Alt.country at the Bathhouse
American alt.country legends Richard Buckner and Edith Frost are playing together at the San Francisco Bathhouse on Wednesday night.
There are three kinds of American folk artist: those who sit, contented, on a back porch contemplating America’s landscape and ways; those for whom its landscape and ways are something to stand against or move boldly through; and those whose America is a shadowy, impressionistic place that moves inside of them. This [latter] is the area that the sombre-voiced Richard Buckner has been exploring since 1984 –(Sylvie Simmons; The Guardian, 2004)
Beautiful Mash
We all know that in Wellington, everyone and their dogs are already busy making films of some description already, but for any aspiring film-makers not currently up to their eyeballs in digital video, here’s your chance. LOOP Recordings want you to make a video for Adi Dick’s song “Beautiful View”.
They’re providing you with nearly a Gigabyte of green-screen footage of the singer, then handing it over to you to mash it up with your own footage or animation to create your interpretation of the song. You have until the 20th of May.
What up, weekend?
Wanting to stalk us this weekend, and/or find something for yourself to do? Here are our suggestions:
- Since Hadyn likes the poster, it’s probably well worth checking out Wellingtonista’s favourite man-bear, Sam Flynn Scott with Lawrence Arabia at the San Francisco Bathhouse tonight. I know that’s what I’ll be doing anyway.
- If you’re looking to head out for drinks tonight, why not try some amari?
- See if we’re capable of being drunk and articulate at the same time at on Public Address Radio broadcast on Radio Live at 2pm on Saturday.
- It’s the last days of the A Human Touch: Design by Droog exhibition at the New Dowse, so why not see if it really does “trigger questions, spark discussion and elicit giggles”?
- The Country Club will be doing Brazil tomorrow night. Expect caipirinhas, samba, soccer, feijoada and no doubt Brazillian porn.
- We went to the last opening and had a (drunken) blast, so we can recommend pretty clothing & accessories shop Modern Love‘s opening for its new premises in Left Bank at 2pm on Sunday. If you need an added incentive, there will be cup cakes and the Real Hot Bitches!
- Of course, if you’re not heading out of town to wrestle pigs, or bask in your well-deserved fame, and you feel like something a little more family-friendly, you could always do some home etomology, go see Bad Jelly the Witch, work on your screen-printing or catch up on some Vonnegut.
Martha on the Front Page of the DomPost
Hard on the heels of one of their worst front pages ever, the DomPost goes some way to redeeming itself by putting one the of Wellingtonista above the fold in today’s issue…
Nice work Martha. Way to fly the flag undies.
Our online library
Your Wellington Central library (or ‘sanctuary’ as it’s know here at the Towers) was been quietly expanding its online offerings and today has added a handy wee email notification service … or is it just another way for ‘big brother’ to keep tabs on ya?!?
To quote from their blog (RSS):
We have introduced a new service for hearing about reserves and any overdue items on your card – you can now get these messages by email. If you want to switch to this option, all you need to do is complete the online form or ask at your local library. And of course if you find you prefer paper or phone notices you can switch back again at any time.
Still the 12th nicest city in the world
Not much movement at the top of the Mercer Human Resource Consulting “Most Livable Cities” rankings this year, with, like last year, Wellington coming in 12th, trailing our northern neighbours Auckland, who come in at a very credible 5th. In fact, there’s really no movement at all in the top 20, with Zurich and Geneva still 1st and 2nd respectively, Vancouver 3rd, Vienna 4th, before a bunch of German cities slot in below Auckland. The rankings are …
based on 39 key quality-of-life issues. They include political stability, currency-exchange regulations, political and media censorship, school quality, housing, the environment and public safety.
We’re tracking you.
So, I hope everyone’s now up to speed on creating false identities, after the Dominion Post’s useful step-by-step front-page guide yesterday, which talked you through the steps required in getting a fake driver’s license or passport. Thanks DomPost!
What really got us nervous though, was the myriad of ways in which our moves and actions throughout the day are tracked by ‘the man’.
The DomPost listed several examples of supposedly ‘nefarious’ personal data-collection. Did you know that the web-browser you’re using this very moment to look at this page keeps a record of the fact that you’ve looked at the page? It’s true. Doctors, apparently, also keep records of your various visits. Suspicious? Almost certainly.
And, even more insidiously, the library keeps a record of what items you have borrowed from it at any given time? Why, oh why!? The pervading finger of ‘the man’ permeates every facet of our life. Our private lives, and indeed, our very identities, it would seem, are under constant threat, from the authorities, or figures who know how to manipulate the system.
Or, on the other hand, maybe it was just the worst front-page ‘shock’ story, ever.
Bowling: It’s OOOOOOOOOOON!
We are super pleased and excited to announce that the Wellingtonista Bowling League is officially a happening thing. Game nights will take place once a month until the round-robin is played out. The first night will be Tuesday 24 April at 8pm, so that we can all recover the next day.
There will be four people to a team, and your website/organisation may enter more than one team if you like. There will be a trophy. Register your team here in the comments, or email the.wellingtonista @ gmail.com before next Wednesday 18. We’ll be bowling at The Lanes on Wakefield St, and it’ll cost probably $10 per person per game. Plus the drinks you will want to buy us.
Please do participate. Or are you scared that we will KICK YOUR COLLECTIVE ASSES? Cos we totally will.
Flight of the Conchords: Hiphopopotamus v. Rhymenoceros
Another Wednesday, another Flight of the Conchords video clip for your enjoyment.
Yeah they call me the Hiphopopotamus,
My lyrics are bottomless…
theNewDowse goes ape sh*t
Taken straight from the Weta Holics website:
As if you needed another reason to live in New Zealand! The wonderful Dowse Museum in Lower Hutt has just re-launched and is now calling itself TheNewDowse . . . AND they’re hosting a King Kong exhibition from June to November this year!
They’re calling it Becoming King Kong. I feel excited just thinking about it!
It’s opening on 23 June and runs until 11 November 2007. A wee bird tells me that it’s packed with insights into the ground-breaking film-making technologies used to make the movie, as well as the creative processes used in the conception of the character of Kong. That’s right – the grumpy ape that keeps on turning up in the film he he…
The exhibition will take you behind the scenes to experience the Weta way of working, the expansive collection of the sculptured creatures, the beauty of the sketches, the innovative techniques and the secrets of how these were achieved: it took thousands of drawings, hundreds of design maquettes and Weta Digital’s visual effects team years of work to create the character of Kong.
To celebrate the exhibition, we’ll be revealing previously never seen before online images from the making of the film in the new Weta Gallery …
