15 Minutes...?

More like a quarter of a second. In any case, my ugly mug played nationwide on Moroccan TV for a brief instant, just after midnight and right before the weather.

The occasion was a truly historical meeting and joint press conference between H'mida Boussou and Abdellah El Gourd, to which I was a witness. These two have had some differences and misunderstandings in the past, but that's all over now. I got some nice pictures, too.

The festival is really different, much more professional (albeit not enough for the professional musicians) than it was 4 years ago. Essaouira is looking much cleaner, with more paved spaces, grass, and shrubbery. The main stage has also been moved to Bab Marrakech, and the open dirt parking lot that used to be between the medina and the Hotel des Iles has been paved and planted over, and a KITEA store is now there (the Moroccan IKEA).

I can only assume that the classy Hotel des Iles didn't appreciate the main stage being so close, since it is a very quiet and respectable place, despite its main claim to fame being the fact/myth that Orson Welles downed a bottle of Scotch in the bar--now named for the director--every night during the shooting of Othello, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1952.