Latest news with #WildWest
Scotsman
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Forfar care home invite local community to attend carnival summer fete as part of Care Home Open Week 2025 celebrations
HC-One Scotland's Finavon Court Care Home in Forfar, Angus, is preparing to celebrate Care Home Open Week 2025 with a fun-filled day with the local community at its Carnival Summer Fete event on Saturday, June 21, 2pm – 4pm. Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Care Home Open Week, taking place from June 16 to 22, is a national event hosted by Championing Social Care, designed to connect care homes with their local communities. The week will provide care homes with the opportunity to showcase their range of services, provide tours of their facilities, and highlight the activities that are offered to residents. The event is also a reminder to the homes' neighbours that they are there if they need support. Finavon Court are delighted to be opening their doors to celebrate Care Home Open Week with residents, colleagues, friends, family, and the wider community. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Finavon Court Care Home will be decorated especially for the occasion and the celebration will be a chance for everyone to come together as a community, and to learn more about life at the care home. Colleagues at HC-One Scotland's Finavon Court Care Home's Care Home Open Week 2024 Wild West themed celebrations last year The Summer Fete event will consist of a variety of stalls including local crafts selling personalised items, cake and candy stalls, candles and aromas, keyrings, bobbles and gifts. There will also be candy floss, popcorn, a face painter, and bouncy castles for kids to enjoy. At the Summer Fete will also be the local Cats Protection organisation who will be attending for the third year in a row as well as a tarot reader for those who wish to receive a reading. There will also be the opportunity to take part in the home's raffle where there will be a range of prizes on offer to win including hampers. A number of food stalls including burgers and hot dogs along with a buffet will be available to choose from. A selection of carnival games created by the residents at Finavon Court will be on show at the Summer Fete for individuals to enjoy. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Claire Cameron, Home Manager at HC-One Scotland's Finavon Court Care Home, said: 'We are delighted to be able to open the doors of Finavon Court Care Home again to welcome in our local community and bring everyone together to celebrate Care Home Open Week 2025. Colleagues at HC-One Scotland's Finavon Court Care Home's Care Home Open Week 2024 Wild West themed celebrations last year 'We are proud to support Forfar, and our Open Week celebrations will provide a great opportunity to reconnect with our local community and to support community engagement which is so important to our residents, colleagues, and the local area.
Daily Record
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Female-led Spaghetti Western with Sicilian flavour being cooked up in Galloway
The film is the latest initiative from writer and director Jessica Fox, who hopes it will help open the door for more female influence over the movie industry. A Spaghetti Western with a difference is being cooked up in Galloway. The film will have all the usual features of a Wild West movie – sheriffs, gun-toting outlaws, wagon trains, saloons, bar brawls and shootouts. But the entire project is female-led and aims to be fully funded by women. And the Scottish project will also have a Sicilian flavour. Spaghetti Western is the latest initiative from Wigtown-based, US-born writer and director Jessica Fox who hopes it will help open the door for more female influence over the movie industry. She and London-based producer Diana Phillips, believe it's essential to have more films created from the female gaze and with female financing. Jessica said: 'It's a fun, authentic, deliciously different take on the Wild West – how it was really won, as gun toting bad guys face the ultimate showdown when Sicilian cookery comes to town. 'But the project is far bigger, it's about empowering women of the 21st century to start transforming the movie industry, by getting involved as investors, directors and producers. 'It's a sector that's overwhelmingly dominated by men. Men decide who and what to fund, the film and TV that we watch and our cultural narratives. Even the films with female central characters are largely made through the male gaze. 'It's time that changed, with fresh stories and ideas that bring new perspectives to the big screen – and with that, new audiences. 'The only way that's going to happen is if we begin making movies that are funded by women and offer the insights and experience they need to truly take the leading role. 'She who holds the purse strings tells the story.' Spaghetti Western is set in 1881 when Elena Fardella, a young Sicilian widow, finds herself thrust into the battle for control of the remote, dust-blown town of Eden, New Mexico. Her only weapon is her skill as a cook and determination to use food to bring people together. Jessica, who is behind award-winning movie Stella and the romantic memoir Three Things You Need To Know About Rockets, has secured Grammy and award and Pulitzer Prize winning Rhiannon Giddens to record the soundtrack and it is hoped filming will begin next year. Development funding is in place, thanks to female angel investors, with chair of Women's Enterprise Scotland professor Lynne Cadenhead backing the project. The team is now calling on other women to get involved, with investors being offered the chance to appear in the film. Diana Phillips said: 'We have a brilliant script, a great creative team, the music has been recorded and development funding is in place – now we are looking for women to come forward as investors and collaborators so we can make a great movie and a real difference to the movie industry.'
IOL News
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- IOL News
UK rapper Central Cee to perform at Hey Neighbour festival alongside Doja Cat and Leon Thomas
UK rapper Central Cee will be performing in Johannesburg, South African on August 30 at the Hey Neighbour festival. Image: Instagram. UK rap sensation Central Cee is gearing up for his debut performance in South Africa. He'll be sharing the stage with global superstars Doja Cat and Leon Thomas at the 2-day Hey Neighbour music and cultural festival, which is set to take place in August. The "Doja" hitmaker will take the spotlight on Saturday, August 30, where he will showcase his unique style and talent. Then on Sunday, August 31, Doja Cat and Thomas will set the stage alight. Cee, who exploded onto the music scene in 2021 with his mixtape "Wild West," quickly amassed over a billion Spotify streams within that year. With subsequent mixtapes, including the chart-topping "23", Cee has solidified his place among the leading voices of his generation, earning him several nominations across various awards and a loyal global fanbase. This year, he bagged three Brits nominations, including Artist of the Year, Hip Hop/Grime/Rap Act, and Song of the Year for "Band4Band". Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad loading Although he didn't take home any trophies, Stormzy, who won the Hip Hop/Grime/Rap Act award, acknowledged Cee as the rap artist of the year. Cee has also been nominated for other awards, including at the BET Awards and MTV Europe Music Awards. Known for his expressive streams of consciousness, Cee's music resonates with listeners through its paradoxical themes, ranging from romantic to realist, and hard-hitting to reflective. In an online interview, he described his sound as "ignorantly conscious".
New York Times
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
21 Nonfiction Books Coming this Summer
The Dry Season After the breakup of a disastrous relationship, Febos takes a vow of celibacy — not to get closer to God, but to get closer to herself. She relishes in the sensuality of solitude and the pursuit of her art, a practice she situates in a long lineage of women who have made similar trade-offs: the Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen and the authors Virginia Woolf and Octavia Butler, to name a few. Buckley Tanenhaus, a former editor of the Times Book Review, exposes the roots of the modern conservative movement through this authoritative biography of William F. Buckley Jr., the firebrand writer and commentator who shaped it. As Buckley's only authorized biographer, Tanenhaus draws from troves of his private papers and extensive interviews with the man himself. The Gunfighters In his follow-up to the best selling 'Forget the Alamo,' Burrough offers a myth-busting look at the Wild West, though still replete with outlaws, cattle drives and carnage. In Burrough's telling, the Lone Star State, at the crossroads of anarchic frontier culture and Old South dueling culture, has been a hotbed of violence since its inception, making it a haven for gunslingers and, more formatively, the newspapermen and Hollywood producers who wanted to dramatize them. How to Lose Your Mother 'I was born to privilege, born on third base, but desperate to strike out and go home,' writes Jong-Fast of her childhood in the shadow of her fame-hungry feminist icon mother, the writer Erica Jong. As Jong's health declines, Jong-Fast — now an esteemed writer in her own right — offers an unflinching, albeit not unkind, reflection on the relationship between mothers and daughters. Baddest Man A veteran sports journalist's nuanced history of the heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson offers a portrait of a mercurial young street fighter from Brooklyn, thrust onto the world stage — with all its attendant perks and indignities. Though the narrative ends in 1988, at the height of Tyson's boxing career, it sets in motion 'the snowballing phenomenon' of one of the most controversial athletes in American history. Murderland Fraser begins with a simple true-crime curiosity — why did the Pacific Northwest have so many serial killers in the '70s and '80s? — and expands her gaze to encompass the recent history of American industrialization and the hidden consequences of environmental degradation. The result is a scientific re-examination of Ted Bundy and his ilk, and the toxic chemicals that may have rotted their brains. The Möbius Book Split into fiction and memoir — two narratives, each beginning at either cover — Lacey's latest book draws its cohesion from ruminations on religion, permanence and waning relationships. In a novella, two friends, Marie and Edie, discuss a mutual friendship over tequila as a fresh puddle of blood collects outside a neighbor's door. Elsewhere, Lacey processes the aftermath of a breakup and the possibility of new love via reflections on Annie Baker, Dr. Watson and Christianity. 'Make It Ours' This biography of Virgil Abloh, the men's wear chief at Louis Vuitton until his death in 2021, doubles as a lens into a staid luxury industry undergoing rapid transformation. Givhan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, deftly lays out how streetwear's grass roots revolution challenged fashion's stuffy notions of taste, exclusivity and their consumers — and paved the way for a hip-hop provocateur like Abloh to rise to the top. The Beast in the Clouds In 1928-29, Theodore Roosevelt's two eldest sons went on a swashbuckling global adventure to prove the existence of the until-then mystical panda bear. Holt chronicles their journey into the Himalayan wilderness — marred by sickness, violence and extreme weather — and what the landmark mission meant for the future of wildlife conservation. A Marriage at Sea In the early '70s, an eccentric married couple ditched their landlocked lives for grand plans to sail to New Zealand. Elmhirst's book opens just as a sperm whale crashes into their boat, kicking off a harrowing 117 days stranded at sea. But while the physical circumstances are extraordinary, the psychological drama is all too universal. 'What else is a marriage,' asks Elmhirst, 'if not being stuck on a small raft with someone and trying to survive?' On Her Game Caitlin Clark, the highest-scoring college basketball player in N.C.A.A. history, was a revelation to most observers following her standout season in 2024. Brennan draws on interviews and behind-the-scenes reporting in this energetic account of that campaign, and explains how the ensuing explosion in popularity of women's basketball is a legacy of Title IX's passage in 1972. Dinner with King Tut In the budding discipline known as experimental archaeology, researchers are driven by the full spectrum of human senses. Kean follows them on zany investigations and tactile recreations of ancient life that involve hunting with primitive spears, baking with ancient yeast strains, wrapping human mummies, taking perilous boats out to sea and building Roman-style roads. Sloppy, Or: Doing It All Wrong King's first book, 'Tacky,' was a sharp and spirited essay collection on pop culture and the pleasures of 'bad' taste (think: Creed, the Cheesecake Factory and 'Jersey Shore')8 This follow-up, which also enumerates 'my mistakes and crimes,' as the author has put it, is constructed out of 17 observant essays on the compulsions and vices — overspending, shoplifting, addiction, to name a few — that have molded her. Tonight in Jungleland Carlin, who has published biographies of R.E.M., Paul Simon and the Boss himself, pulls back the curtain on the making of Springsteen's 'Born to Run' album 50 years after its release. Drawing on interviews with the artist and his inner circle, Carlin revisits how each song was written and recorded while shedding light on the arduous studio sessions and their parallels to Springsteen's career. Blessings and Disasters Braiding personal narrative with Southern history, Okeowo, a contributing writer at The New Yorker, reckons with her love for Montgomery, Alabama, where she was raised by Nigerian parents, despite the state's legacy of chattel slavery and Indigenous dispossession and its more recent evolution into the backdrop for Amazon warehouses, auto plants and culture war lawsuits. King of Kings Much like his 'Lawrence in Arabia' (2013), Anderson's latest is an exercise in demystification. This absorbing account of the 1979 Iranian revolution unravels the story of how the nation's seemingly invulnerable leader, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, was forced into exile, and the ensuing hostage crisis that rattled American confidence and singed its reputation in the Middle East. Tart After quitting a 9-to-5 in corporate marketing, Cheff, the anonymous author of this gritty memoir, breaks into London's fine dining world in the hopes of becoming a chef. What follows is a tell-all detailing hot bartenders, endless emulsions and grueling work weeks offset by plenty of sex. Summer of Our Discontent Williams, a dependably contrarian voice on issues of race and social justice in the United States, examines how a confluence of issues — the Covid-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, the proliferation of social media — sparked an 'illiberal backlash,' and traces its influence to ongoing social justice movements, such as pro-Palestine encampments at universities across the country. Hotshot Wildland firefighting is no joke, as Selby, who spent years as part of an elite unit known as the Hotshots, details in this memoir. The author details their teenage struggles with homelessness and addiction, notes the rugged camaraderie and sexism of fire crews and shares searing insights on federal fire policy, Indigenous land use and American ecological history. Anonymous Male A former F.B.I. sniper falls off the grid in Somalia, raises a private army in Southeast Asia, survives a coup d'état and lives clandestinely for years until a near-death experience forces him to reassess his life. What sounds like the melodramatic plot of a James Patterson novel is Whitcomb's lived past, candidly divulged in this redemptive memoir. The Martians Mars, our barren neighbor, has served as an empty canvas for our expansionist imaginations since long before Elon Musk arrived on the scene. Baron chronicles the lasting influence of the Mars mania that gripped America during the early 1900s, how it captured the imaginations of Nikola Tesla and Alexander Graham Bell, generated speculative news headlines, fueled astronomical ambitions and left an indelible imprint on our culture.
Daily Maverick
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Maverick
Crazy daredevils and madcap missions — wild feats at Augrabies with the Great Farini
Two of the world's more unusual men dropped by to explore the Augrabies Falls in 1885: the Canadian trapeze artist known as the Great Farini, and his adopted son Lulu. The 19th century, the Golden Age of Queen Victoria, was a truly weird time to be alive. This was the era of freak show attractions and bearded ladies, Wild West shows, crass entertainment, shysters, fraudsters and hucksters, the circus legend PT Barnum and tightrope walkers like the Great Blondin and the Great Farini. South Africa saw comparatively little of it, although in 1903, Texas Jack Jnr and Mexican Bill did come out to the Eastern Cape town of Nxuba (formerly Cradock) with a troupe of circus riders, and managed to shock and amaze the locals by lassoing and riding a wild mountain zebra. But that's a story for another day. Nearly 20 years earlier, the Great Farini had visited southern Africa with his protégé Lulu, on a quest to find the mythical Lost City of the Kalahari. Mad stunts over Niagara Farini, who started his life as William Leonard Hunt, became famous because of a fierce and somewhat demented rivalry with tightrope artist the Great Blondin (aka Jean-François Gravelet). In 1859, Blondin had become the first man to tightrope-walk across the Niagara Falls. Months later, Hunt, a trapeze artist from a small town in Ontario, renamed himself Signor Antonio Farini and embarked on a series of mad stunts to upstage Blondin. He tightrope-walked across the Niagara Falls blindfolded, then did it with his feet in baskets. The 'daredevils' section of the Niagara Falls information website enumerates his other wild feats. Farini balanced on his head, hung from the tightrope by his toes and crossed while piggy-backing someone. When the Great Blondin took a little stove and cooked an omelette on the tightrope, the Great Farini took a washtub, lowered a bucket by rope into the water 60m below and proceeded to wash some handkerchiefs. The weirdness did not stop there. After a near-fatal incident in which Farini had to be rescued after trying to cross the Niagara with stilts on a tightrope, he left his obsession behind and began to travel. Along the way, he encountered a young boy with the name Samuel Wasgate, and they started a dual act. Some say Farini adopted the boy. A cross-dressing human cannonball Young Samuel (now called El Niño Farini) was able to hang from a high wire by the nape of his neck and play the drums. Then El Niño faded from public view, and instead, Farini began performing with a beautiful, long-haired young girl called Mademoiselle Lulu, agile and highly skilled on the trapeze, often called the Eighth Wonder of the World. Many became besotted with her and begged for Lulu's hand in marriage. After a few years and an accident on the high wire, Lulu was exposed as a boy. It had been Samuel Wasgate all along. But he continued with the name Lulu, and became even more famous for becoming the first human cannonball, still dressed in women's clothing. In 1869, at the age of 31, Farini decided to stop his trapeze acts and became more of an impresario, circus promoter and showman. He was somehow involved in an exhibition in London of the 'Dwarf Earthmen from the Interior of Africa'. In 1886, he published a book, Through the Kalahari Desert: A narrative of a journey with gun, camera and notebook to Lake N'gami and back. In it, Farini credits his encounter with these 'Earthmen from the Kalahari' for his interest in this region. The 'Earthmen' were accompanied by an old 'half-breed hunter, Kert by name', wrote Farini. 'Kert's account of the grass-covered plains and fertile savannas and forests, teeming with game of all sorts, gave the Kalahari the character of a hunter's paradise, instead of the barren desert which it has always been represented to me.' It is important to note that Farini's depictions of the people he encountered, particularly the so-called 'Earthmen' and Kert, are deeply steeped in the racist language and colonial attitudes of his time, reducing individuals to stereotypes and spectacles. It was Kert's mention of large diamonds in the Kalahari that really caught Farini's attention. He adds candidly: 'At first I did not quite credit this statement, but later on, going through some of the Earthmen's things, looking for poison, I found several diamonds.' Hunting treasure and a Lost City Farini and Lulu (who had become a keen photographer and artist) started their journey to the Kalahari by train from Cape Town. When he entered the Great Karroo, he wrote: 'Such was the Karroo, when I saw it first, after a two years' drought: the most terrible, arid, parched-up, kiln-dried, scorched, baked, burnt and God-forsaken district the sun ever streamed down upon.' Their stated mission was to find the mythical Lost City of the Kalahari, and they did find some interestingly shaped rocks, which they took to be ancient ruins. Hunt, who authored his book under the name G Antonio Farini, described the Lost City of the Kalahari to the Royal Geographic Society as follows: 'A half-buried ruin – a huge wreck of stonesOn a lone and desolate spot;A temple – or a tomb for human bonesLeft by men to decay and rot.' No one has ever corroborated his claim that a lost civilisation once existed in the Kalahari. But the rest of his account, detailing Kimberley's diamond fields and the geography of the Augrabies Falls, seems credible. Augrabies – the madcap mission On the way back from their epic journey into the dry hinterland (in which Farini had also acquired a large cattle ranch in the Kalahari), Lulu decided he simply had to have a photograph of the front of the Augrabies Falls. He and his Farini tied together kudu and ox-hide thongs, along with some manila rope. They made a raft of willow logs to carry the photographic equipment. Everyone present thought this was a mad scheme, certain to end in disaster. But the intrepid Farinis descended safely, then set about sketching and photographing what they saw. Over the course of several days they explored the canyon, with a German companion simply called Fritz, clambering over massive, slippery rocks. It was Fritz who hunted and prepared meals for them – including rock pigeons, so-called wild pheasants and a baboon for breakfast. Lulu drew the line at that. The simian smell reminded him too much of his years in zoological gardens and menageries, he said. The Farinis mapped no fewer than 100 cascades along a 25km extent of the gorge, and named them. Some of these included Farini's Falls, Lulu Falls, as well as granite formations like Book Rock and Gorilla Rock. They tried to name the main cataract the 'Hercules Falls' after Cape Colony governor Hercules Robinson, but that didn't stick. Then they shimmied back up the sheer rocks of the canyon and headed off downstream to hunt some hippo. DM In later years, Farini pursued his interest in horticulture and eventually wrote another book in 1897, How to Grow Begonias. He also wrote an unpublished series of books on the history of World War 1. He died of influenza in 1929. Lulu died 10 years later, at the age of 83. For an insider's view of life in the South African Heartland, get the Karoo Quartet set of books (Karoo Roads I-IV with black-and-white photographs) for only R960, including taxes and courier costs in South Africa. For more details, contact Julie at
