Jason Kahn and White Fungus

Jason Kahn is a sound and visu­al artist based in Zürich whose work includes draw­ing, sound install­a­tion, per­form­ance and com­pos­i­tion. He was born in New York, grew up in Los Angeles and relo­cated to Europe in 1990. Kahn has been exhib­it­ing his sound and visu­al works since the late 1990s, and has had solo and group exhib­i­tions in museums, gal­ler­ies and arts spaces pretty much every­where in the damn world.

And he’s play­ing in Wel­ling­ton on Sunday night.

A Bit o’ Berlin

Poster tells it all, really…

The good folk who brought you the Ber­lin Bon­anza invite you to savour the sights, sounds and fla­vours of Ber­lin once more. Relive the city’s uber­cool vibe with the Sat­urday mar­ket, get the true Ber­lin with a mondo doco, dig in to hot’n’heap­in’ plates of curry­wurst, thrill to the heady mashup of ping pong and coun­try music, groove to alt-coun­try cow­pokes chan­nel­ling the Heimat, and fin­ish the night with a flour­ish of Deutsch­land disco dan­cing.

Full pro­gramme after the break…

Ahoy me hearties!

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?

Government 2.0 – will it ever happen? YES!

BarCampWellingtonNZegov

The date for your cal­en­dar is Sat­urday 15th Septem­ber for the Bar­Camp­Wel­ling­ton­NZegov:

… mak­ing a dif­fer­ence to egov­ern­ment in New Zea­l­and. We are a small coun­try with a very well con­nec­ted, vibrant web com­munity. gov­ern­ment 2.0 can hap­pen here!

The day is being hos­ted by Fronde at their Queen’s Wharf office, is free and totally driv­en by you fine people in the com­munity (‘Bar­Camp’ back­ground and what to expect).

Sev­en things (after the break) that you can do now that will give us a gov­ern­ment for the 21st cen­tury:

Where to watch the Rugby World Cup – Wellington

Well, in response to Mike’s ques­tion, the only place open at 6.30am this morn­ing was J.J. Murphy’s.

And a top bunch of people they are too. The beer was flow­ing for those still out since the night before (includ­ing a gaggle of French guys. Bad luck there Blues).

Even bet­ter! They did a hungry man a $5 break­fast. Scrambled eggs, saus­ages, hash browns, toma­toes, toast.

So, to repeat that. No Occi­dent­al, no Bris­tol.

Get your­self down to Murphy’s next Sat­urday to watch Eng­land v. South Africa (and France v. Ire­land the week after).

Pop along to the Book Fair

The DCM Book Fair is on this week­end at the TSB Arena on Wel­ling­ton’s Queens Wharf.
DCM BookFair Friday Unpacking

On sale will be books, magazines, records, CDs, puzzles, stamps, art­works and DVDs. I was one of their help­ers in set­ting up books this after­noon and i can con­firm there are some supremly awe­some bar­gains to be had.

Plus you can feel smug about doing good things. The Book Fair raises many valu­able dol­lars towards DCM’s work with those who struggle in the city.

and that can nev­er be a bad thing.

Short bits

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!

WQL Results: Round Three

So, a lot of stu­pid decisions were made last night. Over a pre-quiz din­ner at Tulsi, the Wel­ling­tonista thought that as well as drink­ing the wine they’d won at the Bris­tol last week, it was a good idea to drink two cans each of King­fish­er Strong, and then build a tower out of the cans. We’re pay­ing the price for that today. Then, decid­ing to do the quiz at JJ Murphy’s was also a stu­pid idea, because it took forever. And most stu­pidly at all, we for­got that when you do any­thing with hubris, there’s that whole pride goes before a fall thing, and so Xero beat us. By one point! Oh god, the human­ity. Sil­ver­stripe, the Alo­has and the M team all get 69 points since they wer­en’t there (why oh why do you hate us so, Sil­ver­stripe?). So the scores look like this:

Alo­has: 209
Click Suite: 213.5
M Team: 201
Sil­ver­stripe: 205
Wel­ling­tonista: 264
Xero: 227

Three nights of drinking on a school night

It’s a busy week in Wel­ling­ton, so we hope you’ve got your hangover cures sor­ted.

  • Monday is Hustle for Aut­ism at the SFBH – you can read more details about it over at Pub­lic Address. We think you should go along, some of us will be there if you needed any fur­ther prompt­ing.
  • Tues­day is the Wel­ling­tonista Quiz League. This time we’ll be play­ing at JJ Murphy’s in Cuba Mall, which appar­ently starts at 7.30, so make sure you get there early to secure a table, and see if you can beat us (you prob­ably can­’t).
  • Wed­nes­day is Gad­gets, Games & Geeks 07 at the Michael Fowl­er Centre. To quote their blurb:

    Join us for one whop­ping great big geeky net­work­ing fest. Hear and net­work with some awe­some speak­ers and exhib­it­ors who are pas­sion­ate about their gad­gets, games and geek status.

    And it is heav­ily implied that there will be free drinks – which are two of the Wel­ling­tonista’s favour­ite words. See you there then?

Firehouse meet Jafa and Yardwise

FH-JM-YWOK, get your­self ready to get along to some Reg­gae run­nings at the San Fran­cisco Bath­house this Sat­urday, 4th August.

The Nice-Up Crew are put­ting the monthly gig on.

That’s 10pm, Cuba St, all wel­come.