The grave­yard’s alive and dan­cing.….

Spaceth­ing presents the third annu­al Zom­bie Prom at Happy (cnr Tory and Vivi­an Sts.) On Sat­urday Octo­ber 10th open the crypt door and shake your dead moves to fleshed-out tunes.

Zom­bie Prom III fea­tures live dead music by Voo­doo Sav­age and His Sav­ages, Knife Fight, The Death-Rays, New­town, The Ghast­lies, Mar­ket Value and DJ Bride of Pin­bot, as well as the crown­ing of the best-dressed Zom­bie King and Queen of the Prom with prizes galore gore!

Happy. Fri­day 10/10/08, 8:00pm.
Tick­ets $10

Read more after the jump…

We all know that the only good part of the Cap­it­al Times is the film reviews, but this week, it’s also fun to play “what exactly is their sub edit­or smoking?”.

Exhib­it A: a story about cho­reo­graph­er Michael Par­menter, dia­gnosed with HIV nearly 20 years ago,titled “Still peg­ging away”. Nice work.

Exhib­it B: a piece about the Wors­er Bay School cel­eb­rat­ing Dance Your Socks Off unof­fi­cially. The title? “Kids do it bet­ter”. Umm.….…

… and if you like movies, then why not come along to Wed­nes­day nights at the Film Archive and check out the sea­son of films that the Wel­ling­tonista fought over demo­crat­ic­ally chose from the Archive’s col­lec­tion of NZ fea­tures – all 6 movies are roughly related to, shot or set in our fair city.

7pm Wed­nes­days from tonight until the 5th Novem­ber, tick­ets are $8 on the door (or $6 con­ces­sion), and if you’re over 18 you get a free glass of wine with your tick­et pur­chase. Because we like wine with our movies. ‘Nuff said!
Tonight’s movie is I’ll Make You Happy… the rest of the sea­son’s details are after the jump.

There’s a par­tic­u­lar kind of per­son who likes to watch movies for 24 hours in a row, and it’s quite likely that you’re that per­son. Luck­ily for you, Ant Timpson puts on a fest­iv­al to provide you with exactly what you need. Unluck­ily for him, and ulti­mately for you, tick­ets for the Wel­ling­ton event aren’t selling as well as they should, so unless you hurry up and buy your tick­ets for the Decem­ber 13 event now from Tick­etek, it may not hap­pen at all! Full email after the jump.

This week should see an influx of vis­it­ors in town to WOW and be WOWed at the Montana Wear­able Arts Awards being held at TSB Arena from the 22nd of Septem­ber until the 5th of Octo­ber.

The show was Nel­son’s baby for 16 years but shif­ted to Wel­ling­ton in 2005 because, accord­ing to WOW founder Suzie Mon­crieff, “We knew we needed to be in a city with more pro­duc­tion oppor­tun­it­ies, audi­ences, cor­por­ate part­ners and an inter­na­tion­al air­port.”

So much love to every­one who showed up last night (and espe­cially to X who bowled for the Bow­l­ing­tonista as we were a mem­ber down).

The Furry Fer­al Black Balls of Fury from Click­suite (bid on their auc­tions!) ended up beat­ing the Bow­l­ing­tonista by just a couple of points at 462 vs. 281, and the Purple Cobras took the Mighty Boost 402 vs. 338. The league point for top score obvi­ously went to the Fer­als, and although the Purple Cobras had sashes, in the end the Fer­als won best dressed too, for their ties and one play­er­’s gold sat­in shirt. Xero were on their by-week, and as I had­n’t decided until now that you can get a league point in your by-week by some mem­ber of your team show­ing up to hang out with the oth­er bowl­ers, they’re cur­rently at the bot­tom of the league, but I’m sure they’ll pick up next week when the extra league bonus point will be for the single fast­est bowl on the night.

So this is how things stand at the moment, point­wise:
Bow­l­ing­tonista:2
Furry Fer­al Black Balls of Fury: 8
The Mighty Boost:2
Purple Cobras:6
Xero: 0

After the jump, there’s a new table of games, since Xero have joined, includ­ing by-weeks, in which you’re encour­aged to exper­i­ment with your sexu­al­ity, or come along to cheer for the oth­er teams.

Nip in quick for one of those rare Down­stage-Wel­ling­tonista spe­cials. The 10th Anniversary sea­son of Toa Fraser­’s Bare is in Wel­ling­ton for a very short time and Wel­ling­tonista read­ers can go tonight for a dis­count some­where between 100% and 25% (depend­ing on how quick off the mark you are). As time is short, it’s a phone offer: The first two callers to (04) 801 6946 are eli­gible for a free double-pass to tonight’s per­form­ance, the next two callers can get two-for-the-price-of-one and the next two callers can get a fourth tick­et free if they buy three. Bare stars Curtis Vow­ell and Mor­gana O’Reilly and this pro­duc­tion was first per­formed at Auck­land’s Silo Theatre last year. The ori­gin­al pro­duc­tion of Bare in 1998, launched the careers of Toa Fraser and Madeline Sami and won the Best New Play and Best New Play­wright Awards at the Chap­man Tripps. More inform­a­tion can be found here.

Tulips, tours, art, “Crafty Fifi”, the legendary Fairy Trina and more at this year’s Spring Fest­iv­al in the Botan­ic Gar­dens. Run­ning from 28 Septem­ber until 12 Octo­ber. I can con­firm that the recent (and typ­ic­al for this time of year) gales have not denuded the tulip gar­dens & so weath­er per­mit­ting, Tulip Sunday on the first day of the Fest­iv­al, should be a beau­ti­ful way to spend an hour or two com­mun­ing with nature. Accord­ing to the offi­cial pro­gramme:

Spring Fest­iv­al is the time to rev­el in the glor­i­ous riot of spring flower col­our and fra­grance at the Wel­ling­ton Botan­ic Garden.

Spring Fest­iv­al is proudly brought to you by Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil, with gen­er­ous sup­port from the New Zea­l­and Com­munity Trust and the Wel­ling­ton Cable Car.

Look­ing for a good steak in Wel­ling­ton? A week or so ago this Wel­ling­tonista was & after con­sult­ing my col­leagues, I can report back on two of the finest steaks I have tasted in this city (yes, two).

First up, it was one of those not­able occa­sions (although not a sig­ni­fic­ant one) that prompts thoughts of a nice lunch and/or din­ner.

First off lunch:

I had expressed to my loved ones, a par­tic­u­lar desire to sample either a great steak, or a great cas­soulet.

So ima­gine my delight on arriv­ing at Copita to find they had “Fil­let steak on a bed of Cas­soulet”! It was meant to be obvi­ously.

It was lovely, as was the squid entree.

Copita itself was quite under­p­at­ron­ised that day, but there was some sport to be had listen­ing to a very loud party con­sist­ing of two older gen­tle­men lunch­ing with two much young­er women. Because they were so loud we soon ascer­tained the gen­tle­men were wine­makers from the Hawkes Bay. It was­n’t obvi­ous who the women were, but we decided that if the women paid, they were prob­ably wine dis­tri­bu­tion reps, and if the men paid, hook­ers. As it hap­pens, we left before them so we’ll nev­er know!

And onto din­ner:

We decided to take the tip from the team & try the Steak Frites at Le Met­ro­poli­t­ain in Cuba St. This was served with a red wine & bone mar­row sauce & we accom­pan­ied it with a green salad & copi­ous glasses of a French wine whose name I can­’t recall.

And once again, I can recom­mend a win­ner!

Le Met­ro­poli­t­ain on this even­ing was well pat­ron­ised but not packed, in addi­tion, it’s a lovely little spot to watch pass­ers by from. The staff were attent­ive & inform­at­ive, the menu offered plenty of vari­ety & the even­ing was a rous­ing suc­cess.

I’m happy to take any oth­er decent steak recom­mend­a­tions for next year, in the com­ments.

When Arlo Edwards approached an art deal­er with his work at the age of eight­een, the deal­er told him to “come back in 10 years, and then maybe we’ll look at your work”.

Not con­tent with such a response, Arlo embarked on a some­what unortho­dox cur­at­ori­al career, and has been put­ting on exhib­i­tions when and wherever he could for more than a dec­ade.

Toi Pōneke Gal­lery is the next ven­ue for one of his pro­jects, an exhib­i­tion of work by 10 loc­al estab­lished and emer­ging artists. The show, entitled In the Museum of Curi­ous Intent, includes work by Chris Lun­dquist, Free­man White, Wil­li­am Hed­ley, James Flynn, Jaymi Bizzo Lawrence, Roger Mor­ris, Mari­anne Mug­geridge, Gareth Moon, Rupert Everest and some of Arlo’s own work.

In the Museum of Curi­ous Intent opens at 6.30pm on Fri­day 26 Septem­ber and runs until 25 Octo­ber at Toi Pōneke Gal­lery, 61 – 63 Abel Smith Street.

Read more after the jump…