Category Archives: Hedonism

James Barrett has spent the last few years making a splash in the venerable techno scene of Berlin. Now in Covid-ravaged 2021, hes escaped to his homeland and is wasting no time in bringing his brand of dark pounding techno to the ravers of Aotearoa. I caught up with James ahead of his return to Otepoti at Negative Space Club this Friday.

You were in Germany through the Covid times, how was that?

It was mostly just being inside for 15 months, especially in the colder months, which was pretty brutal. Sometimes Id realise I hadnt been outside in two or three days, and time becomes something else, so yeah, it was quite awful having to be inside and not being able to see anyone else for that long. Definitely not a good time.

Obviously the club scene in Berlin is legendary. What do you think it is about Berlin which fosters that scene?

A lot of its sort of historical circumstance, right place at the right time, and sort of the right historical events to make that happen, because on one level its about the fact that its still a city where theres kind of like a lot of abandoned space, which young ravers can move into and turn into clubs, so theres this really amazing industrial environment. So one part of it is that past, and especially that Soviet past as well. But a lot of it is kind of political as well, which is tied in with the history too. Berliners have a very keen sense of what freedom means to them and there is that feeling throughout the whole city and it is kind of reflected in a lot of what you get in the clubs as well, you know once youre in there I mean its not quite a free for all, but it is near enough.

Coming back from Berlin to the Aotearoa club scenes, how do they compare?

Its a good question, and yeah its something Ive thought about a lot. You cant deny what Berlin is and it essentially has the best clubs on the planet, really. You know, these giant sort of industrial places of worship for sort of hedonism and dance music and partying. You cant deny that, but theres also a lot to be said in terms of being a participant within it, on both an artistic and professional level. And I think theres a lot to be said for being somewhere with a lot of potential that has a growing scene like Aotearoa, where you can really leave your mark on whats going on and really help to change things. And theres definitely a difference in terms of satisfaction between that and merely slotting into something thats already very established like Berlin, where you do sort of feel more like a mere participant rather than someone that can really help change things. So thats one big thing I noticed.

How have the shows been so far?

So far Ive had a couple of gigs in Christchurch, those have been really great, Ive always had a good time playing down here. I think because its such a drum and bass town, which in of itself can kind of be sonically quite aggressive, and it also has a sort of sonic similarity to a lot of what I do already. I definitely think audiences have always been quite up to what Ive got to offer here. So, yeah, the only shows Ive done so far have been a couple here in Christchurch and one in Wellington Saturday, and that party in Wellington was kind of really special I have to say, the crew that put it on, Practice, theyre a really lovely crew, they really kind of curated every aspect of that party to a perfect extent. It was a very, very diverse crowd, and they just put together a really, really incredible event that was special within New Zealand.

But, yeah, no, the parties that Ive played so far have been really good, Im so happy to finally be at it again.

Negative Space Club, Friday July 30, at XYZ, 142 Princes Street. Tickets $15 from undertheradar.co.nzListen: havenakl.bandcamp.com

- Fraser Thompson

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Back to bust out the beats - Otago Daily Times

If you ever ran for a dawn train after a narcotic all-nighter in 2007 with The Rat by the Walkmen pounding through your liquified brain and a hip flask of breakfast vodka in your pocket, expect flashbacks from the opening moments of Giddy Stratospheres, director Laura Jean Marshs debut film set amid the euphoria, hedonism and tragedy of the 00s indie rock scene.

We were all so young, feeling invincible and wanting it not to end, says Marsh, who put on gigs by bands such as the Horrors and Black Wire at her Dolly Rockers club night, hosted parties for the Mighty Boosh and sang with guitar pop band Screaming Ballerinas before moving on to acting and video directing.

You didnt want to sleep, you just wanted the fun to go on. Before you know it, its day three. I put on the Long Blondes it was one of the most incredible gigs Ive ever been to at [London bar] Nambucca, everyone dancing around on the tables and rolling around in glass and throwing confetti in the air. There was something really special about how everybody knew each other having friends in bands from Leeds or Liverpool or Manchester and coming into town and everyone partying for 24 hours, feeling like you were part of the family.

Based around a fictional gig by the Long Blondes and featuring music from Franz Ferdinand, the Futureheads, the Rapture and the Cribs among others, the film sets out to capture the wired unpredictability of British rocks latest great generational wave within a dark and personal narrative.

I didnt make the film to represent the 00s, explains Marsh, who also stars as wild child Lara. I made a film about two friends. It was a really exciting time, but it was also quite a tough time for a lot of us. Giddy Stratospheres is quite a personal story to me. I lost quite a few friends and I went through some bad times. A lot of it is drawn from my past heartbreaks.

Filming on a shoestring between lockdowns last year was quite a challenge, she says. There were a lot of gaps in crowds with clever camera work to make it look like it was busier.

So how successfully does the film evoke the era? We asked the people who were there.

Kate Jackson: I dont think many people have covered that era yet in film, so we were happy for Laura to use our song title for the name of the film. I really liked it. It did evoke those times really well. It actually made me feel a bit anxious those social interactions in venues when youre wasted gave me the fear. Everyone in Camden at that time would have been in a band. Literally everybody. I wasnt sure whether to say yes to a cameo because Im by no means an actress, but it was fun.

Dorian Cox: Its probably happened to me millions of times, when some girl has tried to bother me when Im getting my guitar out of the venue. That took me back to those Long Blondes times when we were still living in Sheffield and had to get back to work in the morning.

KJ: I was usually driving us back as well, so all the excessive scenes of drug taking, we werent exactly doing that. It was, like, one whisky and coke before the show.

DC: It was a very hedonistic time in London. Everyone just seemed to go full pelt, there was a lot of drink and drugs and no one seemed to think about the endpoint. When youre two pills down its amazing but then the next day real life happens again, and I think its important to get that message across. Im glad Laura didnt make it seem like it was just a scene full of lads in pork pie hats thinking theyre Pete Doherty, too, because its overlooked how arty that scene was to start with. In that immediate post-Strokes time, on one bill you might find someone like the Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, Ikara Colt, the Parkinsons, all these bands that didnt necessarily have anything in common, just a strong feeling of fun. Like any scene, later on it becomes a bit easier for labels to recognise what sells. Post-Arctic Monkeys, it was easier for labels to think: Its just four guys in Adidas tracksuit tops. I do think everyone felt part of a family in that scene.

KJ: Remember that squat party in Peckham that we ended up playing, in the tile factory?

DC: George Bush Jr one of his daughters turned up with security. Shed obviously heard that indie was cool. There was a lot of crap around then, but then theres a lot of crap around in any scene. There were far more shit Britpop bands than there were good ones. Theres only a handful of genuinely good punk bands. Now is the time for that scene to be reappraised and the good bands to rise to the top.

Jamie Reynolds: The film was great. But its not an easy story to tell. If you were to stand up and tell the story of what happens in the film as a blow-by-blow account, its not a celebration of 2007 more of a depiction of the tragic aspects of it. I felt that was incredibly sad and incredibly brave. It being based in 2007 was in many ways irrelevant: this was a story as old as the hills. It was Rebel Without a Cause. It couldve been a depiction of any music scene since the 1950s, the continuation of the classic rocknroll narrative: one minute its fun, the next minute its fucked. Ive always been quite open about drugs but to see it on screen and for there to be the twist that happens in the film its a fair description of how dark it could get.

Tahita Bulmer: There are some great moments and I definitely enjoyed the twist elements. It had the dirty feel of the mid-00s. There was a kind of sloppiness, people working with what they had in terms of clothes and makeup, and the beginnings of gender non-conformity being mainstream, guys wandering round in lashings of eyeliner and a quarter of a T-shirt held together with safety pins.

The focus on drug-taking, the feeling that it would just be a continual party when our band kicked off that wasnt a reality for us but Andy [Spence, producer] and I were such massive disco freaks and we thought, This scene is the closest thing to disco were ever going to get in terms of the debauchery and hedonism, but also in terms of the creativity as well. The film had a bit of that but it didnt really show the boundless creativity and, because its a low budget thing, it didnt manage to replicate that intense energy that was in London at the time which was so beautiful. As you get older, you realise: that was so rare! Youd have to have had another 40 or 50 people in those gig scenes to give you that sense of the crush and sweatiness. But considering it was filmed in lockdown, I applaud them.

Alfie Jackson: I enjoyed it. At the start, running along to The Rat, thats how I felt at the time. This limitless energy and this amazing music and fashion it just felt like a moment, the same as when Britpop arrived. But its weighted towards the annoying drug-dealing and drug-taking types a little more than I was hoping for. We didnt have Spotify or anything: the first time I heard these tunes was in clubs, on the dancefloors. I was hoping for a bit more of a fun nostalgia trip, super-exciting and happy like the song Giddy Stratospheres is. But at the same time it was good to inject a cautionary tale in there because Rob [Skipper, Holloways guitarist] died, and Ive got a couple of other mates who have never quite been the same, mentally, following their experiences.

Didz Hammond: There are hardly any films that portray live music especially well or accurately. It always comes across as a bit sanitised. Having said that, the drug use and the worldview of all of the characters was spot-on, the costumes were accurate, the behaviour was accurate, the ruthlessness and selfishness were accurate. Some of it was quite difficult to watch: the scenes of misbehaviour are a bit shuddery. Everyone who was in a band in the 00s was kind of making up for lost time. Everyone was about 15 when Britpop was happening and Camden was the centre of the world. By the time we get to 2002-7, youve got a whole generation of kids with guitars wanting to catch up.

Tabitha Denholm: My memory of that era was one of fewer consequences. I remember it in a slightly brighter way. I did wonder: Why is this room so empty? The thing I remember more than anything is singing along with giant groups of sweaty people and them knowing every word. The buoyancy of the musical communion, singing The Rat together or whatever. It was a naughty and badly behaved time but in a very silly way.

Giddy Stratospheres is out now.

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Everyone was going full pelt: how Giddy Stratospheres captured indies hedonistic 00s - The Guardian

Colin Alexander, a political communications lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, on how freedom and liberty have been invoked by propagandists for centuries

The lifting of most Covid legal restrictions on July 19 has been dubbed freedom day by some politicians and journalists. Though not an official designation, thepopularisation of this moment with such a saying closely follows two of my 10 golden rules of propaganda that Ive developed in my years studying the practice. First, appeal to the instincts rather than the reason of the audience, and second, build around a slogan. Then repeat, repeat, repeat.

To this end, the medias regular use of the phrase reflects its compliance with and encouragement of the governments pandemic communications strategy. It is one of these phrases that you cannot quite place where it first emerged but which quickly seeps into public discussion to the point that we all know what it means.

Throughout the pandemic, the British government has utilised a wartime propaganda playbook to deliver public communications about Covid and the purported solutions to it. In these terms, we are now heading for the end of the combat phase of the governments propaganda delivery and the beginning of the post-pandemic or post-war phase.

In this sense, freedom day could be compared to VE Day (Victory in Europe Day, May 8 1945) and ought to be regarded as the latest in a long line of rhetorical associations with the Second World War that have been encouraged over the last 16 months.

References to blitz spirit, the militarisation of language around and heroisation of the NHS and the attention on Second World War veteran Tom Moore as the flagship of British determination and sacrifice are just a few of the ways this history has manifested in Covid Britain.

Concepts like freedom and liberty have been invoked by propagandists since the 16th-century Protestant Reformation and subsequent Enlightenment period. They emerged as influential writers Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill and Isaiah Berlin, to name a few began to philosophise about the rights of the individual.

To this end, the popular use of freedom to describe the end of pandemic restrictions forms part of a populist audience seduction strategy, using emotional rather than rational rhetoric. The medias purpose in using the phrase then is to appear to be on the side of the public. As Harold Lasswell, one of the founding fathers of communications studies, wrote in 1927: the best propaganda is that which is the champion of our dreams.

The philosopher Patrick Nowell-Smith discussed the seductiveness of the propaganda of freedom in his 1954 work Ethics, noting its association with hedonism and its deliciousness within the human mind. He caveats that hedonism is not always about gluttony and self-centredness and is not always carnal.

From the propagandists point of view though, freedom is an effective rhetorical tool because it means whatever the target audience want it to mean. Its utility is that the term is vague but that it resonates with ease when uttered.

One of the most common misconceptions around propaganda is that it always involves the communication of falsehoods to a mass audience and attempts to brainwash evoking shades of North Korea or the Nazis. In the common mind, propaganda is synonymous with the use of dark arts to encourage a target audience to engage in behaviours or to think in ways that they would otherwise not. Undoubtedly, some propaganda does do this.

Propaganda is more complex than this and can also involve truth-telling, however selective or self-interested.

Today, propaganda is all around us. It is undertaken by governments, state institutions, corporations trying to sell us things, media organisations, charities and powerful individuals in advance of their own interests just look at any billionaire philanthropist doing good while paying next to zero tax.

Individual citizens have obtained the means to broadcast for ourselves, particularly via social media platforms, and we too have become propagandists. Influencer is just a more acceptable way of saying propagandist.

Freedom day is not a lie, because restrictions will be lifted. However, the popularisation of it as such (rather than most restrictions lifted day, for example), is part of a strategy (endorsed by government and mainstream media alike) that has wanted the British public to think, act, associate and feel in certain ways since the pandemic began.

Indeed, the best, or most effective, propaganda is that which creates emotional bonds between the target audience and certain people, products, events or concepts. Freedom day has been so-called because the powerful want us to think in certain ways about this day, and to exclude or overlook other aspects of the pandemic that it deems undesirable.

To overwhelm the publics conscience (or to subtly railroad it while making it seem like choices are available) is one of the highest art forms in propaganda. We see this perhaps most clearly within public discussion of the vaccine programme wherein government and media have sought to marginalise more critical views of it.

Calling it freedom day attempts to nullify the public by encouraging us not to scrutinise government and media performance as we should. It reflects an attempt to move the discussion from science, sociology and public health to patriotism and emancipation.

Colin Alexander, Lecturer in Political Communications, Nottingham Trent University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Why Freedom Day is a classic piece of propaganda - The Week UK

Armed with a negative lateral flow test, wearing my glad rags and having practiced my one-two step in the mirror, I set off to one of Teesside's biggest clubs on Monday evening.

As a 23 year-old, I've had a significant portion of my clubbing career stolen by the pandemic, and so I jumped at the chance to go to The Empire in Middlesbrough for their welcome back party, on the day the government eased most coronavirus restrictions in England.

Although my introduction to Boro's clubbing scene mostly involved spectating the hedonism of others, after 16 months cooped up, I wasn't content with just being a fly on the wall.

Read more: More guests, bridesmaids and dancing finally allowed as Teesside wedding venues lift restrictions

When I arrived at Corporation Road at 8.30pm, a huge line was already snaked around the corner of the building ready for the "sell-out" grand reopening at 9pm.

I felt slightly nervous about the whole experience, but I was told the club had taken extra steps to increase Covid safety, which included setting up new entrances and exits to minimise crowding, as well as the installation of 'Virus Killer' air filtration devices.

Veteran bouncer Brian Kennedy, who has worked at the club for the last 15 years, treated me to a whistle-stop tour of the venue, and I could sense both his apprehension and excitement about getting back to business.

Ive had two jabs, which puts me at some level of ease he told me. It's a really big moment - this will be the first time I've seen the security team since we shut in 2020."

He placed me in prime position to witness the first group of clubbers show their tickets, elatedly grab their wristbands, and hurtle to the dance floor.

One girl broke down in tears as she stepped foot under the lights, and she later told she was overwhelmed in the moment, having visited The Empire every single weekend before the pandemic took hold.

The main room began to populate quickly and while I kept my face covering on, euphoric and mask-less youngsters embraced under the cover of smoke.

It felt truly surreal to watch people singing passionately into one another's faces and to see them standing shoulder to shoulder as they sunk WKDS and alcoholic slushies at an unholy rate.

Queues soon formed five-people-deep around the bars, and owing to the pounding bass from the revamped sound-system, ordering drinks was only possible via very basic hand signals or hoarse shouting.

The Empire building, which used to be a theatre, was brimming with performers on Monday night, as the strobe lights accentuated each hair flick, twerk, finger gun and piece of fancy footwork.

And after an hour of old school classics, bottle debris began building up around the place, with bar staff working frantically to try and keep apace.

Weve got this, we'll be pushing through until 4am said new staff member Bethany Woodyatt, 22. "But Ill be coming back to have a dance when Ive got a day off.

Both she and I had to quickly relearn the art of ducking and weaving between inebriated people, which was challenging after a year of strict-one way systems and the dance floor slowly becoming a wet zone from sloshed beverages.

I found solace from the crowds in the girls bathroom, which as I hoped, was a hive of female empowerment. I was met with a flurry of people complimenting one anothers outfits, gossiping outrageously, and giving sage advice to strangers.

I spoke to 19-year-old Laura Edwards through a thick haze of deodorant-filled air, and she told me she's "staying out till close."

"Its been so long and were out celebrating a friends birthday - they've just turned 18 and they havent been able to club yet, we need to show them a good time".

Heading back into the sauna-like main room, I spotted several ingenious clubbers keeping themselves cool. One group had brought with them paper fans and were waving them in sync with the music, another girl had an electric hand-held air cooler, and one boy had simply opted for two cold cans pressed to his neck.

Due to my own sweaty discomfort, I was less than pleased when a huge figure bumped into me and put his clammy hand on my back.

He was so engrossed in a FaceTime conversation that he'd forgotten all spatial awareness, but he informed me the person on the other end was "having to isolate, and he was talking them through the night", and so I found it in my heart to forgive him.

By 11pm circus-esque performers had spilled out into all three rooms. Organised by the club, this included dancers on stilts and others adorned in glittery costumes with disco balls as heads.

Breaking myself away from the mesmerising sight, I headed to the smoking area where I was met with action worthy of a David Attenborough voice-over. Everywhere I looked there was either shameless flirtation, high-running emotions, or messy necking on.

It was there I was taken under the wing of two wonderful lasses, who in classic smoking-area fashion launched into dramatic stories about their night.

The first, had experienced a "rotten" girl in the club trying it on with her boyfriend, and the second, I quickly learnt, had recently broken up with her "cheating liar of a partner" and needed cheering up.

The pair took me for a boogie, helped me avoid a puddle of sick and also mopped me up when a hammered boy spilt his bottle of beer down my leg.

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Going to a club sober is definitely a feat of endurance, and so after the clock struck 12, I said goodbye to my new friends and slipped into the night.

As I exited the rammed dancefloor, I noticed clubbers sat at nearby bus stops having deep chats, taxis lining the street poised for business, and up ahead the golden arches of McDonalds.

"Nature is healing" I joked to myself.

My night at The Empire was definitely an entertaining and illuminating experience, and one that showed me how easily people can embrace old behaviours and seemingly forget the horrors of the past year, as well as the rising cases of coronavirus happening right now.

And although undoubtedly fun, post-lockdown clubbing did feel like a privilege given that many young people who are clinically vulnerable won't get to experience the same dancefloor-fuelled glee for some time to come.

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The Empire: Tears, beers and fancy footwork as one reporter is unleashed at nightclub opening night - Teesside Live

Adding to a night curfew put in place to try to stem the rising tide of COVID-19 because people aren't obeying health measures, music has been prohibited on the wild party island of Mykonos, a prime reason why people go there.

Notorious for tax cheating, hedonism by the super-rich and uninhibited, the island also has see people in mobs along the waterfront, violating safe social distances and adding to the spread of the Coronavirus.

The New Democracy government lured tourists there, those who were supposed to be vaccinated or free of COVID, but hadn't required tourism workers to be inoculated to slow the spread of the disease.

Music had been banned earlier in restaurants and bars across the country because health officials said it would bring people in too close contact but photos from the showed overwhelming masses anyway.

The news agency Reuters said the Civil Protection Ministry said the restrictions, including the curfew, will be in place until July 26 at least as it's still trying to attract tourists and Mykonos is a favored destination.

Greece relies on tourism to bring in as much as 18-20 percent of the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 169.67 billion euros ($200.3 billion), which plummeted in 2020 during the pandemic after a run of record years.

Infections have been soaring after being held down, the rise said largely because of so many people refusing to be vaccinated, less than half the country fully inoculated so far.

That led the government to make shots mandatory for health care workers but not tourism workers and as officials said it's not tourists spreading the virus and the dreaded Delta variant.

Restaurants, bars and taverns are also being allowed to let vaccinated and unvaccinated customers mix together with no word from the government's advisory panel of doctors and scientists why that's been so.

We call on the residents, visitors and professionals on our beautiful island to strictly follow the measures so that we can quickly control and contain the spreading of the virus and Mykonos can return to normality, the ministry said.

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COVID-19 Brings Music Ban, Restrictions on Party Island Mykonos - The National Herald

Dorian: A Rock Musical | Theatre review

131 years after the release of The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wildes Gothic novel about a young man trapped in eternal adolescence the tale is back, though this time as a rock musical, and penned by writer/director Linnie Reedman.

Following the death of his grandfather and no longer bound by the antiquated labels thrust upon him by senior members of his family (which had forced him into confinement and left him with only a handful of books to keep him company) Dorian goes in pursuit of love, and wears his heart on his sleeve in a bid to get one step closer to the worlds most powerful emotion. And so the journey begins with a visit from Lord Henry (John Addison) while Dorian sits for a painting; he corrupts the teen, introducing him to hedonism and sin so that the nave Dorian can be enticed to stay young forever.

A century on, Reedman has stuck closely to the script, incorporating the shows classic themes of vanity, morality and corruption into the narratives equation. What has changed, however, is the mechanism through which the story has been told. Joe Evanss score is largely responsible for this transformation. His understanding of Wilde and his witty nature flow through the lyrics ingeniously. This being said, Evans does indeed manage to add his own touch of magic to the production and breathe new life into it. His Bowie-like flair, seen in opening number Can You Hear Meis a stark reflection of this.

Having been postponed twice due to the pandemic, the play was filmed at a site specific location in the heart of Mayfair, and brought to audiences online.

Ghazaleh Golpira

Dorian: A Rock Musical is available to stream from 16th July2021. For further information or to book visit the stream.theatres website here.

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Dorian: A Rock Musical | Theatre review The Upcoming - The Upcoming

Over the next week at The Ringer, in honor of the release of Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage, we will explore events that changed the world as we knew itspecifically ones that marked the ends of established eras and triggered the beginnings of then-unknown futures. Some will be overt and well established. Others will be less trodden and perhaps more speculative. But all will entertain an immovable idea that when things die, there is someone or something that pulled the trigger. Welcome to This Is the End Week.

Las Vegas is a city where many otherwise cautious people have discovered many wildly incautious forms of debt, so lets start with Michael Milken, the junk-bond king of Wall Street. In the late 1980s, shortly before he was indicted on 98 counts of racketeering and securities fraud, Milken, who was then the most powerful financier in America, helped an upstart casino executive finance his first resort on the Las Vegas Strip. Milken sold $525 million worth of bonds to cover what the executive initially thought would be $565 million in construction costs. Shockingly for a major construction project in Nevada, the resort went over budget; it finished somewhere north of $600 million. That was how Steve Wynn built the Mirage, the casino that transformed Las Vegas.

From the outside, the 80s looked like a bad time to be plowing money into the Strip. The citys casino industry had been crumbling for years, hit hard by the double-dip recession of the early 80s and the legalization of gambling in Atlantic City. On November 21, 1980, a fire had ripped through the MGM Grand, killing 87 guests; word got out that Vegas wasnt safe, and that Nevadas famously light touch when it came to regulations meant there werent even fire sprinklers in buildings where, lets face it, someone could be assumed to be smoking in bed basically 24 hours a day. The bad PR from the fire didnt help, either, especially after another fire broke out at the Hilton. There were 300,000 fewer visitors to Vegas in 1982 than in 1980, room occupancy plunged from 77 percent to 70 percent, and the annual migration of American quarters into desert slot machines started to look like something David Attenborough would get mournful about in a nature documentary. Hotel operators slashed their prices and ripped amenities out of rooms. No frills is the word you see in write-ups of this era. A lot of gaming executives were like, well, lets build RV parks and keep our fingers crossed.

A junk bond, by the way, is a bond that a credit rating agency thinks has a good chance of not being paid back. When you buy a bond, youre loaning the money to the seller, who promises to repay you on a set date. Credit agencies look at these loan instruments and score them based on how likely the seller is to actually do it. If the bond looks safe, i.e., you probably wont get sent straight to voicemail after the managing partner flees to Bolivia, it gets an investment-grade rating. If the bond looks unsafe, i.e., the analyst has some qualms about the loaded .38 and stack of fake passports in the CFOs desk drawer, it gets rated below investment grade: a junk bond. Investors sometimes get excited about junk bonds despite the risks involved, because if they do pay out, theyre worth more. You get a higher yield for flirting with the odds youll lose everything.

Does thatI dont knowremind you of anything? Does it maybe vaguely recall a certain pastime associated with a particular desert city? Wynns resort, which opened on November 22, 1989, nine years and one day after the MGM Grand fire, couldnt have been built without Milkens help, a fact Wynn readily acknowledged. In 1995, he was named Casino Executive of the Year by Casino Executive Magazinea publication that not only exists, but is also, year by year, probably a better chronicle of the American mind than the New York Review of Booksand he said, speaking of Milken: Mike is the one who changed us. No Mike, no Mirage. The casino industry, in other words, was transformed by the Wall Street equivalent of a 3 a.m. bachelor-party blackjack table. This was a couple of decades before credit default swaps made everyone realize that a 3 a.m. bachelor-party blackjack table was a significantly more prudent and rule-abiding space than the financial sector itself.

What made the Mirage different from other Vegas casinoswhat made Wynns vision of the Strip compelling to Milken and his clientswas that it existed primarily to be spectacular. The Wikipedia page for the Mirage notesin the same paragraphthat it was the first resort ever financed by junk bonds and that real gold dust was used to tint the windows; these facts are deeply linked. Old-guard Vegas executives like William G. Bennett, the longtime president of the Circus Circus empire, had been trying for quite a while to attract middle-class families to the city, but theyd been operating as if the middle-class American family were a rational entity swayed by low prices and familiarity: come to Vegas, eat at Dennys. Wynn understood that what middle-class tourists want from a gambling destination is the feeling of escaping from the middle class. The attraction of a gambling resort is not that it caters to middle-class logic but that it enables the suspension of it. Were happy to keep losing as long as we feel like were winning. The Mirage was conceived as the gambling resort of the future, and the gambling resort of the future had to do something more complicated than just offer the tantalizing possibility of striking it rich. It had to coax its customers into feeling theyd already struck it rich, while actually making them poorer all the time.

So: Give them spectacle, size, dazzle. Show them the world, literally, through gold dust. At the time it opened, the Mirage was the largest hotel on Earth. It can be hard to remember this, because subsequent Vegas resorts (including several of Wynns: the Wynn and the Bellagio) have gone even farther down the hallucinatory-luxury path, but in its early years, the Mirage was unlike any hotel Vegas had ever seen. It wasnt just neon and showgirls. It was magic and white tigers (Siegfried and Roy operated out of the Mirage for years, until Roy was nearly killed by one of his own big cats) and contortionist acrobats (Cirque du Soleil first played Vegas in a tent in the Mirage parking lot). It was all the food and drink you wanted. It was total sensory surfeit, so hypnotic you barely heard the cash registers ringing.

For a young city, Las Vegas has had a lot of eras. Everyone agrees that theres a new Las Vegas and an old Las Vegas, but what those terms signify depends on who you ask. The pioneer Las Vegas, which was mostly ranchland and a Mormon fort occupied by Union troops during the Civil War: Thats one version of the old Las Vegas. Another is the city between 1905-1931, after it was officially incorporated but before the Hoover Dam, which brought plentiful water and the legalization of gambling, which brought everything else. Still another version of the old Las Vegas is the Glitter Gulch era, centered on the Fremont Street casinos, before the Strip opened and the gamblers moved south. (One of the richest Las Vegas ironieswhich is saying somethingis that the Las Vegas Strip is not actually in Las Vegas, but in the unincorporated city of Paradise.)

Its the opening of the Mirage, though, that represents the real dividing line between the old Las Vegas and the new Las Vegas, because its the Mirage that changed the idea of Las Vegas into what it is today. After November 22, 1989, the whole range of possibilities was different. Before the Mirage, Las Vegas is the cowboy sign, Frank Sinatra, maybe Elvis, maybe a fight at Caesars Palace; afterward its the Eiffel Tower and the giant hot air balloon and Celine Dion and Britney Spears.

The nature of American opulence is to move from elegance toward comfort. Before the Mirage, Vegas means relatively well-dressed people in relatively drab interiors; after, it means schlubs in astonishing movie sets. The nature of American pleasure is always to move from adulthood toward childhood. Before the Mirage, Vegas is pretty frankly about gambling and drinking and sex; after the Mirage, it dilutes its hedonism by setting it inside fantasyland castles filled with circuses and fountains and cosplayers in Spider-Man suits wholl take a selfie with you for $5.

A project on the scale of the Mirage is polarizing whether or not it succeeds, and the Mirage succeeded wildly. Even at the time, reports about how Wynns vision was changing the gambling industry tended to see the resort as an inflection point. Take the 1996 Washington Post profile of Wynn by Blaine Harden and Anne Swardson. Harden and Swardson depict the Mirage as transformative in two ways: first, as the moment when Wall Street went all in (sorry) on gambling; second, relatedly, as the moment when gambling truly broke away from organized crime. After the Mirage, they write, Wynn was able to finance his resorts with safer instruments than junk bondsthings like bank loans and stock offeringsbecause Wall Street sold the industry to respectable institutional investors; by 96, the endowment of Harvard University had a $38 million stake in gambling companies.

Wynn had once been accused of having problematic mob tiesa Scotland Yard investigation in 1982 called him a front for the Genovese crime family, and a New Jersey investigation had caught the director of his Atlantic City casino hobnobbing with Fat Tony Salerno, reputedly the Genovese family bossbut now he was being exonerated by regulators. Around the same time that Wynn was hosting a gathering of Wall Street money managers at the Mirage to talk about investing in the casino business, the chairman of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission announced that there was simply no basis to the allegation that Wynn was connected to the mob. (Wynn himself always denied any connection and issued a lengthy rebuttal of the Scotland Yard report, which he called erroneous, misleading, and false in every respect other than the spelling of my name.)

Las Vegas as legitimate business, Las Vegas as a luxury consumer experience, Las Vegas as a place to eat world-class meals and be mesmerized by flashing lights and browse $8,000 suits at the Kiton boutique in the mall at the Venice casino (which is of course designed around a simulacrum of Venetian canals): all that starts with the Mirage. And the old Las Vegas, the Vegas of Moe Greene and scotch on the rocks and showgirls in ostrich feathers and Dean Martin in a tux with the tie undonethat version of the city fades out as the Mirages lights come on. Vegas has wavered through the past 30 years about whether it wants to be family-friendly or not. What hasnt wavered is the consumer gloss that the Mirage drizzled onto the citythe sense that you could go there to feel special, not just to feel good.

Its a funny place, this country. Its not just in Las Vegas that the difference between winning and losing tends to blur in the presence of money. The mirage of the Mirage seems to get bigger all the time. Remember how I said Michael Milken, the resorts financier, had been indicted for racketeering and securities fraud? Well, five months after the Mirage opened, he pleaded guilty to six of the original 98 counts. He paid a $600 million fine and was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. The case was notable in part because the prosecutor whose investigation nabbed Milken was a hard-charging New York attorney who used the conviction as a springboard to a political career. His name was Rudy Giuliani.

Giuliani became the mayor of New York City. Milken, who got out of prison after serving less than two years of his 10-year sentence, remained a billionaire. On December 26, 2000, The Wall Street Journal reported that the two men were having lunch together in Manhattan. At the time, Giuliani was pushing for a presidential pardon for Milken, in recognition of his contributions to cancer research. George W. Bush wouldnt touch the case, and neither would Barack Obama. But 20 years later, on February 18, 2020, Milken got his presidential pardon from Donald Trump. The president of the United States, it transpired, had sold nearly $700 million worth of junk bonds in the late 80s, money he used to finance the construction of the Trump Taj Mahal during his time in the casino industry.

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Steve Wynns Mirage Transformed Las Vegas and the Very Idea of Luxury - The Ringer

By TEE NGUGI

The recent protests in the Kingdom of eSwatini have claimed nine lives and destroyed property of a great value. The demonstrations have also claimed the facade of political stability and the image of a people happy in their cultural element.

Loss of lives and livelihoods is tragic indeed. But loss of a political and cultural faade behind which chicanery, debauchery, hedonism, oppression and exploitation have thrived since independence is a revolutionary and liberating act.

The unprecedented demonstrations were sparked by a cocktail of grievances rising cost of living, the opulent lifestyle of the king and his harem of 15 wives and scores of children, and endemic thievery within government. But the most egregious grievance was the dictatorship that has resisted the winds of democratic change that have been sweeping across Africa since the 1990s. The tiny kingdom has been able to weather this storm and keep its people in the grips of oppression and poverty because of an ingenious invention cultural fundamentalism.

This fundamentalism indoctrinated in citizens the belief that the status quo was part of eSwatinis cultural heritage. Anyone seeking to change the status quo was a traitor out to destroy that heritage and, therefore, vanquish that which distinguishes the people of eSwatini as a people and as a nation.

So a king living lavishly, splashing precious funds on cars private planes and palaces, marrying and maintaining multiple wives at the states expense was taken to be part of the great eSwatini cultural heritage. Further, the population was sold on the idea that what was most important in life was not material wellbeing, but preservation of traditional customs.

So the population religiously observed cultural rites and joyfully participated in traditional ceremonies, and overzealously preached the virtues of eSwatini traditional culture, even as poverty ravaged them, and their countrys development indices kept pointing southwards.

There is an analogy with new-age evangelism in Kenya. The impoverished congregants are told to celebrate their faith because a special destiny awaits them. They sing with light in their eyes. They throw themselves on the ground in fits of spiritual trances. They cheer the preacher with every ounce of strength. They enthusiastically give their last coins. But while they remain mired in poverty, their pastors ride in luxury cars and live in opulent mansions.

The royal dictatorship in eSwatini was also able to pull the wool over the eyes of the world. Human rights organisations were reluctant to criticise the country lest they were accused of attacking a peoples culture. African cultural and leftwing ideologues, just as they had praised Robert Mugabe as the embodiment of African nationalist and socialist ideals, praised eSwatini as the custodian of African traditional culture. In 2017, Zimbabweans exploded that myth. Now, in their demonstrations, the people of eSwatini are doing the same.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator

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eSwatini protests: Breaking the faade of royal dictatorship - The East African

Im unsure how long Ive been staring at my feet in the shower. A cloak of water trickles down my shins, then between the crevasses of my toes. The thought of moving my limbs right now fills me with dread. Theyve been through enough today. Ive done a load of washing, run 10km, replied to last nights emails and prepped for tonights risotto. And its not even 7am.

For the past six weeks, Ive been setting my alarm at 5am in an attempt to reboot my energy. While Ive long prided myself on being a morning person, and find the idea of a lie in at the weekend wasteful, its rare for me to intentionally wake before dawn. But, after 16 months of working from home, the spring in my step has increasingly resembled more of a shuffle. So pierced by Zoom meetings and Slack notifications are the hours that stretch out before me, that Im left feeling too fatigued to exercise or meet friends come sundown. I have endless time on my own, but seemingly none left for myself.

To find a solution, I did what any millennial does in times of uncertainty and took to social media, where I found the answer might lie with not lying in bed. The #morningroutine hashtag has amassed more than 3.6 billion views on TikTok, while vlogger Lauren Snyders 6am Morning Routine video seeing her journalling, exercising, doing her skincare regime and making breakfast has accrued more than 3.3 million YouTube views.

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Of course, waking up at first light isnt exactly a new phenomenon. For millennia, farmers, labourers and religious communities woke with the rising sun, long before the alarm clock was invented. But recently those early hours have become a magical window the key to productivity and self-realisation. Leadership expert Robin Sharma, the bestselling author of The 5am Club 336 pages extolling the virtues of rising early is spearheading the movement. For ultimate wellbeing and success, readers are instructed to start their day at 5am with exercise, reflection and personal growth, each lasting 20 minutes. The way you begin your day has an outsized effect on the quality of your day, he explains.

If you look at many of the greatest creative leaders and sages of the world, most of them had one thing in common: they were daybreakers, he says, listing early birds such as Nelson Mandela, Michelle Obama and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

I have endless time on my own, but seemingly none left for myself

But as the pre-dawners quietly got on with their 5am ice baths (Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey), green powders with brain octane oil (Orlando Bloom) and 95-minute workouts followed by cryochamber recovery (hello, Mark Walhberg), everyone else got more sleep. More and more of us are using the extra hours in our days to take meetings, network and even socialise with like-minded peers, leaving the well-rested lagging behind. Sharma is not surprised: Were looking for the game-changing hack that frees us from our slavery to technology. The morning routine is the answer.

The idea of speaking to colleagues pre-caffeine will have most of us pulling the duvet over our heads. But in Miami, before-work networking is as common as jogging along Ocean Drive. With low taxes, hot climate and pro-business mayor Francis Suarez, the coastal metropolis is etching out a name for itself as the new Silicon Valley. Consequently, the city has ushered in a new wave of early rising techies, venture capitalists and former Wall Street financiers itching to share ideas at breakfast lectures and on networking bike rides around the town of Key Biscayne before clocking into the office. After all, time is money.

Its a culture that inspired Brandon Evans, co-founder of technology community Miami Made, to launch the Thrive Together Tuesday event. Once a month, founders meet at 7.30am to share their knowledge and find support from like-minded moguls. The eye-watering start time was very intentional, Brandon says. Being a founder is hard and often-isolating work. To start your day with 100 people who want to see you succeed is a game-changer.

But its not all work and no play for early risers. The morning is getting a makeover, with some viewing it as the new happy hour (without the gin).

My friends and I regularly have 6am calls, TishTash communications agency founder Natasha Hatherall-Shawe tells me from Dubai. The entrepreneur initially began setting her alarm at 5am for work (by 9am, I want my inbox empty so I can focus on clients) but has tailored her morning routine to accommodate time with friends. We end our calls and feel energised for the day, she explains.

Were looking for the game-changing hack that frees us from our slavery to technology

Anna McLeod, athlete, team and partnership manager at cycling brand Rapha, is another fan of starting work early. She meets her mentor for a weekly 7am bun run cycle in the countryside, with a pit stop for coffee and pastries. Ive had meetings on the bike before and I find conversation is more casual and relaxed than in a meeting room, she says.

But could morning meet-ups really become the alternative to post-work drinks? Yes, according to George Rawlings, who co-founded the dating app Thursday in April. With more than 110,000 users signed up in London and New York prior to launch, the platform is looking into a feature that enables users to show their available time slots, which George believes will benefit early risers wanting to date before work. I think people will be more inclined to give half an hour of their time for a morning coffee and make dating more low-key, he says.

Cultivating relationships early in the morning is something Aurelien Schibli and Brenton Parkes have seen first-hand. In 2018, the former flatmates launched the 5.30 Club in Sydney for individuals to meet in a cafe on weekdays at 5.30am. Its expanded across Australia with attendees socialising, working and even dating. Weve attracted people that value connection on a sober level, says co-founder Vani Morrison. Anyone can get up early and have a morning routine, but theres a difference in having a community to hold you accountable. And you dont even have to wait until the sun sets to party. UK-based Morning Gloryville has had worldwide success with its pre-dawn, alcohol-free raves, starting well before 7am.

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But while waking at an earlier hour may benefit some, sleep expert Dr Els van der Helm isnt so sure it makes you more successful; it may even be counterproductive. One major drawback is the myth that waking early means youre getting ahead. In believing this, youre basically misaligning your sleep with the rhythm of your biological clock, she says.

According to Dr van der Helm, humans are created with chronotypes that determine our ideal sleep times. With morning types making up just 14% of the population, she warns that in waking early, most people will force themselves into a schedule that doesnt naturally fit them, especially if theyre going to bed early to rise early. Eventually youll adjust, but youre never going to be completely optimal.

Youre basically misaligning your sleep with the rhythm of your biological clock

Does that mean youre free to stay in bed? Dont bet on it. In an age of comparison culture, earlier-than-you routines are on the rise. Hatherall-Shawe has already seen it happen. Weve got an entrepreneurial community in Dubai people are competitive, she says, noting how she often finds herself comparing how she uses her power hours with her early bird colleagues. And, as Sharma says, Were fundamentally tribal animals. Were not just fascinated, he says, but inclined to copy the chief of the tribes practices.

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Theres nothing inherently better about packing the early hours with activity, but theres no doubt that the purity and simplicity of dawn fits with this generations focus on wholesome self-improvement. And, in an ever-time-starved world, what rising early does give daybreakers over night owls is a feeling of achievement before the day has really begun.

Pre-dawn networking and breakfast bike rides might not replace the hedonism of a night with friends. But, post-pandemic, when working from a spare room is the norm and office hours have lost all meaning, perhaps its time we wake up to the potential of mornings. Just dont hit snooze.

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The Rise Of The Power Morning - elle.com - elle.com - elle.com - elle.com

All images courtesy of Loewe/ Photography byDavid Sims.

When fashion really captures the zeitgeist, often its completely coincidental. A couple of things happened this weekend that foreshadowed this writers experience of Loewes SS22 menswear collection. On Saturday, I went on a mid-morning run across Londons marshes, only to stumble upon a rave the size of a small festival. On Sunday, during a stroll across Piccadilly, I watched streets swell with thousands of pilled-up protesters raving in protest of the impact of social-distancing restrictions on the music and nightlife industries. Something is in the air (quite literally: wear a mask). Young people, however, want to go out again. They need to go out again, otherwise theyll go mad. Theres a dangerous time bomb of hedonism and euphoria ticking away.

Fashion which responded to last years fitness craze with athletic ease and this years pent-up sexual energy with exposed skin is also having a rave moment. First, there was Virgil Ablohs neon-hued Metalheadz-inspired Louis Vuitton collection. Now, Jonathan Andersons hedonistic release of a collection, inspired by the electrifying promise of intimacy and the feel of human touch.

Over the last year, during my twice-seasonal Zooms with Jonathan, he never once doubted the power of incredible clothes and his belief that people would wear them. Designing them, one gets the sense, is what keeps him constantly evolving and its why his collections over lockdown have been some of the best hes ever done. Fashion has a capability to change your mood, he explained during a preview of his Loewe collection. It really does something to people. I've been looking at the fantasy of going out, but not necessarily doing it. We are in this weird moment where we dont know if we can or we can't, and we're trying to dress up but we have no idea of where were going. In a weird way, going back to when I first went to university and was figuring out what I was going to wear, that's kind of where we're all at right now.

As per his lockdown tradition, the collection arrived in a box brimming with treasures. There is a book of the German-born, NYC-based artist Florian Krewer, known for turning found or personal photographs he has taken into saturated, chaotic paintings of characters in the public spaces. The paintings were direct inspiration for the Loewe collection. Another book, commissioned by Jonathan, features surreal, digitally-altered photos by David Sims of young men wearing the collection as a dialogue with Florians work. Theres also a dust bag containing three hundred glow-in-the-dark star stickers and a fluorescent yellow leather slap bracelet (one persons rave symbols are another persons way of calming children at bedtime).

The collection itself is also brilliantly chaotic, full of transparent layers of highlighter-neons and wildly trippy textures, like a pair of chartreuse shorts crafted from loops of tubes, or coats sprouting self-described Pringle-shaped metal plaques. It's a weird moment for fashion because it's a moment where we should be allowed to be schizophrenic, said Jonathan. It's about a moment of flushing things out. I needed this year and a half to play with anxiety and things I like and dislike so when I come out of it, I can start rebuilding a new silhouette or new archetype. Its like being at university and doing a dissertation and handing it in.

Anxiety and adolescence, and the giddy combination of both, are ostensibly the swirling undercurrents of the collection. For Jonathan, it goes back to his own coming-of-age (a key theme in his SS22 JW Anderson collection) and the idea of dressing up as a form of self-discovery. My whole thing with clothing and why I enjoy doing this is because I remember, growing up in Northern Ireland when I would buy discount clothing, I bought this orange jacket and tiger-printed trousers and I wore it to a high school thing and I was completely destroyed by this sea of navy and black and beige, he remembers. I never wore it again and went back to wearing a rugby jersey. Ultimately, everything I do, especially when it comes to men and gender and what that is, is an obscure fantasy of what I would love to get up in the morning and wear.

It seems fitting the collection arrives at the dusk of Pride month, at a time when many queer people reflect on their experiences of feeling different. Points of trauma can be transformed into something to be proud of. A pair of sequined zebra shorts, for example, command you to feel fabulous just as they command onlookers to take notice of you. A silver silk dress, knotted at the chest and waist to reveal flashes of skin, and a coat with a twisted chest cut-out that brazenly exposes bare nipples, are not just sexy because they show skin but because of the confidence it takes for the wearer to show it off. If you put one of these looks on the street, there is anxiety around it, added Jonathan. It would be like seeing an animal from the Amazon on the streets of London or Paris.

To go back to those two events over the weekend, it was surreal to see crowds of people sweating and gurning to the beat of electro music in the middle of London. If fashion has a way of serendipitously striking gold on a cultural moment, then Jonathan Anderson is its leading oracle, always glowing a light in the darkness like those little neon stars.

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Loewe wants to rave, too, with its SS22 menswear collection - i-D