Finally we made it to the performance night.
“first chorus: a retrospective” was a celebration of the first 4 years of Virginia Bott’s amazing Band of Singers. Such a joy to be involved with a magic and gorgeous bunch of good people.
The venue: Anytime Place in Brunswick. Gray Taylor and her team of speakeasy angels worked hard to get the venue looking its best. They are incredibly adept at adapting their environment to suit different kinds of performance.
The acoustics and sound engineering: Simon did a truly amazing job with the sound setup. What a dude. Thanks to Marianna and Ro for pointing out the need to turn down the band and the solo singers. Amazingly, we really had a good balance of volume from choir and soloist/band. (i heard later on from someone who sat both back and front that it was still pretty quiet out back in the standing room.
The audience: what a delightful and generous audience we had, filling out the space with warmth and focus.
The director: everyone knows now that Virginia Bott is a complete genius.
The new CD: Cave of Lights, the collaboration between Emma Tonkin and first chorus: band of singers is now available, hot from the CD burning presses. Launch should be around February. So lucky to have a preview copy that we gave a good spin last night after the gig.
Woohoo. Wish we’d recorded it.
Did anyone video?
Went to a meeting in Richmond, came out to find my bike had subtly changed.
Without knowing the original condition, can you spot the difference?
(This photo was taken after unlocking the bike and moving to another location.)
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!
“i do know what it’s like to grow up feeling like you don’t belong.”
okay, Barack’s popularity might be rapidly declining with people living in the USA (due to the heinous media campaign against him), but i’ve got to say he is becoming one of my all time heroes. Who gets hold of the US presidency and makes a video like this, for gay and lesbian kids still at school?
Go Obama.
Watch and enjoy.
via YouTube – President Obama: It Gets Better.
Boxing Day (PS): i’ve just found one of the sequels, where White House staff add to this message with their own stories. It’s so good to see this kind of message coming out of the US government. They have a whole part of the wh.gov website geared toward the campaign. wh.gov/itgetsbetter Which is part of the larger campaign at itgetsbetter.org
PS: i know many people are probably angry with Obama’s administration for fighting to prevent a Judge making the decision to get rid of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military position.. even though they’ve said they want to get rid of it.
Sigh. Seems bizarre. They say they want the change, but when a judge gives it to them, they go, “ah no wait til we’re ready”.
Postscript, December’10: well Obama was good for it. The military, congress and the senate all worked together to repeal the DADT regime. Good news.
i wonder if this Bill Hicks video is offensive. Probably i shouldn’t post it without listening first, but my speakers aren’t working, so here goes.
Oh yeah, there’s a severe language warning on this one. NSFW!! And it’s likely to offend supporters of military personnel. Thank you Bill.
So i discovered this comic via my new android phone. And i really like it.
One of those stories where you just want to read the next bit, and the next bit. Funny characters, relationship issues, obscure musical references, interesting tee-shirts, plenty of punchline, engaging visuals.
Yes i keep wanting to know what happens to the characters, so i think i’ve read 6 years worth in 6 weeks. Keeps me from spending all my spare time watching television series like BSG and Glee.
If you’re into comics at all, i’d recommend this one.
[Relevant links]
Update: 27Nov.
Well I’ve read the entire series now, and I’m currently having to wait for a single update per day. If I’m lucky.
Oh how I wish I had read more slowly.
Listening to an episode of background briefing, where they’re talking about how the Eastern quoll was wiped out in the 60s, and the Western quoll is endangered. So is it time to open up ‘captive breeding’ for quolls, and allow suburban dwellers to take in their own pet quoll.. instead of getting another cat?
Greg Miles reckons it’s an “anti-extinction” policy. A ranger from Kakadu, he has seen native animal populations ravaged by all kinds of ferals.
On one hand, the income could really help native animal breeders. On the other, animal rights advocates might say that marsupials shouldn’t have to live in captivity, with humans.
Good program, worth a listen.
Here’s the mp3 file on the abc site.
Sugar gliders sound like bad pets though. They bark, and their bark sounds like a mad car alarm. They will urinate on you as soon as they wake up. But in the US, people are hopping on the sugar glider bandwagon like kids lining up for sugar at a birthday party.
photo credit: pierre pouliquin
Dude you have no Qu’ran.
You’ve got to love the Autotune remixes.
i don’t know what’s going on in the USA at the moment. They’ve got a brilliant leader, and a whole bunch of intelligent creative compassionate people working for social change, but somehow there’s still idiots who want to burn Holy Books during a really ugly world war.
And then there’s the cool people who just run up and spoil the media event. On top of that, someone is going to make an autotune remix out of anything these days.
—————————————- Thinking:
One of the comments on the youtube video page was this: ‘so, let me get this straight: hippies love to burn flags but can’t stand to see the Koran get burnt?’
Interesting point.
i think it’s a bit like Jewish jokes. You can make all the anti-Jewish jokes you like, if you are in fact a Jewish person.
You can burn the US flag if you’re a US citizen. (okay, it’s not legal, i mean under my rules which i’m making up right now)
You can criticise the heck out of your own relationship, tear yourself to shreds, burn the Bible if you’re raised a Christian, find the weak spots in your cooking strategies, etc.
But lay off other people’s business.
. . . . .
How about this joyful piece from andrea dorfman in Halifax. The same woman who made that previous one.
Cycling is something i love too.
Thanks Andrea!
a beautiful film, via Angelina in the North of Italy, where her new yoga practice is making her seek out tranquility. She’s always had an eye for gorgeousness. This piece comes from people in Halifax, Nova Scotia, one of my favourite places. A woman called Tanya Davis is the poet, and Andrea Dorfman the animator.
Here’s another by the same team, Tanya and Andrea. i like it.
(after the break) Read the rest of this entry »
Here at the Grandview, we’ve just joined a very wonderful food co-op. Exciting times for foodlovers.
i deliberately used some bad English in an email. (i mean grammatically non-standard English.)
My housemate was appalled.
So i took it all too far, with a genuine LoLcats poster from icanhazcheeseburger.
i’m fascinated by the way new language evolves in a new environment. LoLcats has become one of the latest new English dialects. If i put on my linguist hat for a minute, it’s easy to find a quote from David Crystal (one of the world’s most amazing academic linguist people), in an article at the BBC.
Word play For English speakers there are cult websites devoted to cult dialects – “LOLcat” – a phonetic and deliberately grammatically incorrect caption that accompanies a picture of a cat, and “Leetspeak” in which some letters are replaced by numbers which stem from programming code. “There are about a dozen of these games cooked up by a crowd of geeks who, like anybody, play language games,” said Professor Crystal. “They might not be reading Shakespeare and Dickens but they are reading and cooking up these amazing little games – and showing that they are very creative. I’m quite impressed with these movements.”
Word play For English speakers there are cult websites devoted to cult dialects – “LOLcat” – a phonetic and deliberately grammatically incorrect caption that accompanies a picture of a cat, and “Leetspeak” in which some letters are replaced by numbers which stem from programming code.
“There are about a dozen of these games cooked up by a crowd of geeks who, like anybody, play language games,” said Professor Crystal.
“They might not be reading Shakespeare and Dickens but they are reading and cooking up these amazing little games – and showing that they are very creative. I’m quite impressed with these movements.”
Okay that really belongs on my work blog, but hey, everyone loves the LoLcats, don’t they?
