Please Advise! An Ostrich Rock Concert?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

July is here and my family is seeking some summer fun. Any tips on coming events?

Signed,

Vay Kay

Dear Kay,

You bet! How do you feel about camping, music, ostriches and fighting tyranny? You might be able to check several boxes o’ fun all at once.

You might have to hurry to catch “Farm Aid Canada,” a festival — hopefully — in Edgewood, B.C., starting today and running through Sunday.

It's going to be like a regular festival, but more ostrich-y. The event is being held at the Universal Ostrich farm. It’s operated by the farmers who have defied a Canadian Food Inspection Agency order to destroy their ostrich flock over fears of possible avian flu infection. There's been a legitimate debate over whether the cull is necessary or needlessly cruel. As you might expect, the “save the ostriches” cause has been taken up by animal rights people.

But Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. President Donald Trump's secretary of health and human services, weighed in with support, perhaps inspired not so much by a love of animals (his cousin Caroline says he used to put small creatures in a blender) as by his hatred for any medical innovations from the post-Napoleonic era.

And Team Ostrich has also gained prominent support from the same people who brought you the Ottawa convoy protest and Coutts border blockade. The idea being, apparently, that first they will come for your ostriches, then they take your guns, and one day you wake up and your children are drag queens.

So there's a festival coming up to raise money for the pro-ostrich cause. Everybody loves a big festival, particularly Netflix and Hulu. They love festivals so much, they both made documentaries about one of them. The 2017 Fyre Festival was a big hit, at least with filmmakers. It was such an epic disaster, it made Altamont look like a Shriners convention.

Now, for all Dr. Steve knows, the ostrich festival will turn out to be a master class in event planning.

Still, there may be troubling signs. Three days before the scheduled opening, the event website had a phone number for anyone who can donate “big 'wedding style' event tents, single/double canopy tents, event chairs & tables, food truck(s). Call Marty.” Also, the page listing the scheduled acts includes the line “Join our lineup: *talent/singers/musicians*, promoters & agents. Call Marty.”

Hey, this could be your big break. Bring your recorder. Or your triangle. Or a karaoke machine. And maybe a porta-potty, just in case.

Even top-of-the-line events have issues. Attendees at the Coldplay concert that inaugurated Toronto's Rogers Stadium were unhappy with logistics, with one attendee saying fans were “herded like cattle.” Perhaps being herded like ostriches is more pleasant.

So who's playing Farm Aid (aside from your own star-making recorder performance)? The lineup includes Tamara Lich, still awaiting sentencing for crimes committed during the Ottawa convoy protest. You can probably expect a reprise of the songs Lich and her band performed last week at a Canada Day Alberta separatist gathering.

Other listed acts include a Rolling Stones tribute and a band called Get Off My Cloud. Clearly, they are carelessly bold about the Altamont references.

And Sunday morning will feature a church service led by Artur Pawlowski, the anti-vaccine Alberta pastor who went to jail for his role in the Coutts border blockade.

Dr. Steve can confirm that this will be a big weekend for exotic bird-related events. The pretty town of Souris, Manitoba, hosts its annual peacock-calling festival Saturday. It's a popular festival with music, food, a parade and local folks doing their best imitation of a lusty peacock looking for love.

Now, Dr. Steve does not claim that everyone would surely find piercing peacock shrieks preferable to Tamara Lich. Souris is a long way from B.C., but if you're in the area anyway, it could be an acceptable substitute.

As for Farm Aid, it is described as a fundraiser. It's notable that the organizer of Fyre Festival, seeing the way things were going, allegedly tried to make up his losses by selling access to the backstage chaos to documentary filmmakers. Now that's disaster capitalism. And the ostriches won't care where the money came from.

Just a suggestion. Dust off your recorder and have a great weekend wherever you are.