ALL ROT IN HELL!  So these people care about when they board because it is imperative to hog up all overhead space and delay the flight as much as possible.  It is like they do it strategically.

I am only flying from St. Louis to Philly this flight and am grateful for the window.  I read the Wall Street Journal.  We take off and we land and I have an hour to kill at airport.  I find a bad Mexican Burrito  bowl to eat.  I wait… we board.  I call my wife.  It takes a long time.  We taxi out to take off… we wait...the pilot announces that something is not right.  We head back to a different gate.  They say we need a new plane.  Comforting that they figure this out right before we take off.  They say half an hour.  Instead it is an hour and a half and we finally take off for Dooblin.  I say Dooblin because now I am sitting next to a gen-u-wine Irishman.  Been in the US for a year.  Time to go home.  His speech is almost unintelligible.  Still, very pleasant.  I read.  They serve us a meal that is purported to be chicken.  I know it is tainted with gluten but I eat anyway.  It is worse than terrible.  Chicken is a sauce in a styro-foam dish with broccoli.  Warm iceberg head lettuce salad.  Brownie I know I cannot eat.  Biscuit I know I cannot eat.  I drink water.  I sleep uncomfortably in my chili pepper pants.  It is only a 5 ½ hour flight.  I probably do not actually sleep.  The seat is narrow.  The cushion is hard, the pillow is tiny and styro-foam and keeps slipping through the crack between the fuselage and the seat.  But, it is better than full wakefulness.  I know I am being poisoned by the recycled air.  I am dying.  I will not be missed.

Surprisingly the sun is coming up over the horizon.  We have of course traveled north in ways that make no sense to me.  The sun is very bright over the clouds.  I pull the shade.  Eventually we land.  I exchange pleasantries with my Irish companion.  I realize I have not made plans as exactly where I was meeting up with my daughter.  Somehow even though the both of us knew it was unlikely our phones would work we just said we would meet up.  Just meet up at a strange airport neither of us had ever been to.

I get through customs easily.  No daughter.  I panic.  I think I am going to have to call home and admit to my wife again how stupid I am.  I don’t know how to call home.  I turn on my iPhone and miraculously enough they have free WIFi at the airport.  Take THAT Lambert.  My daughter is in the wrong terminal.  We meet and get the rent a car. I lived through flying ¼ of the way around the world.  I will live to fight again.

PS  Wait till you get to hear me whine about the trip home!

Edward Sharp And The Magnetic Zeros at The Olympia

Soooo… when traveling, as a music head, I always like to look and see who is playing wherever I am traveling too.  Unless you're going to NYC, L.A., Austin, Nashville, Chicago, Minneapolis or Athens GA you are setting yourself up for a variety of disappointments.  You will never find local bands unless you have a local source and even then it is hit or miss and national acts do not tour on your travel schedule but over the years I have been able to see some fabulous shows.

When I scheduled my Irish boondoggle with daughter I went online and after thrashing around found Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros were playing at the Olympia Theater in Dublin and after a little more thrashing around I found out that it was a very cool, historical venue.  We have some great places to see shows in St. Louis.  The Fox is of course in a class by itself but it is too big.  This place had the same setup but it was intimate, more like The Blue Note in Columbia but without the cigarette burns on everything, the holes in the drywall, the lack of lighting, the building code violations and the smell of urine… everywhere.

http://www.olympia.ie/venue-info/about-the-theatre/

I epically failed to get tickets because ticketmaster said the show was sold out.  It was saddening and comforting at the same time to see that even our Irish brothers are beholden to the Ticket Monster Franchise.  I was able to remember and become infuriated all over again about how long the process takes, how I can never read their code which allows them to allegedly stop the robo dialing scalpers (that is a lie) only to find they are “SOLD OUT”.  I considered stubhub, but was scrambling at work to get out of town so… I guess what I am saying is that I got lazy and got cheap.

I arrived at the Dublin Airport at 9:00 Friday morning having slept about three hours on the plane.  My daughter had a full day planned and we hit a lot of sites in downtown Dublin including Jamieson and a museum and we got me a gluten free lunch at The Millstone and then we were walking along and saw the Olympia.  So I walked into venue and asked and the nice old Irish lady said “we just had a cancellation!  So we bought and the tickets cost less than i would have paid online.

My daughter who was trying to take care of me helped track down a gluten free pizza place and painstakingly got directions.  Our iPhones do not work apart from a WiFi so  she got directions and took a screenshot and we headed to town in the rent a car.  We did not count on dark and rain and my general stupidity and abject fear driving on the wrong side of the road.  We never found the restaurant and ended up back by the theater where we got a burger and some wings and then knowing doors were at 7:30 with the opener at 8, we headed down casually around 8.  The street was weirdly dark.  Laura wanted a chocolate milk or something to take the burn out of her mouth from the wings but the grocery was dark as well.  They were lined up 40 deep outside the theater.  We were instructed to go down a side alley if we had balcony seats so we went down a dark alley using the phones as light.  It all felt sketchy but by the side door we were told, “Power outage.  At Least ½ hour.”

So we went and had a cocktail at “The Czech Inn and then the lights were still off so we got another cocktail at some place where we were speculating on the average patron’s drug life.  As we walked around the corner, the lights popped on in the street and we knew all would be well.

As we got in the opener was conducting a sing along because they still had not completed sound check.  It was charming I guess but the crowd was having none of it singing along to U-2 and getting to sing a particularly painful version of Wonderwall.  Still, it was suitable to have another drink to and prepare for the main course.

After a brief break he comes out… with is band… and they keep coming out… and keep coming out.  9 players (2 drummers, keyboard, organ,  multi instrument, guitar player, bass player, random percussionist, and another guitar player and a female backup.  An 11 piece band?  Really.  When I was listening to him on Spotify I did not really get it.  I get it now.  Edward Sharpe is an:

1 Entertainer

2. Songwriter

3. Misanthrope

4. Band Leader

A band leader!  A bandleader singer!  Like Ricky Ricardo! But cooler, and not dead.

He kicked it off raucously with a song called “In The Summer” and for several songs just did whatever the audience shouted out and it was a lot of fun.  There is a joy to a loose set list and there is a joy to a band that is comfortable enough in their gig and good enough to roll with it.  It is not that easy a thing to find, especially with 11 people playing together.  And Sharp is an entertainer.  He patters with the crown, he shuffles around and does odd things with his hands...he whistles… and he sings.

He then lit into “I Don’t Want To Pray” which is at best an...irreligious (is that a word?) song.  But it is a good song with a nice hook.  He sang a few verses and then had band members and audience members make up verses and… it was fun.  As the show went on his patter wandered more and more but was always entertaining and  then he jumped off the stage and waded into the crowd and started singing down there with them.  He was given a gift of Skittles which he shared.  he explained to people that Dublin was the New orleans of Ireland.  He told a long story about drawing a picture of sitting bull as a child and how it morphed instantaneously into a song… and he spoke of the beauty of melody.

Finally, he gave everyone his hit du jut “Home” and though, after the raucous evening he was a little out of voice and whistle it was a celebration.  

Live at Bonaroo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qa10--IPdI

He was forced to wrap up quickly because of the late start due to the power outage and announced to everyone’s dismay that there would be no encore.  But daddy was ready to go home and I had the joy of seeing a guy who is absolutely at the top of his game.  I got to see him with my daughter.  I got to see him at a cool theater in a foreign country.  Life is indeed. good