Robyn’s Secret Passage

I went to the opening night extravaganza of the Beck’s Incredible Film Fest. The costume theme was ’80s, and there were some really excellent costumes. The fake pearls, big hair, ripped lace Madonna look was popular for the ladies, and a lot of fellows went for the spiky hair and sweatband look. There was a woman wearing a green leather skirt and jacket - complete with big, big shoulder pads and another woman was clad in hot pink Lycra workout gear. One couple were dressed as Young Republicans, and wielded a sign supporting the Reagan-Bush ticket.

Before the opening night movie the BIFF crew performed a skit. “Nikki”, the porn star who had planned to give birth on camera, was going to give birth to a second baby live tonight. She was joined by the dodgy director (who looked suspiciously like fest organiser Ant Timpson), a fellow porn star playing the doctor (gay, classically trained in Hamilton’s live theatre scene), and a dirty old camera man who was more than ready for his close up. At one stage Ron Jeremy came out and jizzed all over the stage, which was disgusting and yet delightful. Ok, so Nikki’s in labour and as an experiment the baby is subjected to selected highlights of the last ten years of the film fest. After that harrowing experience the baby pops out and - OMG - Nikki’s given birth to David Wain, the director of “Wet Hot American Summer”!

Mr Wain spoke about how he’d been entice over to New Zealand to come to the fest, but he didn’t realise he’d have to enter a vagina when he got here. Then Mr Timpson gave a brief introduction and every applauded because, let’s face it, ten years of a film festival like this is well worth applauding.

“Wet Hot American Summer” was introduced by a special filmed bit where Paul Rudd, Janeane Garofalo and [another guy who was in the film] talked about the film. Rudd said he liked Crowded House, and that he thought Hunters and Collectors were from here too (Wrong! But Nick Seymour was in Crowded House, and his brother Mark was in H&C, so that’s close enough.) Ms Garofalo said that people kept recommending she move to New Zealand because it’s so nice and liberal here [and half the audience thinks “Yes! Come here, oh cool one!”). I can’t remember what [the other guy who was in the film] said.

Ok, the film itself was really funny. It’s a really naughty parody of all those American summer camp movies of the late ’70s, early ’80s. All the cliches are dragged out and perverted. And Paul Rudd wears short shorts. It really enjoyed it and I felt sorry for all the people who’d chugged down the free beer and had to keep leaving to go wees.

Famous person sighting: Marc Ellis. Woo!

After all that coolness I went to the Dog Bollix to see the WBC play. They are going to be playing on Space next Friday (10.30 pm, TV2), so you should watch that. Also, their new EP “Ease Your Mind” is coming out in about three weeks, so buy that because it is full of good songs.

But anyway. The w00da were good. The Bollix has such a tiny dance floor that it always seems awkward dancing, so I sat on a stool. I was right by a speaker and was hit by some great wall-of-sound moments. Their two new songs sounded much better this time around.

Famous person sighting: MC OJ - and he was all dressed up like a gangsta.

I feel like bumming around Europe for a month. Bring back the old days when the only way to get to Europe was a three month boat trip. Back when Europe was “The Continent.” When being “continental” was akin to sophistication, not modern day European cultural icons such as The Cheeky Girls with their “Touch My Bum” song or the Russian singing lesbians which aren’t really very sophisticated at all.

Now, with the European Union and all that, bumming around Europe could just as easily be going to Manchester and doing a Smiths pilgrimage, or going to Ireland to visit the village where you great-great-great-grandfather may or may not once have lived, pass the Guinness, or just doing the general touristy crap in London, or holing yourself up in a historical cottage and browsing antique shops and going on walks in the countryside, and perhaps a minor detour into Paris just to get some real Euro.

But the three month cruise is replaced by the 24 hour plane trip. No shuffle board, just crappy inflight movies (that’s what you’ve got to be concerned about - not the food).

It’s nice here in the antipodes.

I drove past three car accidents today. The first was just past Ngaruawahia, where a car had driven into a ditch. A tow truck was trying to get in a safe position to be able to tow it out.

Then later on I came down the big hills on the way to Raglan, and there were two cars who had appeared to have hit each other almost head-on. One was totally smashed up in the front, the other was smashed at the front on the right side. There are lots of windy roads on the way to Raglan. People who are used to the smoothness of motorway driving don’t get that you really have to slow down when you go around a tight corner. So I’m guessing that someone took a corner too fast, cut across into the other lane and hit a car coming in the opposite direction. That accident was so recent that no emergency vehicles had arrived yet. The ambulance passed me further long the road.

Then a few hours after that I hooned out to Manu Bay and back. On that road there’s a chicaney corner that’s really hard to drive around. Not only is it a tight hairpin turn, but it’s also up (or down) a hill. The recommended speed is 25 km/h. On the way up it I remember thinking that it’d really suck to get stuck in a ditch like the previous car had. Minutes later on the way back a car had taken that corner too fast and had driving into the inner edge of the bend and was stuck in the ditch. The passengers of the car appeared to be drunk teenagers. Maybe the driver was too.

I saw the Hollow Grinders and Nodrog play at Aqua Velvet. It was a cold night and hardly anyone showed up, but it was a fun show. The ‘Grinders’ set list was written in biro, and no one could actually read it, so they gave it to a guy in the audience and got him to yell out the song titles. Later in the show, Otis observed that there were only three people in the audience he didn’t personally know, so he introduced himself. Instead of having a door charge, they put a plastic fireman’s had in front of the stage and invited people to give a koha (that’s Maori for “gold coin donation”). I gave them 5 cents, but felt guilty and biffed in a $5 note later.

Earlier in the evening my parents were reminiscing about when you could drive from Hamilton to Auckland and back on $2 petrol. I think I spent about $32 getting my car filled up today. Oh yes, and the new bit of road from south of Meremere to north of Huntly is open now. Two smooth lanes in each direction, and it totally bypasses Ohinewai. Looking across at the old windy two lane road, it seems amazing that it was ever deemed worthy of being State Highway 1.

You know how when you visit the ATM lobby of a bank after hours, you have to swipe your card to get the door to open?

Well, you don’t have to use your ATM card. Any card with a magnetic strip on it will open the door. I usually pull out my Foodtown card.

There was an article today in the Herald about credit card scams. One scam mentioned involves a credit card swiper thing being put by the door of an ATM lobby, so that everyone who mistakes it for the real one and swipes their card ends up giving the ruthless criminals their credit card details.

So if that sort of thing concerns you, use your Foodtown, or Flybuys or AA card, etc.

I wrote this thing in my zine about how those school reunion web site never seemed to have anyone who I really wanted to know about. There were plenty of people I can’t really remember or don’t really care about bragging about their boring jobs, but the interesting, intriguing people seem to never have profiles on such sites. My guess was that they are too busy going out having a good time to sit around typing up what they’ve been doing since leaving school. Or like, there’s no internet access in the midst of the Amazon. Or in prison.

Probably the absolute number one person I had always wondered about was this chick called Sarah. She was a supercool bad-ass.

She started at my school and was in my form class in the fourth form. She made friends with another bad-ass girl, but during class she’d sit with me and another girl. Sarah was funny. One time in maths she told me about how her brother got really bad diarrhoea and used a whole roll of toilet paper in one go. When he flushed the toilet got blocked, so she made him put on rubber gloves and fish the pooey paper out. I was in hysterics as she told the story.

I heard a great story about her from a friend who was in her PE class a few years later. Sarah had been mucking around the and strict PE teacher had got fed up and ordered her out. Her last words were that Sarah should “grow up”. As she left the gym, Sarah walked up on tip toes.

In English we’d watched this film called “The Wave” about a teacher who starts up a Nazi-like group to show his students how easy it is to get sucked in to cults. They had all these three slogans, “Strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action!” One day in Geography, Sarah and I came up with our own cult called The Force. It wasn’t a “Star Wars” reference - I’m pretty sure it was a play on foreskin. The slogans of The Force were “Strength through bondage and discipline, strength through homos, strength through sex.” During a science lesson when we were studying weeds, she drew a picture of “the perfect weed” in my refill pad (it looked like a giant daisy) and wrote “The Force” above it.

Sarah decorated my pencil case. She had a dark green pencil case with stuff like “Live to ride, ride to live”, and a drawing of a person smoking a joint with “Toke on dak” written under it. I still have my pencil case somewhere.

One day Sarah and her friend Trudie wagged school. They dyed each other’s hair. They’d only bought one box of dye, so once they did Sarah’s long hair, there wasn’t enough to do all of Trudie’s shorter hair.

Sarah was so cool. I wanted to be like her so much, but I never quite had the wicked bad-arse qualities that she did. The primo example of me trying to be as cool as she was on the sixth form Geography field trip to Tongariro National Park.

The school had booked a lodge, but there weren’t quite enough bunks, so they’d got two cabins at a nearby motor camp. When the teacher asked for five girls to volunteer, Sarah stuck her hand up, so I did too. However, it didn’t work out as cool as I planned. Sarah along with Mel and Minnie went into one cabin, while was in the other with Catherine the geeky girl and, oh dear, a teacher. So while the bad girls in the cabin next door were smoking and drinking, I was stuck in the 100% not cool cabin where the most exciting thing that happened was when Catherine woke me up in the middle of the night to offer me some chocolate. Oh, it was fun anyway.

On the bus on the way back, Sarah and her friends came up with a rude variation of “Mr Sandman”:

Mr Sandman, bring me some chains,
I’ll use them for my sexual games.
I’ll tie you to the side of your bed,
And I’ll beat you still you are half dead.

Policeman, I love you so,
I’ll oil you up and rub you down slow,
I’ll tie you up with your handcuffs,
I might be gentle or I might be rough.

In the seventh form I was excited to see Sarah’s name on the roll for my Geography class. But she never showed up. The last I heard was that she’d gone to England.

And then a few days ago I got a weekly update email from one of those school reunion web sites I’d signed up with. And there, under the list of new members for my old high school, was Sarah. She’s still in England, she has a baby now and that’s about all she reveals. She’s not in prison, she’s not halfway up the Amazon, but y’know, at least she isn’t bragging about being an IT manager in Hamilton.