April 28th, 2007, 2 Comments »
Dublin’s Landsdowne Road is the oldest rugby ground in the world that hosts international matches. They also have international soccer/football matches there–I saw Ireland beat Russia there in a friendly back in 2002. It’s currently undergoing a €365 million renovation, and due to be reopened in 2009.
In the meantime, the Irish Rugby Foorball Union is holding a massive auction of the stadium’s ‘assets’. It’s running online this weekend, and you can get yourself any number of bits of memorabilia: seats, coat hooks (?) and even sections of the turf. Highest priced item at the moment? A Scotland vs. Ireland ‘touch judge flag’ (is that the thing that sits in the corner of the field, like where they take corner kicks from?) from 1924, currently going for €1.626,00.
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March 29th, 2007, 15 Comments »
This morning I read over on DeSmogBlog (one of our clients), that Shaky Town is banning plastic bags:
The city’s Department of the Environment said San Francisco uses 181 million plastic grocery bags annually. Plans dating back a decade to encourage recycling of the bags have largely failed, with shoppers returning just one percent of bags, said department spokesman Mark Westland.
Mirkarimi said the ban would save 450,000 gallons of oil a year and remove the need to send 1,400 tons of debris now sent annually to landfills. The new rules would, however, allow recyclable plastic bags, which are not widely used today.
This was of particular interest to me because Ireland implemented a plastic bag tax while I lived there, back in 2002. People grumbled about the 15 cents they had to pay for each bag, but it was a raging success. There’s been a 90% reduction in usage:
The tax of 15 cents per bag was introduced five months ago in an attempt to curb litter, and the improvement had been immediate and “plain to see”, said Environment Minister Martin Cullen. He said that the 3.5 million euros in extra revenue raised so far would be spent on environmental projects.
For Dubliners, it was as much a litter problem as an environmental issue. Frankly, it had the messiest downtown I’ve ever visited in the developed world, and plastic bags were a major culprit. When I go back, I certain notice far fewer witches’ knickers in the trees.
UPDATE: In related news, Metaefficient reports that IKEA is going to start charging for plastic bags. Strong work, you Swedes.
UPDATE #2: Via Neatorama, Ramadhani “The Arusha Cleaner” Juma lives in Tanzania and makes dolls out of the discarded plastic bags he collects.
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January 15th, 2003, No Comments »
Ireland is the fantastic convergence of the parochial and the ultra-modern. While a small portion of it citizenry (the ones I know, mostly) are total digerati, the vast majority (and in particular the rural population) are still stuck somewhere in the mid-fifties. So, they haven’t quite got this Internet thing down yet, particularly outside the technology industry.
This was brought home to me while I was walking home today. I saw a woman carrying a large paper bag on which was written Baggot Cleaners.ie Baggot, by the way, is a street. Anyhow, as anybody who’s surfed the Web a bit knows, you can’t have spaces in URLs like that. So, I expect the conversation between the bag printer (no doubt called O’Leary’s and Sons) and the drycleaner went something like this:
DRYCLEANER: Right, so, we’d like the bags to say Baggot Cleaners dot IE.
PRINTER: Dot IE? What’s that about now?
DRYCLEANER: I haven’t the foggiest. My son’s told me it’s all the rage.
PRINTER: So, you want it to read D-O-T-I-E.
DRYCLEANER: Heaven’s no, I want it to read dot. As in period. As in full stop. Then an I and an E. Okay so?
PRINTER: Jaysus, that’s feckin’ madness if you ask me.
DRYCLEANER: Can’t stand in the way of progress you know.
PRINTER: Right. Ha ha ha.
DRYCLEARNER: Ha, ha, ha.
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January 6th, 2003, No Comments »
The Gate Theatre in Dublin opened Waiting for Godot on the exact 50th anniversary of the play’s original performance on a tiny stage in Paris. It was a remarkable production, and the best theatre I’ve seen in years. Godot seems to encompass the entire twentieth century in two hours…it humbles every other twentieth-century play I can think of. The other thing that I didn’t recognize about the play (having only read it and seen bits of it previously) was how very Irish it is. Its language, its cadences and characters seem to me, now that I’ve lived here a couple of years, totally familiar.
Estragon: Charming spot. Inspiring prospects. Let’s go.
Vladimir: We can’t.
Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We’re waiting for Godot.
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November 28th, 2002, No Comments »
Last week we saw the Tragically Hip at a 1500 seat venue on the north side. Here are my comments:
The Ambassador Theatre is a former cinema. The main floor has two bars, no seating and is gently sloped toward the stage. The balcony, which I couldn’t really see very well, was considerably steeper, and started about halfway back from the stage. There seemed to be about 1500 people there, and we figured they were 90% Canadian. We brought a couple of Irish people with us, and they guessed there were few Irish at the gig. Judging by the height of the average audience member and the striking clarity of the air (there were fewer smokers than usual), I’d say this was true.
Because of their proximity, the small size and Canadianess of the crowd, Julie commented that “it was like seeing the Hip in your high school gym.” That’s not a reflection of the theatre’s architecture, which was understated and charming.
The band seemed in fine form. They offered 5 songs from their new album (including 2 in the encore…”Lake Fever” and one other). The high point for me was a transcendent version of “100th Meridian”, with Gordie muttering at length about memory during the bridge. He repeated “life is forgetting” for a while, and then broke into a rapid-fire “Iremembereverything, Iremembereverything, etc” and then flying right into the actual bridge lyrics, double-time. Other high points included “Ahead By a Century”, an understated “Grace Too” and a furious “Little Bones”. All in all, it was a fantastic show. Seeing them live actually gave me a bit more insight into Gordie’s surreal lyrics.
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November 28th, 2002, No Comments »
Last night some friends and I saw the up-and-coming singer/songwriter Ryan Adams. I (and several of my friends) am sorry I went. This is what I posted to the Ryan Adams forum about the show:
10 Steps to Rock and Roll Success
- Enquire, early in the show, when a cellular phone rings in the audience, as to whether you can borrow the phone to call your booking agent to tell them “never to do this to me again”.
- Dismiss the song order as “the most f***ed up set list I’ve ever written”.
- Employ a mediocre cellist and violinist and a truly amateur guitarist. Use them sparingly and inappropriately.
- Rework songs so that they’re unrecognizable to the casual listener. After all, you’re an established superstar with an enormous back catalog of music to draw upon.
- Be a kind of caricature of a rock star. Complain about the “50 clowns” in your entourage, throw cigarettes and glasses, and touch your hair a lot.
- Ensure that all your songs are of the same tempo.
- Be petulant. Petulance always appeals to audiences. Especially Irish ones.
- For the encore, bring on the opening act and play one of his songs. After all, the audience has probably seen enough of you, even though you haven’t played “Come Pick Me Up” or “New York, New York”.
- Apologize for “f***ing sucking tonight” to the crowd on several occasions. The audience loves to hear how they’ve wasted 40 euros.
- Recognize that the audience is supremely privileged to see you, instead of the other way around.
This was my first Ryan Adams show, and I was ready to like him. His first two albums are quite good, if derivative. Unfortunately, he demonstrated a glaring lack of professionalism and artistry. Bob Dylan used to do that in 1964, but he ain’t Bob Dylan, and this ain’t 1964. In short, it was quite a dissapointment.
Predictably, I raised the ire of the forum, which is something of an Adams’ love-in. You can read the gory details here (I’m ‘TheFoot’).
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September 14th, 2002, No Comments »
Lately I’ve been listening to Gemma Hayes’s debut album. I saw her a few months back at Whelans, and frankly was kind of underwhelmed. She was a stage-presence-free zone. That said, this album’s great…folksy and listenable in a Sarah Mclachlan kind of way. She’s Irish, though, so you may have some trouble finding her outside of the Republic.
Incidentally, her Web site sucks in so many ways. If you tried to build a site that was less usable, you’d be hard pressed to excede this blight on the virtual landscape. But don’t hold that against her.
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September 8th, 2002, No Comments »
One of the reasons I like living in Dublin is that there’s always something zany going on the centre of town. I walked into town (well, more into town, as we’re about 15 minutes walk from the O’Connell St.) to hear Ethan Hawke read from his new novel (he was charming, it sounded mediocre). It turns out that it’s the day of the annual Liffey Swim! That gets an exclamation mark for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the tremendously polluted state of said river.
I pass the finish line, which is opposite the historical Customs House, and continue on my way into town. After a couple of minutes, more people are lining the streets and I see a number of boats and kayakers in the water. They’re moving in paralell with the lead swimmer, a big lad whose heavy arms are slapping away at the water. He’s got a fantastic lead on the rest of the pack–the guy in second place is a good 30 yards back, and at the front of a mass of frothing river. There were 180 people in all, and for a hundred yards they looked like 360 spawning salmon, arms churning out of the water. In 1923, Yeats painted the scene.
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