Festivals
What is wrong with Adelaide? We call ourselves the ‘Festival State’, but far from being overrun by action we appear to be operating as a surrogate nursery for the rest of the country’s sporting events; they are born here, we suckle them, and then they unceremoniously move elsewhere. And they never call!
We lost another of our great sporting events last week, The Rugby Sevens carnival. I was lucky enough to attend two weeks ago for the carnival’s last Adelaide showcase with my son, but had I realised it was a rugby funeral I would have worn black.
The Deputy Treasurer and Minister for Tourism John Rau was unconcerned, however, by the loss of yet another great sporting event. He shrugged his shoulders and said ‘the fact is we can’t win everything’. Well, yes Minister, but why are we losing so many?
Yesterday afternoon, Kanye West put an emphatic punctuation mark on one of the most rapturous comebacks the music industry has ever seen.
Performing to in excess of 100,000 spectators at the Coachella Festival—and millions more worldwide, thanks to a generous and remarkable live YouTube stream—West’s finale was as fantastical as it was endearing.
Though West often describes himself as a designer—of music, of fashion, of aesthetic—yesterday he proved himself, more than anything, a curator. A man of impossibly varied influence and complexities. And he couldn’t have crafted a more grandiose stage to celebrate the completion of a fascinating, awkward, gritty metamorphosis.
Continue reading "Kanye stages a beautiful, dark, fantastic comeback" »
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rb says:
Liked the music and the dancing, but the guy in the red suit was seriously crap. Maybe they should have auto-tuned him instead of the backup singer. Read more »
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More hipster than you says:
LATFH I like music you’ve never even heard of! Read more »
If the clothes truly maketh the man, there are a lot of Rastafarians in Adelaide at the moment.
Dozens were out and about over the weekend, with their slouching woven hats in red, yellow and green, and their long, black dreadlocks swishing down their backs.
Strangely, many of them sported wisps of blond from the front, or even a shining, pink and completely bald cranium peeking out from their rasta gear.
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Tory Shepherd says:
That’s the one, fairsfair. There’s different spellings about the place. I reckon I owned one in 1993/94 Read more »
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stephen says:
Gladys’s don’t wear sandals and knitted hats, though they do like smells, corduroys and Bob Hope hats. And ‘loathe’ is a word only golf pros’ use. Actually…... Read more »
On a simple buzz-for-bucks basis, booze on sale at the wildly popular Summafieldayze festival is the most expensive drug on the Australian market.
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Single cans of mid-strength Smirnoff vodka and lemonade were going for the ridiculous sum of $10.50; a captive market of 30,000 punters (each shelling out $140 for a ticket) was caught in the net.
For the cost of three or four festival drinks and a couple of phone calls, any half-connected ticketholder could instead score himself a measure of illicit drugs sure to get them far closer to “the happy place” place than a few pre-mixed cans ever could.
Continue reading "Festival booze: Australia’s most expensive drug" »
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Karl says:
They do it because they can - and you, the punters, let them. Ahh for the good old days when we would load up our rubbish bins full of ice and cans and head off to a one dayer at the SCG. Read more »
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JKM says:
Well gold and silver has a strong recognised value internationally, the American republic in its early days after the revolution got by on Spanish dollars just fine. Plus, the Chinese, despite their predilection for strategic deception, are doing their very best to shore up supplies of hard assets such as… Read more »
Imagine my excitement when I discovered that a food and film festival was coming to the very suburb I live in.
Not merely a food festival. Or a film festival. But a food and film festival.
What’s more it wasn’t simply coming to my suburb. It was coming to a specific area in my suburb. According to the large glossy ad on the bus shelter it was coming to a place known to us locals as The Spot.
Continue reading "Marketing trick #253: hold an event, call it a festival" »
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formersnag says:
Sorry to be “the Grinch”, but state, territory & local governments on both sides, all over the place, have been increasing spending on these festivals, fire works, etc, for 10 to 20 years now. The boom years are gone & there is not as much mining royalties around to buy… Read more »
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Tom says:
Agreed. A pub near me recently got in a few no name DJ’s on a Sunday arvo and had the gall to call it a festival. No, something like Good Vibrations or Big Day Out is a festival - big name overseas artists, wide open spaces. The beer garden of… Read more »
Chinese Lunar New Year is just three days away and Beijing is once again preparing to become a hotbed of pyromania.
Residents have been busily stockpiling firecrackers to set off on Chinese Lunar New Year’s Eve, which this year falls on February 13, and on New Year’s Day.
Chinese New Year, also known as Spring Festival, is all about reuniting with family, and a typical Lunar New Year’s Eve might include a special dinner and setting off firecrackers at midnight to welcome in the new year, which this year will be the Year of the Tiger.
Continue reading "Chinese Lunar New Year: a hotbead of pyromania" »
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Sam says:
@Zeta, and last but not least. The “Two Systems, One China” policy announcement in 1997 regarding Hong Kong is the clearest example to date of the ample wisdom of the CCP. I haven’t heard of anything that can even compare with that sort of flexibility coming from a democratic country,… Read more »
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Sam says:
@Zeta, “They deny the organ harvesting of political enemies, and the testing of chemical weapons against Ughyrs, even as evidence mounts to the contrary. Evidence that is nigh on impossible to obtain because of their iron curtain. “ Aha, so the non-existent mounting evidence is impossible to obtain? Are you… Read more »
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