fun bonding activities like throwing axes & shooting guns

Christmas is great, because it gives business organisations an excuse to ignore whatever spiritual connotations are behind the season and instead just be nice and debaucherous here at the end of the year.

For our work do, it was decided we'd go out to a luxury farm (OXYMORON) and do some some fun bonding activities like throwing axes & shooting guns before sitting down for a huge boozy lunch.

The office manager said I'd get an extra pressie if I came dressed up, so I scrambled together an outfit resembling the Ghost of Christmas Past - appropriate as, of course, our workplace is a nearly 100 year old theatre which has several ghosts.

In fact, at the moment we are without a Technical Manager (head of the backstage crew) and so the roster just has "Yuri" on 24/7 - who is the resident ghost and known for playing tricks, particularly with electrical things, as he worked in that department. The most recent 'sighting' was Monday night...!

Anyway, turns out the prize was more for 'most gullible' than for my actual awesome costume and I didn't get any extras goodies - boohoo!

But as we were playing that standard office Christmas party game where you're numbered off and people can pinch presents off each other, wouldn't have made much difference. I was second to go and therefore got shafted - anyone else who wanted to was able to literally take whatever I had outta my hands! Truly in the spirit of Christmas.


We quickly got onto the activities as we were only allowed one drink before arming ourselves and most people were keen to have more. Isn't it funny how this time of year makes everyone want to drink like a fish? I guess we're all just feeling so ready for a break and to relax.

As you can see from the pics, I had a go at the axe throwing first. The most terrifying thing wasn't so much that I might hit myself in the arse swinging it back over my head, but that the guy supervising looked about twelve years old. Seriously, it was like, are you qualified for this? Can I see ID? Can you lift this tomahawk with those spindly arms my child?

Got a pic here of one of the techie guys kindly removing the axes from the target for me. As you can see, it turns out I have quite an eye for this thing.

Also please note, its a case of Steal Her Style here with Neill choosing to rock the sleeveless hoodie outfit I was wearing - though he went with the conventional black rather than sparkly silver like mine.

All of the guys that work backstage are referred to as being on or from "the dark side" and when you occasionally seeing them wearing blue jeans instead of black, commenting on it will get you a gruff reply in keeping with their well maintained tough guy demeanour.

Next up was the target shooting - it was a 22 rifle if I remember rightly, though I'm sure some boffin will take one look at the pic and correct me. Twas my first time ever holding a gun I think and I made the mistake of going after Ciara, who's Irish and been in their equivalent of the territorials and pretty much owned.

I do quite like that the shawl and sunglasses give me a bit of a 'British hieress on safari' look tho, very fab.

The damn gun kept jamming which was quite annoying and made me wonder how entirely effective the whole shooting thing must be in a warfare type situation...?! But at least it gave me something to blame for hardly ever hitting the target. Tiny wee thing that it was.

[PS: don't forget you should be able to click on the photos to see larger versions]

So all in all was a rather fun day and I got a HILARIOUS joke in my cracker so am quite pleased overall. Of course, for last year's Christmas do, at my old work, we got to have a private screening of Brokeback Mountain two months before public release - and EVERYONE was dressed up as cowboys, gay or otherwise, and I seem to recall being quite slaughtered on frozen margaritas by the end of the night.

But hey - this year, I got to find out what a luxury farm is like. And apparently it means they have artwork on the walls, but they fasten it just by screwing it on straight through the front. Awesome.

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.

Its like the WGTN theatre Oscars basically

For those of you interested, the nominations are up for this year's Chapman Tripp's.
You can read all about it over on Theatreview.

Unfortunately I missed Yours Truly which has dominated with a total of nine noms amongst the 20 categories, but one of my favourites from the year is there, Death of a Salesman, which was at Circa. I see Kerry Fox is up for one of the acting awards... hmm I think the locals will be spitting tacks if that happens!
Congrats vicariously to Lou - I see that Golden Boys gets a mention thanks to Erin Banks' Supporting Actress nomination :)

Edit: Please note also that in my hurry to get this up when I got the email notification from the Theatreview website, I neglected to notice that Miss Steph's production of Wheel has also been nominated! Its up for the Peter Harcourt Award for Outstanding New Playwright :D ...at this rate I'm going to have to go along to the shindig myself and do all sorts of repping!

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!!