Goodnight, Your Gracious Majesty

Hard to believe that HM Queen Elizabeth II, of Canada…

…the United Kingdom, and Australia, New Zealand and her other realms and territories, is no longer with us.

She served her subjects well.

May she rest in peace.

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Please note, there will be nothing more published here today.

R.I.P. Kenny Rogers!

Yes, I know this is over a week late, but I just watched a brilliant programme on the History Channel which moves me to write this.

With so many people dying, I didn’t feel up to an R.I.P. for one individual, but seeing him on tv…

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….performing so superbly with Dolly Parton on their last big show, I have reviewed that decision.

We used to sing his songs in our university union bar, hamming up ‘Lucille,’ and intensifying our drawl for ‘Don’t Take Your Love To Town.’

But he was damn good and right now I’m going to open my laptop and listen to his greatest hits.

What better tribute can I pay him, on this rainy ‘stay-home’ Jakarta afternoon?

R.I.P. King Michael of Romania

Breaking news, that a hero is gone.

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Romania’s last king dies at age 96

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Michael of Romania did his utmost to save his nation from the blight of communism at the end of World War II and although he did not pay the ultimate price that so many of his loyal subjects did during the subsequent reign of red evil that lasted not too far off fifty years…

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A Romanian stamp issued in 2014, twelve years after he was able to return,

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…he did suffer a similar period of exile from his homeland.

Like so many of the Balkan Royals, restoration to his rightful throne was denied him, no referendum allowed by the second-rater who rose to power in the aftermath of Romania’s liberation from Ceausescu’s monstrous marxist tyranny.

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King Michael was a good man, and would, undoubtedly, have been a good constitutional monarch, had fate and faithless politicians not betrayed him.

RIP Jupe!

Very sorry to read of the death this past weekend, at only 36, of Julia Perez, aka Jupe.

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She was a beautiful young woman and, had not cancer  cut her life short, would undoubtedly have had a long career ahead of her.

Rest In Peace, Jupe!

RIP Leonard Cohen…

21 September 1934 – 10 November 2016

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While my middle-aged Indonesian neighbour lady often has a Beatles tape playing on Sundays as she hangs out her washing, my own preference has been to find Leonard Cohen’s Greatest Hits on You Tube and let those beautiful songs ripple across the little park across the street.

That one about the Chelsea Hotel (in New York) always made me smile…

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….not so much for the lyrics but for the interview, when he was asked if the reference to his and Janis Joplin’s fun and games had upset Janis.

“Not much,” I think his response went, ” but my Mother…!”

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• I’ll miss him, but, as is the case with all great artists, his works will live on, and be enjoyed by millions. 

RIP Merle Haggard

Today is a big day, the birthday of somebody very important to me, and we shall be chatting/skyping later, assuming PLN, Indonesia’s power company, doesn’t do a black-out on us.

But on opening the Washington Times this morning, I was saddened to see that my all-time fave country singer, Merle Haggard, died yesterday, on his 79th birthday…

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… gone to chorus in God’s Grand Old Opry with other lost legends like Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash, no doubt under the benign tutelage of Hank Williams.

I first heard Okie from Muskogee, his greatest hit, in the summer of 1969, in the bar of the Empire Hotel, in Stratford, Ontario.

The Empire, built and owned a hundred years or so ago by one of my great uncles, is also gone, and no doubt the big guy in the hard hat who was singing it then is long gone too.

But I liked the lyrics so much that I went to a record shop and bought the album. So many great songs, and he sang them with the same gusto he brought to his patriotism.

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A great singer, a great American and a great guy.

Here’s a link  so you can sing along with me later. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGU2GkomuqQ

Bye, Merle. 

RIP Windy Septia!

Like most bloggers, I take pleasure from any increase in viewing stats. The more who take an interest in my observations, the happier I am. 

Hence when my stats darn near doubled these past few days, I was delighted – until I realised why.

It turns out that a lovely dangdut singer, Windy Septia, about whom I wrote a few months ago…

• Dina Jazz? Windy? WOW! Sabun Colek, Penyanyi2 Dangdut Cantik2!

…has died, at the shockingly young age of 21. I gather it was due to some kind of cancerous tumour. Windy was one half of the Duo Sabun Colek.

So I still my cheering and share the sadness of her many fans.

She got my attention because she was one of those brave TKIs, those courageous girls who go to work abroad, in often menial jobs, in situations that are often dangerous, rarely fun.

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• But by talent and luck she escaped her drudgery and won fame.

I append a photo that shows how lively and pretty she was. 

RIP, Windy.

RIP, Sir Christopher Lee

Sad to see that the actor at whose fangs we teenagers once shuddered has passed away, though at a ripe old age.

oooooooooooooooooooo

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Christopher Lee was a great success, not perhaps with the effete critics who pen disdainful reviews for stuck-up ‘heavy’ newspapers, but with the great British public who flocked to “Dracula,” “Dracula, Prince of Darkness,” “Dracula Has Risen From The Grave…”

Well you get the picture!

Looking back, it was an innocent era in many ways, our scariest moments located in the back stalls, or the balcony, in the days when cinemas had balconies!

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How many cinemas in Jakarta today have balconies? I’ve no idea about the UK or Canada!

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Nowadays, with truly satanic forces at war with civilisation, it must be hard to really scare a movie theatre audience.

But Lee did. And did it well!

Adieu, Count!