A: So very very very much!
Yesterday saw the 2011 edition of the Potjie Cookoff taking place at Fourways High School. For me, this was my first, but for the organisers, they’ve done it 9 times now.
Basic overview is that teams enter, cook potjie, host games to raise money, and all of the money goes to charity – Pretty much split between Children of Fire, and SAGA (South African Guide dog Association), with a special charity added this year – Jessica Muraour.
All up, the event raised R176k, which is pretty incredible when you consider that 4 people put it together as a side project.
So, the day itself – Well, I arrived at FHS around 9am, and moved on to my second bottle of wine by 10. So obviously a great start already. Several hours, a bit of light sunburn, a bit of heavier drinking, and two pots of delicious potjie later, I’m still convinced that our team was robbed! But for that much fun, who minds being robbed?
So what was the best thing about the day? Was it the Shoot Osama stand, where we got to fire paintballs at the team members? Or the old school coconut shy, where I won a free beer? Or the regular replays of de la Rey? Or was it the foosball tournament?
Or was it, indeed, the fact that 700 people are willing to come together, get involved, and make a genuine difference, raising a serious amount of cash for good causes?
Well done to Dancer, Den Helyar, and the rest of the committee for putting together an awesome day!
And of course to Stuart Williams for another fabulous movie!
My last post about an entertainment that I watched received some very offended feedback – not all of it particularly rational or well argued. However, one point stood out beautifully for me, which is that people tend to tell the world when something is poor, but not when something is good.
So let me be absolutely clear here. This post is about something good. Something very, very, very good. Marvellous. Magnificent. Side splitting from start to finish.
Nic Rabinowitz, take a bow. And bring Tats along with you. This show, at the Market Theatre (See Frank, how quickly I learn!), was the best spend of time possible.
Nic’s opening act, Tats, almost stole the show, he was that funny. His combination of a voice that would make the holy choir beg him to join, and a biting sense of humour had everybody rolling around in their seats.
But then Nic. NIIIIC! Brilliant, sharp, finding exactly the right balance of teasing and poking each possible stereotype in South Africa. His use of multiple languages, all at a level where non-speakers can understand the gist regardless, created some of the funniest moments of the entire show.
Of course his accents, which are what he’s famous for (I hadn’t actually known of him until this show), were perfect.
The show contained all of the usual stereotypes and personalities that comedians in South Africa love to pick up on, although with less attention than usual to Julius Malema, which was refreshing.
All in all, go and watch it. It’s showing at The Market until the 16th – make an effort to catch it.
Cross post from www.reddit.com
Wow. Well, I’ve just gotten home from the Civic Theater (the Johannesburg Theater), where I watched the most………… hmmm…….. um……… something show I’ve seen in years, outside of the Barnyard, where I expect it, so at least I’m prepared.
I will say that I’ve had a wee pot to drink, god help me, so please excuse various spelling and grammatical errors. You’d make them too if you’d been there.
So, um, the show. Ok, it’s name is “The Guitar that Rocked the World”. It’s about the Fender Stratocaster, which indeed is the guitar that rocked the world. And it’s presented in such a way that you are left in no doubt that the Strat roc…. chan…. influe……. Existed. Yes, it is a guitar, and it existed. AAAAnd, it was used in some pretty awesome songs.
First up, let me say that whoever picked the songs deserves a medal and a blowjob. Neither one from me, but from somebody. However, the person who then decided what to do with the songs deserves a medal stuck in their eye, and to be dragged behind a car. Or something equally disappointing.
Because that’s what this was – disappointing. Thank god I was there were a bunch of really cool folk, so we could laugh and joke and pretend we were watching a B-grade movie. But what the fuck was the story about? There seriously was only the most tenuous thread linking the whole thing together – it’s about a kid who has a dream about owning a fender strat, in which he features briefly to tell everybody that it’s a dream, then pisses off while we’re subjected to lots and lots and lots and lots of guitar heavy music (which is cool), and some sort of vision of what a person who had never heard of drugs would think a drug addled vision would look like. Which is not cool. Seriously, the choreography was…. lacking. The set was….. from the Barnyard. The link between the music and what was happening on the stage was….. non-existent.
But I’m being a dick. There were good things about it. The main character, who is 17 and from Durban (that’s what I learnt about him), was pretty cool. The old man in his dream had a lovely voice (although I suspect he’s finishing off a wonderful acting career, and is frankly just getting through this with as little effort as possible). The short guy (trust me, you ever watch this, you’ll know who the short guy is) had real stage presence until the part where he spoke and sang. The one dancer (white girl, dark hair) was really cool. The indian dancer was also pretty cool. I know dancing is harder than it looks, and I know I have no space to talk, but I also don’t get paid to dance.
Highlights of the show? The singing camel shadow puppet did it for me, as well as the first appearance of the date-rapist, in his blue shirt and black waistcoat. Which one was the date-rapist? Watch it and you’ll see. From my seat towards the back, I could feel him slipping roofies into everybody’s drinks.
Urgh, I don’t even know what more to say. If you’re wondering why, when I’m normally so erudite and witty, tonight I’m abrupt and using the word Cool too much, go watch The Guitar that Rocked the World. Trust me, you’ll also be brain dead by the end. And drunk, if you’re lucky.
There is an old story about the German army during WWII, and how they got volunteers. The sergeant (or lieutenant, or whatever – the boss), would say something like I need somebody to clean out the toilets. And I also need people to go fight on the Russian front.
And so, when a soldier was scrubbing a urinal with a toothbrush, covered in shit and piss, he was smiling, because at least he wasn’t at the Russian front.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this, since watching a fantastic movie on Wednesday night called “Mining for Change“. It’s part of the Encounters festival, and is a documentary about… mining. Well, it’s meant to be a documentary, which would be balanced and take into account all view-points. On this front it fails dismally, as really it’s an advert for nationalisation. HOWEVER, as an advert for nationalisation, it succeeds wonderfully. Living as I do in a sphere of the world where nationalisation sounds like it should be spelt with four letters, it was a fascinating look at the other side, and a persuasive one.
The gist of the movie is that historically, black people owned the minerals in the country, and did in fact mine them (a fact I was unaware of, but some of the works they showed in the movie were beautiful), until the oppressor came in and stole it. Fair enough, and absolutely true as it goes.
So obviously the movie focuses on this injustice done in the past, and most of the interviews (whether through editing or fact) support the idea of undoing that injustice by reversing the original decision. Ideologically, great.
The problem now though, is that “giving it back” is not as easy as that – as the world has become so much smaller, and South Africa such a focal point of it, there are more hands of all colours involved than ever before, and more to lose through biting those hands.
The other problem, of course, is that those people who now own “it”, obviously aren’t keen to give it up that easily. When the original Mining Charter was signed in 2002, a series of targets were set out (and obviously negotiated very heavily at the time). Not all of these have been met, and so an amended charter was launched in 2010, focusing on the change of at least 26% of ownership to black hands by 2014. (Which is a silly idea on the face of it, when we consider how well BEE has worked in mass upliftment so far (i.e., for the foreigners, it hasn’t))
So we’ve got this tension that exists. Everybody knows that the morally right thing to do is to distribute the wealth of the country more evenly, but equally everyb… many people know that doing this through the government doesn’t exactly have a great track record (not in our country, or in most others). So the market has to redistribute that wealth (and it is, but perhaps not quickly enough for everybody), the market has to drive a mass upliftment of previously disadvantaged South Africans, because the market has to understand that in the long term, this is in it’s best interests.
The challenge of course is one of how to get the people controlling the market to part with their hard ear… stol…. um… gotten cash. And how do you do so in a way that will benefit the greatest number of people, not a few people in the greatest way (as BEE has done)?
You present them with a Russian Front.
And to make it seem realistic (it has to sound realistic), you use the perfect tool for the job. You find yourself a man with charisma coming out of his ears, but little enough between them not to be a problem in the long run. You find Juju.
If you haven’t Nyaned yet, get on it. http://nyan.cat/
Had a bad nights sleep, and wasn’t keen on getting up this morning. You know those mornings. It’s cold, the bed’s warm, there’s just no desire to move.
Anyway, eventually I did. Wandered downstairs, picked up last night’s book, opened randomly, and came across this:
“In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present — I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bed-clothes and keep myself warm? — But this is more pleasant. — Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure, and not at all for action or exertion? Dost thou not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees working together to put in order their several parts of the universe? And art thou unwilling to do the work of a human being, and dost thou not make haste to do that which is according to thy nature? — But it is necessary to take rest also. — It is necessary: however nature has fixed bounds to this too: she has fixed bounds both to eating and drinking, and yet thou goest beyond these bounds, beyond what is sufficient; yet in thy acts it is not so, but thou stoppest short of what thou canst do. So thou lovest not thyself, for if thou didst, thou wouldst love thy nature and her will. But those who love their several arts exhaust themselves in working at them unwashed and without food; but thou valuest thy own own nature less than the turner values the turning art, or the dancer the dancing art, or the lover of money values his money, or the vainglorious man his little glory. And such men, when they have a violent affection to a thing, choose neither to eat nor to sleep rather than to perfect the things which they care for. But are the acts which concern society more vile in thy eyes and less worthy of thy labour?” – Marcus Aurelius
So, two things come from this. One, as above. And two, when reading mediations of Marcus Aurelius, open the book randomly.
Then the second “thing” for today is a book I found at Books Galore in Bedford Centre. E-mail on the Internet. As opposed to E-mail where else?
