This year, 2001, marks the 10th anniversary of the ground-breaking New Zealand hip hip album “What Can We Say?” by MC OJ and the Rhythm Slave. Back in 1991 I had mixed feelings about the OJ/Slave experience. I thought the song “Positivity” and its video was pretty choice, but by the time I saw them [...]
One of my favourite words is choice. Not as in, “you have a choice between red or purple.” Not as in, “choice apples! 50c a kilo!” But rather choice as in “choice, bro.” The first time I heard the word choice being used with this meaning was in 1984. One day one of the bad-arse [...]
It happened all so suddenly. My father was going to Melbourne on business and arksened me if I wanted to come along ‘cos he had enough frequent flier points for me to fly for free. Yeah, ok. I kind of forgot about it until about a week before I was due to go, and realised [...]
Automatic Media, the company that owns Suck.com has run out of money and has put Suck on hold. This is very sad because Suck has been around for about as long as I’ve been on the internet, and in that time it’s been dearly admired and very inspirational to me. There’s that saying that only [...]
When I first moved to Auckland and was looking for a flat, I was disappointed at the large number of horrible-looking suburbs. Driving along streets I noticed piles of rubbish stacked up on the front verges of many properties. What sort of horrible city was I moving to? Then I discovered it was the magic [...]
When I was 14, I had to write a speech for English. I was going to do mine on names, and it was going to be like, “isn’t it funny how certain types of people are called Trevor!”. But when I went to write it I got writer’s block (or perhaps I was blocking myself [...]
I hate CVs or resumes or whatever you like to call that document that has all the information about your work history. I hate them because all previous CVs I’ve ever written have ended up being the fakest of the fake. A few scraps of truth dressed up with nouns and adjectives. This is apparently [...]
There have been two occasions when I have been really excited at the news of an upcoming tour by a musical group or artist. The first was in 1991. I was in a hotel in Christchurch, watching the late news, probably “Nightline”. In the wacky zany bit, they announced that De La Soul were coming [...]
In 1932, Phar Lap – the greatest racehorse in the entire world, ever, and if you say any differently you’ll get the bash – died. After his death his heart was removed and donated to the Australian Institute of Anatomy (now the Australian National Museum), his bones were donated to the National Museum of New [...]
The tickets were free, ok. And it’s not like I had anything better to do. I went to see a hypnotist perform, oh it was choice. We got there too early and had a whole hour to kill before the show started. Other people had arrived early too, but it wasn’t due to bad planning. [...]