The Thousands

We’ve been scratching our heads here at SixThousand headquarters, wondering how it is possible that a festival as big, with as many world-class performances and international guests as PIAF 2010, really belongs to us. Then we realised: scratching heads is for fools! And it’s our elbows we need right now! So we can shove aside that yuppie couple in front of us in the ticketing line and get good seats to Antony and The Johnsons! Move aside, yuppie couple, we still gots to get our tickets to HEALTH! *elbow* Calexico! *shove* Pivot! The Pains of Being Pure At Heart! *kick* Yo La Tengo! The Dirty Three!

Before you get ultraviolent, take some quiet time with the amazing PIAF 2010 programme. No one will laugh at you for using a highlighter. Least of all us. We’ve been through three packets of five already – and that’s just in the theatre section (Russian upheaval in the nuddy! Daniel Kitson on rent! Obsessives!) OK it’s gonna need to be a bulk highlighter order from Officeworks, isn’t it? What with the film fest, and the stuff at the Astor: British Sea Power playing a live soundtrack to a 1934 Irish doco, and Dean & Brita scoring Andy Warhol’s screen tests.

We could steal a highlighter from a primary school kid, but they’ll be mostly running with scissors. That’s unless they’re paddling in the Jeppe Hein fountain. Or shooting up at the Irvine Welsh reading. Kids, stay away from crack. Unless that crack is PIAF 2010.