Cohen the Violinist, 2013

Once again, it is Labor Day Weekend! This is the time of the year that Ms. Magic Meryle Cohen, Cohen the Violinist, publishes her annual celebration in the U-T San Diego. Below is this year's edition.

But, before you read her story (and you might have already seen it in the newspaper and you just want to know more about her), you first need to watch a little video I made of her as an entry in an Oceanside International Film Festival contest.

The OIFF had a little contest to celebrate Oceanside's 125^th Anniversary. They wanted people to submit short videos that were about or recorded in Oceanside. To enter, a person just had to send a message to their Facebook account with a link to the video. If they thought it was OK, they posted it to their Facebook page. Voting was done by Likes of the videos' posts.

Magic Meryle called me and a left messages on the machine telling me about the contest. She thought that she'd be a good subject of a video celebrating Oceanside. Of course, she was right! She plays at the Oceanside Sunset Market the first Thursday of each month and the entry deadline was the following Monday. We had little time to plan.

I got to the Sunset Market after work that Thursday and found Magic Meryle. She had a script ready complete with cue cards. We recorded about five takes of the routine. The last take went without a hitch (well, she did have a little trouble getting her violin under her chin because her hat's ear got in the way) so that is what you get to see. She also had some photographs of her with members of New Kids on the Block (while they were still kids), Eddie Murphy and Paul Rodriguez that she wanted in the video.

I raced home and made the video to upload to YouTube. I told the OIFF of it and they added it to their contest.

The attendees of the Film Festival didn't get to see it. The video didn't win the contest. It didn't have much time to get attention and I don't have all that many Facebook friends to stuff the ballot box. All the other entries in the contest did get shown. Half of them didn't even celebrate Oceanside, they were simply shot there. I guess there was one criterion that they didn't mention: that it had to have slick production values. I thought the point was to celebrate Oceanside. Feh!

Magic Meryle is an Oceanside treasure! The Oceanside International Film Festival's attendees deserve a full refund (even though they don't know what they missed)!

Here is Oceanside's Cohen the Violinist.



And now you can read her story. She's got a new picture this year. Why does she look so different?

Magic Meryle plays at the Oceanside Sunset Market on the first Thursday of each month. Try to go see her. And please don't forget her tip box.

And tell her Chuckbert sent you!