Off The Record
by Mike FarragherRSS 
Recent Posts
- An open letter to the Catholic League on rant against David Bowie video “The Next Day” - VIDEO
- All-star benefit for great Irish musician Mickey Finns’ Ray Kelly who died tragically
- Amen to Rend Collective Experiment - VIDEO
- Finally some new U2 music from Bono and the boys?
- The Jersey Shore is back after Hurricane Sandy - The Irish Festival kicks off
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Most of the plot lines on reality TV shows are paint by numbers -- a fat guy emerges from The Biggest Loser camp with six pack abs here, a drag queen lip-synchs for his life and transforms into a gender confused butterfly on RuPaul’s Drag Race over there. And of course, American Idol is the mack daddy of them all.
I wish I had a camera to capture what has been going on with Beannacht over these last few months. I could sell it as Irish American Idol to one of the networks!
Faithful readers of this column will remember the story I wrote about Thomas Johnston, my mild-mannered accountant and financial planner who told me at tax time that he was going to pursue his lifelong dream of performing music. He raved about his niece, Deirdre Margaret Forrest, 21, and how they would combine their love of Irish and contemporary music in a folk milieu.
Long before New Jersey’s the Gaslight Anthem released their new album, American Slang, this week, comparisons to another famous Garden State rocker have followed them every step of the way.
I AM MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!
New Jersey has always been the butt of jokes, and as a proud resident of the Garden State I get my back up when I hear jokes about the state bird being the mosquito, or how everyone in the state is connected to the waste management business like in The Sopranos.
TV has been particularly rough on New Jerseyans, with shows like Real Housewives of New Jersey, Jerseylicious, and MTV’s abominable Jersey Shore getting huge ratings on cable. One friend remarked that all of this publicity was making New Jersey hip, but I am deathly afraid that people living in Oklahoma watch these shows and think we all have big hair and fake orange spray tans.
