There’s a free gig in Tripod on Thursday night for the final of Bright New Sounds, a sort of online battle of the bands, supported by Vodafone, that has been running for the past while.

The top 5 downloaded bands have been chosen, and all that’s left is the final. All you need to do to get tickets is to visit this page here and register your interest.

Interestingly, back in February, Jim Carroll of On the Record was absolutely scathing of the terms and conditions of the competition.

Darragh Doyle has more info and links.

A youtube user has edited the angelus (calling it the ‘Propagangelus’) and pointed out, helpfully, in bright yellow writing, the people in it that appear not to be Irish. (To pass the test you must be white.)

Isn’t that a sculpture of baby Jesus in one of the shots? Why no Not Irish there? You missed one you mentalist fucker! The youtube user lists www.immigrationcontrol.org as his web site.

What the hell, it’s U2 day on Jazz Biscuit. They held a concert on the 29th in Second Life Dublin. Set your avatars to dance.

Christ. This happened before in 2006:

Although that time it wasn’t really U2. Just like it wasn’t really U2 this time. I’m lost.

Set avatar to confused.

We’ve talked about Second life (and penises) before.

Live Nation, a concert promotion company that has already inked a so-called 360 deal with Madonna, announced Monday that it will oversee the Irish music group’s touring, merchandise, and Web site.

“We’ve been dating for over 20 years now, it’s about time we tied the knot,” lead singer Bono said in a statement. “With regards to U2.com, we feel we’ve got a great Web site, but we want to make it a lot better.”

Even though there’s lots of planning involved for a global tour like u2’s 12 years still seems like a long time - Bono will be 59 when the deal finishes.

That’s taken from the news.com news blog.

There’s a big article on Live Nation and what they’re all about over on money.cnn.com. Or just check out the wikipedia entry.

“U2 Funny live moments”:

Shane Hegarty’s column in last Saturday’s Irish Times Weekend Review was fantastic stuff. We can link to it, despite the Irish Times ridiculous pay-wall, thanks to the fact that Shane reproduces his Saturday column on his blag. A snip:

IF YOU picked up a copy of Metro or Herald AM on your way to work on Wednesday morning, you would have learned this stunning statistic: almost half of women love doing the washing-up.

What’s more, 70 per cent dream of a pampering experience, such as a spa break or a manicure, as they are doing the washing-up.

And who brought you this vital research? Fairy washing-up liquid.

Read it: The Percentage Game.

As if to make his point for him, he also points to more survey results that arrived in today: Dumb survey of the day.

As is now required for any mention of Irish Times columns:

Gatsby album promo:

Unfortunately their web site seems to be a bit missing at www.gatsby.ie. You can browse the directory structure though, and there’s 6 songs to be downloaded if you dig through.

More: [myspace] Gatsby.

If you weren’t watching Celebrity Bainisteoir last night, then where were you? It’s not a bad concept, and for once one of these ideas didn’t come off as absolute shite. The introductions of each of the managers to the lads was fantastic cringe tv.

The judges, many of whom are holding balls:

Baz Ashmawy: Despite being the one I’d never heard of, he came across all right. He calls himself Bazildazzle on bebo.

Aoibhinn Ní Shuilleabháin: Came across as excruciatingly nervous at first, but got it under control. I reckon she is going to kick the crap out of the lads, in a sexy way.

Gerald Kean: Total chancer, though he deserves praise for the Glenda pun [paraphrasing]:

Glenda: I’m going to whip your ass
Kean: What about the football?

Glenda Gilson: Did anyone else think she was absolutely hating that first meeting? The Crumlin lads understandably loved it. It’s easy to get lost in eyebrow related slagging whenever talking about her, but she did look well.

Ivan Yates: Meh, neither here nor there.

Mary O’Rourke: I cannot believe she agreed to do it. Easily the sexiest of all 8 of them.*

Nell McCafferty: The lads faces when she walked in was priceless, and then the shallow applause and the polite handshaking… what else can they do? She’s old. And a feminist. And genuinely interested in ‘working with an exclusively male group.’ I think my balls fell off just listening to her.

Jon Kenny: Predictably slipped into a comedy routine in front of the lads. Take it away Jon…

I dunno, maybe I’m just in shock because it wasn’t as bad as Celebrity fuck a donkey or whatever is on Living TV at this moment. Please correct my distorted reality in the comments, if you wish.

More:
[RTE.IE] Official Celebrity Bainisteoir site
[Off the meatrack] Celebrity Bannister
[Boards.ie] Celebrity Bainisteoir

*It’s always been you, Mary.

Make super jazz links go now:

• Super blogger Maman Poulet has an excellent follow on to the story we posted back on March 19th about images from a same-sex marriage ceremony in Canada being used in a Polish political broadcast. The guy involved (his name is Brendan and he’s from Drogheda) is in Warsaw at the minute. Read The most famous Irish Man in Poland now.
• Budget airline Flybe advertised for actors to fly between Norwich and Dublin to boost passenger numbers and avoid a £280,000 commercial penalty.
• Youtube video title: best hangover cure a goldfish!!!!!!!! Description snip: paddy taught it would be funny to eat a goldfish! …yep… he eats what appears to be a goldfish.
• It’s fun reading Well Done Fillet as he wrestles with being named blog of the week by The Mail On Sunday. There is no higher honour.
• Design i found in the Book of Kells. Modified to fit my face. Self portrait. Lovely.
• Continuing the goldfish theme… Colin McKeown reads his poem, Goldfish Memory at the All-Ireland Poetry Slam Championship last year.
• David McSavage sounds like a lovely chap.
• ‘Hello, hello, can you hear me? I’m on the plane’ - yep, it’s finally happening. Comreg is expected to ok the use of mobiles on planes in Irish airspace at the end of April. Diagram above taken from this bbc.co.uk news article. Double edged sword - the icing on the cake of a Ryanair flight would be getting stuck beside some cunt with nothing better to do than call everyone they know.
• Where the slow set go - Gr80’s on Nassau Street. [pictured above.] And a related blog post on The Spanish Exposition.

Surely some sort of first for Irish chippers, K.C. Chippers in Cork, as well as having a bat-shit crazy web site, have a queue cam where you can get a live shot of the queue right now.

Fair fucking play to them.

More: www.kcschipper.com.
They’re discussing it on this boards.ie thread.