Manchester International Festival line-up announced

So Manchester International Festival line-up was announced today – and wowza is it good! Björk will be gracing the city with her presence for three weeks for the world premiere of her Biophilia live show. There will be six shows taking place at Campfield Market Hall with audiences of 1,800. Expect homemade instruments, choirs, unusual use of technology and no doubt a fantastic light show to give a weird, wonderful and atmospheric ambience.

The lovely Damon Albarn will be showcasing his new project Doctor Dee, which is directed by Rufus Norris. According to the MIF site “Doctor Dee explores ritual and symbolism in this country, past and present, using John Dee – one of England’s greatest but largely forgotten men – as a catalyst.” Not sure what to expect here... opera? Accessible? Fun? Who knows... but will no doubt be more than interesting.

Snoop Daaawg is also hitting the Capital of the North to perform his debut album Doggystyle in its entirety. With special guests due to be Warren G, Daz Dillinger, RBX and Joe Cool, expect all the wannabe ghetto kids to come out of their wannabe slums (i.e. Chorlton) and pretend to be all gangster for the night. Now pull your pants up young boys.

No doubt tickets are going to be sold before I’ve had time to pick up the phone when they go on sale at 10am tomorrow. GUTTED that it’s a week until pay day and I won’t be able to buy tickets for all of the shows I want to go to (which is all of them).

Johnny Vegas, Sinead O’Connor and Victoria Wood are just some of the other acts confirmed for this year’s event. See the MIF website for full details.

Foursquare finds Manchester is the F*@king rudest city

 

So Manchester is the rudest city in the world eh?

 

F*@k off!

Location-based social network gadget gizmo thingy Foursquare has imported a load of numbers into some big fat virtual online calculator and out of the end came a screaming foul mouthed Mancunian.

According to Foursquare’s engineering blog, Manchester folk are the most like to swear when checking-in at their chosen destination (i.e. the pub).

Foursquare says: “It’s good to see that the Mancunians truly are not only the rudest people in the UK, but the rudest people globally, only El Paso comes close.”

So every other sh*t city in the world – you must try harder.

Manchester Artist’s Plectrum Portrait a Sure Pick at Auction

Manchester-based Ed Chapman is one of the country’s leading mosaic artists. He has created portraits of some of the most iconic people of all time – including John Lennon, David Bowie and Debbie Harry. Last night, one of his more unusual mosaics – a portrait of Jimi Hendrix made from 5,000 Fender plectrums – was expected to reach up to £16,000 at Cancer Research’s Sound & Vision music heritage auction at London’s Abbey Road Studio.

On his website, Ed says about his plectrum portrait:

"Jimi Hendrix is a guitar legend and nobody played a Fender guitar quite like him.

“I decided to use plectrums to create a portrait of him because I like experimenting with different materials and textures and I think it is a fitting tribute to the musician.

“There’s no better place for it to go on sale than at a legendary home of music and I hope it raises as much as possible for charity.”

#LFW Drool – Mary Katrantzou

 

Love these Mary Katrantzou designs from London Fashion Week. Stunning, structured silhouettes which look like they’ve been embellished with a Chinese painting.

On the subject of London Fashion Week, check out my Smith & Smith PR blog post: "Who needs to go to #LFW when you've got social media?"

Oh no he diiiidn't - Kanye West upsets Twitter

A typical Thursday morning. I grab a coffee, sit at my computer and log on to HootSuite. 

I see that Times journalist Caitlin Moran has tweeted Glamour editor Jo Elvin. What’s this all about then? [Clicks on ‘show conversation’].

 

Ah, Kanye West has been let loose on Twitter again. Upsetting Lily Allen, Caitlin Moran and Jo Elvin and probably a few thousand other women in the process.

Now tweet up Kanye.

Do Mancunians and Scousers need separate airports?

Funniest quote I’ve read today is in the MEN from Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary:

“We know that Mancunians and Scousers don't like each other – so Mancunians will use Manchester and Scousers will use Liverpool airport where we also fly from.”

It might be because I’m not actually a Mancunian (born in Halifax, grew up in Solihull... yes, the ‘posh’ part of Birmingham) that I do not appreciate the friction between Manchester and Liverpool inhabitants. All I know is that my Dad supports Manchester United and my cousins support Liverpool, which results in many a banterful family gathering.

Anyway, the MEN was interviewing O’Leary about the news that Manchester airport has struck a multi-million with the low-cost airline (insert your own witty comment about ‘low-cost’ airlines being anything but). From April, Ryanair will be introducing flights to destinations such as Madrid, Alicante, Tenerife and Faro.

So all together now... *we’re all going on a summer holiday*....

If only I could convince the boy (aka Filmrant) to go on an aeroplane.

What’s in a name? Starbucks logo change stirs social media reaction

I haven't written a blog post for a while...*naughty me*... so here's one I wrote earlier this month for the Smith & Smith PR blog. It's not about Manchester, but it is about Starbucks. And there must be like a million Starbucks in Manchester, so it's totes relevant...Enjoy.

So, yet another company has changed its logo, creating a wave of online reactions. Starbucks has dropped its name from the emblem that adorns tens of thousands of spherical paper cups and kept the, um, the… ur… green Rapunzel princess with lobster claws as hands(??).

My Twitter feed has needed a triple espresso just to keep up with the reactions:

@monalis_solis clearly isn’t a fan of change, tweeting: “Oh no! How am I supposed to get used to this?”

While @LogoMotives is equally as perplexed as me as who or what the person in the picture is: “Starbucks logo always looked like woman holding legs in air to me.”

What’s in a name? Well @MikeBellTweets seems to think it’s everything, tweeting: “Starbucks logo has lost its identity.”

To some though, it appears it is a very weird and grotesque thing to have done. @autmurmis tweets: “Starbucks new logo makes me feel uncomfortable. Familiar yet distant. What’s wrong with them?”

Finally, @amylarrick probably thinks we should all grab a frappacino and chill out about it: “Not a huge change really I’m cool with it.”

I can’t help but remember the Gap logo fiasco(see Alex’s blog post “Online reputation – manage it, don’t damage it”). How long do we think it will be until Starbucks hosts an online poll to see whether or not they should change their logo again?