It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s A TREE

We love com­munity, and we love art, so it’s no sur­prise that we love com­munity art pro­jects. Espe­cially when they’re organ­ised by our own lovely Sue from Craft 2.0 and the fab­ulous Knitsch from the TAWA-nom­in­ated Out­door Knit. Need­less to say, we’re very excited about It’s A Tree:

there are a few very tall lamp posts out­side the New Dowse in Lower Hutt, and Out­doorKnit decided it would be a pretty fun idea to turn them into some­thing different…trees! What Out­doorKnit needs is lots of knit­ted, crochet or even sewn flowers, leaves and nat­ive birds to cov­er these ‘trees’. The best medi­um for this is acryl­ic – it wears bet­ter when the weath­er gets a bit grotty.

The first install­a­tion is begin­ning in a week’s time, so now’s the time to make like a tree and make leaves. Or flowers. Or tuis…

Brazil – da da da, da, da, da, da, daaaaaa

This clas­sic film is screen­ing on 35mm on the big screen at the Film Archive every night this week at 7pm.

 

Terry Gil­li­am’s bril­liant “Nine­teen eighty-four for 1984” is beloved by film buffs around the globe for obvi­ous reas­ons, and yes, it’s in the Film Archive’s extens­ive col­lec­tion.

If you haven’t seen it you must. And if you have seen it you’ll know why you should go and see it again.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xNnRBksvOU]

Lunchtime Willis Wander

If you are work­ing near Wil­lis Street today you could use your lunch hour to sample two very dif­fer­ent exhib­i­tions.

 

The Japan­ese Embassy on Level 18 and 19 of the Magest­ic Centre on 100 Wil­lis Street is always worth a vis­it to give you that thrill of sur­vey­ing the city from the floor to ceil­ing glass win­dows of a shiny tall build­ing.

 

Today is the last day of the a pho­to­graphy exhib­i­tion at the Japan­ese embassy, Gaz­ing at the Con­tem­por­ary World: Japan­ese Pho­to­graphy from the 1970s to the Present.

 

 

Cross­ing the road you can vis­it a sound install­a­tion that has been set up in vacant com­mer­cial space at 141 Wil­lis Street.  Pop­u­lar Arche­ology: A Sound Archive is one part of lar­ger pro­ject called Let­ting Space that is look­ing pretty excit­ing.

 

Pop­u­lar Arche­ology is focused on redund­ant tech­no­logy and is con­struc­ted with a vari­ety of tape decks play­ing tape loops of dis­in­teg­rat­ing frag­ments of New Zea­l­and singles that made the top 10 between 1967 and 1994 in a wall of sound com­pris­ing over 30 tape play­ers.  You have until 9 May to catch this show but it would make a nice jux­ta­pos­i­tion with the show across the road for today only.

 

When is a shop not a shop?

When it’s a Pop-Up Shop, of course.

Right now in Thorndon, Wel­ling­ton’s first Hand­made Pop-Up Shop has arrived. It opened on the 13th of April and closes again on the 1st of May. Each day the shop fea­tures a dif­fer­ent artist or crafter show­cas­ing all their lovely cre­ations.

Pop-Up Shops are trad­iton­ally places where retail­ers off­load sale or dis­coun­ted stock, but this shop is pretty much the oppos­ite. It’s about a home for beau­ti­fuly designed and hand­made things, with a real focus on the per­son behind the product.

You can find the Pop-Up Shop at 302 Tinakori Road, Thorndon.

What’s the real reason the Miss Universe pageant has moved to Wellington?

 Last year the Miss Uni­verse New Zea­l­and pageant was held in Lev­in. Which makes sense, because Lev­in is actu­ally pretty much the centre of the uni­verse, based on the laws of grav­ity and dense­ness and all that kind of sci­en­cey stuff. And this kind of shock­ing beha­viour happened at the event: 

The beauty queens sash­ayed their way through Lev­in and Par­a­pa­raumu shop­ping malls last year, leav­ing eld­erly shop­pers agog.

But this year, the pageant is mov­ing to Wel­ling­ton: 

Event organ­iser Val Lott has instead opted to hold the final in Wel­ling­ton after a “gor­geous” day out at the Wel­ling­ton Cup. “The [Lev­in] event centre was not set up well enough. The cater­ing was not up to stand­ard. It cost a dread­ful amount of money,” Mrs Lott said.

But one com­ment­at­or on the art­icle sug­gests that there is a much deep­er con­spir­acy going on:

I think this is all com­plete rub­bish, and the organ­iser just wants to glam the thing up and get rid of the ruggeds that might oth­er­wise have atten­ded.

So what exactly is going on here? Are we through the look­ing glass? Do we even need to men­tion Terry Serepisos here, giv­en that it’s Don­ald Trump who owns the Miss Uni­verse fran­chise? 

Answer the poll – The Miss Uni­verse Pageant is mov­ing to Wel­ling­ton because: 

I’m a Slave for you

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toWIjjTadB8]

Any­one remem­ber this guy? The self-same enter­pris­ing young man has been seen with an assort­ment of HI-VIZ clad work­er types, some waiters and a gui­tar stum­ming up interest in an event rather shock­ingly entitled: “the Wel­ling­ton Char­ity SLAVE AUCTION”.  Don’t worry folks, it is all above board and for a damn good cause.  Tomor­row at Queens Wharf Square busi­nesses will be donat­ing ser­vices (and products) that will be auc­tioned off to bene­fit the Sky­light Trust. 

A sample of the ser­vices on offer:

• $1000 Pyro­tech­nics / fire­works dis­play
• 6 hours of top-rate nanny ser­vices
• 2 x male waiters for 2 hours
• 16 hours build­ing / land­scape work
• $700 Beauty spa treat­ment

A sample of the products on offer (start from $5):

• $300 bas­ket of GHD products
• $100 wine from Te Kair­anga 
• 3 month Domin­ion Post sub­scrip­tion 

Enter­tain­ment will be provided by Sasha Vee so if you feel like open­ing your wal­let for a good cause get on down from 11.00am until 1.30pm.

Check out the full list of what is on offer here.

Predictive Bussing

We’ve long dreamed of being able to time our morn­ing corn­flakes to the actu­al arrival time of our bus, rather than hav­ing to wait 20 minutes out­side a jammed bus shel­ter dur­ing a howl­ing south­erly storm.

The dream goes a little like this. You’re hav­ing your cof­fee and your phone softly blips. You look down. A mes­sage says your bus is 3 minutes behind sched­ule and will be at your stop in exactly 8 minutes. You have time to fin­ish your cof­fee before you grab your coat and go. And you arrive at the bus stop at exactly the right time.

Luck­ily for us this is, in time, becom­ing a real­ity.

Read on to to find out why…

Good bastards like you to drink vodka

 42Below’s founder Geoff Ross has writ­ten a book with his wife Justine about the story behind the vodka called Every Bas­tard Says No. They’re hav­ing a book launch this Fri­day at the’Ho that’s sup­posedly invite-only but we bet you could sneak in if you were smart enough. In order to pro­mote the book, I got to inter­view Geoff and Justine via email (my choice, things are crazy hec­tic this week at the Wel­ling­tonista towers), but of course since it’s not released until April 30, I was­n’t sure what to ask. Vari­ous Wel­ling­tonis­tas help­fully sug­ges­ted I should enquire about the War Memori­al Scan­dal – but that’s not related to the book – or the allegedly homo­phobic ad cam­paign in the USA, but I know noth­ing about that. And I don’t want to risk hav­ing my oppor­tun­it­ies for free booze taken away from me. I’m a blog­ger, not a journ­al­ist, after all. So, after the jump, I lob some soft balls at them, and Justine in par­tic­u­lar impresses me with her love for Wel­ling­ton. 

Ques­tions and answers with Geoff

1. Why did you start with vodka? What is it about the spir­it that drew you to it?  

I drunk it. And actu­ally more spe­cially I saw more and more Vodka Cock­tails emer­ging. Vodka is the Switzer­land of Spir­its – it goes with any­thing. And with the re birth of cock­tails I could see it being the uni­ver­sal ingredi­ent. Also New Zea­l­and seemed it might have some cred with Vodka. We couldn’t do Tequila or Scotch because of Provence – but Vodka kind of fit­ted. (someone  once told me New Zea­l­and was the Sweden of the South pacific)