Sudden

Scottish rock legend Nikki Sudden, guitarist for Swell Maps (1977-1980), one of my favourite bands - and one of the greatest and most fun and original punk outfits - has died.

R.I.P. Nikki Sudden.

Lem

Polish author Stanislaw Lem, one of the greatest ever writers in the science-fiction genre, has died.

R.I.P. Stanislaw Lem.

Buddies

You may have noticed that a couple new drinking-buddies have appeared over there in the sidebar. You may not have, either. Either way, please join me in welcoming Jen "Smacked Face" and Mr. Stephen Rowe's "Food and Plastics". Cheers.

Law pt. 2: The Saga Continues

Gave up waiting to hear back from the fool TradeMe seller of my lemon VCR; just took a couple of minutes to leave some exquisitely-composed negative feedback on him:

The sort of idiot who'd sell you a VCR which requires the remote control in order to be able to be tuned, without the remote control. And then when you complain, suggest you sell it to some other sucker. And then stop responding to emails. And so on. Avoid him like the plague he is; may he never become not "broke-as".

Despite the great joy it would give me to drag his sorry ass down to Wellington - at his own expense - to answer a case in the Disputes Tribunal, I can't really conscionably spend that much of the public's money to do so; guess it's Safe Trader for this whigga for now on.

Feed

Just a quick heads up: If any of you have been "subscribing" to this blog using the 2RSS site, because your feed-managers or whatever don't support Atom-formatted feeds, and are fed up with the stoopid "ADV"erts they insert in the feed, check out for new versions. I know that the new version of the one I use, FeedReader 2.9, happily now supports Atom-formatted feeds. Yay me.

My feeds, again:

PIL

YouTube strikes again: watch video of the very great Public Image Ltd. performing Poptones and Careering (two of their greatest songs, from Metal Box) on Dick Clark's American Bandstand circa 1980. Clark later famously referred to the episode as the worst moment in the show's history.


See John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon turn the farcical mandatory lip-syncing appearance into something resembling a situationist action, or a riot; see him literally dragging people out of the audience and onto the stage; see the New Wave robot-dance guy; see drummer Martin Atkins resolutely ignore the carnage and pull off brilliant live drum embellishment on Careering; see Lydon playing Atkins' drums with his wireless mic, before handing it to an audience member and encouraging her to sing for him; etc. etc. Hell, it's a treat to just see Keith Levene and Jah Wobble on the stage at the same time.

Favourite comment (from the comments section):

So Clark thought PIL was the worst moment in the show's history? I'd say it was one of the best! Dick Clark was too old to understand what was going on there. I always hated that about AB. Their moronic lip-sync policy. They could have had an incredible library of brilliant live performances, instead of square-looking phony performances. Lydon turned this into a slap in the face to that policy, and brewed up his own live performance in the process. Lydon is sharp as a blade.

Podcast

A wee while back, I did a podcast for online music zine Foxy Digitalis. You can find it here (right-click and Save As to download) (the podcast directory-page here). It was a lot of fun; I even, in a move which has been referred to as "inspired", got my robot fixed up well enough to do the voice-breaks.

A podcast is basically a radio show, but one which you can download or stream whenever you want. (Wikipedia: podcasting).

The tracklist:
Robyn Hitchcock "Welcome to Earth" from Spooked
Main "Corona part II" from Hz
Scorn "Black box" from Gyral
Jesu "Sun day" from Jesu
Disco Inferno "Footprints in snow" from D.I. Go Pop
Sonny Sharrock "Blind Willie" from Guitar
Rosy Parlane "#1" from #1-4
John Fahey "Let go" from Let go
Thela "Look out! The fucking hot jet" from V/A Le Jazz Non compilation
CJA "2:23" from Ironclad
Chris Bell "Speed of sound" from I am the cosmos
Red Krayola "Container of drudgery (never had a name)" from Blues, hollers and hellos
The Dead C "The marriage of reason and squalor" from Operation of the sonne
Bailter space "Ore" from Robot world
K-Group + Omit "Slow movement towards the abyss" from Slow movement 7"

Law

Helluva week. Man, this blogging game is hard work sometimes. So's this 'being around other people and not shooting them' game. Actually, the hardest part about that is not having gun. The 'being a part of a vibrant democratic society' bit is a piece of cake by compare. But I digress... so yeah, helluva week. Having narrowly avoided an employment-law wrangle, and staring down the barrel of a tenancy-law dispute, I now find myself in the midst of a consumer-law wrangle.

So I bought this piece-a-shit VCR player off of TradeMe. It was a fucken lemon. No remote control.. and guess what? You can't tune it without the remote. Needless to say this wasn't mentioned in the 'auction' listing. Here's the guts of my most recent email in the discussion:

Dude, you're required under consumer law to sell goods in working order. Selling a VCR that can't be tuned without the remote - which you didn't supply - isn't in correct working order.
[...]
So... refund please. Or I'll see you in the small claims court. And guess what. I hope you like Wellington, cos you'll have to come here to answer the case.

And then I was like, "Holy SHIT! I hope I'm right.." I mean, I know I'm right about the guy having to come to Wellington; I've been told this by a kick-ass lawyer who knows his shit. But, does the Sale Of Goods act second-hand gear protection apply to internet transactions? Hmm.. I guess I'm-a ring the hotline tomorrow and find out.

Meanwhile, hit me with your TradeMe/eBay horror stories. Or, am I the only whigga with one of those (first one, y'dig, after hundreds and hundreds of transactions, me still Mr. 254/100%).

In other news just to hand, the new Ghostface Killah album Fishscale dropped recently, and it kicks serious ass. It harks back the the heady heights of his debut Ironman, or 2000's Supreme Clientele. I'm not gonna post a mp3 from the album, tho' - we gonna nod to some of what many consider his finest hour - I Can't go to Sleep from the Wu Tang Clan's 2000 album The W. Featuring conscious, emotional rhyming from Ghost, a huge hook from Isaac Hayes' version of Walk On By (from 1969' s Hot Buttered Soul) and vocal stylings from the big guy himself, it's truly a sublime slab of modern soul-jive. The RZA aka Bobby Digital even chimes in with the final verse.

Wu Tang Clan - I Can't Go To Sleep (feat. Ghostface Killah, Bobby Digital and Isaac Hayes) (right-click and Save As to download)

Enjoy.

(look out for Law pt. 2: The Saga Continues shortly)

Which post-punk band are you?

I literally couldn't resist.

You scored as The Fall. Manchester's The Fall are one of the most prolific and enduring of the original post-punk bands. Mark E. Smith's surrealist rants and idiosyncratic brand of 'Country & Northern' continue to command a large cult following, their debut, 1979's 'Live at the Witch trials' is as good a place to start as any. The Fall 90% The Slits 83% Public Image Ltd. 83% Throbbing Gristle 83% The Teardrop Explodes 83% Gang Of Four 80% Wire 80% Joy Division 73% Cabaret Voltaire 63% The Pop Group 43% Which Post Punk band are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Fall

A wealth of Fall tidbits, courtesy of WFMU's Beware of the Blog.

The Fall vs. Jools Holland: The "Heads Roll" Fall lineup on Later with Jools Holland, ripping through "versions" of Pacifying Joint, I Can Hear The Grass Grow (cover of the Move tune), and Blindness (right-click and Save-As to download REALMOVIE file) (WFMU link here). "Under giant hulking letters spelling out 'Fall', Smith warbles, barks, tampers with his wife's keyboard, and is, in other words, great". Check out the end of the clip - he really can't leave that Korg alone!

And here's Mark E Smith participating with someone out of The Undertones in a TV panel eulogy for John Peel (right-click and Save-As to download REALMOVIE file). And if that wasn't fun enough, here's him reading the football results on a TV sports show (right-click and Save-As to download REALMOVIE file) and taking the piss out of one of the presenters' haircut. (WFMU link here).

BTW, in case you were wondering, Fall Heads Roll is a fantastic record.

Bully

In light of the ongoing David Benson-Pope tediousness, I'm considering composing a letter to the Director of Operations at Stagecoach Wellington, demanding that one of their drivers be immediately dismissed. I had heard through the grapevine that "Mr. L", the maths teacher and notorious "bully of F Block" at my old college, had been fired for his inappropriate disciplinary methods; on having recently ridden in a couple of downtown buses driven by "L" I'm pretty confident that the rumour has been sufficiently substantiated.

I was actually lucky; my 5th form year occurred only just after the mandate for corporal punishment was taken away from teachers. But if even only a few of the stories that went around about this guy were true, he demonstrated enough 'poor judgement' such that he should not, in my opinion, ever be allowed behind the wheel of a bus. How on earth could he be replied upon to demonstrate good judgement when it is called for now; when required, for example to drive the correct way down a one-way street. Or to answer competently when enquired of whether or not his bus goes "down Courtenay Place".

Given his history, it's simply farcical that this man be allowed to continue serving the public.

Meanwhile, Bully is also the name of the 2001 film by Larry Clark (he of Kids and Ken Park fame|infamy), which is based on the true story of how seven Florida teenagers conspire to murder one of their mates, the titular bully. Somewhat chilling, kinda clinical but at the same time kinda raging angry - and despite the frequent and explicit sex scenes and the at-times seemingly meandering plot - it's quite a good film. Not everyone agrees though; I recall one review which insisted that Mr. Clark never be let behind the lens of a camera again. There's another review behind the image; IMDB entry here; Wiki here.

Spanky

This is cute. I don't really get it, though.

(click image to enlarge)

Chewie

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

*wipes eyes*

Courtesy of Smacked Face, I bring you... HRRR GLLLRRR UGhRR! (or, Chewie's Blog).

Pizza

Newly discovered evidence that not only is David Farrar a cock, he also doesn't know shit about pizza.



(UPDATE: see 'Pizza Redux').

Control

'A Scanner Darkly' Reveals Near Future Police State

(Much amused by the description as "A-list stars" of Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr. Or did I miss something.)


Ok, well, to an extent they're preaching to a captive audience on that particular site, and it's all very amusing, but the key points remain: the film adaptation of Philip K Dick's seminal novel is imminent. A Scanner Darkly is being created and directed by Richard Linklater in a style similar to that of his well-loved Waking Life - combining 'live' action footage with animation - via interpolated rotoscoping.

Quite frankly, you couldn't ask for a filmic technique more suited to the hallucinatory prose and claustrophobic narrative of the novel.

Plot Summary:
Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive drug Substance D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him. To do so, Fred takes on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob Arctor. And since Substance D -- which Arctor takes in massive doses -- gradually splits the user's brain into two distinct, combative entities, Fred doesn't realize he is narcing on himself.

Caustically funny, eerily accurate in its depiction of junkies, scam artists, and the walking brain-dead, Philip K. Dick's industrial-grade stress test of identity is as unnerving as it is enthralling.

PKD (official site) A Scanner Darkly news here. David's (now year-old) pointless and absurd post about it here (trailer).

ADSL 2

Re: ADSL, on Campbell Live tonight the entire show is dedicated to the NZ + broadband + debacle issue; including, apparently, an appearance by Theresa Gattung, Telecom CEO. Presumably there to "defend the indefensible", as they say. And I'm not referring to her dress sense, despite her bizarre proclivity for Chairman Mao-alike high-collared pea-jackets ("mao jackets").

VD

Hmmm... so St. Valentine's Day came and went, as it is wont to do, once more.

It's a funny old thing, the V-day thing, eh? I've always thought it was a load of bollocks myself, a "hallmark holiday" as they say, invented by an American greeting card company in order to sell greeting cards.

Doesn't ever seem to have mattered how eloquently I explain this to women, though - I always get in trouble if I don't make an effort. No amount of reasoning can buy me an exemption, either. I even said to someone, once, "if you believe in Valentine's Day so bad, why don't you send me flowers" - my argument being the very reasonable one that I wouldn't, for example, expect her to take me to a one-day cricket game, so that I could try to convince her how great cricket is. You can imagine how well that went down - I might as well have announced myself as a holocaust-denier, or some other comparable contemporary reprobatish-type.

Of course, you can't even get away with playing lip-service to the tradition; you can't be self-conscious and/or sarcastic and/or even ironic. Any hint that you're not 100% sincere and you might as well be confessing to a multitude of infidelities, such is the depth and manner of shit you'll find yourself in.

So, I suck it in, man-up, and play the game.

Does that make me weak?

I think it does.

Fun Things to Do For Valentines Day
1. Hang around in a florist's, pretending to be an awkward, shy man who's waiting for everyone else to leave the shop so you can order flowers to be delivered to your wife/gf/whatever with the minimum of embarrassment, while secretly laughing at the awkward, shy men who are waiting for you to leave the shop so they can order flowers to be delivered to their wife/gf/whatever with the minimum of embarrassment.
2. When filling in the card to be delivered to your wife/gf/whatever with the flowers, hum and hah and suck on the pen and look pained, and ask "What do you think I should write?". Wait for the expressions of pity and scorn.
3. Compose some utterly appalling poetry, write it in a card, and have it delivered to your wife/gf/whatever with the flowers.
4. Compose some utterly appalling poetry, write it in a card, and have it delivered to your wife/gf/whatever without any flowers.
5. Send ugly flowers. (Yes, they do exist.)
6. Send flowers that smell bad (Yes, they exist as well.)
7. Send a huge bunch of flowers anonymously to the woman that works next to your wife/gf/whatever.
8. Expect that since you dropped $80 on having a huge bunch of flowers delivered to your wife/gf/whatever, you'll get laid.
9. Expect that since you dropped $80 on having a huge bunch of flowers delivered to your wife/gf/whatever, you'll at least get a hand-job.
10. Swear that you'll never observe the ritual of St. Valentine's Day again. (Hah. It'll never happen.) (I'm serious.)

Bloody Mary

"These Arabs are crazy!" That's what I reckon Obelix would be saying to Asterix right now. Don't worry, I don't have the conceit to try to add anything to the debate. Anyhow my thoughts have already been echoed by many prominent Arab-media commentators, who've pointed out the regular publication in newspapers across many of the Islamic nations of hugely derogatory and racists cartoons depicting jesus, christians, jews, and westerners in general; publication, I hardly need to add, which has gone without the accompanying killing, rioting, burning; indeed, any kind of protest at all. I really, really, really can't get my head around the hypocrisy and gall of the protesters. "Let him who is without sin" etc.

I can't believe I just quoted jesus, but there you go.

All this leads nicely to the next secularism vs. religion; genuine satire vs. offensiveness; cultural-freedom vs. cultural-transgression meltdown - the South Park "Bloody Mary" episode. Yep, South Park, the regular crossers-of-the-line as far as the bounds of acceptability go, did an episode which features a menstruating statue of the virgin mary. NZ catholics are demanding the episode be pulled from screening, and calling for an advertising boycott.

I normally have not the slightest bit of sympathy for catholics of any description. I'm willing to bend my usual strict stance, however, if the pope immediately reverses the catholic church's own stance on (a) abortion, and (b) contraception; and says sorry to the Cathars. But I know that it'll be a cold day in hell before this happens. So, despite my earlier quoting from the supposed son of god, as a deliberate mark of disrespect for catholics - and in fact christians of all denominations - I'm going to go back through this post and de-capitalise all the christian-related proper nouns.

Take that, you bastard papists.

Wikipedia episode precis of the South Park episode here. "Bloody Mary" Episode Ensures South Park Guys A Bungalow In Hell article here.

Perv

Having learnt my lesson last time (and here), I'm not even going to consider posting the (rumoured) identity of the "prominent businessman and television personality" who was "due in court today for the opening of his trial on 11 charges, including one of sexual violation".

The story on Stuff.

Having name suppression means he "cannot be named until after his trial begins in Whangarei District Court today"; at which point I imagine it'll be open slather.

I expect I'll commence getting 1000's of hits via Google any time now.

ADSL

For days, well, over a week, even, I've been wondering what it was going to take to snap me out of my blogging slumber. It turns out that it was a classically-Monday infotech story on Stuff.

Broadband woes media beat-up - analyst
The research arm of Australian broker Macquarie Equities has gone in to bat for Telecom, accusing the media of a beat-up over New Zealand's broadband performance.

Well well well. I can't even be biffed doing the decent thing investigating this story any deeper, but as far as I'm concerned, the research arm of Australian broker Macquarie Equities can suck a cock. New Zealand's performance relative to Australia is irrelevant to the debate, and the issue is not, as Macquarie go to pains to point out, speed; rather the horrendous prices we are forced to pay, and the ridiculous caps that are placed on our monthly traffic.

Fuck Australia; fuck Macquarie; fuck 24Mbps, or even 3.5Mbps; I'd happily take a 256 Kbps connection for 100% of the time, if I wasn't paying through the nose for the privilege, and had to gear down to approximately dialup speed after the cap is reached. Anyway, the day when I can use much more than about 50Kbps, or even have data served up at anything like that rate - due to load on servers and networks the world over - is surely some way off.

New Zealand's broadband services regularly make me the laughing-stock of the various online communities I belong to; quite frankly, it's becoming tedious.

If you're interested in reading further about this, I can almost guarantee - without even checking - that Russell Brown has written about it at length, and without a single cussword. Wanna put a fiver on it?

Dribble

Today the pain.

Yesterday the inaugral Wgtn Art and Hangers-On 5-a-side soccer tournament in Island Bay; yes, that's right, some of the most uncoordinated artists, gallery staff, technicians, administrators, writers, tutors, Masters of Fine Arts, poets, curators, mothers, fathers, hippies, and anarchists in the local arts community convened yesterday afternoon to ostensibly kick a ball around for a few hours.

David has photos. That's me, appearing to expertly dribble the ball around and through two hippies, and generally making them look (more) foolish (than me).

Despite being beaten in both matches, and finishing near the bottom of the table after the first round, our team - Lorrie's Lunatics - won several medals.

• Best banshee-howls in-place-of competent-tackling AND best smoking-on-the-pitch - David.
• Most crafty player - Dan (and Nadine) for their matching small tight undie-shorts. I'll leave it up to you to imagine whose undie-shorts left less to the imagination.
• Best (worst) injury. Me. For this.

And the colloquial award for most fun team to watch, to us!

Yeah. Like I said, today the pain!

UPDATE

Here's a cool picture of me taking a corner kick, for some reason apparently with the bottom of my shoe.

Drag

Oh dear. Poor old Lee Tamahori got busted chatting up an undercover vice cop on Santa Monica Blvd. In drag. Here's a song in comiseration.

Sun City Girls - CCC (right-click and Save As to download)

This is a track from Sun City Girls' (official site here) album 330,003 Crossdressers from Beyond the Big Veda. Reportedly, Tamahori faces a US$5000 fine, or up to a year in jail, or both... though "normally you don't get a long jail time for this." I'm sure he's gonna be ok.

Blog

Ok I said, I will try.

1. Dropped a bit of cash at Kazu Bar (newish) last Friday night and had a brilliant night with Ms. Brown. Enough sake to get a salaryman slurring, delicious and brilliantly varied yakatori (barbequed to perfection on the dinky little barbeque under our very noses by the chef in the comedy head-gear), very fine and spicy ramen, and plum wine sorbet, which was delicate and quite lovely. The service was exemplary, and over our 4 or so hour session, the ambience delightful.

I thought I had a picture of the colossally juicy King Prawn yakatori, but it appears not. These will have to do:


Note the pom-poms.

2. Juniper for lunch yesterday - a martini and 2 bread rolls. The bread rolls were delicious - little long sourdough rolls, served hot and with olive oil and butter. On the other hand, the martini was verging on miserable, and this I related to the barman on my way out. (To be fair, he asked. I gave it to him with both barrels.) (I even - somewhat disingenously - enquired whether he'd ever made a martini before.)

This bar continues to disappoint in the way that only a bar purporting to specialise in your favourite drink - but doing it poorly - can. Was forced take refuge in The Feathers, where I gorged on Island Bay English Sausages (very fine, if that's your thing; it is mine) and mash and gravy; my companion demolished a huge and fanstastic-looking steak sandwich.

Horses. Courses.

3. A beer you must try, if you like dark beer, is the (sadly unimaginatively named) Hog Dark, on tap at The Loaded Hog and One Red Dog, down on the waterfront. It's not too heavy, and has an absolutely divine bouquet of malt extract, treacle, molasses - that kind of thing. The body and the finish do not disappoint, either. Somehow it manages to be refreshing and more-ish, which are not traits I would usually associate with a dark ale like this.

Oh, and props to Tom, imbiber-extrordanaire, for assistance with an urgent alcoholic problem yesterday.

(click an image to enlarge)

Jason Mulgrew

Hey y'all. Good weekend? Hope so. I realised it has been at least a month since I linked to Jason Mulgrew so I thought I'd take the opportunity to do so, especially since he writes some good shit about a song I love, the Beach Boys' I'm Waiting For The Day, from the Pet Sounds album.

Like he says, just a solid A+ song. Probably the most interesting arrangement on an album full of interesting arrangements. Lyrics here.

Massacree

I popped into the previously mentioned Mojo Sound (Tom also touched on this new store) the other day, and was a little disappointed. It's dark, and they don't seem to have much of sweet fuck-all. They particularly didn't have any Aphex Bass Xciter Big Bottom/Aural Exciter pedals (kinda awesomely, if you follow that link, you can listen to demonstration sound recordings), as featured recently in the December/January 2005 NZ Musician magazine (right, above, whatever). Which is a pity, because I'm all set to buy one of these sweet babies; at $295 they're absurdly cheap, especially if they're anywhere near as good as the review suggests.

I've recently become a much bigger fan of The Brian Jonestown Massacre (AMG page here) than previously I had been; this has largely down to having watched the quite fantastic documentary DiG! which covers the first seven or so years in the life of the BJM and their once-great-friends and rivals The Dandy Warhols (AMG page here). The film has gotten a lot of hype lately, and it's all deserved; it's really great. I'm sure it would even be a fascinating watch for someone who doesn't give two shits about the BJM and/or The Dandy Warhols, American indie music, indie music, or even just music, since it's really about human nature and the mechanics of genius. I'm especially now a huge fan of the divinely-carried Joel Gion (dark hair, centre) (you could do worse then to Google Image him), tambourine player with the BJM, who lit up the screen whenever he was on camera, and seemed to have the personality of an angel. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to fuck the guy, but I'd like to give him a hug. Trust me, you'll understand if you ever see the film.

A long time ago at a band-practice Ross once said something that has stuck with me ever since. He said "the talent of a band, and their motivation to 'succeed', are normally in directly inverse proportion to each other". Or something along those lines. DiG! is a perfect illustration of this principle, as we watch the demonstrably less-talented and less-interesting Dandys rise to a certain degree of super-stardom (in the "indie" world, anyway - it's all relative, dig) and the profoundly better Massacre sputter and tragically fizzle out. They have experienced something of a resurgence recently, though, possibly on the back of the movie; if you're interested in hearing them it appears that you can download pretty much everything they've ever recorded, and a bunch of other goodness, from their website.

Speaking of Ross, you should check out his cartoons, if you're not already. He's gone to publishing six a week, and lately they've been kicking my ass all over the place; seriously laugh out loud stuff.

And speaking of angels (I was, truly.. scroll up and you'll see), the other day I was "fortunate" enough to see The Jacket, another film for which there's been a bit of hype lately; this time, though, it's thoroughly undeserved. Pretty as it is (and it's quite pretty, I'll give it that), The Jacket is just a lame combination of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Touched By An Angel, that offensively piss-poor TV series about the angel who manipulates divine providence to save people from themselves. Actually, that's a bit harsh - how about Cuckoo's Nest combined with Tru Calling, that more recent and equally-offensive ludicrous series about the woman who manipulates time and space to save people from themselves, and which surely only exists as a vehicle for it's "sexpot" lead, Eliza Dushku. (I say "sexpot" in that rather than make me want to fuck her, and buy all the products that are advertised in the commercial breaks, she makes something inside me spasm violently and cause pain). Also, how much of a ham is Keira Knightly? And how badly does she want to be Winona Ryder? Fucken heaps x 2, I say. Give The Jacket a wide berth, unless you feel you need proof.

Pictured is Adrian Brody, wearing a jacket. Not The Jacket, though, just a jacket.

Cup

This is a picture of a cup that I drew in a meeting the other day. I'm quite into it. I think I might work up some design ideas and offer it to one of the local espresso roasting houses, whose graphics tend to suffer quite a lot from being terminally-hip - "terminal" being the operative word, since they generally bore me utterly to death - clean, tight, sharp, safe, sterile - or are just a little tired.

funk-y

1. Having a moldy or musty smell: funky cheese; funky cellars.
2. Having a strong, offensive, unwashed odor.

I guess I just like the funky stuff.

Write

I haven't really posted much of late, as I've been writing a column for an online music magazine, Foxy Digitalis. You'll notice the awesome photo of the author - luckily I was able to take an awesome self-portait with my phone on the bus one day. ("You look like you're waiting for someone to kill you" - Foxy D. editor). (Luckily, the same Foxy D. editor was also able to crop the pic and turn it into black and white, making me look even more awesome). The piece is specifically designed to stir up a bit of controversy amongst the usually-benevolent and generally hippie-like underground music community; I'm waiting for the hate-mail to start. I also did a few short reviews of various albums; this is an old tendancy which, now resumed, is probably something I'll continue to do for a wee while.

I got absolutely wankered on Friday night, and as a result spent a large amount of Saturday in the bathroom, shivering and retching, or in bed - doing much the same. With immaculate timing, around 8am the road-gang - who've been making a nuisance of themselves in Aro Street for about 6 weeks - also began work outside my bedroom. Fortunately I was able to put to good use the transcendental meditation techniques I learned from Tibetan monks while we were imprisoned by the Chinese, and transcended my way back to an uneasy sleep; by the time I woke around 2 or 3, I could actually keep down liquid, food, paracetamol and codeine. By mid-evening I had recovered sufficiently to drink lots of beer and go to Paulie's birthday party, where I had an excellent time drinking more beer, inventing champagne cocktails (Jacob's Creek Chardonnay Pinot Noir Brut Cuvee, crushed raspberries and a large dash of 42 Below Feijoa vodka), eating Comtessa's insanely decadent cupcakes, and feeling like a hungover mutant.

Don't ever drink "lime"-flavoured Finlandia vodka. Especially don't ever drink about 1/2 a litre of it, after having drunk 2 huge martinis and a gin'n'tonic. I know I won't be.

Some miscellany:
1. We popped into Morocco one evening late last year, and it was shit. Utter shit. I take back everything nice I said about it.
2. No 42 Below linkage for fear of upsetting The Sifter.

Martini bling

Is there anything better than a martini made with good ol' Tanqueray gin? I think actually that there may not be.

This is my Omega Martini. It's mostly made as per my 1947 Martini, but garnish instead with a large canned dark plum and a generous drizzle of the sour syrup/juice.

Sooooo good.

UPDATE: I was thinking - I didn't mean to imply that I 'invented' the Omega Martini - it's effectively the same as, for example, the Gambata (sp?) as served at Good Luck, except there's no sake. Oh, I don't know, perhaps I did invent it. Opinions invited.

Misanthropy pt. 1

1. Exclusive to The Mill Liquorsave - the "Beer Ball": 800 ml of fresh beer in a convenient ball-shaped bottle.

Uh, since when the fuck was a ball-shaped bottle convenient?

2. Arobake. (In case you can't read it, the text on the bottom of the sign reads "Nearly all cultures believe that a Ladybird is lucky!")

And I imagine that most of those cultures also believe that putting wack faux-mysterious gobbledegook on your shop's signage is stoopid and tasteless.

If you only spent more time learning how to make bagels properly; now, that would be lucky - for everyone.

(click the images to enlarge)

Guitar bling

Oh dear. I felt a disturbance in the force as soon as I laid eyes on it. So, I'll wager, did my bank manager. Mojo Sound is a brand new store in Cuba Street, purporting to deal in custom guitars, amplifiers and accessories. I couldn't bring myself to actually venture within, but it's time will come, you mark my words. (click picture to enlarge)

It's all about tone, apparently.

House bling

Despite my natural stinginess, about once a year - around this time - I get all home-nest-feathery or some shit, and go and buy some kind of homewares. Last year it was a second-hand microwave. After both of my beautiful 50-yr-old vintage chrome toasters broke down irrepairably, this year it was a new toaster (see pic). Ain't it purty, Cleetus. It was on sale... at Briscos, of course. (Ooohhh now I've gone and revealed my class-roots. Bad move.)

As if to celebrate this wonderful addition to the house, my oldest and most dearly-loved trichocereus decided to bloom. Ain't it purty, Cleetus. You can click on the pictures to see enlarged versions of them. And no, in case you were wondering, this one's not a "San Pedro" - rather, it's Trichocereus scopulicola. The flowering is also usually a once-a-year event (conditions in Wellington, NZ not being the most ideal for the poor bugger), and normally the flower only lasts one day - especially if its FUCKING RAINING LIKE IT SEEMS TO BE INSISTENT ON DOING TODAY.

Sorry.

I love it when plants and animals do stuff and suddenly get themselves all tricked-out and pimped-up - it's a kinda nice to imagine that I live in a world that is much more wild than this mundane one I seem to spend most of my days in.

For an Xmas present to myself, I bought myself a new strap for my bass. I got it from the maker, on TradeMe, and it was an incredible bargain. The strap arrived yesterday, and it's really beautiful. Click on the picture to link through to the TradeMe auction - and witness the motherfucken fitness. If you're after a new strap for your instrument, I couldn't recommend this guy highly enough - let me know and I'll put you in touch.

Finally, my summer-project - of completely cleaning and reorganising my flat - is nearing completion, and I am now looking for a housemate. Wish me luck in finding not-a-psycho (well, not-as-much-of-a-psycho-as-I-am, anyway). Thanks.

Caring is creepy

Looks like Rose beat me to the punch on the fantasy-blockbuster-showdown post. Oh well. Some points I'd like to add, though. Narnia was weirdly unfamiliar to me. Despite reading the entire set of books when I was young, my only lingering memories of them are (a) that they got more and more stupid with each volume, (b) turkish delight and snow, and (c) Vivian out of the Young Ones. We were heavily stoned when we saw it, and I kept getting hung up on technicalities like "all the animals are like people, so what did they eat?", and how terribly CGI the lion looked. Oh, and I decided part way through the battle scene that I never ever in my entire life want to watch another movie in which there is a huge battle between an army of 'good' and one of 'evil', where optionally the good is heavily outnumbered, but prevails anyway.

Thanks mostly to the trailer that screened before Narnia, we decided the next night to get heavily stoned and go see King Kong. I enjoyed this a little more, but I still kept getting hung up on details. I mean, exactly how, with most of his crew dead, and especially (presumably) towing a colossal monkey (how the fuck else are they meant to have transported it), did the ship's captain manage to get the ship back out through the treacherous rocks surrounding the island, and back to civilisation. And that diplodocus-stampede. Yeah right. They were all toast. Every single one of them. No question. I was thoroughly exhausted by about half-way through, and could happily have stopped the film, had a nap, and resumed watching later on.

In summary: don't go to see Narnia unless you are 10 years old, or wasted. And, don't go and see Kong unless you are wasted.

Thank you.

In other news, a really, really great little film I saw recently was called Ivan's xtc. Based on Tolstoy's novella "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", but set in contemporary Hollywood, it's a candid treatise on the sordid underside of the film business, supposedly with references to real-life events. It's shot in digital - but with nary a computer-animated monster in sight - and although it's about five years old now, it's only just shown up at Aro Street. It was unexpectedly moving, and fully I recommend it. (another review here).

Best. review. ever.

"New Zealand Stephen Clover proposes on this album of the floating, at the same time stationary beaches and moving, as extracted from continuums without beginning nor end. The music, made up of electronic loops, tablecloths and held sounds, car-discusses, is maintained on its own energy. No the trace of human voice, strictly linear musical structures which progress in not-Cartesian plans. Seht avoids the speeches for the benefit of an enveloping sound with which the listener can start, in one moment of loneliness resonant and alleviating, a dumb relation. Application antarctica download form is an album which naturally finds its place in a current very developed at the occidentalized end of the world; the New Zealand labels Corpus Hermeticum, Siltbreeze and Celebrate Psi Phenomenon publish artists who strip the diagrams of the rock'n'roll to keep only the bones of them, a phantom music whose desolation reveals some questions and feelings that the entertainment in general occults."

- Jean-Grégoire Muller, la Médiathèque

This was translated from the original French to English via babelfish.altavista.org - if anyone reading this would like to chance their arm at a more accurate translation, be my guest.

Second hand news

[seht] i'm also now a fleetwood mac fan
[xxxxxxxx] oh dear god no
[seht] yep
[seht] it all made sense
[xxxxxxxx] i think we need to stage an intervention
[seht] sun, drugs, and heartache
[seht] the only thing that was missing was the late 70's
[seht] and that is always there in our hearts, so there you go
[seht] possibly it's more to do with having sex in a tent at 2am on New Year's morning
[seht] while the van on the neighbour's site blasted "You make loving fun" at about 700 dB
[xxxxxxxx] sounds idyllic ;)
[seht] actually I was always into tusk, but I hated rumours with a fiery passion
[seht] but that was more to do with the awful, awful memories it brought up
[seht] awful, awful people and awful, awful times...
[seht] like, just hearing the opening bars of "Second hand news" would send me into a cold sweat
[seht] and a mild panic
[xxxxxxxx] ?
[seht] heh
[seht] so it would seem that amazing stoned sex and extreme volume have combined
[seht] to break down the bad connotations and the pavlovian reactions
[xxxxxxxx] destroy all false prophets
[seht] and now all i am left with is bliss, and stevie nicks
[seht] exactly

This is cute

In 1991 when the yanks were explaining to Israel why the Patriot missiles they'd promised would shoot down all of Saddam's SCUD missiles instead kept missing, and the SCUDs were slamming into residential Tel Aviv, they should've put together a nice little powerpoint presentation with this graphic, and I'm sure everything would have been much sunnier.

Future estate divergence

Hi. How was your Xmas? I celebrated alone this year, and it was great, thanks. Thanks for asking. I invented two drinks on Xmas day. The first one is called a 'Champagne investment' - serve about a pint or so of cheap, dry, white sparkling wine (the cheaper, and the dryer, the better) in a stainless steel cocktail tumbler with ice, and depth-charge about 60 ml of Stone's Green Ginger Wine into it. The other one is called 'Champagne revolution', and it's for when you run out of Green Ginger Wine; use the same amount of tequila instead.

I've been having an awesome holiday. Xmas completely brings out my misanthropic side, so I've been avoiding ppl as much as possible. Instead of socialising, I've been working on my inner person - taking incredibly strong drugs and crashing early; rising with the birds; going to the gym a lot; drinking shitloads (white spirits, low-cal mixers) ; 'spring'-cleaning the entire flat (I even got the gardener in); trying to flog off my records and DVDs on internet auction sites to raise money for something; all that sort of grown-up crap. Four more weeks of this to go. Here's a picture of me looking fat and being suitably misanthropic.

A few people have privately commented that they think it's weird for me to be planning to get a tattoo that was designed by my ex-gf. To this I must respond simply that I don't. Actually, the main person whose opinion on whether or not this is weird I value is my future life-partner; since this is currently an abstract concept to me, the sum total of people whose opinion interests me equals two. More on this later. Maybe.

Things is looking up though.

I've also had two new mini-albums released in the last week; one (Syddo paragone) on the Belgian record label Audiobot, and the other (Nova bonalbo) on the Australian label Music Your Mind Will Love You. I can't be biffed ranting about them here, so just click on the cover images if you want to know more. I can't completely stop myself, though: here's an excerpt from the PR-sheet for the Audiobot disc:
"Imagine King Tubby at the controls of a New Zealand spaceship, throbbing and shifting into a bottomless pit of reverb upon meeting the Wordsound rockers in a malaria infected basement. Classify under : throbbing NZ claustrophobic dub sponge."

Oh, I'm gonna need a housemate soon. Keep your ear to the ground, would ya?

Tattoo me

Can I show off for a moment? Just wanted to share my awesome tattoo which I'm gonna get this summer. It was designed for me by The Jarman about 18 months ago, and I've fluffed around and procrastinated for far too long already. The second, lower image is an artist's (i.e. my) (extremely crude) representation of where and how it'll sit on my shoulder.

Since the weight of opinion in the responses to my pop-survey was for Roger's, and I had independently been advised the same, I shall be turning up there forthwith to get the ball rolling. The complete bugger of it all is, though, that there's something like a 4-week waitlist at the moment. You know that thing how when you make a decision about something and then you totally just have to do it right then and there. No? Maybe it's just ol' impetuous me. Well anyway, I hadn't counted on having to wait.

Yesterday was the staff Xmas party. About 200 of us convened at Newtown Workingmen's Bowling Club about lunchtime, and proceeded to get extremely pished in the extremely hot sun. There's hangovers aplenty in the office this morning, lemme tell you. What better time, I am thinking, to share with you my brand-new and seemingly surefire hangover prevention remedy. 'Tis the season and all that.

It's quite simple. Before you go out on a bender, put a litre of McCoy's cranberry juice in the fridge. When you get home, drink it. It's not all smoke and mirrors and magic potions.. apparently cranberry juice is a powerful diuretic, as well as being loaded with vitamins. Makes sense to me, anyway. It even works well on the morning after. Oh and for some reason, the stuff in the big glass bottles - Ocean Spray - doesn't work as well. It's much more acidic, to my gut anyway.

Gerry Rafferty's stem cells

One of the reasons I love shopping for booze at Rumbles, downtown in Waring Taylor Street, is that it affords me the opportunity to visit my favourite bit of the city, Maginnity Street (right). Without fail, every time I turn the corner from Ballance Street, I'm suddenly overwhelmed with delightfully faux sense of history, grandeur, depth and scale. Only here, utterly surrounded with 10+ floor buildings at close range, do I find myself forgetting for just a moment that we're basically a piss-ant little city built around a trinity of longish streets laid out in the shape of a Mercedes Benz logo. Only here do I get the hopeful feeling that - just possibly - there may suddenly have sprung up thirty city blocks in every direction.

It's not the architecture per se; the sequence on the right side of the street - the Wellesley Club, then the State (?) building, then the somewhat grandly named Petherick Tower - is nice, I guess, if a little disjointed*. It's more just the disorientation I experience when I suddenly cannot see any hills around me by which to navigate. It's a feeling I also experienced very strongly in Sydney, and have suddenly been overcome by at other odd moments like when walking down the main street of Onehunga, in Auckland.

So much deep thought, yesterday afternoon, as I wandered about in the bizarrely warm afternoon and dreamt of g'n'ts, and pondered on exactly how long it's been since I wrote anything of any worth on this blog. Busy-ness is only a partial excuse; I shall try harder, dear readers, do not be afeared.

If you're looking for promises, that's about as good as you're gonna get.

In other news, it appears that I'm not the only person who absolutely cannot stomach oaked Chardonnay. Oaked anything, actually, including Merlot, which I'm not absolutely sure is oaked, but if it is it will explain why I can't really drink it. I don't get headaches, apart from the understandable ones (1.5 bottles of any wine will do that to ya, innit), it just makes me retch, pretty much. I've started telling people I'm allergic to it; entertainingly enough, most take me at my word.

Shout outs to the other Welly-bloggers who turned out last Friday night for the hooley. It was good to meet y'all, although I almost feel bad that I was so tired after a big week that no typical Drinks-After-Work-type behaviours were indulged in. That's my excuse, anyway. I'm not sure what The Sifter's excuse for the state he got himself into later in the evening is, though.

*As I'm no expert I'll leave it up to someone like Tom to verify the identify of the middle building; he might also like to comment on the respective architecture of the three buildings. About the best I can do is suggest the approximate era of each - 1900s, 30s, and 50s.

Tattoo you

Any concensus on where's the best tattoo parlour in Wgtn, NZ?

Stumps T's are go!

I'm in the process of making a whole stack of Stumps t-shirts which are going to to be available in a wide variety of different shapes and sizes and very affordable. The shirts will essentially be one-offs - no two will be alike.

I've started uploading images of the shirts here; have a look and email me if there's one you want. Ultimately I'll have a much sexier web-interface set up for browsing and ordering the shirts; for now this'll have to do.

Shirts will be only approx NZ$15-20, with a shipping charge on top of that.

What you need to know:
- The colour and size of each shirt is given on the image. The measurements are approximate only - to the nearest 1cm/0.5in or so; the actual colour of the shirt may also be slightly different to that shown, due to the shitty light I'm photographing them in.
- Because no two shirt manufacturer's sizes are the same, I've measured each one in SPAN and DROP dimensions. See [0] demo.jpg for an example of how this works.
- The SPAN is the horizontal measurement across the shirt, basically the "bust" measurement from armpit-to-armpit.
- The DROP is the vertical measurement from the front of the neck to the bottom of the front of the shirt. In the case of 'V'-neck shirts, this is from the lowest point of the 'V'.
- All measurements are made initially in glorious metric; conversions to imperial (inches) are done here and at the mercy of javascript floating point math inaccuracies and the like.

And one for The Stumps....

MySpace.com page for The Stumps here.

Somewhat alarmingly, the url www.myspace.com/stumps AND www.myspace.com/thestumps were both already taken.

These MySpace pages are kinda neat; you can even include a wee blog-type thing where you can post info like a newsletter-type thing.

Sorry if I'm not making much sense. Hardly slept last night and I'm tired as a motherfucker.

I wish I could...

remember who I lent my DVD of the Twin Peaks pilot movie to. It's doing my head in... goddamn memory fails me every day lately, it would seem.

On a more positive note, I've set up a profile for Seht at myspace.com, including some tracks you can listen to while you're browsing.

More fun soon.. when I gotta time 'aiight.