Heavenly Circus

The geni­us minds behind Heav­enly Bur­lesque are back again for the Fringe and this time it’s free. Grav­ity and oth­er Myths is a spec­tac­u­lar out­door new cir­cus show­case inspired by the stars!

Vist Queen’s Wharf at night this week and you see some of the coun­try’s best new cir­cus, per­form­ing on a pur­pose-built out­door cir­cus rig, com­bined with pyro­tech­nics, spec­tac­u­lar light­ing, sound and AV design.

I’ve been prom­ised acts will use fire, trapeze, bungy, hula hoops, dance and object anim­a­tion, all to the loc­ally grown music of Rhi­an Shee­han, Mod­ule and more. This is prop­er cir­cus people, not with evil clowns.

Plus here is your chance to run away with the cir­cus in your lunch­time – Wel­ling­ton Cir­cus Trust are run­ning intro­duct­ory cir­cus work­shops at lunch­times (12.30 – 1.30) on the days of the show per­form­ances.

Grav­ity and oth­er Myths
Queen’s Wharf, (under the sails)
Wel­ling­ton Water­front @ 8.00pm
Thursday 1st – Sunday 4th & Wed­nes­day 7th – Sat­urday 10th
March, 2007.
Entry by dona­tion / Koha
and bring a cush­ion

Jon Auer is coming to town

jon

The guy Mat­thew Sweet always wished he could be. Pos­sibly. He’s in town for one show only. (Remem­ber Mat­thew Sweet?)

From the press-release:

Jon Auer is co-founder of one of the most crit­ic­ally-acclaimed power-pop bands, The Posies, and has also spent a good deal of time in the legendary Big Star with the grand­daddy of all ’em power-pop­sters, Alex Chilton. He also finds time to be the self-con­fessed num­ber one solo sad­core artist in the world.

With his excep­tion­al song­writ­ing, emin­ently-hum­mable melod­ies, and unique music­al vis­ion, he takes listen­ers to son­ic and emo­tion­al ter­rit­or­ies far bey­ond the expec­ted para­met­ers of the pop genre.

John Auer brings his sig­na­ture gui­tar-work and angel­ic voice to MVP for one very spe­cial, intim­ate night.

Sat­urday the 3rd of March
MVP, Dix­on Street
Doors open at 8pm.
$20 pre­s­ales from Slow Boat records ($15 with an Act­ive Card).

Thanks to Steph­en for the heads up (and for mak­ing me look like I know a bit about music…)

Putting the Kunst into Country

Ping pong country at Mighty MightyIf you’ve had enough of pre­tend­ing to be Lat­in Amer­ic­an, The Mighty Mighty now give you an oppor­tun­ity to pre­tend to be from a very dif­fer­ent part of the world with ten days of The Ber­lin Bon­anza.

Much of this appears to involve a highly tra­di­tion­al Teuton­ic leis­ure activ­ity: mass games of ping-pong with a coun­try music accom­pani­ment.

If that does­n’t appeal (and why on earth would­n’t it?) there’s a bewil­der­ing array of oth­er acts and activ­it­ies on offer. Vodka ice slides! Beer and saus­age! Polish/German chan­son­ettes! Krautrock! More pho­tos here and here, excited gos­sip here, and the urb­an semi­ot­ics of cow­boy cap­it­al­ism here.

More web events = more stalking

So, remem­ber how much fun we all had at The Great Blend? Or how much of a crush you have on Martha? How about you com­bind those two things into one event and come to Web­stock Mini on Tues­day night? There are, after all, few ven­ues nicer than the Para­mount, and if it’s good enough for the Queen of the Blog­gers to pay her own admin­is­tra­tion fee rather than try­ing to do the paper­work for the Wel­ling­tonista to cov­er the $75 cost (it’s amaz­ing how quickly the thoughts of an open bar will get her to pony up), it should be good enough for you too.

Those were the days…

From the newly relaunched NZ His­tory web­site comes this wee gem from Today in His­tory (actu­ally, next week’s Monday, but I could­n’t wait to post it)…

Two Wel­ling­ton law­yers, W.V. Brew­er and H. Ross, drew pis­tols over a leg­al dif­fer­ence in Wel­ling­ton. Brew­er fired into the air but ‘received Mr. Ross’ ball in the groin’. He died sev­er­al days later.

Ouch.

Costume Cave 2 sale

Right now, as we speak, the Cos­tume Cave 2 is selling old theatre, TV and film clothes for you to prance around in.

Racked and stacked for you to buyLook­ing for that Hawaii­an attire for a cer­tain Fri­day party or maybe for that 1977 look then I’m sure they can help you out.

Here at Wellin­gonista Towers the boys are already accessor­ising and the girls are eagerly await­ing the cat­walk parade later on. If you see any of us buy­ing Xena frocks, over sized and out­land­ish hats or Sci­Fi sil­ver knee-high boots, give us a smile and ask us for a twirl!

Where: Cos­tume Cave 2
Where: Level 1, 233 Wil­lis Street
When: now until Sunday 18th, 10am – 2pm

READ MORE

Fair season

The next five weeks are going to be tres busy for the dis­cern­ing shop­per. There are fairs galore. Here is a quick run down:

15th Feb­ru­ary – Craft­werk is on at the South­ern Cross. An almost all new line-up of stalls will keep it fresh and inter­est­ing, and it is on from 5–9pm with bands.

17th Feb­ru­ary – Petone Fair. Jack­son St will be chock full of everything from saus­age sizzles, bouncy castles and eth­nic food, to fab jew­ellery, clothes and gifts. Starts 10am. I recom­mend park­ing along the Esplanade and walk­ing a couple of blocks to the fair.

17th Feb­ru­ary – The Big Bang is on at the New­Dowse. This sig­nals a month of excit­ing activ­it­ies. A high­light will be The Real Hot Bitches per­form­ing a dancea­thon at 4pm.

3rd March – The second of the Mar­tin­bor­ough Fairs is on. This is a repeat per­form­ance of the fair in Feb­ru­ary, with all the same fab­ulous food and stalls. It is a great oppor­tun­ity to scope out some winer­ies while you’re over the hill. Mar­tin­bor­ough Square.
10th March – Gay and Les­bi­an Fair, New­town School. An array of stalls and activ­it­ies. 9am-4pm

17th March – Whoop! Craft2.0 is going to be on at the New­Dowse in Lower Hutt. This fab­ulous fair is the cul­min­a­tion of a month of activ­it­ies at the New­Dowse to cel­eb­rate its renov­a­tions. There will be the finest craft from around the coun­try and hot bands. More inform­a­tion on this excit­ing event will be updated every 2 minutes (heh).

Bus Angst #32

for god's sake, move down the back!Two words: bloody buses.

Actu­ally, here’s a few more. This par­tic­u­lar Wel­ling­tonista had to wait forty minutes last even­ing for even one bus to turn up on his route. Of course, when one did, it was packed to the gun­nels, so it sailed by the stop, as did the next, and the next. Finally, one only mod­er­ately packed bus did find space to fit me on board, so I did even­tu­ally get home, but what irks me is that in the forty minutes spent wait­ing at the bus-stop, I saw three Kil­birnie buses go by (the second two wer­en’t even that full), and two Houghton Bay buses. I mean, if they’re going to can­cel buses, could­n’t they be a little more even-handed about it all?

Bus routes affected by the can­cel­la­tions are lis­ted here. I find it hard to believe that there are no #1, #4 and #32 can­cel­la­tions after 4:30 today. As a pre­cau­tion, I plan to back-walk a few stops to the Bee­hive end of Lamb­ton Quay, to ensure, at least, that I can get onto a bus that will take me home, should one deem to actu­ally turn up.

Didja feel that one?

Well, did you?

More info once every oth­er man and his dog stops ham­mer­ing the GeoN­et web­site.

Update. Well, there ya go: a 4.8 shake, focal point 50km deep, 30km west of Pori­rua, out in Cook Strait. A decent rattle.

(And if you did feel it, report your exper­i­ence here. Do your bit for sci­ence.)

We ask: Boy and dog?

The Wel­ling­tonista want to know what is cur­rently shoot­ing in Wel­ling­ton that would require a large truck tow­ing a boy on a bicycle with a dog perched hap­pily behind him to film down Lamb­ton Quay.

Someone out there must have the answer. And also: how did they get the dog to hold on?