dancin in the park

X-air's not exactly my scene. I can see foolhardy young men risking life and limb, doing stunts on dirt bikes and caning themselves from mid-air anytime I want really - we call that "post-Christmas-lunch activities" in our family.

But I will hunt down breakdancers whereever they may be, so off Leanne and I went on Sunday, avoiding the oh-so-empowering bikini comp by the lagoon and the assault of coporate sponsors at every turn.

b-girl styles holla!!

Thanks to Body Rock the week before, we were familiar with plenty of the talent and were continued to be impressed by the crews at Frank Kitts Park that afternoon. The final was between Fresh Socks (its an awesome name, you know it) and the Original Step Kingz - not to be confused with all those subsequent, derivative Step Kingz, thank you very much.

Fresh Socks crew, Trans-Tasman deliciousness that they are.

Original Step Kingz: Kurv, Stretch and, um, the other guy.

Stretch was the guy who won overall at Body Rock and twas no surprise his crew was tight. I loved it when rather than just one of them stepping out, all three would bust out some move at the same time and overwhelm the other side.

Not to say that Fresh Socks didn't have a fair bit of style. Rush was the judge of Body Rock, and him & Melbz had come over from Australia for the events. (I'm just throwing the 'z's in willynilly here, these hip hip kids don't seem to have much respect for the humble 's').



As well as high quality 3 on 3 breaking, there was lots of other action to gaze upon all day. The kids that make up the entourage are just amazing. So much talent, so much stamina, so much damn attitude. You should have seen the way this little un, Kid Swerve, son of the MC/organiser of the event, rolled. He had a shoulder brush-off to be revered.



And for those of you (all of you) who just don't give a shite, I have annotated the token cute blondie. During the under-ages battle, she mightly took the mat, but didn't actually get around to demonstrating any ill moves. Still claimed her Moro bar tho, so I respect her for that.

We also received a few Moro bars during the course of the event, so I guess the corporate sponsors aren't all bad. Though by 'received' I do of course mean 'was flung at close range by extremely fit young gentlemen'. Tweet, the MC, kept saying "Aah yeah, sorry if you get one in the eye, yo!".

But other that slightly sunburnt legs and lingering grief that I will never ever look that cool on the dancefloor, there were no injuries on my part as a result of attending X-Air.


-insert Craig David lyrics here-

dancin in the street

Wellingtonians have a certain disdainful attitude about the Hutt Valley and all that is contained within its clammy slopes. (Excepting perhaps, the Dowse and Eastborne. Oh and that crazy Japanese restaurant. But everything else is feral).

However, Saturday evening was the Jackson St Fiesta, and their big drawcard for the night was Opensouls, an awesome AK-based band I've raved about earlier here. And street carnivals always have a great atmosphere so we were up for it, despite the hazards of venturing that deep into bogan territory.





As you can see, Leanne and I wasted no time getting into the groove on the reclaimed main street. It was joy of joys when we stumbled across a band setting up on one of the three stages that was basically a re-arrangement of Olmecha Supreme, who rocked my world at One Love.

They were doing much more African rootsy style music and the tribal-priest style leader kept us in hysterics with his mantra "if you can WALK then you can DANCE! if you can TALK than you can SING!".



As you can see, I managed to keep on repping it for the white ass girls, jiving like a nana, throughly put to shame by one of the Mahal entourage (undoubtably sister of Deva/Imon Starr/etc - gawd, you should have seen their MUM dancing...!!).

It has been a week of beautifully warm sunny weather here and the summer evening seemed to stretch on forever. When Opensouls took the stage, a huge crowd was ready for it. Their set was fun and funky - they played some new stuff and their singles went down really well too. We were right up front and centre, singing along and "getting our kani on" as instructed.

Lurking about afterwards, we realised that adorably teddy-bear like trumpet player guy who grinned his way through each and every song was standing right by us. I had a hysterical fan girl moment and used my go go gadget arms to SEEMINGLY take a photo of myself, but ACTUALLY capture his talented presence on film (well, digital). (well, cellphone). (well, SHUT UP).



You'd think this would be the pinnacle of happiness, BUT THEN when i got the image onto my computer, and viewed in on a screen larger than a postage stamp, I realised I'd also managed to paparazzi Tyra, the lead female singer!! woot!
I have annotated the image and reposted it for those of you not so familiar with the band:



All in all, twas a night that made me very happy.

Let's get together and feel all right

Is there any other way to spend Waitangi Day in Wellington?

Got to One Love at midday and there was already a huge crowd filling up the grass in the middle of the velodrome. The on-to-it ones had their chilly bins, gazebos, replacement-glass vessels and gallons of sunscreen all good to go.

I'd spent the night before at my Dad's, so I was wearing a day-old black dress, shoes far too cute to be practical and lugging round a load of comic books from the library. Fortunately I had two water bottles - and lots of scrumpy to beg, steal, borrow...

A couple pics of us here and here thanks to the Bartlettssss.

And probably if there are pics around from the Olmecha Supreme set, you will spot some cats going crazy up the front, that is us too. Two guys in matching hats and matching man-cleavage, a girl with flys-eyes sunglasses and Cam with his awesomely ugly red hat, in amongst the rest of the crowd going wild at this guy and his crew:



Best outdoor live music since... Splore - Talib Kweli or the Cuban Brothers. Oh yeah, I'm puttin it up there.

And traipsing all the way round to Haitaitai beach for an early evening swim afterwards was the best idea ever. As was paying that public holiday surcharge to get us a curry for tea. And then collapsing to bed to feast on new books and enjoy warm skin.

The four corners of the town square.

BODY ROCK is on today and I am very excited. I have caught this in its various incarnations for the last couple of years - sometimes it coincides with X-Air, other times it seems to be independent.

Basically, there's a whole lot of break dancing, street art and music going on, right in the middle of town. And its always such a mix of people too, hence a white ass girl like me not feeling too out of place being in the midst of it!

Last year they set up a big graff wall in Civic Square and had specific taggers working on it throughout the day. Watching these people at work was incredible. Their deftness of hand and foresight was impressive, and the way an image was built up seemingly casually, but with such confidence.

Using Molotow spraypaint (which I knew of thanks to my lil bro's shenannigans with stencilling) they created a piece of art several metres long and as high as their arms could stretch. The other thing I loved was that the colour palette was limited solely to shades of pink - the only cans supplied. It looked freakin awesome.

I have more to say (about Furious Styles the wicked breaking crew who are back again this year) but time would be better spent psyching myself up for the traipse through central city, avoiding munter Sevens people...

How Steph Ruined My Day:

Lou blogged about Glastonbury and I was all "you know how I know you're gay... you like Coldplay" and then Steph was like "oh well you should Google this other festival, Bel..." and that's how I found out about Coachella and now my day is ruined.

And there I was thinking that being woken up three times between 4.55am and 6.15am couldn't be topped. CONGRATULATIONS STEPH.

In case you are lazy, here is an abbreviated list:

• Bjork
  
• Interpol
  
• Arctic Monkeys
  
• Jarvis Cocker
  
• DJ Shadow
  
• Peaches
  
• Rufus Wainwright
  
• El-P
  
• Gogol Bordello
  
• Gillian Welch
  
• Amy Winehouse
  
• Red Hot Chili Peppers
  
• the Arcade Fire
  
• the Decemberists
  
• Kings Of Leon
  
• Gotan Project
  
• Blonde Redhead
  
• Regina Spektor
  
• Hot Chip
  
• Ghostface Killah
  
• CocoRosie
  
• Rage Against The Machine
  
• Manu Chao
  
• Air
  
• Happy Mondays
  
• Willie Nelson
  
• the Roots
  
• Crowded House
  
• Kaiser Chiefs
  
• Placebo
  
• Lily Allen
  
• Jose Gonzalez
  
• Ratatat
  
• the Kooks
  
• CSS
  
• Lupe Fiasco

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some laminating to do and then I intend on finding myself a corner of the office in which to cry myself to sleep.

I'm a rocker. I rock out. NO - REALLY!!

Okay, well - I did this one time.

And while wasting time at work today (my boss is still away so I'm yo-yoing between terrifying new levels of responsibility and the freedom to SLACK like never before) I found the blog of a friend of a friend, Chambers, making this request about the Shihad/Datsuns concert:

Someone, please go to this and video it... i don't care if its on your cellphone, discrete pin-camera mounted glasses, handycam strapped to helmet, over the shoulder, hdcam, broadcast, film, digital film camera... make it happen please.

And funnily enough, I did go, and I do have video footage. Of Shihad and the Datsuns playing together. As in - simultaneously, like some kinda mutated Kiwi mega rockin rock band. Definitely quite the alternative to the regime of europop Chambers has apparently been suffering under lately.

Assuming my first attempt at uploading works, you can click here to watch the rather crappy quality video. I believe the track is a cover of "I See Red" as that was what was on the set list, but since the recording is off Option A) cellphone, and not Option E) HD cam, its kinda hard to tell.

Mikey (from Shaky Hands) took it on his phone - which is the same as mine, and of which I was unaware had video-taking properties until this night. Shameola. I will save you from watching the video where he demonstrates this and which features me actually saying "Oh my god. Oh my god. I'm amazed" but cuts before I launch into full blown "Dude, this shit is from the FUTURE. What else does it do? Does it have LASERS?".

As you can see in the video, Mel & I are not down amongst the 2000 other people (plebs!) but rather were hanging out backstage, thanks to the Shaky Hands boys. We are peeping out from that door, like little mice, as we'd just stormed onstage with the rest of them, chucking stuff round and letting off party poppers as part of a 'last show of the tour' prank. But we then thought twice about joining in on the stage dives and so forth - on account of our classic mini-skirted groupie attire.

goodbye Petunia!

Lou's travels have ended which means she's back in town and wants her lappy returned to her! So it is a fond farewell to "Petunia" the lovely wee iBook that I have cared for while she has been traversing. I will be very sad to say goodbye to the little bundle of Mac-ing fun, speshly as I have gotten quite used to the ease of having broadband literally in my bed. And the fact that both my PCs have crapped out and are scattered in pieces around my bedroom. I've started to think of them as installation art.

But I saw my therapist this afternoon so am coming to grips with the whole debacle and the process of readjustment. Also: buying new shoes helped too!



(Please note this photo was taken in a mystery location and not in the aforementioned bedroom containing computer scrap installation art and other piles of crap everywhere).

I should now really be burning off all the files that have accumulated over the last few months so that Lou has some space left on this puppy and can't perve through all my stuff (BECAUSE PRIVACY IS OBVIOUSLY SUCH AN ISSUE FOR ME). But instead I keep getting distracted and reminiscing and so forth...

Like, remember that time I was a freaky vampire child-lady and went around luring people into bed and looking like all I vanted to do vas suck thier blooodddd...



Ha ha ha, good times, great value!

These pics crack me up too - they're from when Pete had just moved into his apartment and it was all polished wood floors, bare walls, minimal furniture. I said I felt like I was in a photo shoot it was so stark and stylish, and was doing the whole thing from Absolutely Fabulous when Patsy gets 'Hello magazine' in and keeps going "Welcome...to my gracious kitchen...". (You know! You know! Come on... am i the ONLY one who has, like, every episode of that WHOLE show memorised?!)



However, Pete's adding of a large carving knife to the shot makes it a bit more 'Hitchcock movie' than 'Hello magazine'!!



That was a very good night. Ebony and I had gone to a WCC launch of the 'Summer City' thing at the City Gallery (well, technically I had SNUCK IN but whoo! how naughty, sneaking into the opening drinks of a council-funded public festival). The highlight of the night, and by highlight I mean EXTREMELY TRAUMATISING OCCURANCE, was Kerry Prendergast's attendance. Of course it was expected she would be there, she was doing the key note speech thingy, so maybe it wasn't so much her attendance - as her appearance.

Because our honourable mayor was wearing a skin tight pale pink boob tube. Why on earth would any grown woman do this you may well ask? All the better to show off the body paint with, of course! She was covered in the stuff. All over her neck, arms, shoulders, back... and front bits. Admittedly, it was a really beautiful job - obviously done by a talented professional and with real skill. And apparently it was in theme with the Summer Festival. But all the same... EWW.

As you can imagine, we got pretty smashed with the free drinks and the needing to cope with never knowing if you were going to turn around and brush against the half-naked mayor of our city (whom pretty much everyone resents, FYI out-of-towners, as her husband is a property developer who scores suspiciously good deals on urban planning). And then we went to Pete's place and terrorized him and Max who had been trying to have a quiet glass o wine and watch a DVD. Fools. That'll teach them to answer the door. When the buzzer is ringing incessantly on account of being held down non-stop cause that is soooo funny!!

But that brings me to my next pic - which will have to be the last I think! Its getting bloody late and as a semi-hysterical text from Samuel J just reminded me, M Ward is in da house! woot!



That is Max, with a big chunk of Santa Claus beardy fluff stuck to his eyebrow with my slobber. A result of us trying to entertain ourselves during the extremely pants Twinset opening act before the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra's Christmas show.

I was so tired that night and Twinset were so pants and I wound up leaving early - after they (WIUO) played 'Ring My Bell' actually. So, not early early, but before the actual end of the show. But I was happy and had had my fill and it was the right ending for me, you know? I just had that feeling. When you realise the night has reached your personal zenith, regardless of what everyone else's timeline is. Happened to me at the final Trinity Roots concert. They'd played a truly beautiful version of one of my favourite (if I had to pick) of their songs and I was near bawling at them saying their farewells onstage and knew I wanted to walk out with their music flowing around me, rather than in the swarm of people. Its a kind of instinctual thing, about personal satisfaction and connection... Maybe you think I'm crazy and not getting my ticket's worth, maybe you've had that buzz too.

Okay well now I've bloody rambled on so maybe ONE MORE piccie heehee!



Mars & Bel: "Ooh yeah! We are so cool! Heehee!"
Tanya: "Shut up. No you are not. If you were, your hair would remain beautiful in all weather conditions, like mine. Fools."

boy, even tho I love you

I saw these guys open for the Black Seeds a couple years ago and they just owned. It was awesome. They're called Opensouls and they have their debut album out, Kaleidoscope, which I own and highly recommend. It has quite a hip hop element, with lots of soul and funky stuff happening, not much of that compulsory Kiwi dub - and it will definitely improve your summer - let alone your Northern hemisphere winter!

Breakfast of Champions

There has to be a pretty good reason to get me dragged out of bed early in the morning. And by early, I mean 7am. But the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra definitely counts as one of these.

This morning was their last performance at Deluxe for the year and it was spectacular. You've got a chance to check it out yourself - because a) Jacqui Brown was there, filming for Campbell Live (screening next week apparently) and also b) they have a gig next Friday at the San Francisco Bathhouse.

In the meantime, feast your eyes on this. The quality is a bit crappy at the start, but bear with me, as its a cover from one of my favourite groups and heavily features Ebony's boyfriend, Age Pryor. Ok, technically, not her boyfriend at all, but - you know - DETAILS DETAILS.

Oh a playful little kitten

If this does not make you two parts bubbly happy excited, one part panicky desparate won't be calm til ticket in hand and just a little sprinkle of longing for time pass mixed with needing time to go slow so can learn everything off by heart, well then GOLLY I just don't know what's wrong with you!!

In other news, I am unwell. Tis consumption I believe. I have all the symptoms: a wracking cough, feverish brow, quite wan looking ...um... I know lots of French ...quite possibly wasting away, oh yes ...um, yeah. I have been bedridden, woe is me, but am doing better. Thank you for your concern.

Special Guest Post! Rebecca Trelease in her own words:

First of all, lets get a few things straight. Why 'Trelease'? There were two Rebecca's in the last year of uni so by default it went to the surname. However, the other Rebecca hasn't been around for more than a couple of years now so lets get it back to the original status, huh? I'm mostly annoyed by the fact I didn't even get a The prefix, as in The Bartlett. I'm so jealous of that I'm totally going back to Rebecca (although it did cause some confusion as I was introduced around Wellington. Eddie met Trelease but was told he would be hanging out with Rebecca so he had NO idea who I was when I climbed into the car).

Bel and I both did the BCS so I knew of her from first year. I always thought she was really cool right from the start but alas she hated me. Although, I remember before we actually started hanging out or knowing too many people in common (i.e. only Shane and Gareth) she saw me walking around mega stressed at Uni one day and she walked over and gave me a big hug. Which I thought was lovely. Over the years we met at random parties, but the one she mentioned at my house - why did you come if you hated me so much! Although she did encourage me to have the vodka and orange juice that ended the night for me, so maybe it was all planned... *

Right. Wellington.

I managed to make it all alone into the city, except I got off at the wrong stop and totally ruined my grand entrance outside the St James. Was there for about 5 minutes before I was sat down with a stapler, stickers and pamphlets. Spent a couple of hours in the most gorgous but very uncomfortable costume from 'My Fair Lady', my hat made me 10ft tall but it squished my brains and the elastic cut into my chin. But no biggy. *

Explored every floor in Te Papa. This visit was a lot more educational than the last one where Bel just pointed to it and said 'well thats Te Papa'. *

That night, drinks at the Hawthorne (which I thought was the Matterhorne) and roasted marshmallows with Ebony, Sam and Sarah-Kay. Now Bel had talked this place up, how they have 'Connect 4' and lots of board games. They had cards for poker. That's it. We considered a round of Snap but instead ate more marshmallows. Went to the Matterhorne where I met Melissa but they didn't have any confectionary so we left.

We explored the Art Gallery which featured Sam Taylor-Wood * and while it showed random pieces of her other works, the main 'attraction' were her photos of actors crying (www.city-gallery.org.nz/mainsite/). We had both heard about it and had our criticisms before seeing it and I'm happy to report that it did absolutely nothing to sway our opinions of getting hired emoters to emote on cue and then call it an 'intimate portrayal of grief'. At one extreme was Philip Seymour Hoffman who actually looked like it could be an honest portrait, to Robert Downey Junior who seems to have a very elaborate way of lying himself out on a bed to cry. Although he did keep it modest. And don't get me started on the David Beckham video of him 'sleeping'. He wasn't. It was probably very difficult getting comfortable wearing massive diamond earrings and bracelets and flexing the pecs but it was by no means 'sleeping'. It was totally worth paying to see just so we could spend the whole time criticising the 'drawcard' of the exhibition. (note: The first part of her exhibition is quite good, especially 'strings'. Just not the crying thing).

Bel's brother Eddie took us on a tour of Parliament. As a security guard he would be in charge of Lost and Found so we handed over a soggy and dejected pink teddy bear found on the path. He also didn't need to go through (or explain) the security checkpoints, so as he kept walking we were stopped and I said 'but we're with him' (meaning he needs to stop or we'll lose him and don't know what we're doing) but being told 'that doesn't mean anything to us' in a very snotty manner as if I was trying to smuggle in stuff. However, that was when Bel was caught with (heaven forbid) her mobile to which he was quite horrified. * The question session in Parliament was a bit boring, when they start yelling you can't work out what they're saying. And no-one asked the tough hard-hitting question: Who lost their pink teddy bear?

Bel tells me we're going to 'Pao Pao Pao'. I had no idea what it was about but it starts and everyone is talking Te Reo. With no translations. However I'm sitting next to Cam and he was laughing away and agreeing with what's being. What I learnt: Pakipake means clap! Canicani means dance! We most enjoyed the performance by Hinemoana Baker (www.hinemoana.co.nz), and ended up seeing a second performance by her at The Marae in Te Papa. I've since heard her version of 'Secret Love'; the only other person I've heard sing this is Mandy Moore and I must say both versions are excellent.

Bridgit's wedding was beautiful and I was very honoured to be Bel's 'date' for this event. We did have to run off to Turnbull House for the Anthology Launch * in the middle (where Bel presented another glorious poem of hers) and I did have a moment out the window of 'That building looks like that main Parliament building. Oh, it is Parliament.' The night continued with our appearances at Mighty Mighty, The Hawthorne, Salsa night at the Jimmy and concluded with a Rosebud cocktail at Motel.

Random thoughts:

• Never seen Malasian restaurants before but they are GREAT.


• Whats up with only having fancy lemonade in glass bottles all the time, can't a girl get a decent watered down, overly carbonated Sprite? If I'm paying $8 for vodka do you think I give a hoot about the lemonade?!!


• The 'walk' signals are incredibly loud.No one waits for a 'walk' signal. The entire group would start crossing so I would too instead of being a scared loner because the man was still red! It took me one day to start running across whenever like a Wellingtonian.


• Yes, California Sushi must always be spoken with a reverent tone.


• Bel's friends in Wellington are all very lovely and I enjoyed meeting them all.

* Bel here, chipping in because I'm the editor and that's my perogative. I would've been in attendance at the at-the-time dreaded Trelease's party because Shane or Gareth or BOTH was so in love with her back then. Another contributing factor to my depising - ya know how possessive I was of those boys. About the same level as I am of Trelease now.
No comment on the drink thing tho. Heh heh hee...

* This is referring to the photo shoot I intended to involuntarily recruit Trelease for, mentioned in this post, which it turned out she hadn't read and therefore was oblivious to our broadcast weekend itinerary!

* We were in a hurry, people!! I thought our time would be better spent eating gelati at Oriental Bay... good call, right?

* Yes, I went along. Yes, this was partially because Trelease offered to shout me. Yes I folded over the sticker pass they make you wear at the door so I didn't have to wander around the building with that pink-shirted sap Hayden Christiansen attached to my body. However, I wholehearted agree with Rebecca's comments about the REST of the photographs/films included, and I think I felt even more strongly about them. Her images The Leap and Self Portrait As A Tree has such impact on me, much more so than some fucken actor working up crocodile tears in front of another lens.

* The 'he' being the snooty security guard that this, not my brother - who is just a regular security guard, feeling cool wearing his radio ear piece n all. The guy had a freakin MARE at me, as it was just before entering the actual, um, chamber? is that what they call it? ...am trying to think back to Social Studies... Anyway - pulled out my phone to put it on silent and they acted like I busted out a glock or something, honestly. What, am I going take scandalous photos of them flipping the bird to each other?! whoo!!

* You can read more about the launch of the NZPS 2006 Anthology here. As well as being Assistant Editor for the collection, and doing the typesetting and cover design, I had a poem included, called 'Long Letters'. Some of you may know it from my zine 'The Knife Thrower's Apprentice' - I'll probably post it up here some time soon anyhow... it went down pretty well on Saturday :)



Ok, better hop to it and get this posted. Trelease - I mean, Rebecca sent this through before COB as request but I somehow got busy and then had to head home from the office and THEN had all kinds of distractions, like ohhh I don't know sussinganewflatmate and stuff like that!!

Could someone please acknowledge two things? 1) my awesome anchor tags doing the whole footnote thang and 2) how I let the whole Mandy Moore thing slide. 'Cause you know she ain't trying to be funny at all there. K, sweet.

(filmed inside a) garage rock (indie pop)

Nik & Bevan are Over The Atlantic and currently they are over the Atlantic, doing a mad 25 date tour of the States. I have one of the gorgeous posters from their farewell gig, which i bought for ten bucks to help fundraise. Nik autographed it for me like the superstar he is and thanked me for my contribution, as it would gratefully go towards an inflight meal. Bless.

Shapeshifter with live orchestrizzle

Beforehand I was like "do I even like Shapeshifter? what songs do they sing, Sam?" for which I nearly got the smackdown but jokes aside, I hadn't yet heard any of their new album and was rather more looking forward to their warm up act, Ladi6.

She was fantastic, of course, accompanied by Parks on the decks, who did lots of singing too. Casually dressed, Ladi6 commented early on she was more used to a club setting. The Opera House was barely half full at this stage, with everyone firmly in their seats. But she visibly relaxed a couple of songs in and one of her last tracks will surely be a single from her debut solo album (due in April, so she said!). Intro-ing it with "Keeping it in the family, this is one I wrote with my cousin..." she launched into a funky song that was great hip hop but still very soulful too (what I like best about Ladi6). Of course it does help when your cousin is NZ's top hip hop artist AKA Scribe - they got their start together in a very cool group called Verse Two I think...?! I'm sure Sam Brown will correct me :P

Anyhoo, then Shapeshifter were on. Woot.
Haha jokes! Their first half was performed with the Vector Wellington Orchestra. Two amazing live acts and it was incredible seeing them perform together. The Shapeshifter guys were all in ties and shirts too, which was very cute. Keeping up appearances! I would have loved to have seen more experimentation go on, though I guess they were on a limited time frame in terms of rehearsal. It just felt like none of their songs had been restructed to accomodate for these wonderfully talented funky classical musicians: you'd just be hearing a Shapeshifter song - yes, granted, a pretty damn exciting live version - but then there'd just be some strings going on in the background or whatever. I thought they'd at least do something like have a big symphonic opening and then go BOOM! and have a massive drop come in and bust out some crazy drum n bass stuff and fuse the two together...but... nah.
However the sold-out crowd was absolutely lovin it and i don't think a single person was sitting in their seat. Or if you were sitting, you could not sit still. From the bass vibrations if nothing else!! The second half was pure Shapeshifter and they brought out an MC called Electric Puha, a guy from Queenstown I think, who was just fantastic. Such great energy and a nice balance to P Diggss. (Also, they changed their outfits, into like, tee-shirts and caps and stuff. Well played). My favourite bit was when they did like a medley and sampled all sorts of tracks/lyrics - the obligatory FFD (he'd already done the shout-out to Dallas in the dress circle) and I got delirious when I heard them referencing the Roots -woot!!

My other favourite bit was bumping into this guy that I was sort of dating at the start of the year. It fizzled out for various reasons and the few times I have seen him round since he has studiously managed to avoid seeing me. However the last time we crossed paths, he was barrelling down Courtenay with a blonde in tow, their fingers entwined in a way that screamed coupledom. I was like "awwh" because I'd gotten the impression he was quite keen to suss something like that. And so then I saw him again at this gig as I arrived with Sam and finally I get a hullo out of him! And so I was telling Sam who he was (back story: he'd come to look at a spare room in our flat and I was like 'hmm you may be too cute to live here' ...I'd been left unsupervised to vet the new flatmates COMPLETE SHAMBLES) and Sam was all 'no morality' which he seems to say A LOT and then I was like 'oooh he so only said hi cause he thinks that I'm here with some boy and he's all awwh she found someone nice but actually UM NO just cause i didn't want to date you doesn't mean I've found someone else so HAH... yeah!!' and Sam was like 'you sure showed him'.

Ok I've just realised how insanely late it is and this may explain why I am writing so insanely. I also wanted to cover Hinepau, Coldcut and Toi Cabaret but perhaps not. One word summaries: Funny. Funky. Underdressed.
Also: Hinepau was in Upper Hutt and me and Melissa were cracking all these jokes on the way up and telling ourselves off for being such baiches and then the moment - literally the moment - we stepped out of the car, the first person that walked past, clearly a local, was not wearing shoes. I clutched my handbag closer to myself. Melissa tried to get back in the car and make a dash for it but I had an obligation to attend the performance and damn we were glad we did. One of the most entertaining shows I think I've ever seen - lucky kids having something like that aimed at them.

Will add some links tomorrow: [Taaah DAHH!!]
Shapeshifter Vector Wellington Orchestra Ladi6 Hinepau Coldcut Ninja Tune Toi Cabaret The Package [where I got that pic of Shapeshifter rockin the Opera House from]

entertain me

Sean let me take him to the opera last night. Its a good sign for a budding friendship when you curse at the dimming lights for interrupting your flow of conversation! We had just got stuck into discussing his latest photography project and I was tentatively sharing for the first time my ideas for....well, a kind of art project-thing. And then APPARENTLY it got all important for the show to start.

Ok well this was going to be a much longer, more rambling post, covering how i got to catch some of the Polyfest rehearsals in the afternoon and how I scrambled in to Happy and just caught the "um we've played our whole set but if you really want another song we could play one of them again?!" of my flatmate Simon's gig, but just had a lovely early morning catch up with Cam so no time!

Cam is enthralled by a novel that sounds dreadful. I love hearing his enthusiasm tho. He said "oh yes you'd hate it" and compared it to Franzen's The Corrections which I'll admit is well written but still a total suckfest. I'm currently back in the midst of Girlfriend In A Coma by Douglas Coupland. This book has such a impact on me when i first read it and I'm finding it just as rewarding now. It's so different to his other stuff, nothing of that Bret Easton Ellisish stuff going on - its very much in the world of the characters - and then that world just spins out of control. If you didn't dig where the narrative of The Lovely Bones wound up journeying too, I don't know if I'd recommend it, as this book requires an open mind, or at least appeals to those with a tinge of sci-fi. It's so beautifully written, great imagery. I read a section to Cam the other night and as I said it aloud there was even more richness than I'd noticed the first (second) time round:

"Karen lit a Number 7 cigarette, her bony cheeks inflamed with blood, pink in the Bic lighter's heat, like a doll in a burning doll house"

Just a snippet - I'll add more later when I'm in a less precarious position to be arrving late for work. Am currently still in bed, unwashed and unfed. Quelle horreur!

...

Ok here it is ...enjoy:

...we rose up again, up the mountain on a bobbing chairlift that stalled halfway up the slope. And it was there that the arc lights also blinked, then skittered, then blackened. In the pitch dark, Karen and I sat bouncing, stuck, suspended above raw nature, our faces blue jeans-blue from the Moon. Karen lit a Number 7 cigarette, her bony cheeks inflamed with blood, burning pink in the Bic lighter's heat, like a doll in a burning doll house. My arm draped over her shoulder; we both felt safe, as if we were a complete solar system unto ourselves, dangling in the sky, warm heated planets inside a universe of stars.

That's from chapter two 'Every idea in the world is wrong'.
Have just finished chapter 10 'One day you will speak with yourself' and am forcing myself to slow down and not plough through it!!