What are you doing tomorrow? I hope it involves walking, or taking the bus, or staying at home in bed all day. Why? Because it’s World Car Free Day.
You can find out more on the Governement’s new sustainability portal:
Living sustainably means living smarter. Through this site you’ll learn how to live smarter, reduce your impacts on the environment, and save money. You’ll find information to help you make important choices about how you use fuel, electricity and water and what to do with your rubbish.
And if you recognise the joke in the title of this post, perhaps you might like to consider switching to an organic cotton alternative – or a moon cup?
This ia friendly public service announcement that the object of much lust is the subject of a documentary about his being such an object of lust that screens tomorrow night on Prime at 8.30pm. According to the IMDB entry, Frodo Is Great… Who Is That?!!,
The documentary looks at the rise to celebrity status of NZ actor and musician Bret McKenzie, who appeared for 3 seconds as an extra in "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring", during the Council of Elrond scene. His brief appearance sparked a huge internet fan-base dedicated to his "brooding pout" and "elvish good looks". McKenzie has been dubbed "FIGWIT", an acronym of "Frodo is Great; Who is That!!?"
So that’s probably quite a nice warmup to when Flight of the Conchords finally start screening here on the 17th.
So it’s one week until that most beloved of all days – International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I bet you’re wondering how you can celebrate it instead of going to the Driving Government Performance – the development goals at work conference. Luckily, the Museum of Wellington City and Sea has the perfect solution: The Great Pirate Corporate Challenge!
The challenge takes place between 12.30-2pm on the day, and will see teams of five compete in a treasure hunt on Somes/Maitu Island, a peg-leg race and a tug’o war. See this handy PDF for more details!
And of course if you DO have to go to that conference, might we suggest a trip to Pirate’s Cove would be the order of the day for another time?
Did you know that Wellington City Libraries has a collection of over 500 zines (and growing!) with special emphasis on locally produced Wellington zines?
You did? You’re very clever, you know.
So what are you doing on Saturday the 8th? You’re heading down to the Wesley Church Hall on Taranaki St between 10am-4pm to check out Zinefest? Damn straight you are! You know how much you support self-publishing, music, art, craft and food!
And you’re going to introduce yourself to Joanna and buy her BOYS BOYS BOYS BOYS BOYS handwritten zine, 101 Stories that I want to tell you purge and her cookbook/entertaining guide You’re SO entertaining as well as her sugar scrub that all the Wellingtonista rave about? You are, right? That’s awesome! Well done you!
I received unsolicted spam (yes, it was an electronic letter by email) this afternoon:
Hello Joanan,
I’m John McGrath and I am standing for Mayor. It’s time to put the Mojo back into the Mayoralty.
If you love Wellington as much as I do, please take a look at my website and let me know what I can do to make Wellington a better place for you.
www.johnmcgrath4mayor.co.nz
Cheers,
John McGrath
Why am I republishing his spam after he spelt my name incorrectly? Why, so that I can tell you, my dear reader, about how you can go about winning a bottle of wine. Just head to his blog, note that on the 23rd he declared
“Oh and for all those Gramma Nazis out there we are more than happy to stand corrected. My Campaign manager is putting up a Bottle of Te Kairanga Reserve Pinot Noir 2002 for the person who finds the most errors in the Blog. We aren’t perfect but we do have a sense of humour!”
… and get counting! I found 54, and that didn’t include any issues with the actual content I might have had (like “Kerry has done a good job”).
Footnote: yes, the title of this post is a Nazi joke.
*govt3 is a scheme whereby government employees have their rubbish bins taken away and replaced with a cube the size of a coffee mug, so they’re forced to sort their rubbish into compost, recyclables and landfill waste. It’s a great idea but it’s very very annoying how hard it seems to be for slightly older generations to adapt to it. If it gets put in place in your workplace, stay out of the kitchen for a couple of months or get earplugs because OH MY GOD how hard can it possibly be and is it really worth the hours and hours of complaining and not understanding what to put where? No!
I’m sure you know by now that tomorrow the fantabulous Craft 2.0 fair is happening again at the NewDowse tomorrow from 11am-3pm. And even though this does mean you’ll need to venture out to the Hutt, you’re willing to make that sacrifice. Plus, since you can also go see the exhibitions that are on at the same time, you can take advantage of this:
When you travel by bus to see Becoming King Kong – get a free ride home! Simply bring in your bus ticket to TheNewDowse and you’ll receive a voucher for a free ride home. Must show a valid ticket from a Cityline Hutt Valley, Stagecoach Wellington or Go Wellington bus service.
And if you need even more of an incentive to get along other than just the great range for stuff for sale, Wellingtonista members Martha, Sue and Joanna will all be there in the flesh signing autographs selling their wares, which you can sample for free if you get there at 11am for the giftbags. Hurrah!
Just remember to take cash along for all your shiny purchases as there is no ATM.
PS. Wellingtonista Che will be selling someone else’s wares.
P.P.S. 101 gift bags get handed to the first people through the door at 11am.
You can check out Craft2.0 before 11am, but the the gift bags get handed out with the official fair start of 11am.
There are a couple of things that we’re universally fond of here at the Wellingtonista. Bars. Being entertained. Experiencing different things. Sexual perversity. If only there was a way we could combine all those things together… Hang on, there is! David Mamet’s one-act play Sexual Perversity in Chicago starts tonight at 6pm (doors at 5.30) at the San Francisco Bath House, and we’re guaranteeing* it’s going to be a good time. If you need more convincing, here’s five good reasons you should see it.
It runs from Thursday 16th – Saturday 25th August 2007, so we’ll see you there, right?
* Well, not technically. But we are giving you our word as a gentleman.
EDIT: And now I’ve actually seen it, I recommend it like, ten times as much as before. Cabaret-style shows where you can sit at a table and drink and eat while watching hilarious dialog and pretty convincing mid-west accents and also hott boys in their panties are alright by me!
Since the rest of the Wellingtonista are doing it, here are a few things about Damian Christie’s article about Wellington that I disagree with.
1. If, like Tom, you’re planning on making the month of August all about whisky, there are worse things you could do than sign up for Wineseeker’s Whisky Tasting on August 21. Sure, it’s $45, but it sounds like very good value for money.
2. While we don’t consider the Wellingtonista to be an exclusively hetrosexual site as such (you don’t have to have a particular kind of sexuality to love bars and hate the bypass, and who you’re doing doesn’t matter nearly as much as where you’re doing them), and I haven’t done a straw poll of how each contributor identifies, we don’t have very much (or in fact any that I can think of) coverage of specifically queer culture. And it’s Proud 07 right now, so in the interests of wider coverage, we’d like commenters to fill us in on the various scenes a little more. Who goes where? What’s hot and what’s not? Are there still monthly lesbian nights at Blondini’s? Is the ‘Lebanese’ restaurant beneath Spicehammer really just a spelling mistake? Enquiring minds want to know!