Holed up in his room at night after teaching high school math all day, Agasthya Pradhan-Shenoy tinkered around with his computer, making music.

When he’d compiled a bunch of tracks he called himself Swelo and put out a record he called Escalator Music. It became an instant internet hit, blowing up first with the the world’s greatest collection of angry elitisits: Reddit.

With a hit record came demands for live dates. 

Agasthya recruited some other teachers, Amberine Huda (couldn’t make it to Happy Hour), Jon Holt on drums and Andrew Tripodo on guitar, and Swelo the band was born.

Here they play live acoustic versions of three songs. To get the full effect check out the whole album.

Rob Owen was just a regular guy with a perfectly sane idea: open a surf shop in New Orleans. Surprisingly, the NO Surf Shop lasted a few years. Then Rob discovered he had a malignant brain tumor and was given 6 months to live.

Over his second or third beer, depending whether he wrote the number accurately on his arm so he’d remember, Rob describes what it’s like to stare death in the face. And live to tell the tale. Eight years after his 6 month death sentence, Rob Owen is  the longest surviving GBM brain tumor human he can find on the face of the earth.

A second chance at life brings with it a determination to live it on your own terms. To that end Rob sat down with his daughter, Edie, and wrote a book, Spy Boy, Cheyenne, And Ninety-Six Crayons.

Mari Kornhauser walks a fine line between truth and lies, Pit Bulls and diluted gene pools, Treme or not Treme. An award winning screen writer, film director and one of the writers who penned HBO’s Treme, Professor Kornhauser (LSU screenwriting) spent the day – courtesy of a mix-up with the show’s starting time – Buddha-like beneath the orange blossom tree outside Casa Borrega.

The meditation gave Mari a great idea for a TV show and a Zen-like approach to Governor Jindal.

Andrew Duhon returns from too long in Texas, catches up on some reading…

… and delivers his customary wry observations.

All the photos on this page at Casa Borrega were taken by Happy Hour photographer (he can be yours too for a very affordable fee) Douglas Engel.