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?