Possibly the most awesome concert ever

Yesterday I had the wonderful opportunity of seeing Kylie Minogue perform live in Riga as part of her KYLIEX2008 tour. Kylie is possibly the most popular person to perform in Riga of all time, with previous celebrities including Pink and the Backstreet Boys (yes, i know...). The thing is, for a long time after Latvia gained independece, large artists have avoided this region, sometimes performing in Tallinn, the capital of neighbouring Estonia instead. This might have been due to the then low income, and thus inability to pay for the tickets, and also the lack of a venue big enough. The Arēna Rīga, capable of housing 12,500 people was built 2 years ago, and now artists of a high caliber are flocking to Riga like crazy. This summer, the small country of 2.3 million will be blessed by the presence of such artists as Björk, the Chemical Brothers, Lenny Cravitz, Metallica, Sigur Rós, Fatboy Slim, Avril Lavigne, Timo Maas, etc.

Here are some of the best photos from the concert:

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Possibly the most awesome site ever

Lo and behold. I stumbled on a very intriguing site through reddit.com. This site is a flash animation that consists of the current time in Tokyo, hypnotizing music set at 60 BPM, and an awkwardly funny interpretive dance by Japanese women wearing Tshirts. Another section of this site presents the world map with a jumping bubble that displays the current time at various places in the world, and the corresponding number of people who have visited this site from said location. All in all it is terribly awesome. However, after spending 20 minutes watching the interpretive dance and humming along the melody, I realized that something was not right. There was no obvious reason for the site. Was it just a unique world clock? Or maybe an ad for ballet? After all...



Well, it turns out this is an ad for the UNIQLOCK store which sells... T-shirts in 20 different colors. Who'da known?

So I invite you to spend some time on this website. Enjoy it, but remember, that this might suck you in for several hours.

Hint: The site changes color every hour, and fluffy little thingies jump up and push the hands of the clock on the whole hour.

The Soviet Story

Two months ago a very controversial movie made by a Latvian (Edvīns Šnore) about the atrocities of the Soviet regime premiered in Riga. It can be considered an answer to the propoganda movie about Nazism in the Baltic states during WWII. I finally got to see the movie yesterday (it is now out in the open *wink wink*) and I have got to say that it is a perfect response the official opinion about WWII in Russia.

On a completely unrelated note, a mannequin of the director of the movie was burned in front of the Latvian embassy in Moscow and a Russian historian has expressed his wish to kill the director. Nice times.

Here is a review of the movie by the Economist.

Here is the trailer: