Chalk it down!

Testing 1.. 2 .. Is this thing still working?

2008-04-22T12:38:00.003+01:00

*looks tentatively around to make sure no-one's moved the furniture*

Jayyyysus - nearly 3 months without a single solitary bleedin post. Not even a youtube video!

Now I could say that the last few months have been busy (and they have people!) but to be fair I think a better excuse is just to say that blogging seems to be a lot like going to the gym. In the early heady days you're full of that effervescent ebullience becoming somewhat fanatical with 2 or 3 posts a day (okay thats where the gym analogy ends) but then "things" start to creep in - work, drinking, more drinking and you start to get lazy.

Ahhh shur I'll write up that film review tomorrow.

Hmmm last night would make a good post but I'm just too knackered.

It's raining outside (sorry thats for the gym!)

You can tell you've lost the blogging vibe when something happens and your first instinct isn't "that'd make a great blog post"!

So lets ease back into this lark. Somehow I don't think I have the patience to recap over the last 3 months (this may or may not be done Memento style in a non-linear flashback format but Hey who knows!) so lets start with the last week or so ... and what a week it's been!

The joys of working in "education" (and I use the term oh so loosely) is that I am now officially on summer holidays so its been a case of lots of gigs and cinema with the odd bit of restaurant work thrown in to cover my high maintenance lifestyle!

So whats been going on?

Well I've seen 3 of the musical highlights of the year in the space of 2 weeks. First up was the phenomenal Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. I'd had a good feeling about this having listened to the album and no doubt the mojitos, beers and bottle of Rioja in the Winding Stair helped as well! I haven't quite made up my mind about the Venue Formerly Known as the TBMC. At the Cathy Davey gig there was a ridiculous amount of noise filtering down from the bar but that had as much to do with the quietness of Ms Davey's voice

No such issues with the bould Ms Jones! From the moment she came strutting out she gave it socks - that woman is sixteen kinds of cool - the band were class - listen anywhere that you've got a brass section, drums AND a bongo player is ok with me. She dragged various people onto the stage and the place was just hopping! The line of the night had to go to the lead guitarist of the Dap Kings (possibly even cooler than Ms Jones herself)

Band go off stage

Crowd roaring for more

Crowd roar a bit more

Guy comes on by himself

"Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings are not the kind of band who just do encores for the sake of encores...

So what I'm asking you is this ...

Are you clapping waiting for something to happen or are you going to MAKE something happen?!!"

Ligind!!

The place went mad!

Highlights Number 2 and 3 will have to wait cause I've got a poxy academic meeting to go to - so much for bleedin holidays.

...

Ahhh its good to be back in the gym

Wooooo hooooo!!

2008-01-25T09:02:00.000Z

Got my tickets for Broken Social Scene!! Not sure if it'll top their performances at the Picnic or the Temple Bar Music Centre but who cares?!!

See yis in Vicar St peoples!

John Waters on Newstalk

2008-01-23T11:39:00.000Z

I think a lot of people have been a bit reluctant to write about John Waters’ recent recent rants (and there really is no other way to describe them) about blogging for the simple reason that he’s clearly just dying to get some attention. The frankly lazy comments about bloggers being “stupid” are hilarious in their childish simplicity. For a man who holds himself out as a relatively erudite (quasi) intellectual you’d think he could come up with a more perspicacious (I just love that word) description than “stupid”.

Which brings us neatly onto his “debate” with Fergal Crehan from Tuppenceworth on Newstalk this morning. To those of you who weren’t aware of it Waters had issued a challenge to Gilroy and Byrne to find a blogger who could “string more than 3 sentences together”.

Firstly I’d like to say a huge fair play to Fergal. He was reassuringly calm and composed in the face of Waters increasingly nonsensical ranting. The 2 were both given a minute each to present their case to address the issue of whether blogs contribute anything to society (I’m paraphrasing). Waters argument was essentially that blogs (as well as being stoopid) are

entirely negative
are written by people with limited or no intelligence
are like the “CB radio of the noughties” (i.e. just a fad)
contribute nothing to society
and are the equivalent of the random scribblings we see in public toilets

Fergal’s points were simply that

you can’t make abject generalisations that all blogs are negative
some blogs are written by Nobel Peace Prize winners and journalists (Waters completely avoided the question when it was put to him that writers in his own paper have blogs)
you’re not obliged to read blogs – you filter the good from the bad

Most importantly Crehan noted that the whole point of blogs is that it gives people an opportunity to air opinions that would not necessarily find a space in the mainstream media and yes, while some of those opinions are those of cranks, you cannot possibly tar every opinion with that brush.

Two final points in me own rant. Firstly Fergal rightly took Waters to task for his random figure that apparently “60 to 70%” of the internet consists of pornography and more specifically he wondered where Mr Waters plucked this figure from. And this is where Mr Waters truly petulant childish manner shone through – “everyone knows that” (again I’m paraphrasing slightly) John Waters essentially came across like a small child who when stuck for an answer replies “just because” – but how do you know this to be true “just because! Everyone knows it’s true – stupid”

As if he hadn’t embarrassed himself enough (and the persistent talking over people really starts to grate after a while) Mr Waters managed to get the final word in – “I don’t read blogs anyway”

But they’re stupid

And negative

How do you know that Mr Waters?

Cause everyone knows it

...

Stupid

It had to happen eventually

2008-01-23T11:36:00.000Z

This is brilliant - Jerry O'Connell does a spot on piss take of the Tom Cruise Scientology video - you can see the original here

He has that laugh down pat

Honestly officer we didn't rob the child....

2008-01-21T10:39:00.000Z

What a weekend!

So it started off relatively sensibly. Saturday was all about Limerick and more specifically the Munster match. It just got better and better – free ticket for Thomond right on the touchline, free train, free hotel (thanks Eddie!).

The rain was absolutely ridiculous but luckily I’d bought the equivalent of a small tent (read oversized poncho) to keep off the tsunami that engulfed Limerick for the day. Suffice to say I was as happy as a pig in shite with only a slightly damp arse!

As for the match itself it’s funny the way you get superstitious about silly little things. This time last year, we’d somehow managed to scrounge 2 tickets for the Leicester match, the weather was equally bad and Leicester the selfish fuckers decided to ruin the party by beating Munster. Just something as stupid as going to Thomond in poxy weather can have you convinced in the back of your head that Wasps might do it. Obviously the main difference this year was that Munster had to win it and you could see from the off that no-one, not even the current champions were going to get in their way.

(Last year would be what Eddie O’Sullivan would call “a blip”!)

Personally I thought O’Gara, O’Callaghan and Foley (God we’re going to miss him) all had phenomenal matches. O’Driscoll really seems to have come into his own with the prolonged absence of O’Connell and I was delighted to see Stringer giving it socks against Reddan – roll on the 6 Nations!

The rest of the night was a blurry happy haze – this could have something to do with certain nameless friends spiking my pints of water (I tried!) with double gins – I was wondering why I couldn’t sober up!

Yesterday then I had to make it up to Naas for a friend’s 30^th. It was a perfect evening – just a few of us getting together for a dinner and lots of raimeising!

And thats when the fun started!

So after dinner we were walking back from the restaurant - myself Chris, Jen, Johnny and Steve along with Niamh (Chris & Jen’s 3 month old daughter) when we get a phone-call from the restaurant saying we’d left a bag behind. Jen and Steve decide to walk back and myself and the 2 lads carry on up the road with Niamh. (Insert appropriate 3 men and a baby joke here!)

So we’re walking along and the local Gardai pass us and give us a pretty funny look – about 5 minutes later they come back the other way and we get another funny look. Anyway we got back to the apartment to wait for Jen who has the keys and the shaggin Gardai pull up in their squad car!

“Everything alright here lads?”

“Ehhh yes guard, why?”

“We got 2 phonecalls about some suspicious activity involving a baby’s buggy and we wanted to check on ye”

“Oh right well that’d be Chris’ child”

“Right you are so, goodnight”

TWO PHONECALLS!!!

Seriously 2 things

First do the residents of Naas have nothing better to be doing?

Second generally speaking if 3 lads were going to abduct a child you’d think they’d be a bit more subtle than pushing her pram down a main street?!

Unbelievable!

Finally...

2008-01-17T11:56:00.000Z

So one of the things that I really wanted to get into this year was a bit of photography. I've started developing an interest over the last few years playing around with my compact camera but figured that if I'm going to do this properly I'd better get a decent camera.
So after much humming and hawing and driving several people in various camera shops demented with questions, I settled on getting one of these.

Thankfully some of my very generous family (thanks ma and Dale!) chipped in for one for Christmas (I'm not bleedin made of money!) and I've been utterly baffled by it ever since.

So having been inspired by Claire's portrait a day project I figured its about time I started shooting something. So here are the first few efforts.

I'm debating whether to bring it with me to the Munster match on Saturday - madness?!

Productivity will be down for this quarter

2008-01-16T21:18:00.000Z

So I get little enough work done cause of the bleedin interweb and then I find something thats going to COMPLETELY ruin any possible productivity (cough) Its called StumbleUpon and basically it generates random pages of whatever it is you're interested in. You can submit a list of general interests (trivia, books blah blah) or put in specific search terms and its absolutely class!

I found this here

These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed

The weapons you are looking for are currently unavailable. The country might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your weapons inspectors mandate.

Please try the following:

Click the Regime change button, or try again later.

If you are George Bush and typed the country's name in the address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly. (IRAQ).

To check your weapons inspector settings, click the UN menu, and then click Weapons Inspector Options. On the Security Council tab, click Consensus. The settings should match those provided by your government or NATO.

If the Security Council has enabled it, The United States of America can examine your country and automatically discover Weapons of Mass Destruction.
If you would like to use the CIA to try and discover them,
click Detect weapons

Some countries require 128 thousand troops to liberate them. Click the Panic menu and then click About US foreign policy to determine what regime they will install.

If you are an Old European Country trying to protect your interests, make sure your options are left wide open as long as possible. Click the Tools menu, and then click on League of Nations. On the Advanced tab, scroll to the Head in the Sand section and check settings for your exports to Iraq.

Click the Bomb button if you are Donald Rumsfeld.

Cannot find weapons or CIA Error
Iraqi Explorer

It reminds me of a sketch that Dylan Moran did a few years ago in Vicar St (its on the Monster DVD) Basically he was talking about euphemistic phrases that are bandied about in the media that normally sound quite nice and fluffy (give me a break I'm paraphrasing!) but mean something sinister. He said one of his favourites was regime change....

Actually screw that I found the clip, he tells it so much better than i do!

Sweeeeeeet

2008-01-14T19:58:00.000Z

This is phenomenal! Got it off Monscooch's page - its a 4 minute clip about how these lads recreated the Omaha landing from Saving Private Ryan in 4 day with 3 actors and lots of technical doohickeys - QUALITY!!

Avoiding the hype (and random tangent)

2008-01-10T10:49:00.000Z

I'm a bit of a hoor for the filums so I am. I have for many years religiously bought Empire magazine as much for recommending old movies that I haven't seen as the ones yet to come. On that note I'm also lethal for hoarding - every year or so (normally when I've decided to move house yet again!) it breaks my heart to throw out the umpteen magazines and copies of the Ticket and various supplements from the weekend papers that I haven't got round to reading.

This normally results in me sitting down for several hours to do some catch up reading (and noting of the various albums/films/books that I should check out some time in the next 40 years or so!) and suddenly realising that the new tenant has arrived for their room and I haven't even packed yet!

I think the hoarding instinct comes naturally to most people - the question is of course whether you have that mercenary vein in you where you can casually throw out all this accumulated waste which you've grown unusually attached to. Which reminds me (jaysus I wasn't even going to talk about hoarding) I saw a documentary on more4 a few weeks back about these people who compulsively hoard - the people in question all suffered from a particular form of OCD where they literally couldn't bear to throw anything out.

There was a couple featured where the husband had literally filled their house with rubbish and his family were forced to intervene, one woman in America had cut off contact from all her friends because she didn't want them to see how much she had accumulated in her apartment but the the most depressing was the guy in England who not only hoarded everything he bought, but who actually went out and sifted through peoples rubbish to find more materials for his collection. In the end he was served with an ASBO because the amount of rubbish that had built up outside his house was attracting vermin. But this wasn't the worst - the local council arrived at his flat to clean out the rubbish and it turned out that he was even hoarding his own faeces.

Outside of the natural disgust that anyone would feel over the thoughts of someone doing this, what fascinated me about the programme was the way an obsessive habit like hoarding can turn from something funny we've all done at one stage or another (you should see my sister's teddy collection!) to something that takes over your whole life - most of the people in the documentary were aware of their condition and how strange it was yet every one of them felt powerless to do anything about it. A friend of mine has a mild strain of OCD but he has it under control and doesn't really talk about it. You just wonder is it something that is wired into your brain from birth or is it something that develops as a reaction to some event in your life.

Any psychologists out there?!

Anyhoooooo - talk about a protracted tangent! My point is this for the most part I'll read film reviews except for those rare films that I'm dying to see - in these situations I'm kind of like the lads who come into the restaurant on a Saturday and say

"whatever you do don't tell me what happened in the match - I'm recording it at home"

Its the same logic with me - there are certain films that you want to see free of any predetermined notions - you've seen the trailer, you've thought "that looks deadly - now please no-one talk about it!"

So to the various American bloggers I read -

Stop bleedin talkin about Juno!!! We still have to wait a few weeks over here to see it!

End of rant

Now here's the trailer

I think the Ralph Wiggum one is more credible

2008-01-08T17:35:00.000Z

Need I say any more?!

Falling Man

2008-01-07T07:20:00.000Z

Do you ever find when you’re having a conversation with someone and they’re talking about something relatively trivial or boring that you tend to wander off in your mind and starting thinking about something or someone completely off-topic? My habit in these situations is to compose lists - normally some sort of to do list.

The problem is I have a tendecncy to do this when I read as well. For the last year or so I’ve been reading purely non-fiction – it all started with Tom Humphreys Laptop Dancing and the Nannygoat Mambo (even if you have no interest in sport you should read it – I’m utterly bitter over the quality of the man’s writing!) and it spiralled from there on leading to a long trail of sports biographies (and one of the Dave Gorman books!)

I think that what I like primarily about these books is that there’s not a lot of waffle (says I the waffler supreme) The story pretty much tells itself, the stories are primarily told anecdotally which I’m a big fan of – anyone remember Eddie Linehan the seanchai who used to be on RTE 2? That’s the sort of storytelling I’m fond of most – a tale that grabs you by your relevant body part (tick genitals as appropriate) and keeps you in the story till the last fullstop.

The thing about sports biographies is that provided you’ve chosen the book carefully and you haven’t ended up with, god forbid, Lewis Hamilton’s book (HE’S a CHILD!! How can he have a whole book??) then the person involved will have a compelling story to tell - recent examples of books I’ve read would include Moss Keane, Paul McGrath, Muhammed Ali, Paul Kimmage and Roy Keane (sure he’d have to be in there wouldn’t he?!)

My point is this – jesus talk about an overdrawn tangent – biographies in general don’t waste too much time with overly flowery descriptive paragraphs (unless they’re looking to fill space) and this is one of the main reasons why I drifted away from reading fiction. I understand the need to develop atmosphere but, blame it on my limited attention span, I often feel that fiction writers get a bit carried away with themselves and consequently I frequently find myself reading paragraphs where I get that distracted feeling and skip to the end of the paragraph without actually absorbing whats been written. Not so for the most recent book however.

So just before christmas I called into Hodges & Figgis to pick up the Gum Thief for Una’s Book-N-Supp and, as I have a tendency to do, I went on a bit of book buying binge. Now normally I prefer to get one book out of the way before moving onto the new one but for whatever reason I picked up one of the new purchases the other night even though I was still in the middle of another one. By the following night I’d eaten the book up, the book being Don DeLillo’s Falling Man.

I’ve been a fan of DeLillo since reading Underworld and this was one book that was on my list of things to read – I knew the basic background – that the story was rooted in 9/11 but knew very little else apart from the fact that it came highly recommended from several heads.

And what a book. Without going on too much more (!) suffice to say that DeLillo begins with an incident of global significance but instead of looking at the implications for the world or for America just gives us one family and an entirely convincing and realistic tale describing the fallout from this event. Aside from the parts dealing with the hijackers there is no real apparent drama – if anything its a tale of the mundane ways in which people piece their lives back together again – but you still don’t know where the story’s going to go. The arc of the story was completely unpredictable and obviously that’s what separates fiction from non-fiction.

With the biographies I already know where the relevant parties are in their lives so the story’s all about the manner of its telling. With fiction its all about the conclusion. With this book though there were no real cliffhangers, no narrative contrivances attempting to hold your attention, it was a very ordinary story but I still couldn’t put it down.

If you haven’t read it, I’d strongly suggest you do – the chapter towards the end on the tower coming down is worth the price alone.

Normal service of youtube posts will resume shortly ...

One for all the parents....

2008-01-04T14:19:00.000Z

Oh sweet jesus. I found this link via grandad

Just go to the website here and then wait for the video to upload - hint - the video is a product test of a Bullet Proof Baby Stroller and they're not using crash test dummies

In other randomness (its a constructive day at work) Nialler put this video up - Celine Dion - madder than a big bag of cats thrown into a bigger bag of ferrets

Happy mental Friday peoples!

Things I learned this Christmas

2008-01-04T13:34:00.000Z

Puuuuuuure laziness!

For some reason Guinness has started going straight to my head lately, resulting in one hugely embabrassing and traumatising experience which no amount of therapy will help!

I can make a mean Tiramisu when pushed!

Having a bottle of Dom Perignon sent to your table rocks! (Even if you do have to share it with the other 11 heads at your table!)

The food in Bang is still phenomenal but the service has kinda nosedived

There really are no decent pubs that serve beyond 9pm in Cork city on Christmas Eve

My family really do go mental when it comes to christmaspresentbuying

There seems to be nothing one of my brothers can't figure out when it comes to de technology - and that includes converting the instructions on my new camera from Chinese to English - who knew he spoke Mandarin?! (Thanks Dale!)

Nintendo Wii ROCKS!! Its debatable which was funnier - playing doubles tennis in a room the size of a small Rathmines bedsit or watching the grandparents playing (and kicking ass) on Wii bowling!

One of my other brothers makes a mean salmon roulade - I think the secret is in the nuts but he'll probably dispute that! (Nice one Wayne!)

Evening weddings are the way to go

The Clarion in Cork kicked arse at said wedding reception - Jurys in Limerick could learn a thing or two (am I going on about that too much?!)

Karl Spain needs some new material

I'm over New Years parties

Happy New Year kids!

More bleedin lists

2008-01-02T17:17:00.000Z

Happy new year kids! Thanks be to christ that month is over! I'll get around to doing some sort of christmas roundup post type thing but in the meantime here's some more end of year list yokes for those of you looking to spend ye're HMV vouchers

Faronheit have their top 50 of the year here

I Prefer the Obscure Remix - here

Gorilla v Bear - here

Magooo has the Wire's top 50 here

Motel De Moka have 2 lists up - the first one is pretty conventional but the second one is completely obscure - has anyone heard of ANY of those albums?!

Pulp and circumstance get in on the act with much fanfare here

The Torture Garden has a pretty random collection of lists

Sinead finally gets round to hers, as does Red and the Girl Who's Afraid of Foxes here

And finally Nialler has his own picks of the year here and the top Irish albums here

As I said before this isn't so much a public service - more of a handy place for me to keep al the lists so I can make some half assed effort at catching up on all the music I missed during the year

So very many lists

2007-12-19T16:30:00.000Z

Apparently Pitchfork have put up their list of top 50 videos here. I think I'm posting this mainly as a reminder to myself to have a look at them ... but seriously who has the time?

...

Apart from those wasters at Pitchfork obviously!

And in continuing randomness - when cellists go crazy.... Check out those facial expressions!

What were we to expect?

2007-12-18T15:27:00.000Z

I suppose realistically we've no-one to blame but ourselves. Went down to Limerick on Saturday for a friend's stag party. Now to be fair the stag was put together at relatively short notice so it being that time of year the chances of getting a restaurant reservation were somewhere between are ya having a laugh and no seriously are ya having a laugh. So we ended up eating in the hotel's restaurant.

Step forward and take a bow ... Jurys Inn

Mother of sweet jesus - there's a reason why I never eat in hotels outside of weddings and occasional christmas parties and even on those occasions you're often well advised to pack a couple of hang sangwiches.

The restaurant in Jurys Inn pretty much encapsulated every reason why hotel restaurants are to be avoided at all costs.

It obviously doesn't help that I've worked full and part-time in various restaurants for the last 12 years - consequently you fall into your natural waiter mode as you silently critique what's being done right and notsoright. First things first there were 2 other tables in the restaurant when we arrived in - a couple and a guy by himself - so here's what you should be thinking.

If you're the manager you should be saying right it's the week before Christmas, the rest of town is hopping and we've got nothing going on here apart from this stag party. Restaurants and hotels are based on the whole notion of goodwill - the pat phrase in these situations is that if a customer is happy with his service he'll tell 2 or 3 of his friends whereas if it's a disaster they'll tell at least 10 of their friends. So knowing all this you'd imagine the manager will say right lets make an effort here and try to get some goodwill going.

If you're the waiter you're thinking right they're drinking, they seem to be good craic, I'm not busy given there's only 3 other customers in the room - lets get these lads served and se how much of a service charge I can get out of them.

Pretty straightforward logic right?

Christ

So here's how it went

food order taken - very straightforward - I think there were 11 sirloins and 1 lamb ordered for mains - key point - make sure you remember who's having the rare steaks, the mediums, the well dones etc... It really isn't that hard.

Starters come out - the staff don't have a clue who's having what, the order's messed up and 2 of the lads are told not so politely by the waiter, no thats not what you ordered, you actually ordered this

I'd say something if we were all demented and couldn't remember what we'd ordered but we were all very compos mentis at that stage

So the lads wait a ridiculously long time for their starters

Meanwhile the waitstaff - there was a few of them - breeze past the table using that careful don't make eyecontact approach that you perfect in waitron school - the fact that this meant the lads had to go to the bar to get drinks just reinforced the impression of this being a meal to forget.

And then the main courses - waiters and someone who looked like a manager bringing steaks out and just shouting at people - "who's having the well done ..." Now personally I think this is a shabby way to appraoch a table but provided you haven't messed up the order it normally works out in the end. It's just a less polished and more inefficient means of serving a table.

As I said provided you haven't messed up the order - well between the waiter and the "chef" it managed to be an unmitiagted disaster - apart from the 2 rare steaks, every one of them was cremated to within an inch of its life. Did anyone come back to check - No.

Unfortunately the consensus from the table was "whats the point in sending them all back and making a scene?" This is a typically Irish approach to poor service.

Personally I'd be reluctant to send my food back but for completely different reasons. I've seen what chefs have done to returned food and kids it ain't pretty.

So that was it - we still gave 10 per cent - why? God alone knows.

Jurys Inn Limerick - what an embarassment - your restaurant embodies the sort of workplace where no-one from the waitstaff to the management gives a shit. I know I shouldn't expect much but every so often, mostly by accident, I've happened upon the occasional hotel restaurant that is a curiously pleasant surprise. But Jurys Inn? The food and the "service" screamed apathy yet you still got your money - you must be so proud.

It's the small things in life that keep me happy

2007-12-14T08:27:00.000Z

Two things...

First - imagine my surprise when I picked up this morning's Ticket in the Irish Times and the first line of the the readers review of the year quotes some guy called "Colin" raving about the Feist gig in Tripod...

Woohoo!! I've made the print media, my year is complete!!

Thanks Jim!

Second thing - I went to see Cathy Davey at the Button Factory on Wednesday night and oh sweet mother of jaysus that girl is on form. What a shaggin voice. As with the Feist gig, it's so strange to hear an act live where the performer's voice is as good if not even better than the recorded version you're so used to.

Anyone who's heard Snow Patrol live will be familiar with the wonders that post production can work on someone's voice - no offence Mr Lightbody!

Anyway twas my first time in the new version of the old Temple Bar Music Centre and I have to say the place looks a lot better - I'm not entirely sure about opening the venue up to the bar as this just increases the chances of the Whelans syndrome creeping in (every muppet yapping at the bar gets to ruin your best efforts to enjoy the gig) but to be honest it didn't seem to make much of a difference - the entire crowd were talking anyway. It was a decidedly mixed crowd and I'd be interested to know how many of them were there purely on the back of her radio play with Reuben.

Anyhoo Ms Davey is beyond sweet - I'd heard that on the tour of Something Ilk she'd suffered from acute stage fright but if she did there was no evidence of it on Wednesday night. There still seems to be a certain shyness there but given that she's bolstered by the best Irish album of the year (I haven't heard Adrian Crowley's album yet!) her confidence just kicked in when the songs took off.

And what a set! She started relatively softly - I think I only counted 2 songs from Something Ilk which just shows the strength of Tales of Silversleeve.

Personal highlights - Reuben and Sing For Your Supper were stormers but that was to be expected. The encore was superb with the eerie All of You being sung oh so quietly against some sort of trellis decorated with fairy lights ("check it out!" if you were there you'll know what I'm on about!) and the perfect closing song was Rubbish Ocean - phenomenal.

But the absolutelycompletelydefinitelynodoubtaboutithighlight had to be a certain Donna Summer song - everyone just had this stupid smile on their faces as the bould Ms Davey launched into I Feel Love - happy days!!

By the way the story about the gardai stopping the van on the way back from Limerick was priceless - more for its telling than anything else!

Cathy Davey, Final Fantasy, Okkervill River AND Dan Deacon ....

Carlsberg don't do Christmas gigathons but if they did...

Final Fantasy at Vicar Street

2007-12-12T15:42:00.000Z

Ow my head - goddamn Guinness really isn't agreeing with me these days.

So Final Fantasy - I think this was the third gig in as many weeks where I went to a gig with only a bare familiarity with the music that was going to be played. I'd heard maybe 2 or 3 songs by Pallett and having missed him at the Picnic I honestly didn't know what to expect.

First things first, that young fella is ridiculously talented - not having any musical ability in me bones, it was amazing to watch him just build up layers of looping melodies to the extent that it seemed as if he had an entire string section playing around him.

I have to say that I'm a complete geek when it comes to the doohickeys that musicians use at gigs so seeing Pallett switch pedals at a rate of knots as he weaved the various melodies together was fascinating to watch.

In terms of the gig itself I felt that there was a definite lull about halfway through the set. I was amazed by how quiet the crowd was throughout – bordering on the reverential. The problem was that as the set dipped in the middle, I felt that the rapturous applause was based more on the crowd’s adulation of Pallett and his abilities rather than on the quality of the songs.

Having said that, given that this was my first time seeing him play I was blown away by the whole thing - the guy's clearly some kind of genius..... Bastard

Right I'm crawling back under the nearest rock with this poxy hangover

PS I missed the first support act but the second crowd, Miracle Fortress were superb – multiple percussionists ROCK!!

The Dark Knight trailer

2007-12-07T14:01:00.000Z

Got this from RP

Oh lordy lordy lordy...

Sweeeeeeet

2007-12-07T12:16:00.000Z

And this is one of the many reasons why I love BoingBoing!

Apparently a website called somethingawful run a regular photshopping contest and this week its photoshopping pop-up books. I have to agree with them, this one is bleedin deadly as the natives would say around these parts!

Here's the link for the rest of them

Savage!

Menomena at the Sugar Club

2007-12-07T08:11:00.000Z

Tickets on sale at 9am peoples. Seriously this band have released one of the albums of the year, get ye're credit cards out!

*edit*

Woohoo!! - got mine - here's a taste of whats to come!

#62.3 - Menomena - Wet and Rusting
Uploaded by lablogotheque

Rachel O'Reilly, Madeline McCann, Kevin Doyle and Katy French

2007-12-05T19:26:00.000Z

What's the connection kids?

In a discussion recently with one of my classes, we got talking about the blatant cynicism of the media - primarily we were talking about the tabloid media but the broadsheets came in for it aswell.

It all began with a conversation about Joe O'Reilly's conviction for the murder of his wife and the highly debatable "standards" displayed by the Irish media in relation to the case. I remember reading an article in the Tribune a couple of months ago which stated that the sales figures for a particular paper - the Herald lets not beat about the bush here - rocketed every time Rachel O'Reilly's face was printed on the cover.

The Herald (naturally) maintained that all they were doing was seeking to keep Ms O'Reilly's face and her memory alive in the public consciousness so the Gardai wouldn't be allowed forget about her and so the murderer would be brought to justice.

The fact that sales for the paper spiked every time her time her image was featured was obviously just an incidental benefit. Of course they never noticed.

And then you have Madeline McCann - whatever you think about the McCann's efforts to keep their daughter's face in the media spotlight the fact remains that surely, as with the O'Reilly case, this one was a no-brainer for the British and Irish media. In terms of cynical exploitation it doesn't get any better.

The whole case takes on a sort of chicken and egg quality - did the media only become obsessed with the case because of the public interest or did the public fixation only arise because of the media's obsessive approach to the case? (Rhetorical question)

I saw a headline recently on one of the sunday tabloids which (along with the obligatory photo) simply read "We Know She's Alive!" followed by an article where the paper lazily rehashed the McCann's claims that they believed that their child was still alive

Again - I'm sure that the guaranteed jump in sales figures for the respective papers bore no correlation whatsoever to the editorial decisons to run yet another photograph of the child on their papers.

As if

And finally onto Kevin Doyle and Katy French. As far as I could see, for the last three days every single tabloid and the Independent (which lets be honest is a tabloid by any other name) have run photos of Ms French. What interested me today was the photograph on the front of the Examiner - some young fella who I wouldn't recognise from adam.

It turns out that the kid on the front of the Examiner was one of the lads from Waterford who had been rushed to hospital after a 21st birthday party two weeks ago. He died at 12.30 this morning.

Cocaine has been linked to his death as it has been to Ms French's current condition.

He got one photo - she's had god knows how many and I'm sure there'll be more tomorrow.

But I'm sure it's nothing to do with the sales figures.

God forbid

Ah no seriously

2007-12-04T13:30:00.000Z

Who exactly sends a shaggin email to tell you your internet's gone down???

Seriously

Thank you Dan Deacon....

2007-12-03T13:05:00.000Z

.... for redeeming a poxy weekend. Without wallowing too much lets just say this

watching Munster getting beaten at home by Leinster was poxy enough

watching Munster getting beaten at home by Leinster in the lashing pissing monsoon that was Musgrave Park on Friday night was beyond poxy

coming back from Cork to discover that some CUNT(S) had robbed my bike just about pushed me over the edge (it had been one of those weeks anyway!)

So thank you Dan Deacon for providing me with one of the most enjoyable gigs I've ever had the good luck to attend, what a laugh lads!

I swear to god you can take your po-faced uber earnest indie kids and stick em where the sun don't shine cause I can't remember the last time I was at a gig where the performer was obviously enjoying himself so much.

It was weird because this was the first time I'd gone to the gig purely on the basis of recommendations (god bless the blogosphere!) I literally hadn't heard even one song of his but it was so worth it - when he started setting his desk up on the floor I was wondering how much of a gimmick this was but it worked so well - the entire crowd just gravitated towards this most unlikely looking of djs and his illuminated skull.

The craic was only savage, myself and boggsy were both behaving ourselves with work in the morning but you just couldn't help but get caught up in the music. The melodies were so simple but so addictive - so many highlights - the dance off in the middle of the floor, the entire crowd getting down on their haunches humming along with him, seeing the entire room "having a stretch" before we got going but the undeniable highlight was when the hymn sheets were handed out for Wham City and the whole room kicked off singing - absolutely sublime. We left the room smiling from ear to ear like total kids!

Thanks Dan - you're a total ligind!!

Fair play to Whelans and Foggy Notions - keep gigs like this coming lads

Justine Delaney Wilson and all that bollocks

2007-11-29T17:24:00.001Z

A bit late but here's my tuppence

Firstly I haven't read the book so this is all idle speculation but does anyone think that despite Gill & McMillan apparently withdrawing their support for Ms Delaney Wilson both the author and publisher are secretly delighted about all the over inflated publicity for the book.

I mean seriously the subject matter of the book isn't exactly revelatory

"the middle classes do charlie as well"

Shock Horror

Seriously - what sounds like a very mediocre book from an author with highly dubious credibility is just going to be pushed up the bestseller list because of some ridiculously excessive coverage

Go on the Meeja!!

Yay!

You're joking me aren't you?

2007-11-29T17:05:00.000Z

Ok i know music awards have no credibility (just look at the Mercury awards over the last few years) And I know that Meteor are trying desperately for the populist vote but SERIOUSLY -

Best Band nominees - fuckin Aslan????

Just how long exactly CAN you protect someone in this crazy world??

Anybody?!!

Answers in a 100 words or less

Where beatboxing meets Delia Smith

2007-11-28T18:17:00.000Z

Gotta love this!

And here's one I made earlier!

Book-N-Supp

2007-11-26T16:46:00.000Z

Hmmmm the last 2 weeks have been kind of crazy between being stuck at home with what sounded like shaggin TB (the racking cough is Sooooo in this season!) and NO internet and then catching up last week - suffice to say I'm feeling much better after an amazing few days staying in a place in West Cork that shall remain a secret cause I don't want people mooching in and booking the place out!!

Anyhoo thats not the point of this mini-rant - the point is to give major props to Una for her inspired idea Book-N-Supp - its going to be a regular get together over food and some sociable sherries to discuss a different book every month.

Its an absolutely inspired idea and the books will help kick start what's sure to be some absolutely class nights of random conversations (which may even revolve around de bukes for part of it!)

First night is on the 7th of January - get thee to the website and sign up people!!

And a VERY happy birthday to you son

2007-11-08T16:12:00.000Z

So there I was logging into my email account - now you know the way they flash these news stories up before you get into the email account proper?

Ladies and gentlemen I give you the story of the week ... possibly the year, from Yahoo news

A schoolboy was given an unexpected surprise for his 16th birthday when a stripper turned up in his drama class.
The stripper - dressed as a policewoman - had been booked by the boy's mother, who had apparently asked for a "gorilla" to mark her son's big day.
The woman even asked the teenager's teacher at Nottingham's Arnold Hill School and Technology College to film the event so the family could see his reaction.
On arriving halfway through the lesson, the stripper walked the unnamed boy around the class on all fours like a dog.
To the soundtrack of Britney Spears, she then spanked him 16 times - once for each year - before stripping down to her bra and knickers.
It was only when she asked the schoolboy to rub cream on her that the shocked teacher called a halt to the show.
The boy's mother reportedly told the school the incident was the result of a booking error.
On Thursday a spokeswoman for the local education authority, Nottinghamshire County Council, said they were investigating how the incident happened.
She confirmed that nobody had been suspended and the police were not involved.
The spokeswoman said: "We and the school are investigating into the situation."

WHERE DO I START???

The fact that it sounds like the teacher may have been filming it

The fact that the teacher didn't object in the first place

The fact that she didn't object when the birthday boy was crawling around on all fours OR when he was getting spanked

But definitely the best part - the fact that she only finally got round to objecting when herself asked himself to rub cream on her!!

Realistically there's only one question on everyone's lips given the profound moral and societal implications of this story

...

Why didn't my mam get me a stripper?!

No seriously!

I love dominos

2007-11-08T14:27:00.000Z

So the joy of the internet - you see a clever video but its also an ad for a major corporate brand - do you a) show the video thereby endorsing the product and giving some (quite limited!) free advertising to the brand or b) provide a link to the ad thereby not directly endorsing the product and salving your conscience?

Fuck that

Love the black stuff so i do - and dominos are great as well!

Simple pleasures

2007-11-08T10:22:00.000Z

Cycling through Rathmines warmly wrapped up to bate the band with the leaves going mad while listening to a bit of Grizzly Bear singing this:

Grizzly Bear – On a Neck, On a Spit

CHOON!!

The answer to the question thats bothering everyone...

2007-11-08T10:19:00.000Z

This is brilliant, got it from Niall's blog

www.IsItChristmas.com

Now stop asking the bloody question!

Addictive ... not like crack but still pretty addictive

2007-11-06T18:48:00.000Z

So here's 2 random websites I found on other people's blogs which have nothing to do with each other apart from the fact that they both operate in real time - they're both intriguing to watch and curiously quite addictive! You have been warned people

So I got this over at Damien's place. Basically if you click on the link it brings you to a website where you see in real time (did I mention that already?!) what people are editing on Wikipedia - if you click on the icons over the map, it then brings you to Wikipedia entry where you see the original and the edited versions of the entries side by side. Most of it is trivial corrections, some of it is random alterations, but it really is fascinating to watch. Here's the link

http://www.lkozma.net/wpv/index.html

The second link I got over at Rapture Ponies

Basically its a counter in you know what time that shows you what people are looking for on the internet - from the mundane to the bizarre. A 30 second visit rapidly turns into a 5 minute gander at the random shite people look up!

http://www.automatedbeacon.net/

So random!

New Toons!

2007-11-02T16:09:00.000Z

You can tell that the week's winding down with all the over-compensating for the lack of posts during the week! So i got me some new cds and i is tres excited as the germans would say!

So i got this
And this

And this

And this

And MOSTSHAGGINIMPORTANTLY this

Shameless plug - thats me bruvva playing drums on safekeeping - buy the cd kids - tis only savage!

The Jazz Weekend

2007-11-02T15:40:00.000Z

On a less ranty note - I forgot to say that the Jazz weekend was only savage

The weekend started off with a great double header on the Friday night

This guy called Avishai Cohen who was insane - lets just say the guy reeeeallly loves his double bass. At one stage I actually thought he was licking it - seriously! The headline act were EST. This was my third time seeing them live - the 2 previous times were amzing - once in the Everyman and once in Vicar St surrounded by tealights cause of a power cut. This time round they were a lot more mellow to begin. The first 4 or 5 songs were quite ponderous which isn't necessarily a bad thing but the heat and lack of air conditioning in the gods in the Everyman wasn't helping and we were nearly dozing off. Having said that the second half of the set was an absolute stormer but overall the feen Cohen got my vote - his drummer was about 12 and words escape me for how good he was.

Saturday night was probably my gig of the weekend - jazz me bollix - managed to get a ticket for the Redneck Manifesto in the Liquid Lounge above Clancys. Never been there before but me bruvva who knows these things tells me they've been putting some pretty decent nights on there. The place was absolutely mental. Naturally the gig sold out but what was really strange was the distinct lack of a stage! We were stuck about 10 rows back so could see fuck all but it looked like the entire crowd were pretty much standing/jumping/hopping on top of Richie and the lads.

As for the gig - I've seen these lads plenty of times and I don't think I've ever seen them do a bad gig. I know that sounds exaggerated but given that it's pretty much entirely instrument based apart its amazing to see the energy they bring to the place - the crowd are always up for it and while they might be pushing it to get another album, the set they've crafted essentially amounts to an incredibly tight best of selection - fuckin amazing!

The Sunday was supposed to be music free but the bruvva got me tickets for the Sunday afternoon in the Everyman - this was "proper" jazz which to be honest I find a bit inaccessible. First up was a guy called Don Byron who played saxophone and clarinet with his trio. This guy was actually pretty cool - he was so laid back he was nearly vertical! Here you have a guy all the way from the Bonx and he's wearing a shaggin Man Utd shirt! It was just nice to see someone who was so genuinely into the music, he was roaring on the drummer during his solos and his banter with the crowd, especially about him "being the only person to give props to Dick Fosbury" was hilarious

The main act were a bit too serious for my liking - they were called the Miroslav Vitous Quartet - some of the stuff that they did was enjoyable, looping samples from orchestras over their own notes and there were parts where they reminded me a lot of the Cinematic Orchestra but overall it was too much like proper jazz with long meandering solos that i felt went nowhere - meh I'm probably not cultured enough!

Here's the Rednecks with the only mighty We Still Got It - the video is quality!

The Catholic Church scares me and cracks me up in equal measures

2007-11-02T13:35:00.000Z

So leaving aside the Catholic Church's completely irrational insistence on telling the entire African continent that condoms don't spread AIDS and sure lets face it even if they did aren't they a sin anyway, I read this story on Wednesday and it just blew me away

From the Irish Times

Pharmacists in Ireland have a constitutional right to refuse to dispense the morning-after pill on grounds of religious or personal beliefs, a spokeswoman for the Irish Pharmaceutical Union (IPU) has said, following Pope Benedict's comments on the subject in Rome.
On Monday the pope appealed for pharmacists to refuse to dispense drugs such as the morning-after pill if they objected on moral grounds. The comments ignited controversy in Italy....

What the FUCK???

So here's the thing - I remember a friend of mine talking about the good old days in the 80's when condoms literally couldn't be bought - I'm guessing everyone's familiar with the way people used to travel up north purely to fulfill their contraceptive needs because of the ban in the South. He talked about coming back from America and going into a chemist to buy some condoms (at this stage they'd finally) been legalised only to be told by the severely disapproving older woman behind the counter that "we don't sell THOSE THINGS here".

You'd think things would've changed but I think most lads can tell a story of the dirty looks from behind the counter as you hand your packet of Durex over along with shower gel, deodrant, toothpaste razor blades hair gel (even though you've just shaved your head) and lots of other stuff you didn't really need. Ah yes how we perfected the art of nonchalantly grabbing the packet at the last minute as if it was an afterthought - God be with the days!

Ok i'm being facetious but there is a point - condoms are one thing but the morning after pill is even more difficult I presume. I'd imagine it's safe to say that it's pretty much always the woman who ends up having to explain to the doctor what happened.

So here's how I imagine it -

first you have to make sure you get time off to see the doctor within the necessary time,
then you have to go through the excruciating discomfort of explaining everything that happened the previous night and
then you have to make your way to the chemist knowing that the pharmacist is looking at you judging you and then

and then

then some prick says fuck you I'm not giving you this on the grounds of my religious beliefs???

Excuse me?? But fuck you buddy.

Seriously whatever reasons people have for getting into that position in the first place the fact is that contraception is all about choice - namely YOUR fucking choice and not the chemists

What a fuckin joke

Just to end the rant on a lighter note, you gotta love Father Brian Darcy. Basically he says on the front of the IT here that priests are worried that if they celebrate a few masses in one day that the altar wine will push them over the drink driving limit.

Now leaving aside the fact that apparently the Catholic Church won't let the poor priests use non-alcoholic wine (WHY?? - I suspect some conspiracy between Rome and the Italian vineyards!)

Anyway that aside here's my favourite quote from the boy D'Arcy

while I don't like to use the word wine, as it is the precious blood in the Eucharist, it still has all the characteristics of wine when in the blood stream

I can see it now - sorry Father would you mind stepping out of the vehicle - I'm afraid we're going to have to arrest you on suspicion of drunk driving.

Oh no no no my son that won't be necessary - you see it's actually 2 bottles of the precious blood of the Eucharist flowing through my system, not wine! Now it may have all the characteristics of win.......

Come with us Father

*hic*

A few tunes what I think you should like

2007-11-01T19:53:00.000Z

I have to say I love the Blogotheque website (where I got the Final Fantasy clip) - its definitely a combination of the quality of the bands they record along with the acoustics on the recordings - they're recorded for the most part on the streets of Paris and its great to see the musicians playing so well in such an unusual environment

Here's Grizzly Bear just about holding it together (nothing worse than a fit of the giggles when trying to sing/hum!) doing a completely acoustic version of Knife.

#10.4 - Grizzly bear - The Knife
Uploaded by lablogotheque

But my favourite has to be the phenomenal Menomena playing Wet and Rusting to a very enthusiastic audience - these kids are absolute legends!!

#62.3 - Menomena - Wet and Rusting
Uploaded by lablogotheque

Final Fantasy at Vicar St

2007-11-01T18:46:00.000Z

Tickets are on sale people - Got me mine!

I missed him at the Picnic but by gob not this time!!

Here's the boy Pallett doing his thing on a street in Paris I think going a bit mad!

Can't wait!

Pointless

2007-10-25T12:12:00.000+01:00

Ok so basically I work teaching in a college - I use the phrase "work" loosely given that I only have 16 hours of lectures a week - thats why it baffles me when I hear people whinging that "I can't believe the bastards have put me up to 24 hours from 20" Get over it

But i digress

So there I am at my computer pretending to work when there's a wee bit of commotion from across the hall. Space is limited up here so nearly everyone has to share an office with at least one other person. So basically one of the lecturers completely loses it with her "room-mate" (Why isn't even remotely interesting) and starts screaming incoherently at him. But here's the thing - at the end of the tirade of abuse she storms out of the room and screams "F OFF ___"

My point is that I'm not actually censoring her words - she couldn't bring herself to tell your man to FUCK OFF - she actually said "F" off!

Whats the fucking point?!!

Surely the joy of cursing is that in those sort of situations it's a release and a vent for people's anger (sometimes - sometimes its just funny or part of our fuckin vernacular)

I mean in a work context where people are all civilised and maintain that thin veneer of respectability, surely if you're going to let loose do it properly!

Seriously

I mean imagine - your boss is in "playful" mood and decides to give you the most almighty super-wedgie known to man/woman/plant/vegetable

Whaddya say??

"Ah for F's sake you F'ing C - you're an absolute F'ing P and you're after tearing the F'in B's off me"

Not quite the same is it?!

Fuck's sake!

Arcade Fire in the Phoenix Park

2007-10-24T16:03:00.002+01:00

Jesus would ya look at that - 3 posts (WITH photos people!!) in the one day!

So as a birthday present (sooooo old!) i got taken to the Arcade Fire gig in the Phoenix Park - twas a good gig but I think by comparison to the gig in the Olympia it lacked something. The visuals were amazng with huge velvet curtains up giving a beautiful background to these massive silhouettes of all the band in full theatrical dancing - it looked almost like a marionette puupert show! The sound was great and you could tell the crowd was really up for it.

Personally like i said it was good but not great - an hour and a half with a VERY brief encore - it kinda felt like we'd just finished the trek from Parkgate St when we were leaving again. I suppose you could call it the Arcade Fire backlash - I mean 3 times in one year - (I think only CSS are beating them in terms of number of appearances!) - but there was definitely a little something lacking. Having said that the fact that we were right at the very back didn't help either! Hence the crap photos!

One of the more unexpected highlights of the night was walking out of the tent to arrive into this really eerie but beautifully lit dense fog - I will freely confess to being a wannabe amateur photographer and keep threatening to buy myself a digital SLR one of these days. Anyhoo I got some nice photos of people dissolving into the fog. Here ye go

Kevin Drew

2007-10-24T15:54:00.000+01:00

So copious reviews have been written about the gig so I'm just going to give my tuppenceworth and lob up a few photos.

The gig was absolutely brilliant - myself and my 2 friends came out literally beaming from it and how often do you say that about a gig?!

So reasons why the gig was one of the highlights of the musical year so far

Drew's a bit of a hippy but he's completely sincere in what he says to the crowd
He has a completely infectious enthusiasm that the entire crowd buy into and get carried away on
His own album is *good* with a couple of stand out tracks but it is a bit ponderous lets be honest - thankfully he knows better than to concentrate solely on his own stuff and with 2 of the best albums of the last few years behind him (You Forgot It in People and Broken Social Scene) he has a lucky bag full of songs to treat he crowd to .... Which he did with gusto
He fucked up on one song and completely carried it off
They had issues with the sound but it didn't affect their performance - I could compare this with the Arcade Fire gig in the Olympia where there were serious sound issues and you could see Win Butler getting more and more worked up as the gig went on - understandable reaction but I felt that both Drew and Canning dealt with it much better
Jack Daniels for the kids at the front
U2 Karaoke - anyone who didn't realise he was just having a bit of fun needs to relax just a little bit - 2 lads at the front stormed out when they started playing it - lads seriously have a bit of craic - ye might enjoy yourselves if ye're not careful!

"look we're teenagers again!"

Stars and Sons and all of Tripod bursting into clapping the chorus without any need for encouragement
No nonsense about encores - 2 hours of sheer musical fun - this is our last song - thank you

Happy Days

One of the best gigs of the year? ..... Chalk it down!

Here's some photos people

Blogging guilt

2007-10-24T14:44:00.000+01:00

Ok having already apologised to my blog a few weeks back I then went back and completely ignored it for several more weeks. So i was reading Conortje's post here via 73 one of the things that he was saying was how the hell do people find the shaggin time to lead lives and blog?! (Clearly I'm paraphrasing!!)

Seriously! If anyone's reading this (God Forbid!) HOW?! I managed to start a *relatively* healthy blogging habit at the latter end of the summer but purely because my dayjob is in education so i have a ridiculous amount of time off - since coming back from the sheer bliss that was France I've had a pretty crazy couple of weeks - but good crazy and lots of stuff to write/ramble/rant about.

Personally I'm putting it down to really bad time management on my part but it really does amaze me how some people can log so frequently - seriously lads whats the secret?!

So here it is a severe personal upbraiding - sort your shit out young fella!

By the way I think i'll try to coin a phrase - blogging guilt for neglecting your blog -

"Blilt" anyone?!

Anyone?!

Anybody?

Lazy post #68 - One of a limited edition

2007-10-02T19:53:00.000+01:00

How have i not seen this sooner?

Whatdefuck???

2007-10-01T19:04:00.000+01:00

From BBC news

Shock at archbishop condom claim

The Catholic Church formally opposes any use of condoms

The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique has told the BBC he believes some European-made condoms are infected with HIV deliberately.
Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claimed some anti-retroviral drugs were also infected "in order to finish quickly the African people".
The Catholic Church formally opposes any use of condoms, advising fidelity within marriage or sexual abstinence.
Aids activists have been angered by the remarks, one calling them "nonsense".
"We've been using condoms for years now, and we still find them safe," prominent Mozambican Aids activist Marcella Mahanjane told the BBC.
The UN says anti-retrovirals (ARVs) have proved very effective for treating people with Aids. The drugs are not a cure, but attack the virus on several fronts at once.
The BBC's Jose Tembe in the capital, Maputo, says it is estimated that 16.2% of Mozambique's 19m inhabitants are HIV positive.
About 500 people are infected every day.
'Serious matter'
Archbishop Chimoio told our reporter that abstention, not condoms, was the best way to fight HIV/Aids.

Condoms are one of the best manners of getting protection against catching Aids

Aids activist Gabe Judas

"Condoms are not sure because I know that there are two countries in Europe, they are making condoms with the virus on purpose," he alleged, refusing to name the countries.
"They want to finish with the African people. This is the programme. They want to colonise until up to now. If we are not careful we will finish in one century's time."
.....

Apology

2007-10-01T18:51:00.000+01:00

Dear Blog

I'm sorry - i go off on a wee bit of a holiday and apart from some early token attention I neglect you completely. How could I be so casual about our relationship?! I'm sorry

Colin

A few questions for Eddie O'Sullivan

2007-09-17T13:58:00.000+01:00

Dear Eddie

just a few random thoughts off the top of my head

Why in the name of sweet jesus are you picking someone who plays for shaggin CONNACHT (no offence Mr Duffy sir) over someone who has played consistently at the top flight of English rugby? Did Geordan hide your favourite pair of slippers and you failed to see the funny side?

Why ohhhhhh WHY is Simon Easterby still on the team?

If you pick "form" players why exactly did Hickie get a game on Saturday?

Bringing Brian Carney to France - why did you bother getting his hopes up?

Alan Quinlan? Has he offended you in some way? Was he in cahoots with Murphy during Slippergate?

How has Rory Best persisted in being your first choice hooker for so long? .... No seriously!

All joking aside did you see the impact Flannery made in the last 2 matches? ... Seriously!

Finally were you in some way connected to Cork's utterly abysmal performance in Croke Park yesterday? Seriously did you give Alan Quirke a few strategic pointers? Go on admit it ... I won't be angry ... Promise!

Sincerely

Colin

Oh PS - good call on Reddan - bit late but good call

Ireland 22 to play France

2007-09-17T13:50:00.000+01:00

From the bbc website

Reddan given shock Irish call-up

Wasps scrum-half Eoin Reddan starts against France

Wasps scrum-half Eoin Reddan has earned a shock call-up as one of three changes for Ireland's World Cup must-win Pool D game against France on Friday night.
Heineken Cup winner Reddan replaces the dropped Peter Stringer while Isaac Boss is again named on the bench.
Andrew Trimble returns in place of Denis Hickie on the left wing.
Jerry Flannery replaces injured hooker Rory Best but Neil Best has to be content with a place on the bench while Geordan Murphy is left out of the 22.
There is still no starting place for the physicality of Neil Best, while Murphy has been surprisingly ushered from the bench altogether, with Gavin Duffy named as utility back.
The promotion of Reddan comes out of the blue and ends Stringer's long association with his Munster colleague Ronan O'Gara at half-back.
Stringer, with 79 caps, is Ireland's second most-capped player behind Malcolm O'Kelly, who is again named on the bench.
Reddan was the third choice coming into the World Cup - behind Stringer and Boss, who twice had limited time as a replacement in the games against Namibia and Georgia.
This will be the Limerick-born Reddan's fourth cap after making his debut as a replacement in the 2006 Six Nations game against France.
He made his first start during the summer tour to Argentina, where Ireland lost both Tests with a virtual reserve-strength side.
Reddan was with Munster twice and in between had a season with Connacht before being lured to London in 2005 by Warren Gatland, the former Ireland coach, who was then in charge of Wasps.

Ireland: Dempsey; Horgan, O'Driscoll, capt, D'Arcy, Trimble; O'Gara, Reddan; Horan, Flannery, Hayes, O'Callaghan, O'Connell, Easterby, D Wallace, Leamy.
Replacements: Sheahan, S Best, O'Kelly, N Best, Boss, P Wallace, Duffy

Happy/sad ice cream

2007-09-17T11:35:00.000+01:00

This is absolutely mad but there's a certain charming fuzzy logic to the whole idea!

From boing-boing

Voice-stress ice-cream dispenser increases portions for the miserable

Demitrios Kargotis unveiled his Mr Whippy machine at the Ars Electronica festival in Linz. It's a self-serve frozen custard machine that doles out portion sizes based on the amount of misery it detects in a voice-stress analysis. The sadder you are, the more ice-cream you get.

Employing voice stress analysis of the user's answers to specific questions, varying degrees of unhappiness are measured and the counteractive quantity of ice cream is dispensed: The more unhappy you are, the more ice cream you need.

New Beirut single

2007-09-17T10:35:00.000+01:00

So apparently Beirut have a new album out and judging by this track alone it sounds even better than Gulag Orkester - i love the acoustics in this video

And here's the superb Postcards from Italy off Gulag Orkester ... mmm ... nice!

Absolutely inspired

2007-09-13T15:43:00.000+01:00

By the way (and god bless google reader for moments like this) got this from rick

Graham Linehan you're a comedic genius!

Sure where else would you be other than Bordeaux?

2007-09-13T15:27:00.000+01:00

So given that I'm on holidays the blogging will clearly take a back seat - in an effort to cut corners and make life as easy as possible pour moi (see that natural grasp of the language?!) here's a completely lazy post cut and paste straight from my email

Bonjour from Bordeaux peoples!

Well what a week - aside from the small matter of the poxy rugby it’s been savage altogether.

You have to love the lifestyle over here – having checked into the b&b on the sunday the husband who runs the place asked me if there was anything i needed – some water would be great says i (keep in mind its only 11am) here ya go so and sure here have a bottle of wine as well – we were drinking the same one last night so i can definitely recommend it!

Je t’aime this country!

And, no, that entire conversation wasn’t conducted in french – the woman who runs the place is french (with a bizarre french/mancunian accent) and her husband’s english.

On a wee tangent - given that i haven’t gone near the french language since first year in school (sooooo long ago!) myself and my phrasebook have been getting on like a house on fire!

In that vein the Mostusefulfrenchphrase Award goes to.....

‘allez vous en, sinon j’appelle un agent’

which apparently means go away or i’ll call the police –

i can just imagine being held up at knifepoint in paris …

... hold on a second till i get my phrasebook…

... am i pronouncing this right ?! …

... do i call you ‘tu’ or ‘vous’?!!

anyhooooo – so the set up over here in bordeaux is brilliant – they’ve a huge ‘rugby village’ down by the quays with a big screen so i spent the afternoon down there with various random irish punters watching the wales and south africa matches – cold cans of beers, sun beating down and a big screen – carlsberg don’t do holidays…

Anyway - as suspected there was no problems getting a ticket – i haggled a great seat off one of the locals, right down by the namibian 10 metre line.

As for the match itself what a joke. The Irish crowd were very poor – i think the fact that someone started a mexican wave says it all but then again look what was on display. Apart from his cross field kick to Trimble I don’t think O’Gara could hit a barn door – and as for Hickey – what the fuck?? As a buddy of mine said you’re not retired yet sunshine.

But the BEST part of the whole thing is that same night I was talking to another Munster head and apparently the rumour is (maybe someone can confirm this at home) that the beer they were serving in the stadium was shagginwellALCOHOLFREE!!!

And there i was dancing around like a lunatic!

To be honest the match threw everyone – you’d swear we lost the way everyone was walking out –

luckily some lunatic brought a ball and perked everyone’s spirits up by launching a garryowen up the road (followed by fifty more from various randomers!) till we got to the pub – bordeaux traffic (literally) didn’ know what hit it!

So the rest of the week has been spent hanging round in the sun, drinking and eating (lads the FOOD!) Went down to Biarritz and Bayonne for the last 2 days, wasted over 90 minutes of my life last night watching the Irish match – on the upside Scotland won! Definitely not a good sporting week for the locals!

The plan for the rest of the week is couple of vineyards tomorrow, match Saturday, all ireland Sunday and god knows after that!

Final story before ye all fall asleep –

so there i was yapping to these lads the other night in Bayonne and here’s what happened to one of them

So there are absolutely sweet shag all taxis in Bordeaux and not unreasonably the ‘Luas’ finishes around 12. So there are all the lads stuck in town at 4 in the morning looking a bit the worse for wear trying to get back to the campsite. One of them (typically the most bedraggled lookin fucker) decides to go upto this local young lady looking for her phone to ring a taxi.

Sooooooo (!!) the young lady thinks that this lumbering mass is trying to assault her (to be fair its 4 in the morning!) and whips out a can of pepper spray, sprays his eyes and legs it!!

But thats not the worst part – so the lads are all pissing themselves laughing while your man’s screaming in agony – eventually one of the lads gives him a bottle of water to wash his eyes out followed quickly by a JEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSUUUUUUUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS MEEEEEE BAALLLLLLLSSSSSS!!!

The water washed the pepper spray out of his eyes but then poured straight into his shorts and voilà – LES GREAT BALLS OF FIRE!!!

Lads ya couldn’t make it up!

Slàn

Colin

Electric Picnic Photos

2007-09-07T15:01:00.001+01:00

Yet another mental week and it's showing no signs of slowing up! Haven't even had a chance to rant/rave about the Picnic - for the meantime here's some photos of a savage weekend. I'm off to the beautiful city and then it's off to Bordeaux so my blogging will probably become even MORE erratic (and I don't mean sexy people)

LCD soundsystem (what was with the encore??!!)

First time seeing Delorentos, they put on a kickarse show altogether

The living legend that is Marlena Shaw - just what was needed on a lazy Saturday afternoon - everyone was just relaxing as she strutted her stuff and then California Soul came on and everyone couldn't help but get up and dance - brilliant!

MIA - gotta say I wasn't overly impressed - the songs were good but there was no real life in her performance - it was as if she's done this a hundred times before and was just going through the motions - even the shout-outs to the crowd seemed tired/lazy

Spilly Walker! For some reason I don't have any shots of Kitt the Younger! It was purely by accident that I happened on them but what a great set! Pure unbridled craic!

The Polyphonic Spree - the albums can get tired pretty quickly but as far as live sets go they're absolutely class - none of your drab indiekid nodding of heads here!

A buddy of mine - Keiron Black and the Amazing Few (rest of Few unseen in photo!) What a laugh - himself and the missus come across like a regular Johnny and June Cash on stage ... except with songs about washing your hands after you go to the toilet!

The Beastie Boys - I don't care what anyone said - THEY ROCKED!! Really poor call to have them in the tent but i was lucky enough to get up towards the front - credit to the lads for stalling the gig and getting everyone to step back to stop the people at the very front getting crushed. Nice one

I missed the Dublin Gospel Choir sunday morning and then as i was walking over to the comedy tent I heard some sweet sweet sounds coming from one of the charity tents - pleasant surprise or wha?!

These heads came on after DJ YODA who KICKED ARSE - absolutely phenomenal set altogether - what a ligind as we say in Munster!

Hipster Olympics

2007-09-05T13:28:00.000+01:00

Got this from keep it fresh

Broken Social Scene to play Dublin ... or are they??

2007-09-05T11:39:00.000+01:00

So running around like a lunatic correcting exams, prepping notes for october before i head to france on sunday (WOOHOO!) and next thing a friend rings me to say broken social scene are going to be playing Tripod in October.

So as you may know from one of my previous posts I'm a huuuuuuggggeee fan of those crazy canadian kids. So imagine my delight when i checked the ticketmaster website and I saw that tickets were only €20! The gig is part of the Heineken Green Synergy Festival so here was i thinking that this was another great example of a corporate sponsor obviously reducing the financial burden on punters going to gigs. I talked about this before and as I said while no-one is entirely comfortable with the increased corporate branding of concerts the fact remains that if it means cheaper tickets then happy days.

.... BUT HOLD ON!

- so i go to the ticketmaster website and the website CLEARLY says Broken Social Scene at Tripod (here) but 20 quid seems far too cheap. So i hop onto d'interweb and go to the Pod website which clearly states "Broken Social Scene presents Kevin Drew"

This sort of marketing is ridiculous - Drew is one of the founding members of BSS but I honestly don't know what his own music is like - is he going to be playing his own tunes which could be taking a completely different direction to his BSS stuff or will he end up giving into the crowd and playing some of the BSS tracks to satisfy people's cravings?! I'll still go along to see the gig but this sort of deliberately misleading advertising (Ticketmaster please hold your hand up) is a joke - it's almost a case of well if we put the "presents Kevin Drew" in really small print people will shell out their money before realising their mistake!!

Unbelievable

*Update*

Completely spoiling my rant goddamn ticketmaster amended their website to include Drew's name *shakes fist at sky* I guess I'll have to come down from my lofty perch on the moral high ground now... Meh the air was going to my head anyway

By all accounts his album is quality altogether and Sinead Gleeson gave it a great write up but typically it wasn't released before I left home. Has anyone listened to it yet?

Ps

2007-08-30T12:04:00.000+01:00

I know pretty much everyone's seen it already but just in case you haven't

I love the way she gets "for our children and the future" in at the end - what a pro...

The weekend's nearly here!!

2007-08-30T11:22:00.000+01:00

So running around like a lunatic trying to organise everything for the Picnic - can't bleedin wait!!

So never heard of this crowd until i saw them on una's page - they're called Flight of the Conchords and they're bleedin hilarious - very similar to David O'Doherty and that ain't a bad thing!

Apparently they're from New Zealand and they've got a show on HBO - gotta track down some of their stuff next weekend. So here ye go -

Have a great weekend peoples!!

Vive le Picnic (and pray for good weather - i'm off to buy wellies just in case!)

Electric Picnic lineup and times update

2007-08-28T16:43:00.000+01:00

Electric Picnic lineupdate

if you go to this page you can download a pdf which shows which shows what acts are clashing etc..

bit more user friendly/aesthetically pleasing and all that

And speaking of the picnic...

2007-08-28T14:36:00.000+01:00

Twas another crazy weekend between working friday going to cork for a bit of tag rugby on saturday and back up sunday for jb's birthday - given that we finished playing poker around half 5 sunday night/monday morning i felt like i was having a relapse of the jet lag yesterday

anyhoo as i was saying speaking of the picnic had a bit of a marathon cinema session on thursday night - went to see the electric picnic documentary in the ifi - great craic altogether - i only made the saturday last year between weddings and all ireland finals but i still saw what was definitely the gig of the day (possibly the weekend?) - Broken Social Scene playing the same tent where Arcade Fire blew everyone away the previous year - absolutely phenomenal - if you ever get a chance to see this band live please do - I had seen them the previous year in the temple bar music centre which was just unbelievable - don't normally like the tbmc but for that gig the sound was perfect the place was crammed to the rafters and the band played an absolute stormer.

They've got everything - strings multiple percussionists, lots of trumpets and horns and soaring toons! What more could you want - found this clip of them from lollapalooza which kind of echoes the Picnic gig ... shivers despite the poor sound!

Speaking of great songs with a nice dose of trumpet i robbed this from nialler9

Can't believe i'm going to miss her gig in september but there's the small matter of the rugby world cup and me flights are booked!

The other highlight of the docmentary was the interview with the cork dad. So there he is with his new baby boy in one of those front sling thingys.

Interviewer - is this his first picnic?

Cork Dad - no actually he was here last year in his ma's belly and look at him now - he's able to carry a grown man on his back!

Brilliant

Oh yeah almost forgot before the documentary on thursday had a couple of hours to kill so finally got to see the bourne ultimatum - have to say i really enjoyed it for the most part.

The one-on-one fight scene was insane although there was a sense of de ja vu - here he's fighting with a book , in the bourne supremacy he was using a magazine.

2 other relatively minor criticisms would be the overuse of the handheld camera or shakycam or whatever the hell they call it - there were moments when i was literally dizzy watching the screen there was some movement going on. I understand it lends to the "realistic" feel of the film as if you're in the car with them blah blah but sometimes it took away from the action. There was moments when the camera was focussed in and shaking so much that you could be watching the inside of a tumble dryer for all you knew

Finally the bourne franchise has been notable for taking itself quite seriously - you're not watching the films expecting to laugh for ANY reasons - deliberate or otherwise - so one of the last scenes with the "assassin with the heart of gold" (you'll know what i'm on about if you've seen it) just made us splutter on our popcorn it was so bad! A pity but having said that it's definitely the best trilogy of a really poor summer so far which i think reached its nadir in die hard with bruce's "fucker" in "motherfucker" being carefully cancelled out by the sound of a shotgun - what they'll do to get that PG 13 rating

end of rant/stream of consciousness!

Electric Picnic times and lineup

2007-08-28T14:23:00.000+01:00

Via Una

Nialler9 has the full times and lineup for the Electric Picnic

WOO HOOOO!!

Lego Movies

2007-08-23T14:36:00.000+01:00

Without a doubt one of my favourite blogs at the moment is Pedro Monscooch

His lego movies are absolutely quality - the attention to detail is ridiculous!

Lego Zoolander

Lego Matrix Reloaded

Photos

2007-08-23T14:15:00.001+01:00

So as i was saying i was over in the states for a wee while and spent a night in New York before heading over to Minneapolis - I fully embraced my tourist status and went snap-happy around Times Square trying to figure out how to use the exposure setting on my wee camera - lets just say I won't be investing in an SLR just yet!

Jeeeeesssusss

2007-08-22T16:00:00.000+01:00

So very very VERY wrong - from the BBC news website

Woman jailed for testicle attack

A woman who ripped off her ex-boyfriend's testicle with her bare hands has been sent to prison.
Amanda Monti, 24, flew into a rage when Geoffrey Jones, 37, rejected her advances at the end of a house party, Liverpool Crown Court heard.
She pulled off his left testicle and tried to swallow it, before spitting it out. A friend handed it back to Mr Jones saying: "That's yours."
Monti admitted wounding and was jailed for two-and-a-half years.
'Pulled hard'
Sentencing Monti, Judge Charles James said it was "a very serious injury" and that Monti was not acting in self-defence.
The court heard that Mr Jones had ended his long-term but "open relationship" with Monti towards the end of May last year.
The pair remained on good terms and on 30 May she picked him up from a party in Crosby and went back for drinks with friends at Mr Jones's house.
An argument ensued and Mr Jones said there was a struggle between them.
In his statement, Mr Jones said she grabbed his genitals and "pulled hard".

He added: "That caused my underpants to come off and I found I was completely naked and in excruciating pain."
The court heard that a friend saw Monti put Mr Jones's testicle into her mouth and try to swallow it.
She choked and spat it back into her hand before the friend grabbed it and gave it back to Mr Jones. Doctors were unable to re-attach the organ.
In a letter to the court, Monti said she was sorry for what she had done.
She said: "It was never my intention to cause harm to Geoff and the fact that I have caused him injury will live with me forever. I am in no way a violent person."
The letter added: "I have challenged myself to explain what has happened but still I just cannot remember. This has caused much anguish to me and will do for the rest of my life."

My favourite part is the quote from Ms Monti

"I am in no way a violent person"

Of course not - you're just misunderstood...

Not without your papers

2007-08-22T11:57:00.000+01:00

Holy sweet suffering mother of jaysus!!

Going into the pile on your desk marked you couldn't make it up no matter WHAT you shaggin smoked

Found this on Claire's page

"In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation."

Get the full story here

Seriously lads it's Pythonesque its so bizarre

"Crucifixion?"

"No reincarnation actually"

"Where's your papers?"

"ehhh ... sorry my what"

"your PAPERS - you know official endorsement by the People's Republic that you are in fact allowed TO reincarnate"

"oh right well i think i may have left them on my corporeal being, my mortal coil so to speak"

"yeah sure buddy we've heard that one before, tough - limbo's that way"

"but"

"don't want to hear it"

"but i was supposed to become a member of the royal family"

"of COURSE you were - listen sunshine, i've had a pretty long eternity, i'm late for my coffee break so here's the story - no papers, no moving onto a new plane of existence - now MOVE"

"but"

"NEXXXXXXTTTTT"

Whoops

2007-08-21T15:23:00.000+01:00

Relatively quiet night in de restaurant

Phone rings

Me - Hello blahblah restaurant

Woman on other end of phone (sounds like she's in her 50/60's) - Hi i've a slightly strange question for you

Me - go ahead

Her - Is there a topless bar next to your restaurant?

Me - ehhhh no madam, the closest topless bar would be Lapellos on Dame St

Her - ....... (moment of presumably disturbed silence) ..... I said tapas bar

Me - oh right.....

My ears are bleeding

2007-08-20T16:55:00.000+01:00

Mother of sweet jesus - THIS is how we're trying to educate the kids?!!!

James frickin Blunt ... singing bout a triangle

Cork in the Other All Ireland Final

2007-08-20T15:05:00.000+01:00

Waddefuck????

I'll be the first to admit that I've never taken much interest in the football - i've always thought that by comparison with hurling .... well thats the whole point - there's no comparison! So i was working in the restaurant on saturday night and every second person who heard the accent was asking with that impish condescending grin "how'd ya think ye'll get on against meath?!"

Once i released their heads from my vice-like grip while holding their heads in the soup for a few minutes (the novelty value of being told you sound just eddie hobbes wore off .... ohh i don't know after the first 5 minutes) I calmly explained that I hadn't seen a single cork football match all summer but judging from what i'd read of their performances (limping into a semi-final having beaten (cough) SLIGO?!!) I didn't think they'd have a hope on God's green earth

Then a Dub of all people started trying to persuade me that you'd never know they might just do it - I guffawed loudly (something that I tend to reserve for moments of singular hilarity) but I said sure fuck it I've nothing better to do tomorrow afternoon I might as well watch it

Couple of things

Meath were horrendously bad
Graham Geraghty was bullied off the field pretty easily
Cork played a beautiful style of football which to someone who's never really had any interest in the bigger of the 2 gaelic balls (please reserve all puns!) was a pleasure to watch!

Will i be jumping on the bandwagon - No

Will i be looking for a ticket - No (mainly cause i'll be in France for the RWC but even if i was here i wouldn't be - just so's ya know like!)

Do they have a chance? - hmmm good question - realistically i can't see Dublin getting past Kerry even with the advantage of the home crowd - the Monaghan game was exactly the kind of kick up the hole that Kerry needed and for all the Evening Herald sponsored nonsense about this being the Dub's year - the fact is that Kerry will take them apart and then they'll do a similar job on Cork - to be honest I'd love to see Dublin beat the Kingdom - when it comes to Cork playing Kerry the football team seem to get a good dose of what golfers would call the yips and seem to lose all faith in their abilities (i had the misfortune to go to the semi-final last year with a Kerryman - its their condescension thats the worst part - "sure at least ye still have the hurling!")

So basically if Kerry win next week i reckon all bets are off - if Dublin pull it off somehow god alone knows!

Billy Morgan - maith an fear agus comhghairdeachas!

Back again

2007-08-20T14:39:00.000+01:00

Hmmm clearly my commitment to the blogging cause must be questioned - one brief holiday and i fall off the radar for a couple of weeks! Anyway had a great week off in the states for a friend's wedding - a celtic pagan wedding no less! Absolutely great craic, the highlight being the ceili mor after dinner - the poor locals didn't know what the hell was going on when we started the Siege of Ennis! Got some decent long exposure shots in New York as well which I must upload.

In the meantime for your viewing pleasure ....

Heard about this from a friend in work a few weeks ago and then rick saved me the hassle of looking for it on youtube by posting it. This is absolutely amazing to look at - its phenomenal to see the two competing pack mentalities (and the crocodile!) What are the chances of taking a safari tour and catching all this?? A certain David Attenborough would be proud!

And for your aural pleasure....

This is one of MyNewFavouriteBands (c) - they're called Menomena and their latest album is called Friend & Foe - this is the first track on the album - the album itself is superb - the live track here doesn't do complete justice to the song so just buy/download the bleedin album - whatever it is you kids do these days!

Weekend

2007-08-03T12:49:00.000+01:00

Hmmm the joys of having a summer nixer in the catering industry (cough) is that bank holiday weekends become largely redundant! Having said that we've got the replay on Sunday (I reckon Waterford are freaked out by the Rebels refusal to lie down and have their bellies tickled!) AND a wee barbecue so people lets keep all fingers toes and miscellaneous body parts crossed for the youknowwhat to remain unchanged for the weekend!

C'MON DE REBELS!!!

Wha?

2007-08-03T11:16:00.000+01:00

Just listening to the radio - did ANYONE know there was a train tunnel going from Heuston to Connolly under the Phoenix Park?!!

Random fact for the day or wha?!

Castlepalooza

2007-08-02T18:06:00.000+01:00

Shameless plug time!! If anyone who happens to stumble on this blog is going to Castlepalooza this weekend check out hoorayforhumans on the saturday - they're from cork, they're poptastic, they do a mean live set ......... oh yeah and my brother's the drummer!!

Check out their myspace for some choooons!

Arcade Fire in the Phoenix Park

2007-08-02T17:43:00.000+01:00

From ian via una

Arcade Fire Irish Autumn date confirmed.
MCD wins again.

Wed October 24th.

Phoenix Park

Support from Clinic.

Tickets on sale Friday August 10th

Interesting! Didn't make it to Oxegen but saw them in the Olympia this year and at the Picnic 2 years ago - the ticketmaster site says at the "Big Top" - wonder will it be something like the Marquee in cork but on a grander scale (seated? hopefully not for the love of jaysus!!)

What i will say is an "indoor(ish)" gig like this will suit the band better - the noise in the tent at EP 2005 was unbelievable and if they can recreate something like that again then WOO HOO!

Effin Eddie

2007-08-02T14:22:00.000+01:00

Got this from Claire

For those of you who aren't familiar with his work "Effin Eddie" is a ligind in his own lifetime - he did a commentary on the 1992 Tipperary Under 21 Football Final between Aherlow and Eire Og Nenagh which has gone down in youtube history! words cannot describe what he brings to the commentary but lets just say Micheal O'Muircheartaigh sounds like a pussy cat on valium by comparison!

Fair play to ya Ian this is an absolute classic! I agree completely with Claire - the facial expressions are spot on!

For those of you who need more of your fix of the Ligind you can buy the dvd of the match at eddie's website

Busy

2007-08-01T16:38:00.000+01:00

How the HELL do people find the time to maintain these things and hold down jobs, lives, families and regular social interaction?!!

Seriously ... HOW??!!

Unbelievable truth

2007-07-30T16:26:00.000+01:00

Got this from graham

Think I'll just echo his own comments and say holy fuckin shit - it absolutely beggars belief that this happened but is anyone that surprised??

Knackered

2007-07-30T14:19:00.000+01:00

Mother of divine jaysus what a weekend!

It started off ridiculously civilised with a gang of us going to Patrick Guilbaulds (no I don't make a habit of it and yes it was purely because they do a "lunch special") Felt ridiculously posh (even had to get the tinoffruit out and all for the occasion)

To use a hackneyed cliche it literally went from the sublime to the ridiculous - over to the iveagh gardens to see the "jason and adam show" - that'd be jason byrne - mentalist ginger irish fella- and adam hills - not quite as mental australian comedian who happens to have a prosthetic leg - i know this because at once stage he took off his leg (!) to address a heckler (or possibly someone who was on a mobile phone - it all got a bit hazy at that point)

Hmmmm the rest of the night was even more blurry and will be quickly skipped over - more madness on saturday evening - at the tag rugby all irelands - free drink for the entire evening was great until i decided to cycle home - things i learned this weekend - apparently you can be arrested for drunken cycling! (i wasn't but good to know for the future!!)

And then as if that wasn't enough we had the melodrama that was the cork v waterford match yesterday - the atmosphere in croker was brilliant, the sun made a guest appearance and the crowd was treated to one of the most intense hurling displays given on that sod!

The tension was unbearable - there was literally nothing to separate the 2 teams - somehow myself and the lads ended up surrounded by Deise fans - this, combined with the fact that I was nearly lynched when i made some (ahem) *mild* criticism of John Mullane's slightly over-zealous approach to the game all added to the fun! I honestly thought we were away after Neil Ronan's second goal but sure where would be the fun in that?! In the end I reckon a draw was the fairest result - these teams really do bring out the best in each other and while it does nothing for my physical mental or emotional well-being i can't wait for the replay

As if that wasn't enough fun for one day we ended up going to another comedy gig in the iveagh gardens - karl spain was good (lot of repetition from the last time i saw him at christmas) but the second act was phenomenal - an aussie guy called steve hughes - if you get a chance check him out - very similar in approach to Bill Hicks (in other words caustically funny)

So many good lines - his riff on McDonalds doing salads was inspired ("does your drug dealer do a healthy option?! I have heroin AND hoummous!") but the stand out joke was him talking about being mangled on magic mushrooms in amsterdam - "we were so fucked up we bought a load of bags of ice and went down to the canal to release them back into the wild"!!

Absolutely inspired!

Having been well and truly hyper-stimulated for 3 days i'm now going to hide under a rock for the next week!

Ta na Deise ag dul sios

2007-07-27T12:48:00.000+01:00

Woo hoo!!

The weekend's here and tis going to be a mad one so there's only one thing I've time to say...

Rebels Abu!!!

Car-crash tv

2007-07-26T15:48:00.000+01:00

From gawker

words cannot describe how cringeworthy this is

Soggy

2007-07-26T15:33:00.001+01:00

Seriously ... screw my carbon footprint - who'd be a cyclist in this weather?!

Tour de Farce

2007-07-26T12:05:00.000+01:00

Yes its a cliched title but there really is no other way to describe yet another disastrous Tour de France - while the use of steroids, blood transfusions is endemic in all sport be it horse racing, athletics, swimming (lets not even go there) and even something as unlikely as golf (fair play to ya Gary Player) it still baffles me that journalists and the media still approach the Tour every year as if it has some ounce of credibility hanging onto its tattered crossbar.

While the atheltics field is probably equally as rife with cheats the fact is that the cyclists seem to be a lot more "amatuerish" in getting caught. The problem is of course that le Tour and the Giro etc all bring in huge amounts of money between sponsorship fees, television rights and economic boosts for the vrious related regions. Consequently it seems quite easy for the powers to be to point to their increased investigations, improved testings and their hollow claims that "it'll all be different this year".

The decision by German tv stations ARD and ZDF to stop broadcasting the Tour (i'm loathe to even give it a capital T!) has been completely vindicated by the 2 most recent revelations and expulsions.

I know this is all rhetoric thats been said a million times before but the fact is that as long as the Tour and other sports are accorded coverage and credibility by the media, athletes will continue to be endorsed - and a seemingly vast proportion of them (look at our own potted Olympics history) will use whatever means possible to achieve (tainted) success

End of rant

I bet McDowell's secretly delighted he got out

2007-07-25T15:18:00.000+01:00

From breakingnews

Shooting trial collapses as victim refuses to answer questions
25/07/2007 - 11:29:50

The trial of a man accused of shooting another man in Crumlin has collapsed after the victim refused to be cross-examined.

Mr Justice Paul Carney yesterday told Mr Daniel Doyle (aged 26) that the only reason he wasn't spending the night in a cell was because he was in a wheelchair after he refused to answer questions put to him by defence counsel Mr Conor Devally SC.

This morning, cross-examination resumed but Mr Doyle refused to answer further questions. When asked by Mr Justice Carney if he refused to be cross-examined he replied: "I'll be killed."

Mr Justice Carney then directed the jury to acquit Mr Paul Hurley (aged 19) of Clonmacnoise Road, Crumlin, Dublin who had denied attempting to murder Mr Doyle on August 15, 2005 in Crumlin. He was also acquitted of a second charge of causing serious harm to Mr Doyle

You couldn't make it up

2007-07-25T15:04:00.000+01:00

I know these have been doing the rounds for a while but talk about demented!

From redmum

And from una

Of Montreal at Crawdaddy

2007-07-25T14:35:00.000+01:00

Walking down to Tripod last night for the Alabama 3 gig (demented - eclectic doesn't even begin to describe the crowd there) when I saw a poster for the Of Montreal gig in Crawdaddy - Nokia are sponsoring the gig but what struck me was the price of tickets - €12.50! Whatthehell?

Having just been talking about the damage going to gigs regularly can do to your pocket this seems like a great deal. Nokia get their advertising and the punters can afford a second rock shandy at the gig - everyone's a winner!

Chalk it down!

Testing 1.. 2 .. Is this thing still working?

Wooooo hooooo!!

John Waters on Newstalk

It had to happen eventually

Honestly officer we didn't rob the child....

Finally...

Productivity will be down for this quarter

These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed

Cannot find weapons or CIA Error Iraqi Explorer

Sweeeeeeet

Avoiding the hype (and random tangent)

I think the Ralph Wiggum one is more credible

Falling Man

One for all the parents....

Things I learned this Christmas

More bleedin lists

So very many lists

What were we to expect?

It's the small things in life that keep me happy

Final Fantasy at Vicar Street

The Dark Knight trailer

Sweeeeeeet

Menomena at the Sugar Club

Rachel O'Reilly, Madeline McCann, Kevin Doyle and Katy French

Ah no seriously

Thank you Dan Deacon....

Justine Delaney Wilson and all that bollocks

You're joking me aren't you?

Where beatboxing meets Delia Smith

Book-N-Supp

And a VERY happy birthday to you son

I love dominos

Simple pleasures

The answer to the question thats bothering everyone...

Addictive ... not like crack but still pretty addictive

New Toons!

The Jazz Weekend

The Catholic Church scares me and cracks me up in equal measures

A few tunes what I think you should like

Final Fantasy at Vicar St

Pointless

Arcade Fire in the Phoenix Park

Kevin Drew

Blogging guilt

Lazy post #68 - One of a limited edition

Whatdefuck???

Apology

A few questions for Eddie O'Sullivan

Ireland 22 to play France

Happy/sad ice cream

New Beirut single

Absolutely inspired

Sure where else would you be other than Bordeaux?

Electric Picnic Photos

Hipster Olympics

Broken Social Scene to play Dublin ... or are they??

Ps

The weekend's nearly here!!

Electric Picnic lineup and times update

And speaking of the picnic...

Electric Picnic times and lineup

Lego Movies

Photos

Jeeeeesssusss

Not without your papers

Whoops

My ears are bleeding

Cork in the Other All Ireland Final

Back again

Weekend

Wha?

Castlepalooza

Arcade Fire in the Phoenix Park

Arcade Fire Irish Autumn date confirmed.

Effin Eddie

Busy

Unbelievable truth

Knackered

Ta na Deise ag dul sios

Cannot find weapons or CIA Error
Iraqi Explorer