June 21, 2014

JUNE 16

Steve Dedalus    posted 16 Jun 2014, 01:40 PM / edited 16 Jun 2014, 02:10 PM

LA TIMES reveals the hottest show on Auckland’s red-lit K Rd tonight!

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-bloomsday-june-16-2014-20140611-story.html

Steve Dedalus    posted 17 Jun 2014, 08:02 AM / edited 17 Jun 2014, 11:01 AM

And joined by Vanity Fair (though unsure of Auckland’s location):  www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/06/bloomsday-james-joyce-ulysses

Steve Dedalus    posted 18 Jun 2014, 02:16 PM

Well it was a bulging-at-the-seams jam-packed occasion (and a drunken one; someone put a thousand bucks down on the bar and shouted the house; one of the Jews Brothers band was outside in the street having a smoke when the door burst open and a punter shouted out, “They’re giving away free beer inside!” — like the Big Rock Candy Mountain had finally arrived.) It was definitely a celebration but not of what first comes to mind. Not Ulysses. Although the uniqueness of James Joyce was a factor—a life lived grandly on hand-outs while spending a decade writing a book that lots of people find unreadable and which ends up banned for its obscenity. Clearly a factor. But just as the Springbok Tour protests were not really about ending apartheid, but about something else going on in New Zealand, so is Bloomsday not just about its source. The night seemed to be a celebration of community. Not just a gathering of the audience, but a gathering of the cast, hobos and pros, all celebrating our shared existence and condemning our rulers. Wonderful.        

Editor    posted 21 Jun 2014, 04:53 PM / edited 21 Jun 2014, 04:54 PM

Warrior princess morphs into Molly Bloom

NZ Herald: Saturday Jun 21, 2014

Janet McAllister on the arts

On Monday’s rainy night, exactly 110 years to the day since James Joyce’s Leopold Bloom supposedly took an odyssey around Dublin, I pushed open the door to the Thirsty Dog on Karangahape Rd and fell into Ireland. Or rather, I fell into what the Jews Brothers Band called “the only Jewish-Catholic convocation in the known world”, their chaotic celebration of Bloomsday, crowded by poets, musicians, unionists, sociologists and (other) old codgers.

“Any Catholics here?” asked accordion player Hershal. A few guilty hands. “Any Jews?” “Yes!” bellowed Mike Mizrahi.

While the Jews Brothers sang an ode to K Rd — “It’s got dairies/and a cemetery!” — the script was by Joyce (and Dean Parker): “A woman … brought Parnell low (and Len Brown).” [More]]