Tonight's Comedy

The evening started with drinks at Young & Jacksons. So, finally got to see Chloe in the felsh, as it were. Also had some fries there that tasted like bacon. Disturbing.

Also, I couldn't find my arse from my elbow tonight when it came to finding venues. The Google Maps built in to the Comedy Festival iPhone app was just plain wrong, and the Tuxedo Cat is one of those fuck-you hipster venues where there's no sign out the front, you have to go down some stairs and along a dingy corridor before you come to the bar, where the actual room you're looking for is hidden away behind a closed velvet curtain and THERE'S STILL NO BLOODY SIGNS.

It was frustrating. Especially after I had to run halfway across town to get there on time.


TONIGHT'S SHOWS

Jamie Kilstein: Pyrotechnic political ranting. The sort of show where you cheer as much as laugh. Angry lefty excellence.

David Quirk: dead pan dark humour. Very funny. Also, he ejected a belligerent drunk with the calm and finesse of a jujitsu master.

(Hungry Beast's Dan Ilic was in the audience. He had a laugh like the Penguin from Batman.)

DeAnne_Smith: Tomboy grin. Glasses. Ukulele. Silly and cheeky and adorable. Also very, very funny. A great end to a great night.



Only two more shows and the Festival is over for me. There's a tonne of shows I would have loved to see. But you can't see everything. Especially not when you have to pay for your tickets.

Cello versus Dinosaurs

Zoe Keating is a cellist. She plays experimental, neo-classical music, looping cello lines through effects pedals so she can accompany herself. I find her music dreamlike and beautiful.

She doesn't have a record label. Her albums are self-released. What she does have is over a million followers on Twitter. So to promote her upcoming new album Into the Trees, she wrote a Twitter app where her fans could get a free track in exchange for a tweet.

The company that worked with her to created the app have now released the code for free, under an open-source BSD licence.

Meanwhile... the RIAA and MPAA have filed a joint submission for the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator's upcoming Joint Strategic Plan.

Their suggestions? Spyware installed on people's computers. Internet service providers being forced to scan and filter their connections for copyright violations. Getting customs official to "educate" visitors about copyright law. Using the USA's economic power to bully other countries that have less draconian copyright laws. And using tax-payer funded federal agents to to enforce copyrights for private companies.

I suppose I can't blame the MPAA and the RIAA. I'm sure the dinosaurs roared and gnashed their fangs after that asteroid hit, and the sky went dark, and they lost the sunlight that they needed to live. No one goes down without a fight.

But the world had changed. The great lizards died out. Small furry mammals took their place.

And then one day, the great-great-great-great grand-daughter of those mammals played the cello, and released her music over the internet. And it was beautiful.

That's how you make money out of art, guys. You make something beautiful.