Get out your cameras because SpoletoToday and Lowcountry Live of WCIV-TV Channel 4 are teaming up to sponsor a video contest. The rules are simple: The video cannot be more than 3 minutes; it must have a Spoleto and/or Piccolo tie-in; and it must be finished by June 4.

For more shocking details (OK, not really shocking, I just always wanted to say that) tune in at 10 a.m. Tuesday, May 27, to see Geoff Marshall and Janet Edens Conover talk about SpoletoToday on Lowcountry Live with Ryan Nelson.

You do have to make a video even your mom could watch. There is a $200 prize and the winner will be featured on Lowcountry Live. It can be funny, serious or inspiring. It doesn’t have to be perfect: Just shoot it, post it and send us the link (with an embed code) to SpoletoToday@postandcourier.com. We will check it out and, if it meets all the content criteria, we’ll put in on SpoletoToday and in the running for the prize.

Celebrities who have agreed to judge so far include Mitchell Davis and Farrah Hoffmire of Organic Process Productions. They just wrapped up the surfing documentary “Finding Pura Vida” in Costa Rica. Nick Smith, our own Spojo and Charleston filmmaker will also be taking a look-see at the videos. Learn more about what he’s been up to at his Cat City Online blog. As always, if you’ve got any questions, give us a shout at SpoletoToday@postandcourier.com or comment here.

“Monkey: Journey to the West,” this year’s Spoleto talker, is a visual feast. It gets the kitchen sink treatment in the numbers and kinds of Chinese performance arts thrown in. I saw Friday night’s performance. A few thoughts …

Supertitle translations show that Monkey is quite funny. The 500-year old folk story of a spiritual quest is full of natural and supernatural people and beasts.

It’s 2 hours with no intermission, the anime is great, costuming outrageous (and sometimes scary … plus, Monkey looked like he’d just played basketball), painted sets interesting, and physical performances … martial arts, sword fighting, gymnastic aerials, high wire flying, plate-spinning, silk panel aerials, bamboo pole acrobatics, body contortion, fire stick twirling, umbrella spinning … amazing. Your eye doesn’t know where to go, and if you drink any alchohol before the show you might get dizzy. For me, it was a preview of some of the things we will see in opening ceremonies for this summer’s Beijing Olympics … on a smaller scale of course. For the Olympics, there will be hundreds of acrobats, scores of plate-spinners, thousands of singers …

The orchestra is amplified and so are the singers, so if you have a sensitive ear, take earplugs. The performance is not that loud but Chinese music’s forms and some of the rock repetition of rhythms, plus the squeals the monkey makes (I wanted to wring his neck) and the whanging of sticks on the stage floor (amplified by the wireless mics) can be jarring to a Western ear. (My ear is so sensitive that those things made me feel like I was losing my mind.) Mandarin itself, in fact, can be jarring to a Western ear.

Sometimes you just have to let art wash over you.

(See Alan Hawes’ photo gallery here.)

Tomorrow’s Friday 5 Top 5 is about tips for enjoying the festivals… Those will be available Friday morning, but my extended tips are available right now over at my Friday 5 blog.

Anyone still there? You are! Good.

When myself, Dan and Harriet appeared on Marcus Overton’s show (Also called “SpoletoToday”) a couple of week ago - it was broadcast on NPR and available as a podcast from the ETV website.

But I’ve now taken a version and edited it down to just the bits with ‘us’ in so that you don’t have to hear the whole 30 minutes, but a truncated 22 minute version instead.

Hear Marcus talk to us about out blog - how the reporting of Spoleto is changing, and a little ribbing to over the name of this blog being the same as his radio programme.

You can play the podcast direct here, or subscribe and listen to previous ‘casts at our dedicated podcast page here.

I just edited my last story, proofed my last page, and that means it’s finale time at the P&C. The news desk will handle it from here.

I love going to Middleton Place for this last concert, because it is the ultimate Southern evening and the dividing line between seasons. Before this event, it’s still spring. After it, we are beginning the meltdown of summer. But for one glorious night, it seems like we might be able to stay on the cusp, put on a enough bug spray and enjoy being outside.

I like to see who shows up, as in festival celebrities; and who shows up with chafing dishes and crystal in tow, as in lifestyles I will never acquire. Then I settle back on my blanket with a glass of wine in a plastic cup and wait for the music to start. Somewhere along the line, my patient hubbie realizes I can talk again without babbling about deadlines, headlines and online.

Now the notion that I’m a music fan is laughable given the critics I’ve worked with in the last two and a half weeks, but even I can recognize that sometimes the humidity plays havoc with the string section, and the crickets chirp louder than the flutes. There are certain pieces of music that work much better outside than others. This year is “Pictures at an Exhibition” so it ought to hold its own against the climate.

But no matter what the weather, I still love the night. And on Monday, I’ll be down a bit. The artists have gone home, the gossip has died down, and the audience has all headed to the beach. So I will sleep for a week, and then wish the festival would start all over again. We’ve just gotten the hang of it by the time it’s over.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this year’s festival and thanks for sharing your comments with us. This blog has been one great adventure. See you next year.

The jazz boat was rocking on Monday night when the Piccolo Spoleto Festival’s Harbor Cruise launched from the Fountain Walk Dock, and it wasn’t just the lively winds, which eventually died down.

Former Broadway pit band pianist Maida Libkin (musical director of “Urinetown” at the Village Playhouse) showed up with her husband, singer Bill Schlitt, who is one of the city’s premiere show singers and directs “The Good Time Variety Hours” at at the Village Playhouse. Read the rest of this entry »

For my money, the most interesting moment in this morning’s ETV radio broadcast of Spoleto Today with Marcus Overton actually occurred off-mic during the roving-reporter segment. Overton wanted to talk about the notion (broached in the opening segment) that blogs serve the role of conversation-starters. He was specifically interested in this topic as it relates to hierarchies of opinion.

Did we not agree, he asked, that some things are better than other things? That some opinions are more informed (and therefore more valuable) than others?

Sure, I get that. I gave him my usual line: Even the best auto mechanic is a lousy oncologist.

I hoped we’d delve into this issue when we went back on the air, but the conversation turned elsewhere. Pity. Because it really got me thinking about this year’s Spoleto blogging ecosystem, and the niche that this blog seems to be filling…

Read the rest of this entry »

And here’s some video from the interview this morning.

Admittedly, there’s no real reason for showing this video clip, except that I think we were trying to prove to Marcus our medium by how easily and quickly you can turn out a video clip onto a blog like this. Well, that … plus it’s interesting to see him of course too.

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I know you think they are already doing show with their podcasts and videos - and they are - but they will hit the public airwaves on NPR at 9 a.m. Monday morning as guests on the program of the same name - “Spoleto Today with Marcus Overton” - at 89.3 FM.

There’s no relationship to the program and the blog other than once upon a time both the newspaper and Marc jumped on the name at about the same time. Believe me - there will be a lively discussion about it.

In case you don’t know it, Marc once ran Spoleto Festival USA, so he’s an insider and knows what he’s talking about.

He also rode his motorcycle in the storm over the weekend to Georgia and back to see elderly relatives. He said he felt like a drowned rat by the time he got back to Charleston this afternoon. There’s more to this man than a great radio voice.

Janet and Dan, along with intrepid videographer Geoff Marshall, plan to talk with him about this grand new blogging frontier for The P&C, otherwise known as how to learn to podcast and videoblog in five easy lessons. It should be fun - if they are awake, that is.

I heard something about a party tonight …

Tune in.