Nuinca.com

The Walkmen and Nuinca

Here’s the brief, epic and entirely missed connection between your lovely host and one of his favorite bands.

The Walkmen opened for the Fleet Foxes in Jacksonville this Tuesday night. Luis and I bought tickets months ago. The Fleet Foxes are great and all, but The Walkmen is who we wanted to see. The Rat, Victory, Angela Surf City, While I Shovel The Snow. Yeah, awesome, all of it.

This story begins at Indochine, a Thai restaurant in downtown Jacksonville. Diana and I were seated super-late, about 10 minutes until 8 (when The Walkmen were scheduled to take the stage) and Luis and Beth managed to join us while we ate. Figuring no-one in the history of music has ever started a concert on time, we enjoyed our beers and satay.

I noticed two guys sitting two tables away. The one facing me caught my attention because he was kinda gangly (like me), ginger (like me) and wearing a khaki suit that can only be described as perfectly bedraggled, like he spent a lot of money to look so unkept. I also noticed that two buttons were missing from his right suit jacket.

Blah blah, whatever. I know you’re judging me for noticing his suit jacket buttons. But I notice that sort of stuff, OK?

Missing jacket buttons and his tablemate left a few minutes before 8. We finished 30 minutes later and made it to The Florida Theatre not long after, only to realized we missed The Walkmen set. Crushing loneliness set in.

Fortunately, the Fleet Foxes were as amazing in person as everyone says and our worries drifted away in Ragged Wood and $7 pours of Johnnie Walker Black…until I checked the photo gallery from the show on Jacksonville.com

Above, my friends, is the photo of my favorite frontman playing his concert at The Florida Theatre in Jacksonville. Two buttons missing from the right jacket of his perfectly formless khaki suit. Ugh.

Chalk this one under the Missed Connections section of your favorite local alternative weekly. “Ginger with all of his buttons looking for ginger missing two buttons.”

What makes Nuinca so Nuincalicious

I get questioned about the meaning behind “Nuinca” with some regularity. Mostly from half-conscious checkout clerks looking to pad corporate email lists, but occasionally from hearty drunk curious folk who want to know the etymology.

If you’re a close friend, you’ve heard this story before, so close this tab and tune back next week when I discuss how uncomfortable the word “taint” (in all uses) makes me.

New visitors and non-friends, here we go.

Nuinca is the phonetic translation of a Romanian phrase for “Not yet”. It’s not that I love the phrase, but I do love the flow of the letters, and hell, having a six-letter URL is awesome. If you happen to be married to a Romanian *cough*, Nuinca is pronounced “New-Inca”, but whatever, it’s my word now so pronounce it however you’d like.

There’s another reason behind the Nuinca madness. This guy (I refuse to his name here, in fear of cross-tainting my SEO with his) happens to share my name, along with at least one accomplished novelist, a British parliamentarian and some guy who created the AutoIt automation language.

So there’s your explanation. Google Jonathan Bennett and you’ll get dozens of pages of ugh. Google Nuinca and you’ll get exact what you’re looking for.