Tegan And Sara At The Button Factory

I went to see Tegan And Sara at the Button Factory last night. Great set, great venue. The changes they've made to The Button Factory are not that noticeable, especially when the place is thronged, as it was last night, it's more open now and the stage is a little more accessible. The sound was great, helped by the fact that the band were really tight and rockin out. Their fans were out in force treating them like mini Elvis's. In return, they charmed us all, interspersing the tracks with some pretty hilarious stories. Great Gig!!

Movies, Plays and Music

Last weekend I went to see The Savages in The Screen. I've always been fond of the cinema, but it really is looking worse for wear, the popcorn machine is spitting out an unsavory oily smell and the seats in Screen 3 are packed as tight as a Ryanair flight, so it was a stinky and uncomfortable experience.
The plot is no Friday night fun fest, two damaged and emotionally dysfunctional siblings have to care for their dementia suffering estranged father. Philip Seymour Hoffmann and Laura Linney play the siblings, and they do it really well sharing some nice comic moments both overall it felt laboured, The Savages might have achieved greatness if they had shaved 5 - 15 seconds of pretty much every scene, but they didn't so it dragged.

Fool For Love last night in the Peacock, raced along at a much more energetic pace. A Sam Shepard play from the early 1980's "Eddie, a stunt man returns once again to his girl, May. In a motel room in the middle of nowhere they thrash out their love in a doomed relationship" This thrashing involved tequila, hollering and even some lassoing, but no amount of Don Wycherley throwing himself on the floor, door slamming and explosions (Yes!) convinced me that these people were anything more that caricatures. It takes more than a little yelling to create passion, chemistry and tension, Fool For Love lacked these despite the best efforts of the cast.

Tonight I'm off to The Button Factory to see Tegan And Sara, it's my first time to the venue and I've heard it's great, so I'm looking forward to seeing them there.

Prince is playing Croke Park on the 16th of June and I am sooooo there. Tickets go on sale on March 5th so if any members of my family out there are stuck for a birthday present idea.....

Sarah, Matt, Jimmy and Ben

And Cameron Diaz, and Harrisson Ford, and Brad Pitt and and.....

The Original.....



The Response.....

Bloody letter

Quite well written really.....

Bitch Is The New Black!

Got this from Una.

About time there was a positive viral video about Hilary.

Oscar win for Falling Slowly

Here's the announcement and acceptance speeches, check out Jon Stewart calling Marketa back on stage to say her piece, Rock On!

Dublin City Council Announces Covert Police State

Yes, this guy is for real, and he is talking about Dublin, Ireland.



Covert operations, huh?

It's from The Alex Jones Show an American syndicated news/talk show broadcast from Austin, Texas. Alex is known as a bit of a conspiracy theorist, and calls himself an infowarrior.

Yup.

A little taste of Jimi

We covered Are You Experienced a couple of weeks ago on the show, which brought this ad to mind, Pepsi wins!

Digiloops

Just as websites and videos go viral on the W, so does language, adding ies to the end off a word has been a recent trend (although it might now be so last yearsies, if so, byesies))
Heart is a current one doing the rounds, I heart this and I heart that as you do, and Rapture Ponies has just claimed it, (controversial)

Fads are off course nothing new, but maybe they could do with a new name for the digital age, (and why not) In the spirit of invention I offer Digiloop, in honour of the king of fads, the Hula Hoop.

For example, digilooping right now is the word heart, (and the word swede obv.)

Hmmm...perhaps it's a bit lame...any other suggestions?

I'm keeping "on the W" BTW

Writers strike ends

The Hollywood writers strike is over, though not all shows are going back in to production.

If you are used to watching your favourite shows on RTE this won't make any difference to you as they tend to be pretty random about what they show and when.

I heard on Newstalk this morning that Irish Cinema owners have been experiencing a bumper time and have suggested that the strike is actually helping them, (though what they planned to do if the movies ran out I have no clue, silly people)

It will be a while before production returns to normal so in the meantime I think I am going to start watching The Wire, from Season One on DVD.

The Devils Glen

Apologies for the rather shaky shot, it was taken on Monkeys Moto (a style over substance purchase)
The picture's from The Devils Glen, in Wicklow, where we went walking with the copywriter at the weekend. I'd heard about the glen before but it was my first time there and I'm definitely going back soon, with a better camera. Its a beautiful peaceful woodland with a Sculpture trail featuring contemporary sculpture by Irish and international artists. Dotted here and there are these little plaques with slightly poignant dog related thoughts, like "doesn't the dog look younger out here" (that made the copywriter sigh)

Something for the tourists?

Roe Lane, Thomas St, 11th Febuary 2008.

Bernard and Doris

Doris Duke was a multi millionaire tobacco heiress who willed her fortune to a Charitable Foundation putting her butler Bernard Laffertty in charge. 3 years later he died himself but not without a little partying in the meantime.
Lafferty was from Creeslough in Donegal about 12 miles from where I grew up and I first heard about him in a book by ex LLoyd Cole Bassist Lawerence Donegan. No News At Throat Lake (Creeslough in Irish) tells the story of some time Laurence spent in Creeslough working for a local newspaper, and in it he references Bernard and his unusual relationship with his mistress Doris.
I remember seeing a documentary about Bernard, maybe on RTE, a couple of years ago and The Biography Channel have done a piece on him too. A 1999 Biopic about Duke cast Richard Chamberlain in the part of the Butler and now he's being played by Ralph Fiennes, opposite Susan Sarandon in Bernard and Doris. Can't wait to hear Ralphs accent.....



I dug around trying to find out a bit more about Bernard, but information is pretty scarce, he doesn't even have a wikipedia entry!!

Who says race isn't an issue?

The much lauded Super Tuesday has come and gone and the only thing it really determined was that I make some pretty fabulous pancakes - actually probably the BEST EVER pancakes.

Republican Mitt Romney, has dropped out leaving John Mc Cain to battle it out with Mike Huckabee for the Grand Old Party nomination .
Though there has been a lot of heat around Obama and Clinton and how close the race is between them, Mc Cain has been trundling along securing a lot of support and being...well...kind of inoffensive. I've got to admit, this is starting to worry me.

The thing is that the Democratic vote is split down the middle, and a hell of a lot of energy has to be spent between now and decision time. The unfortunate reality is that closing in on the actual presidential election half of the democratic voting public are going to experience huge disappointment as their chosen one, Clinton or Obama, fails to make the cut. The winning nominee is then faced with trying to win over voters who up until the eleventh hour, were hoping and praying they wouldn't be running. After all that, will enough democrats take to the polls, come election day? You see, if Super Tuesday had been the deciding factor, disappointed Obama fans, or disappointed Clinton fans, whichever, would have a whole heap of time to get over themselves and focus on getting a democrat back in the Whitehouse. There's going to be a lot of election fatigue out there.
Meanwhile, there's Mc Cain, with all that time to look presidential and......well.....ornery (that matters to Americans I think)

So, I'm wondering, Maybe Mc Cain??

Meanwhile, I think Scroobius Pip wrote this for Christocrat Huckabee and Morman Mitt.

The Desktop

Rapture Ponies started this and Rick has followed suit, so in the spirit of copying people, this is my current desktop. I am about to switch to Leopard so no doubt it will change soon.
The Picture is of Astronaut Thomas. P. Stafford, with the NASA mascot Snoopy, taken prior to the Apollo 10 Mission in May 1969. On that particular mission the Command Module was called "Charlie Brown" and the Lunar Module was called "Snoopy"
I know it's a little nerdy but could care less.

Some Ticketmaster Irony

What if the word verification caused me to miss it.....?

Irish Music Television

I went along to the Irish Music Television launch in 4 Dame Lane last night. Although there was plenty of Tiger Beer on offer I had to opt for the Red Bull as I had my wheels with me. Note to self - don't EVER drink 4 Red Bulls again, know the one that's one too many.

Entertainment for the evening featured a selection of bands from the Eircom Unsigned Bands competition, (check out Cirrus by Saccade, sounds a little like Silverchair do these days)

IMTV offers a fairly good selection of Irish music videos and plan to create all kinds of new programmes for and about the Irish music scene, made available on whatever techie gadget you prefer to use for your viewing pleasure. So far they're using the Joost platform, and you can also check them out on myspace.

The quite brilliant Dark Room Notes have a few of their videos included, including Shake Shake My Ceiling. I used to play Love Like Nicotine a lot on the show, and I love this track too.