Lucozade For Strength & The Funniest Fraction In Dublin

This is a bit of a cleaning house post. The folks were in town this past week, tales of which I'll post soon - you can check out photos on the right. But, as it's been a while since I last wrote, and nothing major has happened recently, this is going to be a bit of a potpourri of random musings, vignettes if you will, from the past few weeks in and around Dublin.

A few weeks ago I attended a great concert in Dublin at place a called the Sugar Club (which I repeatedly and mistakenly referred to as alternately the Sugar Bowl, the Cotton Club and occasionally the Sugar Shack). Despite my tenuous grasp on its name, the Sugar Club is a fantastic place to catch a show. It has a real 1950s classy feel to it - booths upholstered in red, in a tiered, stadium-style arrangement, each fitting five people people comfortably. Every booth has it's own table to set your drinks, which you can procure with relative ease from the fully stocked bar in the back at the top of the stairs. Overall a cozy but not claustrophobic feel, and all this with a great sound system to boot.

The band we went to see was called Angus & Julia Stone. A brother and sister duet from Sydney, well worth the price of admission. They have kind of a White Stripes meets Morrissey feel to them. Both Stone siblings play multiple instruments. Julia played guitar, trumpet and piano, Angus played harmonica, guitar and dobro, and they were accompanied by a solid rhythm section.

They maintained a quirky stage presence throughout the show, Angus generally mumbling things inaudibly before songs (though, from some reason he had perfectly clear annunciation when asking the soundboard guy to turn down his sister's guitar) and when not playing the trumpet or piano, Julia flitted around stage in her stockings, doing a kind of weird tippee-toe dance, and moving her hands exactly like Leonardo DiCaprio did in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? It might not sound great, but trust me, it worked. If they come to a venue near you, check them out. You can hear their tunes on their MySpace page. Just a Boy is a good song and Private Lawns was great live.

All in all it was a fun night, and ended at a reasonable hour, something which is a bit of rarity around these parts. As those who know me can attest, I've been known to push the limits on the length of an evening past the point of good judgment. Fortunately, I'm often accompanied by others with sound reasoning skills, who know when to call it a night. Not so here. They truly live up to the Irish motto and game plan for a fun evening: 'No mater when you go out, you come home tomorrow.' All this revelry, however, can lead to some very rough tomorrows.

Fortunately, they have a miracle elixir in the UK called Lucozade, developed and sold by the pharmaceuticals company GlaxoSmithKline PLC (you known we're talking industrial grade stuff here, just look at that corporate amalgamation). Essentially Gatorade on steroids, it looks and taste like rocket fuel (or at least as I imagine it would) and boy does it work wonders on the late night induced malaise. One bottle can get you from feeling like death warmed over to only slightly sub-human in just a manner of minutes.

After a particularly long weekend in which more than a couple bottles of 'zade were utilized for its curative effects, we came up with a marketing slogan that I think would truly speak to their Dublin market:

'Lucozade: Almost as good as a decent night's rest.'

Pretty sure it would fly off the shelves.

And now a note on the Dublin accent and my highly developed sense of humor.

One of my favorite things to hear in Dublin is a native saying anything with the number 3 in it. For instance, a cab driver asking for a fare of 3.30 ("That'll be tree-turty"), brings a smile to my face every time. However, the best thing to hear by far, is anything involving 3rds. The reason for this is simple: for some reason they drop the "th" sound so it's just a 't', and pronounce the 'i' as though it were a 'u.' Simply put, one third is pronounced "one turd." And yes, this makes me laugh. In fact, it amuses me so much, I'm tempted to hang around clearance sales or used car lots, in the off chance that I might hear a Dubliner and a sales person haggling over prices and have the following exchange:

"It's a lovely car, but would you be willing to take two turds off it?"
"Two turds? No, I can't do two turds. One turd, maybe. But two turds? Let's not be ridiculous."