Carnaval - Japanese style

There is a very large Japanese community living in Brazil so we get a lot of Japanese related programmes and news items. This morning I found out about the Kishiwada Danjiri Festival. What began as a dedication to Inari, the fox god of the harvest, has turned into a completely crazy race.

The different neighbourhoods of Kishiwada spend a year creating intricately carved wooden floats and then spend two days tearing round the streets of the town on these moveable shrines that weigh 4 tons. They are pulled by as many as 500 to 1000 people. The best parts are the high speed accidents that occur as they are dragged around narrow roads and street corners, crashing into buildings and sometimes completely falling over.

I haven't found a decent video from this years festival and this one from '97 doesn't really do justice to what I saw on TV. Guys falling off the roof and carts knocking over telephone poles.
Excellent.

(more info for the hardcore)

"Just get off your arses and do something!" - Ralph Bakshi

This is a great clip.

Ralphs advice can also be applied to the comics industry:

Don’t work for the big studios, work for yourself.

Technology allows you to take on the big guys.

Develop new markets for your work.

Creatively zig when everyone is still zagging.

What’s been successful for years can become stale.

Starcraft

Posted yesterday on the blizzard weblog:

Send us your StarCraft-themed comics and we'll choose the funniest or most interesting to be showcased on a special gallery page. Remember, we're looking for the best StarCraft humor out there. You can submit comics created in any medium, just make sure they're relevant to StarCraft II, original, and make us laugh.

For the first month, our winner will receive an 8GB Blizzard Branded iPod Nano, a copy of the StarCraft board game, a StarCraft Battle Chest, a shirt, and a copy of the StarCraft cinematics DVD. Two runners-up will also receive prize packages. Two runners-up will also receive prize packages. Please submit your entries by October 4th, 2008, to be considered for the first month's prizing. See the official rules page and contest page

Good luck y'all.