Kapow!
Patrick Lehane writes:
“I think the Joker is selling his apartment in Ringsend [a laughable €269,000]….”
Yearly Archives: 2014
What you may need to know:
1. It’s one of Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s final movies.
2. It’s based on a John le Carré novel.
3. It’s directed by old U2 mucker Anton Corbijn, who did Control (2007) and The
American (2010)
4. Broadsheet Prognosis: Honestly? We’re still completely bummed out
that PSH is dead.
Release Date: Summer
Cheers Baz
Wall Dogs
at
An altophobia-inducing documentary short about the sign painters of New York. Vocativ sez:
…there are those who still get out messages the old-fashioned way, with a paintbrush and some attitude. They call themselves “wall dogs,” says one veteran of the trade, “because we are chained to a wall all day by our safety harness, and we work like dogs.” Vocativ spent a day with these blue-collar artists as they paint advertisements high above the streets of New York City.
Aunty Ben is Ireland’s first LGBT play for children about a nine-year old girl and her favourite uncle, who is a drag queen”.
Super Paua theatre company write:
“We are a theatre company set up in 2013 to make brave work for young audiences Our first show – Aunty Ben – is about to premiere at the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, before transferring to the Brighton Fringe Festival, and we need your help to launch it!
Aunty Ben is a very pioneering show – it is a play for children (and adults!) aged 7+, about a drag queen. The story revolves around nine-year-old Tracey’s relationship with her favourite aunty, Ben. It doesn’t matter to Tracey at all that Aunty Ben is actually her uncle, or that he is a drag queen, because in Tracey’s family dressing up is for everyone! But when Ben meets her school friends, Tracey is shocked to discover that other people’s families can be very different to her own…”
A short, sweet, slow motion animation (created with 3D Studio Max, Vray and After Effects) by Vladimir Loginov.
Music by Boards Of Canada.
The Independent’s Robert Fisk on that state visit.
The Irish papers, normally so acerbic in their coverage of all things royal, positively purred with self-satisfaction that “the Queen” – not Queen Elizabeth, mark you, as she would have been called by any other self-respecting republic – had greeted the Irish President with all the Queen’s horses and all the Queen’s men.
I have always suspected that deep in the soul of every middle-aged Irish lady – far more than Irish men, perhaps – there lies a sneaking affection for the tiaras, and brocade, and the palace, and the castle, and the pomp and circumstance that their grandparents rejected in 1920 (though not so wholeheartedly as we may believe – Ireland remained within the Commonwealth until after the Second World War).
….But last week was revealing in other ways. While the British media dwelt upon the sins of Martin McGuinness and his IRA past and his handshake with the Queen of England, the Irish papers fulfilled the role of the British press in sanctifying the rule of Good Queen Bess.
The London correspondent of The Irish Times wrote of the “kaleidoscope of memories” which the royal week had left behind. Miriam Lord, normally stabbing (accurately) the hypocrites of Dail Eireann – was at her softest when it came to our beloved Queen and the Irish President’s success – “then it was back to Windsor Castle for a special reception with a Northern Ireland theme…”
FIGHT!
(Aras/Photocall Ireland)
[Top: Joanne Hayes and (above) John Courtney (right) then head of the Garda Murder Squad, with Gerry O’Carroll at the Kerry Babies Tribunal in April 1985 ]
Thirty years on..
A retired detective inspector who was involved in the Kerry Babies investigation has called for the exhumation of the remains of both male infants for full DNA analysis.
Gerry O’Carroll still agrees with a prevailing Garda view at the time that Joanne Hayes, the woman at the centre of the saga, had twins.
“For that reason, there’s no other way to establish if the babies were twins, only by DNA analysis.,” he said.
Exhumation ‘would resolve’ Kerry Babies case (Donal Hickey, Irish Examiner)
Alternatively…
The Garda case against Joanna Hayes advanced a theory of superfecundation– that she had had been impregnated by two men around the same time – something that was theoretically possible but unprovable given the weakness of corroborating technical and forensic evidence.
For example there was no forensic evidence that Joanne had been stabbed in Joanne’s bed as the confessions obtained by the gardai had claimed.
Furthermore there was no evidence that the baby that was buried on the farm was not a stillbirth. The case built up by the gardai was riddled with inconsistencies.The DPP advised the Garda Superintendent to withdraw charges at the earliest opportunity…
The Books That Defined Ireland (Bryan Fanning and Tom Garvin)
(Eamonn Farrell/Photocall Ireland)
Recently sold for an impressive $5000 by rock dealer (and obvious Tolkein fan) Rob Levinsky of The Arkenstone, this extraordinarily textured mineral known as Chalcedony on Chrysocolla stalactites (pocket) was originally discovered in Arizona around fifty years ago. Lavinsky sez:
Frank Valenzuela obtained this specimen from a fellow miner at the Inspiration, where he was a miner and then a shaft supervisor in the 1950s-1960s. It was collected, he recalls, in the early 1960s. It is a classic example of the quartz-covered chrysocolla stalactites from that time, but unusual in that it was preserved as a whole pocket. The piece glows when backlit, as the top surface is partially translucent and there is a small hole in back of the vug, to let light into the pocket for backlighting. The largest stalactites are 2 cm. The pocket opening is 2 inches across.
[Medical student Cathal MacDonncha and his longbordeaux]
MS Ireland write:
In support of Multiple Sclerosis Ireland and in the run up to World MS Day on May 28, Cathal MacDonncha is undertaking an epic longboarding trek from Bordeaux, France to Bilbao, Spain. Cathal, a final year student, plans to use his longboard to travel approximately 360km during May 19 –June 3 this summer after he completes his medical degree at the University of Limerick. He’ll be carrying a helmet and a backpack with his tent and spork at the ready for some late night tins of beans cooked over a campfire to keep him going. He is funding his own travel, food and accommodation and all donations made will go to MS Ireland.
Donate here