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!

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.

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.

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…

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.

• 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.

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.

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.

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!

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.