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A few recent news items:A column in Brno's paper Rovnost discusses karaoke. The author reports that police had to be called to one Prague karaoke venue because three singers were so bad that the other customers couldn't take it anymore. In case this happens to you, remember that the emergency number for police is 158. (Picture source)
Thirty residents were evacuated from downtown Brno (Kozí ulice) due to a gas leak, reports Lidové noviny. Power in most of the city's historical center was turned off. I walked through after coming home from a performance last night, and it was quite eerie to see the darkened buildings and deserted streets. The Rovnost website reported this morning that the outage lasted about two hours.
Czech Radio featured an interview with Věra Šustíková, creator of the exhibit on Fibich's symphonic poem Štědrý den (Christmas Eve). I noted the exhibit and commented on the new Czech Museum of Music here.
A new list of cultural heritage sites has been released by the National Institute of Memorials. It includes the usual things, cultural treasures etc., as well as the Ještěd television tower--not your average television tower, but one that also contains a hotel. It is hoped that the tower will eventually be added to UNESCO's list of world heritage sites. One-third of Czechs live in paneláky, and they are tired of them being ugly. (A panelák is an apartment building assembled from mass-produced panels. They were characteristic of the Communist period, and you see them still littering the landscape of every city and most smaller towns as well.)
Reality shows are growing in popularity. The new hit is about gorillas, not people.
Posted 06 January 2006 at 11:18.
A graduate student in music and anthropology writing a dissertation about music in Moravia, the eastern third of the Czech Republic. At some point, the Czech Republic's "second city" (that would be Brno) captured my attention, and I've since been blogging about events, arts, music, and other stuff—basically whatever interests me in and around the cityscape. I'm not living in Brno now, but I keep up with the cultural pulse from afar as best I can.
Comments:
I'll keep in mind that police number next time I go near a house-of-karaoke. Meanwhile, why are you showing a Lithuanian karaoke photo? Don't the Czechs have their own? (At least, I think that's Lithuanian. I guess it could be Latvian. I forget whether it's Latvian or Estonian that is Finno-Ugric.)
5:41 PM, January 06, 2006
Details, details. I just searched 'karaoke' on google images and that was the first picture that came up. I found it odd (is the beer singing?) and vaguely appropriate, so I used it.
11:06 PM, January 06, 2006
I suspect the picture is Latvian as the URL had a .lv address.
3:05 AM, January 08, 2006
The .lv suffix was confusing to me as isn't Lietuva or something like that the Lithuanian word? (OK, I checked, it is, and .lt is the Lithuanian suffix so the picture must be Latvian.)
1:08 PM, January 08, 2006
And am I the only one that finds it very strange, despite my elsewhere noted critiques of UNESCO, that they hope a television tower will be included on a memorials list? Which one will it be, the list of locations where they could have filmed James Bond movies but didn't?
4:30 PM, January 08, 2006
Well, yes, I thought that was pretty strange too. It's an interesting tower, but surely there are other things more in need of immediate protection? The Czechs apparently have a very influential voice at UNESCO. I wonder how their list of monuments compares to that of Afghanistan or Cambodia. Or South Africa.
11:59 AM, January 10, 2006
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