The Cosmonaut Screening + Costume Party

Join us for the Toronto premiere of “The Cosmonaut”, the groundbreaking, crowd-funded film about love, space, and Soviet rocketry. Oh, and win some incredible prizes in our costume contest!

See the trailer here: http://vimeo.com/59640383

The Cosmonaut (www.thecosmonaut.org) is a crowd-funded feature-length film about the first batch of Soviet cosmonaut recruits. Featuring breathtaking visuals, a love triangle and a lost cosmonaut myth come to life, and inspired by real events, this film was also shot on the love and dedication of an indie creative team with the backing of over 5000 individual contributors.

Its world premiere is coming up, and this event is the film screening for all Toronto’s astrophiles, nerds, partygoers, aspiring filmmakers and underdog backers.

The screening will include one or more of the following amazing components:

- A costume contest in two categories: Sci-Fi (Star Trek, Star Wars, Firefly, Alien, etc.) and Space Pioneer (Apollo 13, Gagarin, etc.) with audience judges and fitting best costume prizes in each category.

- Thematically appropriate tunes with a stellar DJ

- A fully licensed sushi/bar venue so we can all drink while we watch the film

The event will be 19+ and the cost for this unique screening will be 15$ to cover venue rental, DJ and prizes. 50% of the proceeds will go directly to the movie’s creators.

Please, tell your friends and friends of friends, tell your game group, your astronomy club, your fellow circus performers, your LARP team, your band, your book club…tell everyone, and invite them to this event, even if you yourself can’t make it!

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Common Gnomes Pop Up at Rarefied Flower Show, to Horror of Many

So it was not surprising that the staid Royal Horticultural Society‘s decision to allow garden gnomes — creatures commonly associated with the landscapes of the unrich, the unfamous and the untasteful — at the Chelsea Flower Show this year elicited a variety of responses.

Such as people all but fleeing in horror when the word was mentioned. “Gnomes?” said one exhibitor on Monday, when the show opened in preview. “I can’t comment on gnomes.”

Some exhibitors went proud and loud, putting gnomes in places they would not be missed, like in the middle of the grass. Others seemed to feel that gnomes may be fine for other people, but certainly not any people they know, or want to know. One renowned landscape architect, Robert Myers, hid a gnome in a tree in his display, lost his nerve and took it out again before the judges could see it.

“I don’t know where he went,” Mr. Myers said of his erstwhile gnome.

And then there were the Hewitt brothers, Paul and Richard, who were exhibiting greenhouses and who showed up dressed in gnome outfits that they had purchased on eBay and accessorized with beards they had fashioned themselves.

They had misunderstood, and were feeling a little sheepish. “We thought there’d be loads of people dressed as gnomes,” said Paul Hewitt, 50.

Richard Hewitt, 57, said it reminded him of the time he went to a black-tie party dressed as Ozzy Osbourne, having mistakenly thought he was going to a costume party.

The flower show is the horticultural society’s most important and influential occasion in this gardening-mad country, drawing Britain’s top gardeners and thousands of horticulture enthusiasts. Exhibitors spend several weeks and, sometimes, hundreds of thousands of dollars creating entire gardens that compete for various titles and are seen by the country’s keenest and most discerning gardeners.

Gnomes, which are called “brightly colored mythical creatures” in the handbook governing the show, are not really part of the Chelsea aesthetic. (Nor are balloons, flags, “feather flags,” or “any item which, in the opinion of the society, detracts from the presentation of the plants or products on display,” the handbook reads.)

But outside the rarefied world of the flower show, garden gnomes — small and cheery, or small and creepy, depending on your perspective, and typically dressed like the dwarves in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” — are extraordinarily popular.

Tackiness, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder.

“There are a lot of people who are gnome fanatics, who will literally buy any gnome going,” said Sally Chambers, décor brand manager at Solus, a company offering gardening-related products that has sold 200,000 gnomes in its Woodland Wilf line since 2009.

Customers have multiple Wilfs to choose from, including Wilf lying on a leaf, Wilf watering the plants, Wilf sheltering under a mushroom and Wilf playing golf.

“They put it in the front garden, the back garden,” Ms. Chambers continued. “They send me photographs of their gnome collections. There’s a lady who’s quite a good photographer, who uses Wilf as a subject and sells the photos on the Internet.”

Jonathan Jones, the garden director at the 14th-century Tregothnan estate in Cornwall, said he was not embarrassed at the inclusion of a gnome in his Chelsea exhibit. The gnome, cunningly sitting inside a kind of mini-indoor greenhouse called a Wardian case, can usually be found on the estate, by the clock tower.

The owners of large estates in Cornwall have a humorous habit of playing gnome-related tricks among themselves, Mr. Jones said, sometimes unexpectedly placing gnomes in odd places on one another’s property. “Once someone decapitated one of our gnomes,” he said.

As part of its new gnome-friendly policy, the horticultural society gave a group of gnomes to a group of celebrities, who then decorated them (Elton John gave his huge sunglasses with pink rhinestones). The gnomes, which are on display at the flower show, are to be auctioned off to raise money to help educate children about gardening.

And about time, said Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, a celebrity who gives decorating advice on television and who painted his gnome in a classic English landscape.

“Gnomes are very symbolic in English gardens, as an anti-class statement,” said Mr. Llewelyn-Bowen, who happened to be passing by his painted gnome as he prepared to tour the garden show. He said he had a colony of gnomes in his garden.

“It’s good to confront the received wisdom that all gnomes are nasty,” Mr. Llewelyn-Bowen said. Referring to his wife, he added: “Also, Jackie has had to overcome her poshness and confront her gnomophobia.”

“I’ve learned that there’s no place for gnomism in my life,” Ms. Llewelyn-Bowen said.

The loosening of the gnome restrictions applies only to this year, the centenary year of the Chelsea Flower Show. Next year the ban will return.

Not everyone will be sorry. A new advertising campaign for Ikea shows gangs of evil gnomes menacing a couple in the couple’s garden, whereupon the couple attacks back, drowning the gnomes, hurling them against a fence and smashing them to bits.

At the stand for Kings Seeds, a gnome in a little green hat sat in what on closer inspection turned out to be a chamber pot.

“It’s a joke, really, to show what we think of gnomes,” said Les Day, the managing director. “From a practical point of view, if you’re growing seeds in your garden you don’t need them, really. It’s more practical to put in something like netting or slug repellent.”

A royal pain – Philly.com

YOU ARE BORN insanely rich, so rich you will never have to work a day in your life, but you will “work” and be royally compensated. Sound inviting?

You are the second grandson of the monarch, the second son of her son. You are the “spare,” after the “heir,” as the Britons say.

Your name is Prince Henry, they call you Prince Harry, but you are really Prince Redundant.

In Ye Goode Olde Days, you would spend your days happily drunk, dissolute and in the arms of whores.

It could be worse.

Then things changed.

Heads started rolling, royal heads, the heads of blue bloods.

The House of Windsor, no dopes they, intuited they would have to change if they were to keep their castles, their titles, their wealth, their heads.

So they morphed from rulers into PR gimmicks – like team mascots, but for an entire nation.

U.S.A. has Disneyland, the kingdom of Mickey Mouse.

The Brits have Buckingham Palace, the kingdom of the Windsors. (Currently the queendom.)

For modern-day royals, there are expectations.

Next-in-line to the throne, Prince Charles was expected to marry a fetching virgin, so he was denied his true love. Because chronic inbreeding seldom produces the best and the brightest, he chose to couple with commoner Diana Spencer, the shy, willowy schoolteacher destined for global celebrity and an early, public death.

Do the wealth and celebrity still sound inviting?

Gone are the days when the royals would be killed by assassins. Today the killers carry cameras and digital recorders.

When Elizabeth – her 61-year reign is Britain’s second-longest (after Queen Victoria’s 63 years) – decides to cash in or croak, her elderly son Charles will have a short reign compared to his mum.

His No. 1 son, William, may have a long reign.

No. 2, Harry, 28, will have a long, fruitless wait. The moment the lovely Kate, Will’s wife, pops one from the oven, Harry is o-u-t.

Will he be jealous, or relieved?

Younger and more trouble-prone than older brother William, Prince Harry (known to his friends as Spike) has had several brushes with notoriety. If your kid does it, it’s delinquency. If a royal does it, it’s an embarrassment:

There was underage drinking, smoking pot, wearing a Nazi uniform at a costume party, throwing snowballs at bobbies from the Kensington (London’s, not Philly’s) palace roof, punching a paparazzo, calling a Pakistani comrade a “Paki,” and a few other BFDs.

After photos surfaced showing Prince Harry nude during a late-night party in Las Vegas, the redheaded royal heartthrob shut down his Facebook profile – He had used the pseudonym “Spike Wells.”

We jump ahead to this week. In uniform, he paid his respects to America’s fallen at Arlington National Cemetery and to wounded veterans at Walter Reed, and flew to Colorado to attend the Warrior Games for wounded service personnel. Harry – a captain in the British army, a self-described “bullet magnet” during frontline service in Afghanistan – is at ease among his fellow soldiers. Brits with whom he served regard the young royal as a good bloke.

Later in the week – still looking comfortable – he was walked around the Jersey Shore by the human dirigible, Gov. Christie. (Note to Guv: Avoid being photographed next to anyone as slim and fit as Harry.) He closed the week playing polo (He shoots, he scores!) for charity in Connecticut.

He has a serious side and a sexy, silly side. Like his mother, he chafes in the velvet handcuffs of royalty.

There is practically no chance he will sit on the throne, and I think he’d rather sit on a horse.

Redundant or not, he will spend his entire life under a microscope, having his every word and action scrutinized and criticized.

To me, that’s a royal pain.

Email: stubyko@phillynews.com

Phone: 215-854-5977

On Twitter: @StuBykofsky

Blog: ph.ly/Byko

Columns: ph.ly/StuBykofsky

The Cosmonaut Screening + Costume Party – blogTO

Join us for the Toronto premiere of “The Cosmonaut”, the groundbreaking, crowd-funded film about love, space, and Soviet rocketry. Oh, and win some incredible prizes in our costume contest!

See the trailer here: http://vimeo.com/59640383

The Cosmonaut (www.thecosmonaut.org) is a crowd-funded feature-length film about the first batch of Soviet cosmonaut recruits. Featuring breathtaking visuals, a love triangle and a lost cosmonaut myth come to life, and inspired by real events, this film was also shot on the love and dedication of an indie creative team with the backing of over 5000 individual contributors.

Its world premiere is coming up, and this event is the film screening for all Toronto’s astrophiles, nerds, partygoers, aspiring filmmakers and underdog backers.

The screening will include one or more of the following amazing components:

- A costume contest in two categories: Sci-Fi (Star Trek, Star Wars, Firefly, Alien, etc.) and Space Pioneer (Apollo 13, Gagarin, etc.) with audience judges and fitting best costume prizes in each category.

- Thematically appropriate tunes with a stellar DJ

- A fully licensed sushi/bar venue so we can all drink while we watch the film

The event will be 19+ and the cost for this unique screening will be 15$ to cover venue rental, DJ and prizes. 50% of the proceeds will go directly to the movie’s creators.

Please, tell your friends and friends of friends, tell your game group, your astronomy club, your fellow circus performers, your LARP team, your band, your book club…tell everyone, and invite them to this event, even if you yourself can’t make it!

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Friends of the Fairhope Museum to host Roaring 20s costume party

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A Gonzo Prom: Hunter S. Thompson’s night out in Fairbanks – Fairbanks Daily News

FAIRBANKS — If any group in Fairbanks can pull off a Hunter S. Thompson-based event, it’s Angry, Young and Poor 2013.

AYP is the eclectic Fairbanks philanthropic group known for its outrageous costume parties, pop culture-inspired events and summer concerts that double as charitable events for nonprofit organizations, and that’s just the basis of the group’s latest shindig — Fear and Loathing in Fairbanks: A Gonzo Prom.

Come Saturday night, the city’s favorite bohemian haunt — The Marlin — will be filled with more lizards, bucket hats and aviator sunglasses than you can shake a bottle of ether at, all in the name of a good party and a good cause.

“Every year, we host a combination fundraiser and throw a big party. This is the fourth one. People know to look for it know,” said Hannah Hill, one of AYP’s “disorganizers,” the term by which leaders of AYP prefer to be addressed.

Past events have included a David Bowie/Space Oddity event, a “Twin Peaks” party, the end-of-world bash “Promageddon” and most recently a “Doctor Who”-inspired costume party. But AYP isn’t all dress-up and costumed gatherings; the group has a serious side too.

AYP is civic organization, philanthropic group, and arts and entertainment-based collective all rolled into one. The group hosts charitable events throughout the year and puts on summer concerts with emerging local and statewide talent. The money it raises goes toward nonprofit organizations in Fairbanks, with past recipients being the Literacy Council, Planned Parenthood, the Ester Community Association and Fairbanks Counseling and Adoption.

Eventually, Hill said, AYP wants to start a scholarship fund at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Saturday’s gonzo prom is in the style of Hunter S. Thompson’s most famed work, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” It’s a costume party and fundraising event with prizes offered for costumes, dancing, DJs and all-out wild time.

“We try to give people exactly what they want,” Hill said. “People usually look at the name and think, what do you have to be angry about? AYP by any other name would smell just as sweet.”

What is gonzo?

Sure, you’ve heard the term, but not everyone might be familiar with Hunter S. Thompson’s style of writing. “Gonzo journalism” refers to a style of reporting Thompson popularized in which fiction and journalism blend. It’s often laced with the reporter’s opinion and noted for the use of profanity. The reporter often plays a role in the story.

Who is AYP?

Still want to know more about Angry, Young and Poor? Check out their Facebook page or look them up on the fundraising website.indiegogo.com where you can help fund the group and the organizations to which it donates.

If you go

What: Fear and Loathing in Fairbanks: A Gonzo Prom

When: 10 p.m. Saturday, May 18

Where: The Marlin, 3412 College Road

Cost: $5 at the door. Ages 21 and up

FYI: The gonzo prom is a costume party, so dressing up in your best gonzo outfit or Hunter S. Thompson’s unique style is highly encouraged as is anything from his epic work, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”

Contact Features Editor Gary Black at 459-7504, by email at gblack@newsminer.com or on Twitter at @FDNMfeatures. 

Oh, the horror— and the sci-fi!

Scary movie buffs, get ready for a ghoulish good time. The annual Big Bear Horro-Fi Film Festival takes over the town Friday through Sunday, May 17-19, at the Big Bear Lake Performing Arts Center.

The festival provides a forum for established and rising filmmakers to promote the advancement and creativity of filmmaking and to showcase their films to audiences within the horror and sci-fi genres. It is an outlet for filmmakers and fans to mingle and meet.

Official films selected to compete in this year’s event are “A La Folie,” “Grey Matter,” “Only the Smart Survive,” “Daughter of Werebitch Meets Skankenstein,” “Hell’s Belles,” “Pickman’s Muse,” “Dead on Arrival,” “Him Indoors,” “Pig Lady,” “Dead Weight,” “House of Bad,” “Visible Scars,” “Deer Head Valley,” “You Should Stop” and “Game.” 

Invited films are “Ax,” “More Brains! A Return to the Living Dead,” the 1988 film “Pumpkinhead,” “Beast Wishes,” “Necrofusion” and “The Employer.”

Several special guests are slated to appear at the festival. Thommy Hutson, Bob and Kathy Burns, David Dastmalchian, Frank Dietz, Trish Geiger, Jonathan Hartman, Lance Henriksen, Paige Howard, Alan Howarth, 

Tuesday Knight, Pat McClung, Frank Merle, Victor Miller, Brian Peck, Jeffrey Reddick, Amit Tishler, Matthew Willig, Matt Winston and Tom Woodruff, Jr., are all on the bill. Howarth, Knight, McClung, Miller and Peck are this year’s official judges.

Black Diamond Tavern hosts the Friday-night VIP party and B’s Backyard Bar-B-Que is the venue for the Saturday-night costume party and screening of “Pumpkinhead” by the lake.

Cost is $45 for Saturday passes, Sunday passes are $30 and include screenings only. The two-day pass is $70 and is good for two days of screenings and $10 off the cover charge for the Saturday night costume party. 

All access passes are $85 and include three days of screenings, all on-site events, entry into the Friday night VIP party and the Saturday night costume party.

Cost for the Saturday night costume party only is $15 and includes the screening and food. Tickets can be purchased online at www.bigbearhorrorfilmfest.com or at the event.

On-site childcare is available from 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Saturday and 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Sunday. The first two hours are free of charge. Each additional hour is $5 per child.

The Big Bear Lake Performing Arts Center is at 39707 Big Bear Blvd., Big Bear Lake. 

For the festival schedule of events and more information, go to www.bigbearhorrorfilmfest.com, call 323-839-4283 or email

info@bigbearhorrorfilmfest.com.

Maloof family under fire for ‘poison pill’ Kings plan

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• Sacramento Kings owners George Maloof (third from left), Gavin Maloof (third from right), and Joe Maloof (second from right). (PHOTO: US PRESSWIRE)

• Political consultant Doug Elmets mocked Joe Maloof at a 2006 Halloween party

SACRAMENTO  Sacramento Kings fans are angry but not entirely surprised by the latest twist in the Maloof family’s plan to sell the team to Seattle investors.

“Time and again they have managed to screw this community,” said Sacramento political consultant Doug Elmets.

Elmets was reacting to news that broke over the weekend that the Maloofs will not sell the Kings to California-based investors who would keep the team in Sacramento if the NBA blocks the proposed move to Seattle.

The Maloofs are reportedly threatening to retain control of the Kings in partnership with the Seattle investors while the team would continue to play, at least temporarily, in Sacramento.

Elmets believes the Maloofs first showed their lack of committment to Sacramento in September 2006, when Joe Maloof shocked city leaders by publicly torpedoing a campaign to build a new downtown arena with a sales tax increase.

The ranks of Maloof-haters steadily grew with each stab in the back.

“I think they’re being jerks,” said Sacramento resident Hannah Rice as she waited to cross the street outside the Downtown Plaza. 

The family’s later attempts to move the team to Anaheim or Virginia Beach led to another offer by Sacramento leaders to build a new arena at the Downtown Railyards, this time subsidized by the city’s public parking spaces.

George Maloof nixed the 2012 arena proposal during a meeting of NBA owners in New York, attracting the ire of commissioner David Stern, who had lobbied hard for the plan.

“The Maloofs?  They play a lot of games,” said Kings fan Macc Brown.

The latest plan to keep the Kings in Sacramento, led by Mayor Kevin Johnson, brought together a group of wealthy investors who matched the original Seattle offer and crafted a new plan to build an arena at the Downtown Plaza.

Although the NBA has endorsed the Johnson plan, the Maloofs are still stubbornly resisting it.

“I don’t think it’s right,” said Sacramento resident Cassandra Tryon.  “If Sacramento has investors, they should just sell.”

Elmets, the political consultant who felt betrayed by the Maloofs in the 2006 sales tax campaign, showed his disdain a month later by hosting a Halloween costume party and dressing up as Joe Maloof.

Elmets’ costume lampooned Joe Maloof for appearing in a Carl’s Jr. commercial with his brothers that boasted about their wealth.

The costume party brought a rare response to public criticism from a Maloof family member.

Elmets said after the party was mentioned in the Sacramento Bee, he received an angry phone call from the family matriarch.

“Colleen Maloof called me and asked me how I could insult her family and her son by dressing up as him for Halloween,” Elmets recalled.  “And I said, of course, it was all meant in jest, Mrs. Maloof.  The next thing I heard was a ‘click.’  She hung up on me.”

by George Warren, GWarren@news10.net 

News10/KXTV

Spice Girls Reunion! Emma Bunton and Melanie C. Dress as Baby Spice and …

Twitter

The Spice Girls taught us two things: (1) If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends (we’re still not positive what that means exactly); and (2) friendship never ends.

The latter of which was clear when Emma Bunton and Melanie C. reunited for comedian Leigh Francis‘ 40th birthday party dressed as Baby Spice and Sporty Spice, respectively.

“Baby and sporty are back!!!!” Emma tweeted alongside the above photo, showing Sporty in a soccer jersey that she actually wore during her Spice Girls days and Baby rocking her signature pigtails.

NEWS: Scary Spice Mel B tweets Geri Halliwell’s vintage Playboy cover!

The costumes were so on point that even former girl bander Geri Halliwell was confused.

She said so herself: “Confused ?is this u now?!” she asked.

Geri attended the same party, but opted out of her Union Jack dress and red go-go boots.

Twitter

Instead, she dressed as German Spice.

No sign of Victoria Beckham, who has basically transformed Posh Spice into her everyday persona, or Mel B, who was probably at home in her cheetah one-piece waiting for her invitation.

PHOTOS: Check out Victoria Beckham’s fashion spotlight

What Critics Are Saying About Baz Luhrmann and His Crazy Great Gatsby Parties

“Racking up his 3-D budget to the credit-card limit, Mr. Luhrmann turns these dinner dances into drunken confetti-drenched orgies. The sumptuous, vulgar Gatsby estate, overflowing with gangsters, movie stars, flappers, wisecracking alcoholics, voluptuous tap dancers, people falling from trapezes, clowns, acrobats and an orchestra in the middle of a swimming pool full of inflatable rubber zebras, looks like a high-school costume party on prom night invaded by Cirque du Soleil.” —New York Observer