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)