- One of the biggest and fastest-growing American music
festivals is about to go Middle Eastern. After years of building its brand in around
the United States and more recently in Chicago, Lollapalooza is reaching for international
horizons and on the heels of this year’s massive event, festival organizers
announced Saturday they would hold Lollapalooza Israel in Tel Aviv next year,
in what will be the country's first large-scale international music festival. Israel
joins two South American nations, Chile and Brazil as the sites for Lollapalooza’s
push to go international. "Lollapalooza
began as music's premier traveling festival," said. Perry Farrell, the
festival's founder and Jane's Addiction frontman said in a statement. "As a musician, I really
missed the days when we were on the move. In the last few years we've widened
our scope, presenting Lolla to the 'festival generation' around the world. Next
stop- Tel Aviv." Israelis will host their first incarnation of
Lollapalooza Aug. 20-22, 2013 and the festivities will take place in the city's
Yarkon Park, Israel's largest park. Yarkon has previously hosted concerts from
the likes of Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney. In explaining the choice to go
into what might not be the top choice on the list when considering musical
hotspots around the globe, organizers cited Israel's demand for live music in
its decision to
expand there. "Israel is an
incredibly sophisticated music market," Marc Geiger of WME Entertainment
explained. "Consumers have a voracious appetite for entertainment, yet
there has never been a major music festival. To me, this combination screams
Lollapalooza." This is the third consecutive year Lollapalooza has
announced a new international event during its main festival, as the Brazilian
festival was announced in 2010 at the Chicago festival and plans
for Lollapalooza Chile were unveiled in 2011. Next year’s schedule will begin
in São Paulo, Brazil (March 29-31), move to Santiago, Chile (April 6-7), take a
summer break and pick back up with its stops in Chicago (Aug. 2-4) and Tel Aviv
to wrap up the year……….
- Amazon is going gaming. The online retail giant has
grown into a
force in the distribution of mobile games with the Amazon App Store for Android
in the past year or so, but Jeff Bezos’ operation is now looking to seize a
bigger piece of the market with the launch of its own game studio, Amazon Game
Studios, and its first social game. The game, Living Classics, debuted on
Facebook Monday and in an accompanying Facebook post, the company rhetorically
asked, “Why is Amazon making social games, you ask? Good question! We know that many Amazon customers enjoy playing
games – including free-to-play social games – and thanks to Amazon’s know-how,
we believe we can deliver a great, accessible gaming experience that gamers and
our customers can play any time.” This new direction is a definite risk for
Amazon because it means the company will no longer be viewed as a neutral party
by game developers. Facebook maintains that stance as a neutral platform owner
because it doesn’t make games, but platform owners like Nintendo, Sony and
Microsoft have long operated under a policy of making games through “first
party” game studios while also soliciting games from third-party game
developers. “Amazon Game Studios is exactly what it sounds like: a new team at
Amazon that’s focused on creating innovative, fun and well-crafted games,”
Amazon said in a statement. Living classic is a moving object game where the
user has to click on objects in a scene that are shimmering or moving in some
way. It centers on a family of foxes who have wandered into “vibrant, animated
illustrations from their favorite books including Alice in Wonderland, The
Wizard of Oz, and King Arthur,” according to Amazon. The goal is to reunite the
foxes and spot moving objects. Those paying attention to Amazon’s hiring
patterns have predicted an entry into the gaming world because the company has had
lots of job openings for game developers for some time. Mix in its App Store
and the Kindle tablet and the bar has clearly been raised…………
- The unwanted are in the crosshairs in cash-strapped
Greece. With the weak link in the European Union teetering on the brink of
financial ruin, authorities in Greece are rounding up thousands of suspected
illegal immigrants in a large-scale deportation. Greece has long been Europe's primary
entry point for illegal immigrants from Asia and Africa pursuing a better life
in the West and their presence is a massive drain on the nation’s economy. Severe
economic problems and high unemployment have compounded those woes and one government
official likened the influx of immigrants to a prehistoric invasion. Police
detained more than 6,000 people over the weekend in Athens in a massive
operation ironically named after the ancient Greek god of hospitality, Zeus
Xenios. Officers moved throughout the city, stopping mostly African and Asian
people in the street for identification checks. Most were detained briefly and
let go, but about 1,600 were arrested for illegally entering Greece and sent to
holding centers pending deportation. Immigration officials estimate that more
than 100,000 illegal immigrants sneak into Greece every year, mostly from
neighboring Turkey, and up to a million are believed to live in Greece. That
represents approximately one-tenth of the population in a nation of about 10
million. Along with a rise in illegal immigration, Greece has also seen a
recent spike in crime and the abrupt rise of an extreme-right political party
which uses aggressive rhetoric against immigrants. The extreme right Golden
Dawn gained nearly 7 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections six weeks
ago, showing just how big of an issue immigration has become. Public Order
Minister Nikos Dendias announced Monday that the rounding-up of illegal
immigrants would continue because their unchecked entry has brought Greece
"to the brink of collapse." "The country is being lost,"
Dendias said. "What is happening now is (Greece's) greatest invasion ever.
Since the Dorian invasion some 3,000 years ago, the country has never received
such a flow of immigration." Nothing like reaching back to the heroic
Mycenaean age for some vitriolic anti-immigration rhetoric………
- If at all possible, most people tune out alarms. So many
car alarms and other alerts sound needlessly because someone grazes against a
parked car or a business owner opens the door and doesn’t get the code punched
in quickly enough that the average person walking around a city or through a
parking lot doesn’t give a second thought to an annoying buzzer or chime going
off nearby. That option wasn’t really on the table for residents of a Wilkinsburg,
Pa. apartment building late Sunday night and into Monday morning. The Wood Street
building was an uncomfortable place on account of an über-loud fire alarm that
blared for nearly 16 hours throughout the night. Police confirmed that the
alarm was set off by burning popcorn around 6:30 p.m. Sunday. Yes, a clueless
idiot who probably hit the button to automatically cook a bag of popcorn and
trusted that the always-too-long cooking time that inevitably results was the
source of hours and hours of ear-splitting disturbance for an entire apartment
building full of people. Firefighters
were unable to shut the alarm off because of liability issues – gotta love
bureaucratic red tape – and residents were left to call the company that owns
the building, Glenshaw Gardens, and wait the entire night and first half of the
following day for someone to come and turn the alarm off. Residents were
predictably outraged and a few even left their apartments and spent the night
in a hotel to get some sleep. Around 10 a.m. Monday a maintenance worker and a
locksmith were able to shut the alarm off. The maintenance worker could not
shut off the alarm on his own because while he had a key to turn off the alarm,
he did not have a key to get into the room where the alarm panel is located.
That seems like a reason to raise an alarm……….
- Will there be an NHL season or will a sport that is perpetually
lagging behind the three biggest sports in the United States shoot itself in
the foot once more with a work stoppage? Right now, the one thing the
NHL and the NHL Players' Association agree on is that there's still more than
enough time to reach a new labor deal before the season is in danger. Even
though the union has yet to submit a counteroffer with less than six weeks left
before the current collective bargaining agreement expires, both sides insist
there is no reason to despair. "I don't think time's running out
yet," said Donald Fehr, executive director of NHLPA, after meeting with about
40 NHL players Monday in Barcelona. . "I still think if the parties are
dedicated to it, there's sufficient time to reach an agreement." NHL
deputy commissioner Bill Daly concurred, sounding a hopeful note. "While
time is getting shorter, we continue to feel there is sufficient time to reach
a deal before Sept. 15," Daly said. If the current agreement expires
without a new deal in place, the NHL could impose a lockout, which is something
Fehr doesn't favor. "There's no law that says you have to lock out,"
Fehr said. "If both parties are both really interested in trying to reach
an agreement, and if we both really care what the people watching hockey games
think, then we ought to be doing everything we can to avoid that eventuality.”
He’s correct, mostly because fans will quickly move on to other sports and
pursuits if there is a lockout. Hockey simply does not have the rabid following
the NFL or NBA have, not in the United States. Daly has been cagey about the
league’s plans if an agreement is not reached by mid-September, but
negotiations resumed at the league headquarters in New York on Tuesday. Fehr is
still traveling Europe and Russia, meeting with players to discuss the state of
negotiations. The NHLPA is already angry because the league is proposing to cut
players' share of revenues from 57 percent to 46 and restrict free agency on
several fronts. Neither proposal was well-received by the players, who
oddly enough don’t want to give up and money or power………..
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