Cherryflava

Review: Vodacom funny festival

Posted on 30. Jun, 2005 by Cassandra.

Thanks to P4 radio 104.9FM ‘The heart and soul of Cape Town’ (shameless unpaid punt)…..last night, the Cherryflava team attended the Vodacom Funny Festival at the Baxter.

It’s the old Smirnoff Comedy Festival with a new sponsor and without the notorious ‘danger zone’ bit.

So…after a few quiet sundowners and pleasant advertising industry banter in the foyer, we padded into the Baxter concert hall for the show.

The host for the evening was Julia Morris, an aussie comic who now lives in London (along with the rest of Australia) and has apparently recently been let loose on the BBC. You’ll either love her or hate her (like ever true South African should of an Aussie), but she’s brash, bitchy, camp, swears like a stormtrooper and you’ll end up wishing that she’ll stop so that you can take a breath. Pretty much like the Australian cricket side right now.

South Africa was represented by Dave Levinson (the guy from the MWEB ads) and Kurt Schoonraad (the guy from those dumb garage shop ads)…who both dished out the usual ‘only if you’re South African’ kind of humour, which we all love. Don’t get me wrong…they are both very funny guys, but only if you’re South African.

Andrew Maxwell from Ireland, who was voted "the strongest comedian on the UK circuit right now" by The Telegraph in 2004 was brilliantly sharp and witty. If you’re not used to the Irish accent you’re going to have to listen very carefully because he’s fast and moves around alot. But once you’ve tuned in…you’re laughing. The ladies in the group also found him rather good to look at …so you’re really getting you’re money’s worth here.

Earl Okin is the strangest looking guy ever, but he’s a true entertainment professional. At first you think there’s just no way this chopper’s going to get you to laugh, but he’s so good it’s spellbinding. Sharing his act with you would spoil everything ….just go check him out.

The audience was at first a little nervous of wheelchair act Tom Gerrard. He’s seriously hectic. We’re still trying to figure out whether he’s a really good comedian….or he’s pissed off with everybody.

The final act of the evening was drag queen Tina C, who’s act is a mixture or country singing, very subtle one-liners and sarcastic flashbacks. She’s talented, but we couldn’t help thinking that the humour was perhaps a bit too advanced for last night’s audience.

….Either that, or we just really dig jokes about Gatip and his two-tone Cortina cruising the gang infested streets of the flats.

All in all…it’s a cracking show…and well worth the effort of getting out there and checking it out. It’ll knock you R100 and runs until 16 July.

Love hurts

Posted on 29. Jun, 2005 by Cassandra.

Meet Tim Shaw. He’s a famous radio DJ at Kerrang 105.2FM in the UK.

See that lovely black Lotus Esprit Turbo that he’s standing next to?……well, Tim pissed his wife off and she sold it on Ebay for 50p.

A controversial radio DJ’s wife sold his £25,000 sports car on eBay for just 50p after he flirted with Jodie Marsh on air.

Kerrang 105.2’s Tim Shaw told the model he was prepared to leave his wife and their two children for her, reports Metro.

Wife Hayley was listening and immediately posted an advert for the Lotus Esprit Turbo with a ‘Buy It Now’ option of 50p.

The
item description read: "I need to get rid of this car in the next two
to three hours before my husband gets home to find it gone and all his
belongings in the street."

The car sold within five minutes.

Ouch….that’s nasty. [Thanks Peaks]

2005 Design awards

Posted on 29. Jun, 2005 by Cassandra.

We’ll be honest (for once)….we picked up from Craig Jamieson’s site, a story about the 2005 Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA).

So we scampered over to the official site, eager and totally pumped to be blown away by the world’s most amazing blast of kick ass stuff…..only to be totally halted in our overexcited tracks by this.

In all the world of hot design…this was the official online representation? Come on!
The judge’s for this thing look like a fairly funky bunch (some look a little sad), but what happened on the way to the web people?

Google travel

Posted on 28. Jun, 2005 by Cassandra.

We’re still loving the fact that Google maps now covers South Africa.

The guys at Commentary had a legendary post covering all kind of spots in the Gauteng area.

But seriously…most spots of interest in Cape Town (Clifton, Robben Island [doesn't show up], Pollsmor Prison) are all blurred.  But we did find:

Cape Town international airport as well as Canel Walk shopping centre …Hermanus.

Strange place this; the mine in Oranjemund Namibia and check out what the middle of nowhere looks like.

Failing all of that, check out this great site which has an eye for all things of interest around the world.

UPDATE: Breaking news….Marc Forrest from Durbzblog has started a new blog dedicated to South African satellite travel called Satellite ZA. Go give him some luv.

Check your spelling

Posted on 27. Jun, 2005 by Cassandra.

Check out this wicked programme that generates instant logos via the massiv Flickr network. From what we understand…the engine will search Flickr for letter images to produce an instant logo for you.

This could see the end for graphic designers everywhere…..or not. [Via]

What’s up with the moon?

Posted on 22. Jun, 2005 by Cassandra.

This morning Cherryflava was violently and rudely woken by streaming beams of moonlight produced by abnormally big and bright moon which hung heavy and low over the city.

Interestingly the present status of the moon is rather rare.

According to NASA the moon is the lowest-hanging full moon in 18 years is going to play tricks on us this week.

NASA also claims that even though the moon looks huge it’s actually an optical illusion and if you take a photograph of the thing it stays the same size no matter where it is in the sky.

Cool stuff. Check it out.

File this!

Posted on 21. Jun, 2005 by Cassandra.

Not a typical photoblog with pretty pictures to interest you, but FILE is essentially a website hosting a collection of unusually shot photographs.

They’re the kind of shots that you’d most probably toss into the boo-boo bin…muttering something about poor lighting or needing a new camera, but in this case they just look really unique, artistic and frankly entertaining.

Pull into FILE here….we especially like the shots taken by Big Labowski star Jeff Bridges.

Travel to do: Around the world

Posted on 20. Jun, 2005 by Cassandra.

Cherryflava’s always had this thing about oneday taking a ‘around-the-world’ trip.

It just sounds to cool…you know…just like the Amazing Race or that Castle ad where the guy drinks beer in all of those exotic places.

So, lucky for us…we’ve stumbled upon Airtreks.com which is a travel agent-type site specialising in….you guessed it…round-the-world trips.

We punched in a couple of arb destinations….and came up with the following avaliable option:

    Cape Town
   
   
-

Johannesburg
-

Dubai
-

Male
-

Colombo
-

Singapore
- Melbourne
-

Shanghai
-

Beijing
-

San Francisco
-

New York
-

London
-

-

Cape Town

….at a cost of just US$3439 to US$4126. (R24 – R30 000) Not too bad really. Now we’ll just have to save enough forex to spend while not sitting in the air. [Via]

TBWA \ Hunt \ Lascaris is alive

Posted on 17. Jun, 2005 by Cassandra.

Cherryflava is really not sure how much money TBWA \ Hunt \ Lascaris  is paying journalists to keep them on the advertising map, but according to Kim Penstone, the Joburg agency may just have produced SA’s best advertising work….ever.

The sad thing is that we in South Africa will probably never see the ads ("War" and "Duel") because they’re for the Playstation global brand, and are too violent for SA TV.

The concept was produced on spec by TBWA Hunt Lascaris and Velocity Films. Filmed in Cape Town and running up a price
tag of R3-million, it’s the most expensive spec job ever shot in South Africa. It took eight months to complete.

Eight months? They could have shot a whole movie in that time. Most decent agencies can shoot a great ad in just one day, but then again…we are talking about TBWA \ Hunt \ Lascaris here…what the hell would we know.

You can see the mammoth productions here.

Apologies in advance for the terrible TBWA \ Hunt \ Lascaris website viewing options. It’s the result of a disruption and seriously lacks a user-friendly interface, but it’s actually very advanced…..sniff, sniff …tsk…tsk.

Killer business idea

Posted on 15. Jun, 2005 by Cassandra.

South Africa is full of brilliant business ideas and concepts, the problem is that very often we lack the ability to market the concepts to the rest of the world. Here’s an excellent example of a commercially web-driven ’stokvel’.

Fundable is a peer-to-peer service that lets groups of people pool money in
‘group actions’, for whatever goal or purpose they like. Similar to an
online auction, a group action has its own page, describing how much
money will be collected and what the money will do. It has only been in
business since last month, but so far, Fundable seems to attract a mix
of fundraisers and tech savvy group buyers (for example, 10 people just
completed a group buy for a USD 1,100 HP server; each person ponied up
USD 110, for which they will receive 10GB of server space, 1GB
bandwidth per month, and at least 1 year of hosting. The deal was
initiated by ‘Louie’). None of the participants takes a risk: if the
collection for a group action falls short of its target or deadline,
all collected money is refunded. Unlike an online auction, however,
Fundable acts as a sort of escrow service between groups of people and
the person who collects their money.

It looks like a free service for now, but there’s definately potential to build this online stokvel idea into something huge…especially in this country where the stokvel system is the primary investment tool for many people….and lets face, was basically invented in South Africa. If only more people in SA had access to the internet!

[Story via this month's issue of Springwise]