If, like many of us, you’re furi­ous about the way many media out­lets treat women, you need to start read­ing the Amer­ic­an magazine Bust. It’s fiercely fem­in­ist, but also riffs on craft, cul­ture and fash­ion – in a good way (they use ‘real’ people for mod­els, of all shapes, sizes and sexu­al­it­ies etc) In fact, their new issue is the per­fect place to start, because it fea­tures our Wel­ling­to­ni­ans of the Year, the all-con­quer­ing Flight of the Conchords on one side of its flip cov­er, along with the Wel­ling­ton land­mark-defil­ing Eli­jah Wood.

I recom­mend sub­scrib­ing, because this magazine is really so very very awe­some, but if you just want to give it a go, you can buy it at Vic Books, Magazzino, and prob­ably Unity Books.

Some Fri­day music video view­ing for you. Two of the best things in life – Crick­et and Music – com­bined into one fine music video from Wel­ling­ton’s increas­ingly hir­sute Phoenix Found­a­tion…

About half the Wel­ling­tonista now call New­town home, so we thought it was about time we did some explor­ing of the area. There­fore, on this com­ing Sat­urday, we’re going to be doing a New­townista Pub Crawl, and you should come with us!

We’re going to start on Rid­di­ford St down near the zoo around 7.30pm, and work our way back towards town, aim­ing to end up at Amigo’s for tapas. Most of us haven’t been to most of the bars, so we’ll be intend­ing to give them all a go-to, even the dodgy ones – but we may change our minds on the night when we look in their doors.

To come along, either show up in that area at that time, get in con­tact with a cell­phone num­ber so we can text you our pro­gress, or fol­low my twit­ter account as hope­fully I’ll remem­ber to update it as we go along. We’re going to boldly go where some people have gone before, and it should be a jolly good time.

Gor­geous photo by Dead Pos­sum, yanked from flickr

Just in case you’ve man­aged to avoid the sat­ur­a­tion cov­er­age across the news media for the last week or so, today marks the 40th anniversary of the Wahine dis­aster.

We won’t add to the pleth­ora of stor­ies (well, we are with this story I sup­pose, but, well, err…) we mostly just wanted to make note of one art­icle in the NZ Her­ald, entitled…

Wahine tick­et revives ter­ri­fy­ing memor­ies (+pho­tos, audio)

Ahhh, yes. It’ll be the tick­et reviv­ing those ter­ri­fy­ing memor­ies. Not the bar­rage of pho­tos, audio or video.

Any­way, cyn­icism aside, it was a tra­gic event in Wel­ling­ton’s his­tory, and we’ll be tak­ing a quiet moment today to remem­ber the vic­tims, and to salute the many brave people who risked their own lives to head to the beaches (and, in some cases, out into the storm-lashed waters), to help res­cue the hun­dreds of pas­sen­gers and crew of the ship who had been thrown into the sea from the founder­ing ship.

A swag of Wel­ling­ton artists have pro­duced video art for The Artists Film Fest­iv­al, open­ing tonight at 5:30pm at the Film Archive (cnr Tarana­ki and Ghuznee Sts).

Cur­ated by Wel­ling­ton-based cur­at­or (and Listen­er art crit­ic) Paula J Book­er, the show prom­ises an extreme mix of artworks.…28 video works in total, pos­sibly the largest video exhib­i­tion ever under­taken in NZ.

High­lights include someone singing to Janis Joplin until almost passing out, CHCH artist James Oram gen­er­at­ing elec­tri­city by bike to power his own ME sign.…it’s all pretty enter­tain­ing/shock­ing/­thought-pro­vok­ing stuff.

EXHIBITION DETAILS
The Artists Film Fest­iv­al
11 April – 17 May 2008

LIVE PERFORMANCE, Thursday 17 April, 7pm
The Twi­light Drone by Johannes Con­tag (of Cloud­boy fame) Tick­ets $8/6.

Con­tag explores the notion of the ambi­ent film with live accom­pani­ment to this film work shot in a snow-covered Aus­tria…

Is it just me, or is the NZX anim­ated dis­play much more aes­thet­ic­ally pleas­ing when it goes ber­serk?

Mighty Mighty Bar has released their Face­book “what’s on” earli­er than pre­vi­ous ones – on ’em!

This may be the final chance you get to catch Delaney Dav­id­son and his Ghost Orches­tra before he goes back Europe way! IT IS A MUST SEE SHOW !

Also here is this weeks gigaroos! see you here, or you are square 😉

Cap­tain Richardo and the Mighty Mus­ket­eers

WED 9th – 8:30pm ROSIE TIN TEA CADDIE + ACHILES BOTES. Sweet folk.Lapping in the sea of tran­quilitea come s these nicey nice hand hold­ing acts.

THUR 10th – 9pm – The WRONGDOINGS,DELANEYDAVIDSON and his 8piece GHOST ORCHESTRA(last NZ gig),SLIM CHANTS,Say good­bye to the drum­mer about town,Jelly and the last time in a year to hear his numer­ous and great bands.Dirty coun­try.

FRI 11th – 10pm THE SHADES E.P Release + THE AVIATORS. AK‘s finest soul out­fit. Hip hop beats funk and soul,a smokey ses­sion indeed!

SAT 12th – HI ACES ALBUM RELEASE ‚with The BLACKBELLES finally a record­ing from these loc­al coun­try favourites.Fill your jugs and raise ‘em high!

Pis­ci­vores rejoice! A couple of loc­al fish­ing boats have star­ted to dock at Chaf­fers Mar­ina on Sundays and are selling their wares dir­ect to the pub­lic, and it will make a nice com­ple­ment to the meat & veg at Wait­angi Park mar­ket. The spe­cies on offer no doubt depend upon what’s caught on the day, but today’s offer­ings ran from groper steaks and blue ware­hou to octopus (for those with a tentacle fet­ish) and kina (for those who like it spiny and slimy).

More fishy good­ness after the jump.

Good to see the loc­al hostel­ries pro­mot­ing respons­ible drink­ing: tonight, Blend are not only offer­ing $5 Jäger­bomb tick­ets, but are host­ing a “New Zea­l­and Jäger­bomb record attempt” at 9pm. I really don’t envy the street clean­ers who’ll have to deal with Wake­field St tomor­row morn­ing.

Even those not temp­ted by such excess might some­times dream about liv­ing in a bar. Well, here’s the next best thing. The former Imbibe is being stripped out in anti­cip­a­tion of its redevel­op­ment by the lovely Bresolin boys, and tomor­row from 10am to mid­day they’re hav­ing a “bar gar­age sale”, selling off everything from glass­ware and lamp­shades to tables, couches and “even the kit­chen sink”. So to relive the glory days of Imbibe (pine­apples option­al) at your own pad, get on down to Swan Lane and duke it out with the oth­er punters in search of a bar­gain.

Many bar­flies say they’ll die for a drink, but some take it too lit­er­ally. At the newly opened Lager­field, one unlucky punter found in their Mar­tini an unwanted couple of gar­nishes in addi­tion to the olives: two very dead little fruit­flies. Worse, there was too much ver­mouth. Still, what a way to go. (And by the way, the staff were appro­pri­ately hor­ri­fied and rec­ti­fied the situ­ation with aplomb, so I’d agree with CC Vince that it’s worth check­ing out.)