Centenary program (Part 1) [Would you have preferred The Rolling Stones poll?]

Truthiness said :

Every year Canberra suffers a mass exodus of artists, it would have been nice to bring them back, if only for one year.

is mike nock on the program?

Every year Canberra suffers a mass exodus of artists, it would have been nice to bring them back, if only for one year.

You do realise that everything in the printed program is available on the website…

As for The Rolling Stones, well, each to their own, but even if you put them in the big top for $25 a head, and then gave me comp tickets so good that I’d have to be ducking my head every time the lipp-ed one thrust his pelvis to the front…..

Yeah, I’d probably choose to be down at THE Front (Cafe, Lyneham).

Personal choice.

I’m really interested in the content and 64MB holds no fear for my download limit or processor, but….

Sorry, we are unable to scan this file for viruses.
The file exceeds the maximum size that we scan. Download anyway?

Yeah, no. Having spent the last six weeks working with cybercops, no, just no.

Sounds like a job for the Centenary’s web monkeys to concoct a more accessible, and byte-sized version.

When I’m driving in my car
and Robyn comes on the radio
saying how great things will be
for this Centenary
and sounds celebratory
I can’t get no, oh no no no
Hey hey hey, that’s what I say

All I got was “47852 C100 Program_text-fa3lr.pdf” and then a bunch of Chinese symbols like this “? ? ? ????.” Anyone care to translate?? Have we outsourced the coordination of these activities with our trading partners to save on costs??

If I knew what everyone was talking about I’d make a constructive comment, but in reply to the comments about fun activities…
– bring back legalized fireworks, they are fun.
– bring back legalized wood fires, they are fun to watch and keep you warm
– bring back bushbikes without stack-hats, much more fun with the wind in your hair.
– bring back the drive in cinema, my kids don’t know what one is.
– “bring it back, bring it back, bring it back, bring it back to me…..”

Mr Evil said :

Where the hell are Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson when you need ’em????

One man, his madness
Stanhope’s sad, hang-ups may prevail
Public art, possesses, conquers, my city’s budget
The phallic owls rise, and fail

Wasteful spending is eternal
Long before this assembly’s lines were drawn
When the Liberals ruled, when no crossbenchers stood
The Stadium fiasco was born

(Surely some Rioters will recognise it)

Some of you have got a heart of stone. Or maybe we’re just headed for our 19th nervous breakdown. Perhaps Robyn should just paint Canberra black.

Why the hell aren’t they doing “Gunghalin Drive Extention – The Musical”?

Where the hell are Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson when you need ’em????

c_c said :

Masquara said :

Robyn Archer is an enthusiastic lady of moderate cabaret talents

And immense ego I would suggest. Jumping up the front and singing at the launch today. Gosh, doesn’t Canberra have any good singers that she had to do it instead?

It was excruciatingly bad. Her voice has never been good, even in her heyday; she got by on enthusiasm.

Bluey said :

Hey Johnboy the program is 64MB.

Any chance of cliffnotes version?

Quote from google download: “Sorry, we are unable to scan this file for viruses. The file exceeds the maximum size that we scan.” ROFL

I just can’t stop picturing some octegenarian trying to access this on the dialup plan they’ve had with Telstra since it was Telecom and still works just fine when they want to email the grandkids thankyou very much…. hahahhahaha

Masquara said :

Robyn Archer is an enthusiastic lady of moderate cabaret talents

And immense ego I would suggest. Jumping up the front and singing at the launch today. Gosh, doesn’t Canberra have any good singers that she had to do it instead?

Robyn Archer is an enthusiastic lady of moderate cabaret talents, who has developed a track record successfully directing standard arts festivals – where you loosely devise a theme, and are lauded for bringing disparate and fabulous acts from all over to a city, where a mix of visitors and locals celebrate hard for a week or two.
I simply don’t think she has been up to the C100 job.
Here’s an example: C100 spokesman interviewed on 666 this afternoon was asked to nominate two highlights of Canberra’s festival – remember, Canberra’s 100 years is the year-long theme. He nominated the Toulouse Lautrec exhibition and a one-day cricket match – both of which should fall solidly into the camp of “side, foreign” and “side, national” rather than “core” events.

The centenary has a name, but not a cogent theme. Remember how Archer’s framework specified one of the goals for Canberra’s centenary events as “encouraging remote Indigenous employment” – simply a byproduct of hauling C100 funding from some program bucket or other into the C100 budget – after she was questioned about Ngapartji’s links with Canberra (spuriously retrofitted from a single performance that happened to coincide with an Indigenous conference at Aiatsis years ago, and nothing to do with any actual developed relationship between Ngapartji and Canberra).

C100’s PR has been piecemeal, inconsistent and anything but strategic. Out of a hotchpotch of 1,000 events, of course many of them will be fun and worthwhile, especially lots of the local ones, and the ones arising from Canberra’s ACTUAL, not Robyn Archer’s faux, diaspora. But cherrypicking some great events from a pea soup (pardon the mixed metaphor) over an entire year simply won’t hang together for Canberrans as a cogent celebration.

The interview this evening was also STILL apologising for Canberra. Since when was “worthwhile Canberra” only “recent Canberra”? The “old Canberra” is apparently something that Archer has lately decided to reject, refining her PR message to somehow send a message that Canberra has seen the error of its ways and is now a fun city. What a ridiculous approach, when that “old” Canberra was an absolute fount of creativity and amazingness, and a unique environment where hippiedom, academia, grunge & bohemia could mix & thrive. Archer in her arrogance hasn’t bothered with the social history and identity of Canberra.

More’s the pity.

And inflicting a 64 megabyte program on those of us who won’t get handed one in hardcopy, is just another example of incompetence.

johnboy said :

But it’s hard to keep going after King O’Malleys is named the Centenary Pub

And who says public servants don’t have a sense of humour.

On the upside, at least it’s a pub that acknowledges it’s pulling the piss about being an Irish pub. On the downside, it’s King O’Malleys.

astrojax said :

tommo said :

How’s this for a brief summary:
It’s not the Rolling Stones

so, no satisfaction then? i thought wild horses wouldn’t keep them away. they miss you already and would gimme shelter if they were to come, but it’s only rock n roll…

Well, you can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes you might …

Get what you need!

What would the 500 public servants employed by the ACT Government’s “Arts” directorate *do*, though, if they weren’t given an endless stream of pointless tasks to perform?
It would be a disaster – our Rates would have to go down if they didn’t find all these sorts of pointless rubbish to fund.

Not even Sympathy for the Devil.

Bluey said :

Hey Johnboy the program is 64MB.

Any chance of cliffnotes version?

Suspect someone in CMD hasn’t learnt to use PDF Optimiser in Acrobat. No way a file should be that big.

tommo said :

How’s this for a brief summary:
It’s not the Rolling Stones

so, no satisfaction then? i thought wild horses wouldn’t keep them away. they miss you already and would gimme shelter if they were to come, but it’s only rock n roll…

How’s this for a brief summary:
It’s not the Rolling Stones

So will you do a summary JB? In your copious spare time?

will i get to wave at the queen?

Bluey said :

Hey Johnboy the program is 64MB.

Any chance of cliffnotes version?

There really isn’t.

I did ask for a breakout of the new events rather than the rebadged ones and got this answer:

“In terms of separating what’s completely ‘new’ versus the legacy stuff, no, we don’t have a break down and it would be really tricky – there are new components to existing activities (e.g., Collected Works at CTC), what we released at the Preview in March, and new things that have already been announced along the way …”

Some things go all years, some for months, some were happening anyway.

Canberra Day down by the lake is meant to be a big highlight.

But it’s hard to keep going after King O’Malleys is named the Centenary Pub and Summernats makes its appearance.

Everything is presented as being MAAARVELOUS, and there’s a hundred odd pages of it, so who’s to say?

Hey Johnboy the program is 64MB.

Any chance of cliffnotes version?