Ukuleles & overweight nudity… September 3, 2010
Posted by jasoncondie in Art, Edinburgh, Festival, Music, Thoughts.Tags: Edinburgh, Art, Edinburgh Festival, Edinburgh Fringe, Half price Hut, lucky dip, the ukulele project, ukulele, george formby, mumford & sons, damien rice, karma police, rebellion, arcade fire, radiohead, naked splendour, philip herbert, life modelling, life drawing
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… just another Saturday afternoon lucky dipping the Fringe Half Price Hut then. Whilst I appreciate the festival is over for another year (tear), I thought another couple of reviews wouldn’t hurt in case you happen across the shows next year or elsewhere.
The Ukulele Project 8.5/10 – Cowgate Udderbelly Belly Bancer
Size isn’t everything. Disregarded previously as a musical punchline (not helped by the comical strummings of George Formby), the ukulele has enjoying a recent resurgence thanks to folk rock bands like Mumford & Sons. The Ukulele Project, a trio of teenagers, apply their wee guitars to an eclectic range of hits from Dolly Parton to the Beatles. Lead male vocalist Oli Peacock is pleasingly reminiscent of Damien Rice and his acoustic covers of Radiohead’s Karma Police and Arcade Fire’s Rebellion were arguably better than the originals. The only criticism being the inclusion of a Bond medley was uncharacteristically childish but only because the maturity of performance makes you forget the age of the performers.
Naked Splendour 9/10 – C-Venues Carlton Hotel
“Contains nudity, drawing involved” warns the ticket. Audience members are handed sketch pads and pencils upon entering the worryingly intimate auditorium (drawing involved – check). Philip Herbert has dedicated his life to life modelling and through innovative participatory theatre, recounts witty and absurdist anecdotes. After the subject strips (nudity – check), an initially embarrassed audience soon settles to intense concentration as sketchers attempt to capture Herbert’s naked splendour. The show certainly answered my questions about life modelling (what happens if you fall asleep or get an erection?) and I’m now considering giving life classes a go – drawing not modelling mind.
Apparently the rendering of the model's genitals says a lot about your personality - do you go for the darkened area, acorn or exaggeration?
“Hi I’m Johnny Knoxville, welcome to Jackass 3D” August 27, 2010
Posted by jasoncondie in Movies, Thoughts.Tags: Movies, 3D, jackass, jackass 2, jackass 3d, 3-D, johnny knoxville, stunts, pranks, Men in Black 2, Dukes of Hazzard, the Ringer, butt xray
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Is that your hand on my butt...?
Jackass defined a genre and a generation. A gaggle of bored twenty-somethings performing feats of daring idiocy and playing pranks to amuse themselves and a dedicated fanbase. I’ll unashamedly admit I loved the original movie in 2002 but was less affected when Number Two arrived riding a runaway bull in 2006. Although I was impressed that Knoxville still participated in the more dangerous stunts despite Hollywood success (?) in Men in Black 2, the Dukes of Hazzard and the Ringer.
So now the Jackass boys are back to complete the hatrick adding that now ubiquitous extra dimension. The trailer appears pretty uninspired. I fear that post-naughties the world may have moved on from a grown man inserting a toy car into his rectum.
Lucky-dipping the Half Price Hut August 20, 2010
Posted by jasoncondie in Edinburgh, Festival, Friends, Thoughts, Travel.Tags: Edinburgh, Edinburgh Festival, Festival, Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe, Half price Hut, That Moment, Chef!, one woman show, Cowgate Underbelly, beatbox, breakdance, a-capella, Assembly @ George St, martial arts
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Discovering fresh, untapped talent at the Edinburgh Festival is a risky business. Headliners like John Bishop, Jason Byrne et al offer a safe, guaranteed laugh but the amphitheatre venues and extortionate ticket prices detract from the true festival experience. That’s why I prefer to lucky-dip the Half Price Hut. Located on the Mound, the Hut’s screens list the day’s undersubscribed shows, now available for half price. Admittedly, trying to locate a show in the genre-categorised (as opposed to alphabetic) Fringe brochure is relatively stressful as the queue gradually diminishes. Top tip: take a photo of the screens as the show listings update frequently. Applying such a technique I unearthed a couple of recommendable performances I wouldn’t have considered otherwise:
That Moment 8.5 / 10 – £10 Cowgate Underbelly
Energetic, imaginative one-woman show (so 90s) recounting the questionable life choices of an aspiring actress, complete with Lorraine-Kelly-accented agent spouting motivational cliches, homosexual theatrical directors and an incontinent dog. The tiny cave venue feels almost too intimate to contain the show’s energy and character range – at the climax the solo performer plays 7 different characters interchangeably. Witty and well-acted throughout.
Chef! 8 / 10 – £13 Assembly @ George St
Thankfully nothing you’d see at the Taste Festival. The food merely acts as backdrop to an innovative hour of beatbox, breakdancing, martial arts, a-capella and surreal Asian culinary comedy. Arguably the best set-piece involved the majority of the cast invisible in black body stockings manipulating items and two characters in a slow-motion, Streetfighter inspired dinner battle. Amazing beatboxing and breakdancing.
Movie Review – Beautiful Kate – 9/10 August 12, 2010
Posted by jasoncondie in Movies, Thoughts.Tags: movie review, movie, Beautiful Kate, Australia, Australian film, Southern Gothic, incest, Ben Mendelsohn, Bryan Brown, Sophie Lowe, Rachel Ward
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I'm glad I didn't have a hot, immoral, incorrigible sister growing up....
Southern Gothic is a subgenre of the gothic novel, exploring the social issues and cultural character of the American deep south. Notable protagonists including William Faulkner, Truman Capote and Cormac McCarthy. A ubiquitous feature of Southern Gothic is “the grotesque”, typically situations, places, or characters made cringe-worthy via racial bigotry or hypocritical, egotistical self-righteousness. The grotesque theme underpinning the movie Beautiful Kate… incest.
Although an Australian film, the arid scenery, isolation, restless natives and hardened simple farmfolk of the Flinders Range outback are analogous to the southern states of the US. Ben Mendelsohn is haunted, remorseful writer, Ned Kendall, returning to his remote family home to reconcile with and bid farewell to his dying father Bruce (Bryan Brown). Familiar household objects trigger teenage memories of Ned’s beautiful twin sister, Kate, (played by the stunningly ethereal Sophie Lowe) who seduced him without remorse.
The film is very reminiscent of The Reader. Middle-aged male lead haunted by flashbacks of a forbidden love. Mendelsohn’s powerful evocation of a man tormented and defined by his past anchors the film and offsets the discomfort of the incest scenes which director, Rachel Ward, boldly didn’t compromise. Incest is far more prolific than society likes to entertain – I read an article only last week on sibling marriages. Once you’ve wrapped your head around the central theme you’ll discover a beautifully shot, tightly scripted and emotively acted movie.
Letters from America – USA Trip 2010 August 5, 2010
Posted by jasoncondie in Friends, Quotes, Thoughts, Travel.Tags: aliens, America, car rental, dodge charger, fear & loathing, Flagstaff, Grand Canyon, quotes, Roswell, Santa Fe, Texas, Travel, travel tips, vegas tips
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Cut a deal with the novelty beer sellers to promote their offering and they'll offer a 50% discount on subsequent purchases. 4 pints for $5 is a bargain, Miller Lite or not.
Bad Decisions Tour 2010 – a fortnight based out of Austin, visiting Lake Texoma for the Independence day long weekend before commencing an epic roadtrip to Vegas via Roswell, Santa Fe, Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon. Rather than a dull day-to-day diary of meals eaten and $s spent, I thought my inebriated, “fear & loathing” inspired scribblings might prove more amusive. Also check out my photos on Flickr, particularly Stevo’s MJ tribute.
Car rental: Hertz hooked us up. Apparently the standard-issue ‘economy’ model is not generic American beige such as a Toyota Camry or Ford Taurus but a SMART car. The perfect vehicle for a 20+ hour roadtrip surrounded by muscle cars, monster trucks and 18-wheelers. Thankfully depreciation (?) saved our blushes and our bacon. Drive a car one-way and receive a free upgrade. Our quadruple upgrade … a Dodge Charger. Thanks depreciation.
Roswell: Imagined this wee town to be like an extraterrestrial safari park. Big-eyed, grey, genitalia-free anal-probers removing wing mirrors and humping on the bonnet. The reality is a Main Street littered with souvenir shops and a lacklustre UFO museum. The spaceship-themed McDonalds playcentre was a nice contextual touch though.
Santa Fe: Feels like an Epcot Centre representation of Mexico. Mexicoland per se. But if you appreciate faux adobe, turquoise, art galleries and amazing clouds, Santa Fe is definitely worth a visit.
Vegas tips: Buy a 24-hour buffet ticket for $35. Buy $10 4-pint, giant novelty beers. Utilise available gambling coupons – we turned a $40 free bet into a $50 kitty. Don’t “hit” when the croupier is an elderly Asian woman. Don’t underestimate the dehydrating power of the Vegas sun. Don’t be intrigued by “Girls Direct” approaches on the Strip – nothing good can come of that.
Memorable quotes
Stevo on the Blue Man Group: “I’d be pissed too if a blue guy touched me”
L’il Wayne: “trading V-cards with retards”
Stevo on 67oz beer versus margaritas: “$1 margaritas will always be there, black guys with giant beers won’t”
ASAnine July 29, 2010
Posted by jasoncondie in Advertising, News, Thoughts.Tags: ad, Advertising, Advertising Standards Authority, adverts, ASA, bbc, Burger King, censorship, chicken burger, commercials, football, Paddy Power, political correctness
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Deliberate contextual misspelling. The 21st of July was a big press-day for the Advertising Standards Authority, featuring in two ‘most popular’ (and by popular I mean ludicrous) articles on the BBC website….
Paddy Power blind football ad stays despite complaints – The ASA received 1,000 complaints as the ad controversially and surreally insinuates the death of a cat at the feet of a blind footballer. Favourite quote from the ASA statement defending the ad, “we considered it was unlikely to be seen by most viewers as malicious or to imply that blind people were likely to cause harm to animals whilst playing football.”
Burger King advert ‘misled on size’ – Burger King’s “cheat on beef” campaign was banned by the ASA following a whopping 2 complaints the chicken burger shown was larger than the real-life equivalent. Give me a break, who hasn’t ‘misled on size’ at some point in their life. According to the article, the ASA “bought three burgers and found their thickness and overall height was “considerably less” than in the ad”. Sufficiently representative sample: check. The watchdog then revealed research stage 2… “we also examined the size of the burgers in the hands of an average-sized man and considered that they did not fill the hands to the same extent as the burger featured in the advert”. Asking the first 5’9″ man you see walking down the street to hold the three burgers mentioned previously doesn’t really constitute empirical evidence.
Poor, overworked ASA. I poke fun but it can’t be a fulfilling job. Constantly fielding complaints from the political correctness police and letters from bored, oversensitive pensioners. Ad breaks are a necessary evil but would be made even more painful if agencies faced heightened censorship. Think of how many of your favourite adverts contain elements that could be construed by some minority as controversial?
Mall trawling July 13, 2010
Posted by jasoncondie in Thoughts, Travel.Tags: American retail, boardshorts, Buckle, buying boardshorts, clothes shopping, cross-selling, incentivising, retail, sales assistant, upselling
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With the combination of booze and escalators, the singles mixer at the mall very quickly got out of hand....
Retail sector spend suffered substantial shrinkage during the recent recession. Redundancies were inevitable however some employees weathered the cull. To survive, these attractive, personable point-of-sellers had to evolve into a new breed of sales assistant. Up-selling, cross-selling, incentivising, indebting – all mechanisms to extract as much cash as possible under the guise of excessive friendliness.
I visited a mall to purchase some boardshorts. Sounds straightforward. 1) Find a skateboard shop, 2) Browse boardshorts, 3) Find desirable size and colour, 4) Try on, and 5) Purchase. A shop called Buckle immediately appeared to satisfy steps 1) – 3). Whilst browsing, a sales assistant half my age resembling Jesse Metcalfe accosted me with “Hey man, what size are you?”. “What size do you think I am?” I retorted. Always best to answer a question with a question. Jesse ignored my witty repartee and proceeded to describe the Phantom boardshorts – apparently being fabricated from recycled boat sails or dolphin hide justifies the price tag.
I picked a selection to try on and after ironically introducing himself as Jesse and a half-hearted handshake, I found myself in the changing room. Wrestling myself into the unnaturally slippery Phantoms, Jesse checked on me and slid two pairs of $50 flip-flops under and placed three $40 T-shirts on top of the door as he felt these would “go really well with the shorts”. Thus began my incarceration – Jesse must have brought applicable sizes of every item in the shop for me to try. I escaped the claustrophobia of the fitting room when he started bringing girl styles (“it’s a modern world – you could probably get away with a size 8″). I returned to the boardshorts to hear a cute female assistant tell a male customer “I’m bored so I’m going to find you the perfect outfit. Time to play dress-up”. Why did I have to get stuck with Jesse? Ultimately I ended up with no boardshorts but three new T-shirts, two of which were from the men’s aisle.
Mini-snakes on a plane July 6, 2010
Posted by jasoncondie in News, Thoughts, Travel, Web.Tags: Thoughts, bbc, news, Travel, maggots, maggots on a plane, plane, air travel, flight, Atlanta, US Airways, spoiled meat
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If you have no ears to pop, altitude induces gigantism
OK, I know I said no posts for a fortnight but this news nugget was too quote-stuffed and vacation-topical to resist. A US Airways flight was forced to return to Atlanta airport after maggots started dripping from an overhead luggage locker. The cause: spoiled meat. No liquid containers greater than 150ml but rotting flesh, have a nice flight. Nobody tell Ryanair or next time you fly to an airport in a different time zone from your desired destination, you’ll have to opt out of the ‘maggot charge’. Notwithstanding the ridiculousness of this cargo passing security unchallenged, the passenger quotes were priceless:
“felt like they were crawling all over me because it only takes one maggot to upset your world”.
“I see a maggot looking back at me and I’m thinking, ‘These are anaerobic, flesh-eating larvae that the flight attendants don’t have to sit with.’”
Perhaps I’ll try to smuggle my inevitable hooker-bride back from Vegas in my checked baggage.
This sh*t is bananas, b-a-n-a-n-a-s June 24, 2010
Posted by jasoncondie in News, Thoughts, Web.Tags: animal attack, attack, evil chimpanzee, killer whale attack, macaque, Metro, monkey, monkey attack, Monkey Island
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When monkeys attack... a re-enactment
Similarly ludicrous to the “killer killer whale” story of a couple months ago, last week the Metro offered another animal attack gem. Attempting to conquer her lifelong pomfretphobia (fear of primates), Dee Darwell visited Monkey Island (no, not the point-and-click PC puzzle game of the 90s) off the coast of Phuket.
Again I would like to caveat this post with the disclaimer that I don’t condone or find unprovoked monkey ambushes amusing. However the resultant quotes are hilarious. The full story is available on the Metro website but for your reading pleasure I’ve listed a few choice excerpts below.
She had a fear of primates after her father brought up a ‘positively evil’ chimpanzee. Surely some explanation is necessary as to why her father owned a chimpanzee. Child from a failed first marriage? Michael Jackson fan? Furthermore how did he successfully instil the evil? À la Chris’s evil monkey from Family Guy.
‘The next thing I noticed, this monkey walked up next to me and I thought, “Oh dear”. Imagine a knee-high macaque swaggering toward Dee like a drunken hoody and the exclamation of such an emotive epiphany as she realised the monkey’s intentions were not pure.
‘There was one man, a tourist, and when he saw the monkey bite me, he screamed and ran off’. Unless the onlooker had watched Outbreak (atrocious movie recently released in Thailand) the night before, I put it to you that that man was a coward.
Tour leader Yongyut Buasod said: ‘We can’t control the monkeys if they decide to bite someone.’ Classic denial of liability.
The curse of the Nike ad June 22, 2010
Posted by jasoncondie in News, Sport, Thoughts, Web.Tags: ad, advertisment, Cannavaro, Drogba, Federer, football, Homer Simpson, Kobe Bryant, Madden curse, Nike, Nike ad, Nike curse, Ribery, Ronaldhino, Ronaldo, Rooney, TV, Wayne Rooney, world cup, world cup 2010
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Token African striker (OK, Drogba) beats numerous defenders before chipping the keeper only to be denied glory by a goal-line overhead kick from Canelloni (sorry Cannavaro). Insert Italian celebratory song and dancing girls. Rooney chests down the clearance before playing a sloppy intercepted pass. Insert failure montage culminating with a bearded Wayne exiled to a caravan. Inspired by this dystopic future, Rooney chases down Ribéry and slide tackles. Insert alternative success montage – Rooney is knighted, Britain’s crippled stock market recovers, newborns are named Wayne en masse and Federer is defeated at ping pong. Brazil’s Ronaldinho dazzles with some fancy footwork to swing in a cross. Insert worldwide dissemination of his step-over move including replication by Kobe Bryant. Finally enter golden boy Ronaldo, accompanied by an autobiographical movie, Homer Simpson and a 3-storey blinged statue.
Despite an impressive plethora of sportstars, the Nike World Cup ad is fatally flawed in several respects. Kobe Bryant is best known this side of the Atlantic for a sexual assault case that was later dropped. Similarly Ribéry, embroiled in an underage prostitution investigation, was banned from the Champions League Final. Ronaldinho, fancy footwork or not, was considered too old to be selected for this year’s Brazil squad. Football faux pas indeed but nothing in comparison to the stars’ underperformance in the World Cup to date. At the time of writing (20/6/10) Drogba, Rooney, Ribéry and Ronaldo have played woefully in the opening games and Cannavaro has just handed New Zealand a(n arguably offside) tap-in. Even Federer struggled in his opening Wimbledon game against relative unknown, Alejandro Falla.
The Nike curse is well-documented. Previous ads featured Eric Cantona, subsequently dropped, and Dennis Bergkamp, before uncharacteristically Holland failed to qualify. Only the Madden Curse, where American football players appearing on the videogame box art suffer a degradation in performance, is comparable in terms of expense and embarrassment. To quote the commercial’s only character not cursed… D’oh.
Shrek upgraded from the swamp before MTV Cribs came a knocking
