Accordion Lessons

Essay

At the age of 15, it dawned on me that the accordion isn’t cool

The Beatles killed the accordion, but their songs sound better on the instrument than the Stones

My accordion unplugged, at FireAid

I started accordion lessons in about 1977. I was 12 years old and really into rock & roll. My love for this genre was not considered when I chose to pick up the accordion. A friend of mine started taking lessons and played the instrument for me and I thought it was cool. So I signed up with his teacher. Mr. Matlejan would visit my house once a week for half-hour lessons. I learned old Croatian folk songs. I also learned to read sheet music. I would rehearse between lessons and worked my way up to a bigger accordion. I had started on a smaller beginner’s accordion, with only two rows of left-hand bass keys. As my abilities progressed, my parents then bought me a used, bigger accordion. It was white, mother of pearl plastic with black keys Looking back, I was living two musical lives. One was on my accordion, which fit in well with my family of Croatian-speaking aunts, uncles, and other relatives in San Pedro, California. My other life was as a pre-teen listening to 93KHJ, the big …

You Only Live Once

Fire on the Hill

PREPARE FOR IMMEDIATE MANDATORY EVACUATION

Brigades of psychopathic real-estate schemers plan Soviet-style ‘15-minute cities’ by the sea with special pods for aliens while US Special Forces with infrared radar hunt looters in white Econoline vans

The Watch Duty app is available to anyone whose city is burning down from both Google Play and the Apple Store.

By Ted Mann

A few days ago, before the blaze began, the National Weather Service in Los Angeles warned us to “be prepared for strong winds and fire danger.” In preparation, LA Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley has pre-deployed firepersons and emergency vehicles across the city, at the ready by 8 AM; it is the morning of January 7th, the day historic Santa Ana winds are forecasted to blow. About two hours later, with the emergency equipment and personnel in place, a live camera from ALERTCalifornia, the UC San Diego wildfire and disaster monitoring program, spots smoke. This, they say, is the first sight of the “Palisades Fire” (what became possibly the most monetarily destructive fire in US history, one of many that broke out across LA County shortly after the New Year). LA has hundreds of brushfires every year — the average is 618 per year, according to the LA County Fire Department — and normally these are rapidly extinguished. This proves to be impossible in the Palisades, even with …

Accordion Lessons

The War for Palestine

Fire on the Hill