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The Welingtonista Bowling League 2008 table

So this year we have only four teams, which means that the league will play out over three action-packed weeks start­ing at 6.30pm tomor­row night.

Round one (Sep­tem­ber 25):

• Bowl­ing­ton­ista vs. Fur­ry Fer­al Black Balls of Fury
• The Mighty Boost vs. The Pur­ple Cobras

Round two (Octo­ber 2):

• Bowl­ing­ton­ista vs. The Mighty Boost
• Fur­ry Fer­al Black Balls of Fury vs. The Pur­ple Cobras

Round three (Octo­ber 9):

• Bowl­ing­ton­ista vs The Pur­ple Cobras
• The Mighty Boost vs. Fur­ry Fer­al Black Balls of Fury

Results will be post­ed as we go along, accord­ing to the afore­men­tioned points sys­tem. Woo haa!

Bus strikes, etc

There won’t be any bus­es tomor­row as you’re no doubt aware, so please use the com­ments sec­tion to offer & request car-pools. I’d offer to dri­ve the New­town­istas in, but instead, I’m get­ting a ride myself at an hour of the morn­ing that I more often asso­ciate with falling asleep time. Wahoo.

It’s a Conspiracy

Their Myspace head­line is “If some­one says they play with us, they do!”, a ref­er­ence to the list of thir­ty-odd musi­cians that take the stage and/or record at var­i­ous times with the musi­cal col­lec­tive known as Willard Grant Con­spir­a­cy. The loose group revolves around song­writer Robert Fish­er, who sounds a lit­tle like Nick Cave, a lit­tle like John­ny Cash singing Leonard Cohen, and a lot like a good time; with a strong folk vein run­ning through the some­times-rockin’, often-orches­tral arrange­ments and accom­pa­ni­ment that bring to mind Cave-affil­i­at­ed instru­men­tal­ists the Dirty Three (lis­ten to Ghost of the Girl in the Well and you’ll see what I mean).

Fish­er is grac­ing us with a vis­it as the solo incar­na­tion of Willard Grant next Wednes­day, Octo­ber 1st, at the San Fran Bath­house — and before that Island Bay crab comes out of his shell again to call vest­ed inter­est, I declare my bias, my band The Wrong­do­ings are proud to come out of qua­si-retire­ment to play sup­port at this gig. We’re very excit­ed!

Tick­ets from Slow­boat Records on Cuba St, or online at Under The Radar. Check out pro­mot­er Gales­burg’s list of upcom­ing gigs for a bit of sun­shine too — I’ll be post­ing more about them soon.

A better cheese than that from a whale

If you haven’t been down to Break­er Bay late­ly to get your­self a lump of whale oil (I’m not sure what’s more dis­gust­ing — whale vom­it or the bile that the same-named blog splurts out) and you’re not the type to buy such a thing on trademe, the Welling­ton­ista would like to make the fol­low­ing cheesy sug­ges­tions:

• “I nom­i­nate that Mex­i­can place down Left Bank that did that dia­bol­li­cal­ly cheesy thing (que­sadil­la?) I had that one time. It was like a cheesy soup. I believe I stared death in the the face. The deli­cious, plas­ti­cy face.”
• “The ooozy oozy brie as part of the fan­tas­tic antipas­to at Gus­to in Petone
• Any cheese from the Dutch Shop in Petone (but I have a par­tic­u­lar fond­ness for the cumin gou­da)
• Fro­magerie at Kirk’s
• Truf­fle (small but inter­est­ing selec­tion)
• Sagana­ki (ouzo-flamed Greek cheese) at Duke Carvel­l’s
• Quat­tro For­mag­gio piz­za at Sco­pa (and no doubt else­where)
• Chow’s blue cheese & peanut won­tons
• “Oh, and Arbi­trageur has some fan­tas­tic cheeses to chose from for their antipas­to selec­tion.”

So there’s a few start­ing points for you. Just don’t get too cheesed off if you have crazy dreams after­wards…

Spring Cleaning

What:Envi­ro­tain­ment

Where:Ori­en­tal Parade (Frey­berg Pool/Mural end)

When: 2.30 till 4.00pm Face­book event page

Spring has well and tru­ly sprung but the uni­verse is send­ing mixed mes­sages as usu­al. Lambton Quay is dec­o­rat­ed with slight­ly over-ripe kowhai trees in full bloom; the petals tram­pled into the street by the suits, and what’s left on the trees disheveled by the spring rains. Con­fu­sion reigns, walk­ing down the street one day sans wool­ly hat, think­ing to one­self, “there is noth­ing like Welling­ton on a good day” while look­ing up at the unim­ped­ed blue sky. The next day remem­ber­ing you still haven’t kicked that damn cold, the elec­tion date means tis the sea­son for polit­i­cal hoard­ings to be lit­ter­ing the streets has begun and you real­ly should­n’t be wear­ing open toed shoes yet because it is rain­ing again. Sigh.

Tid bits and tasty things

• If you’re in town before 6pm today, sneak into the Soft­ware Free­dom Day at the Michael Fowler Cen­tre for a free Havana cof­fee. Don’t tell them that I sent you though.
• The pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned Kayu Man­is (you’re a manus!) — the Indonesian/Malaysian restau­rant on Cuba Street is now BYO, which makes its $18 mains much more palat­able. Also, the food is super fresh tast­ing, and the atmos­phere is much nicer than your stan­dard Malaysian joint, so we sug­gest that you check it out.
• The fre­quent­ly apos­tro­phe-cat­a­stroph­ic Elec­tric Avenue now sports a ban­ner adver­tis­ing its music quiz on Thurs­day nights as being the only music quiz in town. Appar­ent­ly Abel Smith Street, home to the music quiz on Thurs­day nights at the Cross is a sub­urb.
• Radio Active 89FM’s Han­dle the Jan­dal, the nation­wide DIY music video com­peti­ton, is back for 2008 and is call­ing for entries for this year’s com­pe­ti­tion, to be held Novem­ber 27 at Welling­ton’s St James The­atre. Go to Radio Active’s site for more infor­ma­tion.
• Don’t for­get to sign up for Bowl­ing League.

Out and About

For­give me for shar­ing a cou­ple of Welling­ton sights, recent­ly cap­tured on handy cell phone cam­era. First­ly:

It may not be imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent but that is an Aston Mar­tin DB9 (beloved of Top Gear-heads every­where) parked in the top floor car park of Moore Wilsons. This means that there is some­one in Welling­ton who takes a $430,000 car gro­cery shop­ping. It was also cov­ered in con­crete dust as Moore Wilsons is hav­ing some work done.

Next, New­town Unit­ed Video: keep­ing it real:

No fur­ther com­ment required.

Heads-up Dance Lovers!

Renowned chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, dancer and teacher Daniel Bel­ton is bring­ing two pro­grammes of award-win­ning dance films by Good Com­pa­ny screen­ing for over two con­sec­u­tive week­ends at the Film Archive.

The pro­grammes — Chore­o­graph­ing the Screen Pro­gramme 1 & 2 begin this Fri­day.

There are dou­ble pass­es up for grabs. www.filmarchive.org.nz

Send an email to information@nzfa.org.nz with the name of the sec­ond pro­gramme which screens on Sat­ur­day 20 & 27 Sep­tem­ber to get your hands on your own dou­ble pass.

Bowling league is back: bigger, better and braver than before!

Oh my stars, we are so very excit­ed to announce that the Welling­ton­ista Bowl­ing League for 2008 is about to start. Next Thurs­day Sep­tem­ber 25 to be exact, at 6.30pm at The Lanes on Wake­field Street. What does this mean for you/your organisation/social cir­cle? It means that you have to find three friends to form a team (or more, mem­bers can rotate in and out at will), come up with a name and reg­is­ter here before next Tues­day 23 Sep­tem­ber so we can come up with a table and you can start insult­ing your com­pe­ti­tion.. The league will last for as many weeks as there are teams (with a max­i­mum of eight teams due to the space I’ve booked), minus one, as we’ll play round robin.

The rules on the night are as fol­lows:

• If at the end of the game your team’s sum total (total of all four play­ers) is high­er than your oppo­si­tion’s then you get four com­pe­ti­tion points.
• If your team con­sumes more than four bev­er­ages (or aver­ages more than one per play­er) you get a bonus com­pe­ti­tion point
• The team with the high­est sum total on the night gets an extra bonus point.
• There will be one ran­dom league point award­ed on the night in an area of our choos­ing. The first one will be for the best-dressed team.
• Trash-talk­ing AND frater­nising with the ene­my are both high­ly encour­aged.

So if you booze up and roll like a god your team could come away with sev­en points.

We real­ly did have a tremen­dous amount of fun last year, made new friends, busi­ness con­tacts and drink­ing bud­dies, so what are you wait­ing for? Sign up already!

Back in ‘Nam (someone is pleased to think of the children)

I’m hav­ing flash­backs. There’s three cours­es of deli­cious food. There’s an auc­tion with amaz­ing goods to be won like a stay in a French vil­la, a 32 inch TV and an assort­ment of wines. There’s a com­mit­ment to raise $6000 for Save the Chil­dren and cycle 400km in Viet­nam.

Hang on a sec­ond, it’s not a flash­back at all! It’s an upcom­ing event — a Viet­namese ban­quet and char­i­ty auc­tion on Sep­tem­ber 29 at Restau­rant 88. Tick­ets are $50 and are avail­able from their web­site, and you should get one. If you don’t like Viet­namese food or good caus­es, do it pure­ly because Click­Suite won the most out­go­ing award in last year’s Welling­ton­ista Bowl­ing Awards, so you’re guar­an­teed good com­pa­ny on the night.