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‘Safe For Life’ Women’s Self Defence Seminar — Wellington

Although the last thing in the world that I want is for the Welling­ton­ista to come across like tra­di­tion­al fright­en­ers media, I think we can all acknowl­edge that some­times the world can be a scary place for women (and men), so here’s some­thing you can go to that might make it a lit­tle less scary.

Pro­tect, who teach real­i­ty-based self-defense, is run­ning a sem­i­nar enti­tled ‘Safe For Life’ in Welling­ton on Sat­ur­day Octo­ber 18. If you don’t want to take the bus out to Khan­dal­lah by your­self, how about you go with Leaf, Prob­a­bly?

I haven’t been to one of their cours­es, so I can’t tell you what it’s like, but I do appre­ci­ate that they adver­tise one of the things that they teach is con­fi­dence, which will pro­vide a healthy reminder that no one is ever ask­ing to get attacked or deserves it (just be wary: pos­si­bly NSFW).

Don’t forget to win yourself a new phone

Today’s the sec­ond to last day to enter our com­pe­ti­tion to win a new Voda­fone phone because we’re going to draw it at noon tomor­row. Hav­ing had a 6121 for a cou­ple of weeks now, I have to tell you that it’s pret­ty damn awe­some for check­ing your email on, espe­cial­ly while wait­ing for your bags at air­ports. Except for today when the net­work did­n’t seem to be work­ing. So what are you wait­ing for?

Con­grat­u­la­tions Cat! The Ran­dom­iz­er picked your num­ber, so you’ve won your­self a fan­tas­tic new phone. We’ll be in touch to get your deliv­ery address.

And Bingo was its name O

Sure, you already play Hip­ster Bin­go at the SFBH, but have you thought about play­ing the real game instead? From the good peo­ple who bring you the movie quiz at the Para­mount comes a new way to spend your Sun­day after­noons: Hang­over Bin­go!

It will be hap­pen­ing for the first time at 2pm on Sun­day 7th Sep­tem­ber at the Courte­nay Arms.

Set­tle down in front of a warm fire, with yum­my food, some hair of the dog and a few leisure­ly games of bin­go!

Cash Mon­ey to be won plus loads of oth­er good­ies. Go along and make it a suc­cess so that it can become a reg­u­lar event.

Live! 3D! audio-visual rave-slash-cinema!

Art No Made is a live audio-visu­al per­for­mance staged by Argen­tinean mul­ti­me­dia artists Niko and Aye­len Schi­avi at the Film Archive this Fri­day and Sat­ur­day night.

The artists, who are cur­rent­ly res­i­dent in Welling­ton, mar­ry 3D film cre­at­ed using Chro­madepth — which trans­forms a 2D graph­i­cal inter­face into a strik­ing 3D illu­sion­al space — with elec­tron­ic sound­tracks DJ’d live in the cin­e­ma. Tick­ets are avail­able from the Archive, pre-sales and door sales alike are $8 or $6 con­ces­sion, and on the night(s) 3D glass­es will be pro­vid­ed for your enjoy­ment of and par­tic­i­pa­tion in this world pre­miere event.

Orig­i­nal­ly Niko and Aye­len designed the project for a par­ty, but have since adapt­ed the project for a lounge for­mat, which “involves the spec­ta­tor all the more since he/she is not los­ing ener­gy and con­cen­tra­tion in danc­ing”.
Fri­day 29th & Sat­ur­day 30th August at the Film Archive, cnr Tarana­ki & Ghuznee Sts

Brian Jones vs David Hasselhoff

You can tell that sum­mer is com­ing from the tour­ing inter­na­tion­als head­ed our way, if not by the weath­er right now! Sep­tem­ber to Decem­ber is always a fren­zy of north­ern hemi­sphere bands escap­ing the cold to tour down under and to kick it off none oth­er than Bri­an Jon­estown Mas­sacre are hit­ting (hope­ful­ly not lit­er­al­ly) Welling­ton on Sept 4th.

Any­one who’s seen the fab­u­lous doco that fol­lows BJM and their friends-turned-bit­ter-ene­mies the Dandy Warhols, Dig, will be excit­ed to see the volatile band in the flesh as well as thrilled to know that after a hia­tus, tam­bourine play­er (yep, that’s his instru­ment) Joel is back in the band.

Sup­port­ed on their Auck­land and Welling­ton tour dates by Shayne Carter’s Dim­mer and by Mar­tin Phillipps’ ever-evolv­ing Chills in Dunedin, the line-up is like a rock-slash-dra­ma nerd’s dream! But to top it off, if you can’t make the Welling­ton show (tix sell­ing fast, by the way — from Slow­boat records on Cuba st or through Under the Radar) you should high­tail it to Christchurch on the 3rd of Sep­tem­ber for the super-spe­cial sup­port from the Has­sel­hoff Exper­i­ment! I kid you not! They reformed for a one-off reunion ear­li­er this year and blew every­one’s socks off so if the deep south is call­ing you, now’s the time to vis­it. (I have a feel­ing this might be a secret sup­port slot but, hel­lo, don’t tell Welling­ton’s biggest gos­sip in that case… that’s me, by the way). See you at San Fran Bath­house on the 4th — BYO tam­bourine.

Hang the DJ. Please.

On Fri­day night, Fur Patrol played at Bar Bode­ga. They announced their last song, played it with aplomb, and left the stage. Now, every­one knows that the last song isn’t real­ly the last song because the band comes back for an encore or two — well, every­one know that, that is, except for the DJ, who start­ed play­ing MGMT again, even as curi­ous heads emerged from around the cor­ner of back­stage going “What? Can you turn that off please?” to no avail. The crowd were con­fused — DJ music always means the end of a gig — and shuf­fled off, so by the time the DJ got the mes­sage that they’d fucked up, Fur Patrol would have played to an emp­ty room.

So, because some­one did­n’t know the rules of the encore, we missed out on Fur Patrol’s first air­ing of ‘Domi­noes’ in like, eight years. You suck, DJ.
Pho­to by Rat Pony

Shall I Compare Thee to Oriental Bay?

What’s some­thing that this fair city has been need­ing since it was found­ed in… say, when was Welling­ton found­ed any­way?

That’s right, you guessed it, you KNEW it all along, Welling­ton needs a son­net!

And here’s where you can help: You can write that son­net!

Welling­ton Son­net Com­pe­ti­tion 2008

Welling­ton needs a son­net. Lon­don has ‘Upon West­min­ster Bridge’ by William Wordsworth and in more recent times, oth­er poets have writ­ten son­nets about their favourite cities. So have you got what it takes to write Wellington’s son­net? We are look­ing for the best unpub­lished son­nets about Welling­ton and you could be in to win $1000.

This com­pe­ti­tion, spon­sored by New Zealand Post, is being run as a pro­mo­tion for the Welling­ton Writ­ers Walk, an ini­tia­tive of the New Zealand Soci­ety of Authors, Welling­ton Branch. The walk pays trib­ute to nine­teen New Zealand authors with a series of sculp­tur­al and ‘benchmark’ quo­ta­tions set in sur­pris­ing and unex­pect­ed places around the water­front.

The Welling­ton Writ­ers Walk is con­tin­u­ing to devel­op, assist­ed by gen­er­ous indi­vid­ual spon­sor­ships for each com­mem­o­ra­tion and over­seen by a small, vol­un­tary com­mit­tee. By enter­ing this com­pe­ti­tion, you are con­tribut­ing to the con­ti­nu­ity of the project.

Find out more about the walk here

Prizes
1st prize $1,000
2nd prize $500
3rd prize $250
Plus 10 high­ly com­mend­ed prizes of $50 each

Click here for fur­ther details, an entry form & the small print.

Please note: there are very spe­cif­ic rules gov­ern­ing the con­struc­tion of son­nets: the num­ber of syl­la­bles in each line, the num­ber of lines in the son­net, metre, rhyme scheme etc etc…

Double pass giveaways

I have two dou­ble pass­es up for grabs for the silent film screen­ing at the Film Archive tomor­row night — the 80th Anniver­sary of The Bush Cin­derel­la — Rudall Hay­ward’s fourth and final silent fea­ture.

First and sec­ond per­son to email me at anna.dean@nzfa.org.nz and tell me the name of Rudall Hay­ward’s wife, who worked close­ly along­side him on his film projects, gets tick­ets to tomor­row night’s rare event with live piano accom­pa­ni­ment.

Let them eat antipasto platters!

Some­times a fly likes to take time out from fre­quent­ing the fine bars of this city to spend some time in the fine cin­e­mas of this city.

But when one buzzes into a cin­e­ma foy­er, one does not expect to find that one has walked into a staff meet­ing, espe­cial­ly when one is in the posh sec­tion of the cin­e­ma — the part that charges $31.50 a tick­et.

Yet there I was, try­ing to pro­cure tick­ets to Mam­ma Mia for me and mi amore, when I found myself the unin­ten­tion­al audi­ence of a man­ag­er who was loud­ly announc­ing some impor­tant news to staff: the posh $31.50 tick­ets would soon no longer come with free pop­corn and soft drink.

That’s loco, crazy-insane, I thought. Pop­corn and soft drink cost cents to make — sure­ly they can afford to give it away to cus­tomers pay­ing $31.50 a tick­et.

The prob­lem was, the man­ag­er explained to his charges, that pun­ters were fill­ing up on the free pop­corn and drinks and not buy­ing any of the food offered on the menu. It was, after all, a busi­ness that need­ed to make a prof­it. And not, one pre­sumes, a food bank.

Now I don’t want to go read­ing too much into this, but I can’t help but won­der if man­age­ment is tak­ing the wrong approach here. I sug­gest they start with not hold­ing staff meet­ings in pub­lic areas, and then con­sid­er how many peo­ple just take the free food because it’s there, rather than because they’re hungry/thirsty.

I was plan­ning a roman­tic night at the posh lounge cin­e­ma see­ing the Dark Knight, but instead I’m switch­ing to some nib­bles at Sweet Moth­er’s Kitchen, fol­lowed by a pri­vate screen­ing of the 1966 Bat­man movie ($9.99 from the Ware­house).

Pho­to cour­tesy of Aim and Shoot!‘s Flickr pho­to­stream.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

In an age of whizz bang graph­ics and fan­cy cam­era tech­niques, it’s a real treat to be able to watch a silent film with speech titles such as: “Where Mary was con­cerned Sam­my, the hired hand, had the soul and ardour of a fifth cen­tu­ry poet” ??WTF!? and all with live piano accom­pa­ni­ment.

On Wednes­day 20 August, 7pm The Bush Cin­derel­la is screen­ing, a pre­sen­ta­tion by the Friends of the Film Archive, to cel­e­brate the 80th anniver­sary of this Rudall Hay­ward film.

Star­ring Miss New Zealand Dale Austin, “who com­bines Hol­ly­wood expe­ri­ence and tech­nique with a fault­less pho­to­genic face.” — The Sun, 1928.