La Musique at Sandinos, Derry
This Saturday I’m hitting the road and heading to Derry to play for La Musique in Sandinos. They’ve already hosted gigs by Hystereo and Deadbots, and they have the Filthy Dukes coming over on Easter Monday, so I reckon I’ll be right at home in their club. Doors are at 10pm. Hopefully I’ll see some of you there. If you make it, you’ll be the first to hear a couple of Philthy re-edits I’ve just done. 
Dancepig vs Mano Le Tough
The boys from Berlin (well, sort of…) are back this Saturday, March 28th, for their second head to head gig, which after the success of the first promises to be a packed affair. Andrew’s Lane Theatre is the venue of choice this time, and support comes from Lil’ Dave and Job. Live visuals on the night come from the multi-talented Shonagh Hurley. It’s my club of the week.
As is typical of Dublin these days, there’s also another gig worth checking out the same night, which is Zombie Nation (live) in the Button Factory. His new album Zombielicious just came out at the start of the month and is getting great reviews. Any other night I’d be there like a shot but it’s Andrew’s Lane for me this time.
[YouTube thanks to Damien Mulley]
I did a quick Twitter post last night when I noticed a story on RTÉ News online about two anonymous paintings of a naked Brian Cowen that had appeared in two Dublin galleries yesterday. Underneath a picture of one of the paintings a sub editor had made a pun about one of the paintings being “well hung”. I was surprised but pleased that RTÉ could make fun of the situation.
I was more than a little surprised tonight then to hear that RTÉ issued an apology to Cowen and his family over their reporting of the story. Watching the report above, I really don’t know why they would have had to do so. I know our libel laws are amazingly out of date, but surely they couldn’t cover anything said in the report? The story on RTÉ online has also since been edited and the pictures of the paintings have been removed.
I look forward to hearing more about it tomorrow anyway. In the meantime, you can read the latest reactions by searching for #picturegate on Twitter.
[Update 25/03/09] It gets worse! I just read the text of the apology on the Irish Times website:
“On last night’s programme we carried a report on the illicit hanging of caricatures of the Taoiseach in two Dublin galleries. RTÉ News would like to apologise for any personal offence caused to Mr Cowen or his family and for any disrespect shown to the office of the Taoiseach by our broadcast.”
To make matters worse, they’re also reporting that “Fianna Fáil TD Michael Kennedy last night called on RTÉ director general Cathal Goan to consider his position”. Seriously, I know things are bad right now, but Cowen and the FF party need to figure out when to laugh and roll with it. They’ve now achieved something I thought was impossible: to look even more pathetic than they already did.
[Update 25/03/09] Here’s the video of the apology.
It seems people are less perplexed about this than I am, but more angry. Damien Mulley, who posted the first video here, just wrote his own blog post about RTÉ’s apology, and other artists are now starting to publish more naked pictures of Cowen.
[Update 25/03/09] Nearly 24 hours have passed since I first posted here about what’s now just called Picturegate. It’s funny how fast things move sometimes. We now know that the artist in question is called Conor Casby. Apparently the pictures were hung in the galleries weeks ago, but it was RTÉ’s report two nights ago that made the shit hit the fan.
Today, Gardai visited Today FM trying to strongarm the contact details of Mr Casby out of them. He had been in touch with the Ray D’Arcy show for a couple of months. They didn’t give the Gardai his details, but, in a strange turn of events, Mr Casby contacted the Gardai himself and gave a voluntary statement. It just goes to show how out of hand the whole thing had gotten that there was talk of charging him with criminal damage for putting some glue on a wall and incitement to hatred (???).
The story has been all over the radio all day, and all over the world thanks to the BBC, The Times and the New York Times. I’m still pissed off that RTÉ were made to apologise, when no other media group in the world has even been asked to (to the best of my knowledge), and they’re all still publishing images of the paintings which caused such offence to the office of the Taoiseach.
I guess we can take some comfort in the fact that the creative types didn’t let us down. Check out some of their sterling photoshops of Brian Cowen over on the Creative Ireland website. This one is my favourite:
Brian Cowen by JimChimney
Dashboard #3
The Dashboard boys are back in 4 Dame Lane this Thursday March 26th with a country themed gig this time, featuring The Blood Red Mountain Band, The Hot Sprockets and The Sly Brothers, along with DJs Dino, Mark Lam and Conor Murphy. More info from the Dashboard 3 Facebook event page or from dashboard.4dl@gmail.com.
Saturdays at Wax
Just a quick heads up about a new occasional residency I’ll be doing on Saturdays in Wax, along with fellow residents Aidan O’Connell, Mark Alton and Barry Farrell. Expect a good mix of house, techno and electro.
It’ll be access all areas between Wax and Spy, it’s a tenner in every week even when there’s guests (Upcoming: Housemeister on May 2nd), and if you don’t tell anyone I told you, you can even get in free if you go in early enough. It kicks off on Saturday April 18th, but my first dates are:
Sat May 9th – Mark Alton + Philth DJ Set
Sat May 30th – Mark Alton + Philth DJ set
I was trying to describe the big reveal in this video to a friend in the pub the other day, and failed miserably. It happens between 5.00 and 5.30 but it’s worth watching the whole thing.
Much and all as I like thought provoking low budget movies in foreign languages, I always have room for a big blockbuster in my schedule now and again. This summer has a lot of “big” movies coming up. Here are a few of the trailers to whet your appetite. (There is no trailer for Avatar from James Cameron yet…)
Star Trek
Terminator Salvation
Transformers 2
Wolverine
Graham Linehan (Image from 4talentmagazine.com)
I don’t know a lot about the man apart from he wrote and continues to write funny TV shows, and he runs a pretty popular blog called Why, That’s Delightful. Recently he posted a piece about an unforgiveably misguided piece in the Scottish Sunday Express that had to do with teenage survivors of the Dunblane massacre. The thrust of the piece was basically that these survivors were shaming the people who died in the massacre by going out and leading normal lives, including doing such shameful things as going out and having fun and posting about it on Facebook.
Graham was rightly outraged and wrote this blog post. It has since attracted a lot of press and online attention, leading to nearly 10,000 signatures on a petition expressing “deep offense at the article”. The Press Complaints Commision has also announced that it is investigating the Dunblane article, and now apparently the Scottish Sunday Express are due to publish an apology (later today).
Celebs often get an unfair kicking for trying to use their fame and contacts to do some good, so in this case I thought it was worth giving a shout out to one who made a stand and (so it seems) made a difference.
Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.
After reading a bit about it I understand what tilt-shift photography is, but I still don’t understand how it fools my brain into thinking what I’m seeing isn’t real when clearly it is. I was sure when I watched the video above for the first time that is was a composite of real world backgrounds with little models superimposed, or something along those lines, but it is all “100% real” according to the creator, Keith Loutit.
Not surprisingly this video has been picked up by a lot of blogs already, but it is amazing, so if you haven’t seen it, take a look. Check out the rest of his videos on Vimeo here.
Brian O'Driscoll and Ronan O'Gara
I’m speechless, which isn’t a good way to start a blog post, but what a game! The 61 year wait for a Grand Slam is over. It’ll be a long time before I forget that drop goal from O’Gara going between the posts. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did.
[Update 22/03/09] No videos of the drop goal on YouTube because of copyright issues but you can watch the highlights of Ireland’s 2009 Grand Slam winning game, including the drop goal, thanks to BBC Online.