Slow Work Day
Jan. 31st, 2006 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
waitingmanOn a day when not much is happening in the office, although I do have a few semi-urgent tasks - the Sydney Morning Herald is intent on disrupting my thought process with articles like this...
Visitor takes a break on museum trip
LONDON: A museum director's nightmare came true when a visitor tripped on his shoelace, stumbled down a stairway and destroyed a set of priceless 300-year-old Chinese vases.
The three vases, dating from the late 17th or early 18th century, had stood on a windowsill at the Fitzwilliam Museum, in Cambridge, for at least 40 years, and were among the museum's best-known artefacts.
The museum refused to name the visitor, who was unhurt.
Steve Baxter, another visitor, who saw the accident, said: "We watched the man fall as if in slow motion. He landed in the middle of the vases and they splintered into a million pieces.
"He was still sitting there stunned when staff appeared. Everyone stood around in silence, as if in shock. Then the man started talking. He kept pointing to his shoelace and saying, 'There it is; that's the culprit'."
The museum's director, Duncan Robinson, said: "It is a nightmare you are always afraid of in a museum. I have been here for 40 years and now that nightmare has happened."
The museum said it intended to put the vases back together.
Living, as I currently do, in a city inundated with 2nd & 3rd rate covers bands. I implore the promotion companies to get together a package tour of these bands...
Lez Zeppelin takes off
Four women rockers who took on the music of Led Zeppelin are driving club audiences to a frenzy and, offstage, whipping up speculation over their sexual tastes with the name of the band: Lez Zeppelin.
"We have sort of a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy," says Steph Paynes, lead guitar player and the "Jimmy Page" of the group. "It's better to keep it all a mystery, and in the end it really doesn't matter. What matters is the music."
The New York-based quartet came together almost three years ago with the express purpose of covering songs by Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members Led Zeppelin.
They're among a small but growing number of all-female tribute bands Spin Magazine recently referred to as "Chicks with Picks," and include the playfully dubbed AC/DShe, Cheap Chick and The Ramonas.
Paynes said the tribute group had been mulling a name for a week or two and when Lez Zeppelin was suggested, there was no question of them not using it.
With veteran New York-area musicians Helen Destroy on drums, Lisa Brigantino on bass, mandolin and keyboards and Sarah McLellan on vocals, the group is electrifying.
But the question that consistently follows the band around is whether any or all of its members are, in fact, lesbians.
"Oh, definitely maybe," Payne said. "There's no question about maybes."
Australian support bands could be the Angelles, Rosie Tattoo, Ladyfinger (Powderpuffinger?), Mrs Higgins... & Ben Lee.
And today's little smilebringer, courtesy of 2 regular sources - the USA & a religious loony...
Bible belt around the ear as old-time religion takes a hold
Like many American preachers, Rob Adonis delivers his sermons bathed in sweat, passion and a spotlight.
But he is probably the only one who spreads the word while wearing a purple leotard decked out with Spandex crosses.
As he puts it, he wrestles to spread the word. Ultimate Christian Wrestling, the ministry he founded in 2003, tours churches in what is — even by the Bible Belt's standards — an unorthodox drive to win converts.
It matches traditional pro-wrestling moves such as headlocks and body slams, with themes and stories from the Bible.
Despite fierce competition from traditional churches, it has taken off in the South, where pro-wrestling is hugely popular and the battle for souls shows no signs of letting up.
At one of its regular venues, the non-denominational Harvest Church, in Winterville, Georgia, Pastor Curtis Parker estimated that in the past year, Ultimate Christian Wrestling matches had boosted his 800-strong congregation by more than a fifth.
"We have given away cars as an outreach initiative," he said. "We have given away groceries from a truck in our parking lot. But the wrestling has added more people to our congregation than any of these projects. It gets the largest crowds, and it keeps them still."
Among other church leaders, Ultimate Christian Wrestling's reputation has spread. One tour, which has clocked up 30 venues in Georgia, Florida, Virginia and Alabama, is about to expand into Texas and the Carolinas.
Adonis, in real life a school teacher by the name of Rob Fields, began wrestling professionally in 1999. The idea for a Christian wrestling group, he said, was born when God appeared to him in a dream two years ago.
He accepts that this particular brand of muscular Christianity is not for everyone, but disputed the idea that faith and pro-wrestling were incompatible.
He pointed out that in the Old Testament, Jacob wrestled with an angel.
Visitor takes a break on museum trip
LONDON: A museum director's nightmare came true when a visitor tripped on his shoelace, stumbled down a stairway and destroyed a set of priceless 300-year-old Chinese vases.
The three vases, dating from the late 17th or early 18th century, had stood on a windowsill at the Fitzwilliam Museum, in Cambridge, for at least 40 years, and were among the museum's best-known artefacts.
The museum refused to name the visitor, who was unhurt.
Steve Baxter, another visitor, who saw the accident, said: "We watched the man fall as if in slow motion. He landed in the middle of the vases and they splintered into a million pieces.
"He was still sitting there stunned when staff appeared. Everyone stood around in silence, as if in shock. Then the man started talking. He kept pointing to his shoelace and saying, 'There it is; that's the culprit'."
The museum's director, Duncan Robinson, said: "It is a nightmare you are always afraid of in a museum. I have been here for 40 years and now that nightmare has happened."
The museum said it intended to put the vases back together.
Living, as I currently do, in a city inundated with 2nd & 3rd rate covers bands. I implore the promotion companies to get together a package tour of these bands...
Lez Zeppelin takes off
Four women rockers who took on the music of Led Zeppelin are driving club audiences to a frenzy and, offstage, whipping up speculation over their sexual tastes with the name of the band: Lez Zeppelin.
"We have sort of a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy," says Steph Paynes, lead guitar player and the "Jimmy Page" of the group. "It's better to keep it all a mystery, and in the end it really doesn't matter. What matters is the music."
The New York-based quartet came together almost three years ago with the express purpose of covering songs by Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members Led Zeppelin.
They're among a small but growing number of all-female tribute bands Spin Magazine recently referred to as "Chicks with Picks," and include the playfully dubbed AC/DShe, Cheap Chick and The Ramonas.
Paynes said the tribute group had been mulling a name for a week or two and when Lez Zeppelin was suggested, there was no question of them not using it.
With veteran New York-area musicians Helen Destroy on drums, Lisa Brigantino on bass, mandolin and keyboards and Sarah McLellan on vocals, the group is electrifying.
But the question that consistently follows the band around is whether any or all of its members are, in fact, lesbians.
"Oh, definitely maybe," Payne said. "There's no question about maybes."
Australian support bands could be the Angelles, Rosie Tattoo, Ladyfinger (Powderpuffinger?), Mrs Higgins... & Ben Lee.
And today's little smilebringer, courtesy of 2 regular sources - the USA & a religious loony...
Bible belt around the ear as old-time religion takes a hold
Like many American preachers, Rob Adonis delivers his sermons bathed in sweat, passion and a spotlight.
But he is probably the only one who spreads the word while wearing a purple leotard decked out with Spandex crosses.
As he puts it, he wrestles to spread the word. Ultimate Christian Wrestling, the ministry he founded in 2003, tours churches in what is — even by the Bible Belt's standards — an unorthodox drive to win converts.
It matches traditional pro-wrestling moves such as headlocks and body slams, with themes and stories from the Bible.
Despite fierce competition from traditional churches, it has taken off in the South, where pro-wrestling is hugely popular and the battle for souls shows no signs of letting up.
At one of its regular venues, the non-denominational Harvest Church, in Winterville, Georgia, Pastor Curtis Parker estimated that in the past year, Ultimate Christian Wrestling matches had boosted his 800-strong congregation by more than a fifth.
"We have given away cars as an outreach initiative," he said. "We have given away groceries from a truck in our parking lot. But the wrestling has added more people to our congregation than any of these projects. It gets the largest crowds, and it keeps them still."
Among other church leaders, Ultimate Christian Wrestling's reputation has spread. One tour, which has clocked up 30 venues in Georgia, Florida, Virginia and Alabama, is about to expand into Texas and the Carolinas.
Adonis, in real life a school teacher by the name of Rob Fields, began wrestling professionally in 1999. The idea for a Christian wrestling group, he said, was born when God appeared to him in a dream two years ago.
He accepts that this particular brand of muscular Christianity is not for everyone, but disputed the idea that faith and pro-wrestling were incompatible.
He pointed out that in the Old Testament, Jacob wrestled with an angel.
