Posts from ‘The Naked Man Festival’
Racing cockroaches, rubber ducks and cows.
Monday, January 25th, 2010
‘Australians usually celebrate Australia Day with a barbeque, oftentimes with lots of beer’ That’s the the answer to ‘what do Australian’s do on Australian Day’ on wiki answers. Which is actually pretty much what happens. But it’s not all barbies and tinnies, though. There are many other things to do on Australia Day. Like racing strange things. Last year I attended the Cockroach Races in… (read more)
Haiti – 200 years of bad luck.
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
I went to Haiti in 2003 for the Saut d’Eau Vodou festival. Back then Haiti was in ruins. Not from an earthquake, but because the entire country was falling apart after years of dodgy governments, lack of any significant industry and it’s own people stripping the land bare. Here is an extract from my book The Naked Man Festival which describes Haiti’s turbulent and troubled history:
‘The streets around Champs de Mars were packed with men standing around doing nothing. This didn’t surprise me… (read more)
Happy Jool-eye Fourth!
Saturday, July 4th, 2009
A few years back I went to the US of A to celebrate July 4th for my book The Naked Man Festival. I chose to celebrate the holiday in the town of Capitan, New Mexico because I didn’t want the anonymity of a large city. I wanted a small town parade followed by a great big small town party. I stumbled upon Capitan by typing in ‘July 4th parade’ on Google and, on page 37 of my search, found the ‘Village of Capitan’ website with pictures of their Annual Fourth of July Smokey Bear Parade. The parade seemed to be entirely made up of fat people sitting on the backs of trucks waving American flags. It was absolutely perfect. That was exactly the Independence Day experience I was after…
Karaoke World Tour – Vietnam
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
Part Two of Brian’s Karaoke World Tour takes you to Vietnam – although it does seem to have much the same storyline as Part One (ie: lots of drinking and singing). I promise that not ALL my Karaoke World Tour stories involve me getting drunk.
I was in Hue in January 2003 as part of the research for the Tet celebrations (Vietnamese New Year) for my book The Naked Man Festival. I was on one my usual aimless wanders down side streets looking for the ‘real’ Hue where I found Tet celebrations in full swing as I peeped into people’s houses and saw lots of card games going on and plenty of drinking. I was… (read more)
Hemingway can’t sing karaoke.
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008
In 2003 I went to the Ernest Hemingway Festival in Key West, Florida for my book The Naked Man Festival and met a man with a white beard called Tom Grizzard. Tom was one of 150 men with white beards who were all competing in the Hemingway lookalike competition (I took this photo of him and his colourful fan club). It was Tom’s third attempt at winning the coveted prize and yesterday, after eight years of trying, he finally won! I found the story here and I noticed that in the photo he looks a little sloshed. When I met him in a karaoke bar in Key West five years ago he was very… (read more)