Tana’s Farewell – Sat’dy Arvo
Wellington gets a chance to say a fond farewell to All Black legend Tana Umaga on Saturday afternoon when he plays his final first-class game in New Zealand before heading off to start his coaching career at Toulon in France. The Wellington Lions play Manawatu at 2.35pm hoping to put their atrocious performance of last weekend behind them and give Tana the send off he deserves.
I was at Christian Cullen’s farewell, as well as the Auckland send-offs for Michael Jones and Zinzan Brooke. They were all amazing occasions and this one probably will be too.
My prediction (and feel free to ridicule me for it in the comments): Tana to be New Zealand’s first Samoan Prime Minister within 20 years.
Phoenix Pre-Season Campaign Returns to Wellington
An unanticipated great result in Melbourne on Saturday night has kept the Phoenix in the hunt for early scalps and, perhaps more importantly, given them another warm-up game to prepare for the forthcoming A-League campaign.
The late goal from Brazilian import Daniel that surprised last year’s champions Melbourne Victory means the Phoenix play the Newcastle Jets at the Stadium tomorrow (Friday) in a playoff for 5th or 6th place in the Pre-Season Cup. It will be the first time the team have played under lights at the Stadium and they’ll be hoping for a turnout that equals or exceeds the 6,000 that cheered them to their first win less than three weeks ago.
Tickets are on sale from the Stadium only (from noon at the kiosk on the concourse; all the booths will be live from 6.00pm) and the game kicks off at 7.30pm. Adults pay $10 and kids and students get in free. Let’s make some noise, people.
Cinephilia: Opening This Week
Once described by Terry Gilliam as “a monument to cranial architectureâ€, Bruce Willis’ shiny bonce is on full display in Die Hard 4.0 (known in US-centric territories as Live Free or Die Hard), playing at Readings, Regent-on-Manners, Empire, Sky City Queensgate and the Embassy where it looked kind of murky this evening.
Adam Sandler does his bit to fill the gap left by Ingmar Bergman with I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry: he and the guy from “The King of Queens†play two firefighters who pretend to be gay to get the marriage benefits (any relationship to the limp Australian comedy Strange Bedfellows starring Paul Hogan is entirely coincidental): Readings and Sky City Queensgate. Aside: I saw a film in one of the two Gold Lounges at Queensgate on Tuesday night and an usher stopped by my seat to ask me if I wanted popcorn or a soft drink which was nice except THE FEATURE HAD JUST STARTED! And for health and safety reasons they don’t dim the lights fully so it was an experience I can’t recommend. The film was good though (more on that in another post).
The rest of the new releases after the jump, including Black Snake Moan and Ten Canoes.
SiCKO – Michael Moore
Well, if you happen to be a fan of the big man and are wanting to go see his latest mockdocumentary then you know, you just might be in luck.
We here at Wellingtonista towers, in all our munificence, are giving away three double passes to see SiCKO.
To win, you’ll need to be one of the first three people to send an email to the.wellingtonista@gmail.com and make some appreciative sounding noises.
The tickets are only for this Friday, Saturday or Sunday nights.
Enjoy.
Short bits
1. If, like Tom, you’re planning on making the month of August all about whisky, there are worse things you could do than sign up for Wineseeker’s Whisky Tasting on August 21. Sure, it’s $45, but it sounds like very good value for money.
2. While we don’t consider the Wellingtonista to be an exclusively hetrosexual site as such (you don’t have to have a particular kind of sexuality to love bars and hate the bypass, and who you’re doing doesn’t matter nearly as much as where you’re doing them), and I haven’t done a straw poll of how each contributor identifies, we don’t have very much (or in fact any that I can think of) coverage of specifically queer culture. And it’s Proud 07 right now, so in the interests of wider coverage, we’d like commenters to fill us in on the various scenes a little more. Who goes where? What’s hot and what’s not? Are there still monthly lesbian nights at Blondini’s? Is the ‘Lebanese’ restaurant beneath Spicehammer really just a spelling mistake? Enquiring minds want to know!
WQL Results: Round Three
So, a lot of stupid decisions were made last night. Over a pre-quiz dinner at Tulsi, the Wellingtonista thought that as well as drinking the wine they’d won at the Bristol last week, it was a good idea to drink two cans each of Kingfisher Strong, and then build a tower out of the cans. We’re paying the price for that today. Then, deciding to do the quiz at JJ Murphy’s was also a stupid idea, because it took forever. And most stupidly at all, we forgot that when you do anything with hubris, there’s that whole pride goes before a fall thing, and so Xero beat us. By one point! Oh god, the humanity. Silverstripe, the Alohas and the M team all get 69 points since they weren’t there (why oh why do you hate us so, Silverstripe?). So the scores look like this:
Alohas: 209
Click Suite: 213.5
M Team: 201
Silverstripe: 205
Wellingtonista: 264
Xero: 227
Porcine Holocaust
When it comes down to living the good life, you don’t have to spend up large.
One of my favourite things about having been a dishpig or assorted-kitchen odd-body for a number of years is that you soon learn that the most expensive foods are often the crappyest.
So, to help you all out, here’s a few pointers about surviving on a partial-gourmet diet in Wellington. Now, all of these photos were taken at gourmet and sometimes 4×4 central, Moore Wilsons.
Fact Number One. Pork is good for you. To prove it, here’s a great example right here. 
A kilo of pork belly for a miserly $12. There’s a bit of fat on there, but nothing you can’t handle.
Of course, you don’t want to go overboard. Too much pork makes Che a rather fat boy. But everything in moderation, no?
So, I mention the pork belly because it’s a main ingredient in cassoulet, something I’ll be discussing in more length over on Object Dart. Sooner or later.
Probably later.
But, there’s heaps of stuff you can find at Moore Wilson you can’t find easily anywhere else. So here’s a few more
Mana College v. Wellington College
If you’re stuck for something to do next Monday night, you could do worse than to head to Porirua Park for the final of Wellington’s premier one grade schoolboy rugby competition. The match is to be played between Mana College and Wellington College.
As detailed in a story in the Dom Post, Mana has made a dramatic rise through the grades after starting the year in premier two and being promoted mid-season, and to have made it to the final is nigh-on miraculous.
More, including much politicised frothing, after the jump
Three nights of drinking on a school night
It’s a busy week in Wellington, so we hope you’ve got your hangover cures sorted.
- Monday is Hustle for Autism at the SFBH – you can read more details about it over at Public Address. We think you should go along, some of us will be there if you needed any further prompting.
- Tuesday is the Wellingtonista Quiz League. This time we’ll be playing at JJ Murphy’s in Cuba Mall, which apparently starts at 7.30, so make sure you get there early to secure a table, and see if you can beat us (you probably can’t).
- Wednesday is Gadgets, Games & Geeks 07 at the Michael Fowler Centre. To quote their blurb:
Join us for one whopping great big geeky networking fest. Hear and network with some awesome speakers and exhibitors who are passionate about their gadgets, games and geek status.
And it is heavily implied that there will be free drinks – which are two of the Wellingtonista’s favourite words. See you there then?
Wellington Sevens (1st/2nd Feb 2008) tickets on sale September 12th at 9am
You have been told so don’t complain to us when you miss out at 9:05am
Tickets are ONLY available online or Ticketmaster:
… only available via the Internet at www.sevens.co.nz or by calling Ticketmaster on 0800 111 999. No tickets will be available through retail outlets.
(ticket details and how to get them after the break)