Lou and I went to see dr brown play the tuxedo cat. It was the final night of the mammoth comedy festival and our last chance to catch this californian doctor clown this year.
He is insane. We hooted with laughter, and I can’t even remember why. He’s just really silly, and open, and ridiculous.
But the lovely thing was this: the week before i’d been to his “clowning with doctor brown” workshop, and as i saw him in performance – it all made sense. Everything he’d been trying to teach us, all the wisdom he’d aimed to impart; it all fell into place.
The workshop was crazy. I went because Lynne and Ahmarnya were going, and i’d wanted to try this for a while. The thing about simple clown is not that you have to make people laugh, which is good as I have no skills in physical comedy, but that when you fail – people need to see and feel your genuine emotional response. You need to connect authentically. To be vulnerable.
We all try to act upset, or show our masks of distress and failure, but the clown can simply be open and present, and let the whole world in.
It feels impossible, the more you try, the more you fail even at failing.
And then comes a moment of extreme frustration where you surrender completely, and the doctor calls out, “Yes you’re beautiful right there, we love you there!” Ah, thank heavens i got it finally, the surrender moment.
of course, if you can make people laugh.. it’s a whole lot better.
And the next day – after the Castlemaine festival madness – we all supported the legendary Sam Downing in her Sew Funky event “Beasty Beats” at the Elphinstone Hotel.. an awesome day of monster-making. Around 80 people, children and their parents, designed and created their own monsters in all shapes and sizes. At the end we had a monster monster dance. Fun.
One of the highlights of the Castlemaine festival was the Baroqu-eoke performance, “So you think you can Prance”. This was a very fun event. We’d seen them dressing up in the early part of the day, and i was looking forward to finding out more. The costumes were magnificent, as were the instruments and their players. Genuine harpsichord, viol-de-gamba, mediaeval flute and fiddle.
For the first part of the show, the MC taught us a range of emotional expression, Baroque-style. When expressing emotions in the world of Baroque (restoration?) one must always place the weight on one foot or the other. Never evenly balanced.
After teaching us the basics, we were asked to dance these emotions to a series of classic karaoke numbers: Dancing Queen, Don’t you Want me Baby? and You Should be Dancing. Classic! At one point, there were no volunteers for the karaoke, so Tim in his role as Barry Fluff the festival host pointed at Sam and me, calling out, “They’ll do it! Choose those two!” Nice one Tim – clearly we were being too shy. Sam and i belted out a raucous version of ‘Don’t you want me baby’, and were awarded a free jug of Pimms next door at Madame Brussels. Sam mentioned later on that perhaps we might have attempted to sing in a more refined way, however i’d been following the lead of the “Village Idiot” character who would sing in the most tuneless and hopeless way.
Tim made a quick video, you’ll get the idea. Oh boo, it doesn’t work. Why not? Oh well you’ll have to go over to their site to watch it.
i’ve seen this woman before somewhere. She plays a very good innocent character, pretending to be no-one in particular, who then goes on to take the audience’ breath away with her incredible voice. So as well as buying her cd, i went out hunting on the youtubes and found these live performances, from a show in Melbourne in 2008: “Yego Luelku (Leave Me Alone)”
Wait, there’s another one: “All My Wives”.
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So i’ve been looking for photographs of the Bohemian Ball. Luckily there are some really good photographers hanging around with this crowd. There’s even a new book coming out that seems inspired by the ball and its coterie of performers – “This City Speaks to Me“.
The shows have been hit and miss over the years. i think i went to the first one at the Regal Ballroom in Northcote, and the music was decidedly non-boho. Disappointing in fact. But they’ve settled on a combination of Spoonbill and the Barons of Tang for recent years, and also for their whirlwind tour of Australia last year.
Found a set of (NSFW!) photos from the March 2010 ball, by Luke David Kellett over at flickr.
i just found this entry from Dellywood. Yay for Dell she caught the photo finish at the [Secret Location] Cup Day Derby. i have some photos too from last year’s Billy Cart Rally but haven’t put them anywhere public yet. i heard rumours that the guy who won had been training for months. He was a wild-card re-entrant after being knocked out early on. He is also the one who filmed all the other races by following on his skateboard; and for that i think his victory was so well-deserved.
Eastment St Derby 2010 on Vimeo on Vimeo
Here’s some footage from 2009, shot by Man Monkey Durphy. The winner that year was top3 in 2010 as well, i believe.
Dan also has 2009 shots on flickr, here in a slideshow.
The Age has photos from 2009 here.
Hope they run it again and again.
Too much fun.
Sleepy from dellstewart on Vimeo.
i can’t help it. Silly videos make me laugh. This one comes via the amazing Glen. Thank you Glen. A scary eighties number with Big Shoes.
i think i discovered this on the same night as i was introduced to the whole “Literal Lyrics” thing.. eg for Total Eclipse of the Heart: For some reason Sony has banned you tube from playing the video in Australia. This one works because there’s a TV and a cat. No, she’s not as good a singer as Bonnie.
Here’s another collection of literal lyrics videos, including [you have been warned] The Rickroll Himself.
Hilarious. Ricky pushes all the wrong buttons for his opener at the Golden Globes. Nice work. i especially liked his comments about The Tourist, as he acknowledges the unfairness of the joke: “i haven’t even seen the film, but who has?” Implying the Globes run on bribery won’t get him any fans with his employers, but he brought plenty of his own special kind of boundary-crossing laughter. And let’s face it, everyone’s talking about it so they won’t mind too much.
i’m sure he really did have lawyers look at the scientology joke beforehand.
Nice work from a rapper known as Jasiri X in the United States of Hell: “What if the Tea Party was black?”.
The Tea Party have been seriously dissing their president. If they were left-wing or non-white, the media would interpret their messages as seditious, treacherous and Anti-American. They would be vilified in the most ugly ways imaginable. But no, the Tea Party is the darling of the media with their horribly misguided and intellectually-damaged thought missiles. Reprehensible rubbish.
Thanks for this video!!
via YouTube – What if the Tea Party was Black?.
Ok, irony alert. i got the video from “Stuff White people do”, chapter entitled: listen to anti-racist music. Yes i’m trying to salve my bruised conscience. Whatever.
While i’m talking of anti-racist music, one of my all-time favourites is “George Bush don’t like black people” by the Legendary KO. Impressed to see this song has its own wikipedia page.
..and here’s the original quote from Kanye West that led to the remix:
..and another video mix
This originally came out back in ’05. Xeni at BoingBoing pointed everyone toward it. You can still get the mp3 file too: “George Bush Don’t Like Black People” MP3 (8.7MB). [Lyrics here.]
On the other side of The Pond, a 15 year old gains notoriety with this stirring speech during the recent demonstrations around education fees. Good to see the next generation coming up and with such strength and passion. Really like the way he weaves narrative into the invective. No music, but a really good talk eh.
via YouTube – 15 year old Tells Establishment to Stick-it..
You won’t believe it but Jessie Tucker is having her 3rd exhibition this year, and it’s a beauty.
Another round of 3D painting-style sculptures, this time focussing on fables like the 3 wise jellyfish, the pigeon and the birds of paradise, the tiger and the moth. Gorgeous, magical pieces.
Get yourself to the nunnery and drink in this splendour.
C3 Gallery, Abbotsford Convent, until 14th November – hurry!
