This is the most brilliant news about Hamilton that I’ve heard in a long time.
It was a jump too far to the left for two city councillors, but Hamilton’s time-warping plans for a Rocky Horror statue have been approved.
Councillors voted 12-2 to back a Weta Workshops-designed tribute to former Hamiltonian and Rocky Horror Show creator Richard O’Brien for Victoria St.
A statue of Richard O’Brien as Riff Raff will be erected on the site of the old Embassy Theatre. It was in this theatre that O’Brien saw many of the late night double feature picture shows that went on to inspire him to write the Rocky Horror Show.
The two councillors who opposed the statue seemed to confuse celebrating the international artistic achievement of one man with turning Hamilton into Sodom and Gomorrah.
It was a sad day when the Embassy theatre was pulled down. If was one of the three cinemas along Victoria Street. The Regent was eventually pulled down too, and the Carlton was converted into offices. A seven screen Village multiplex replaced them. But the Embassy was cool. Old, crappy, but beautiful, it served as the venue for many of my early movie going experiences. There’s no evidence that it ever once stood in its spot down the south end of Victoria Street, so the statue won’t just commemorate Richard O’Brien and the Rocky Horror Show, but also a piece of Hamilton’s cinematic history.
When people find out that I go to the gym, one thing they often request is muscles.jpg. I don’t really have much to show, but today I was mucking around with my camera and managed to capture some biceps action:
Yeah, I’ll smash u.
Things to note:
- Over my left shoulder is El Diablo. Yes, very symbolic, totally unintentional.
- Over my right shoulder is Miffy I admire Dick Bruna’s clean, minimalist, Mondrianesque design and Miffy’s ability to be cute without being smily. Acquired at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, one of my favourite places in the world.
- Under my hand is the poster for “Bullitt”. I’m not a huge fan of the movie, but I really dig Lalo Schifrin’s theme song.
- Just above Miffy is a photo from the New Orleans Voodoo Museum. I made my parents go there when they were in the neighbourhood.
- Under my right elbow is Britney. It’s advertising a 2001 issue of TV Hits. I got it from the free postcard rack at the Ikea store in Melbourne. I’m currently celebrating the fifth anniversary of the release of “Baby One More Time” and the subsequent return of good pop.
1. Having written the first draft of both the Sunday and Monday NZ Idol episode recaps already. It’s so much easier than doing the audition shows because there are longer sections, not lots of little bits crammed in. Tomorrow, all over New Zealand, the water-cooler chat topic will be “Filipo in the Top 10: Injustice or Delusion”
2. Camho Manhos. A good friend of mine got a webcam for his birthday. Within a few hours he had exposed himself and done something that he described as, “look, I’m being gay with myself”. Teenage girls flashing their boobs are so ’90s.
3. That friend of Ryan in Christchurch who is stalking me. That’s good stalking, not bad, standing outside in the rain screaming out bad poetry, stalking.
4. Orkut. Totally redefining “friend” as “this guy I used to work with” or “this chick I saw at a party once six years ago” and my personal favourite, “some dude in America I’ve never communicated with in any way, ever before.” Of course, that adds to the fun of the Orkut experience and makes me feel far more social than I suspect I really am.
5. Having earned enough Fly Buys points to get a frying pan. It’s taken me about three years, but finally I had accumulated enough points to be able to pick something semi-decent. I was tempted by the ceramic hair straighteners, but I really do need a new frying pan, so I went with the practical over the pretty.
Having spent the last five days working on a mammoth 6000-ish word recap of the last NZ Idol episode, I have discovered that my ability to write has been temporarily depleted. So here is another photo.
I was trying to take a photo of my profile to demonstrate my really straight nose. The flash reflected off my pale skin causing this ghostly silhouette.
(I had no idea my forehead was so hairy.)
My neighbours gave me these flowers:
DRZA was in town to see A Perfect Circle. He sent Teh Matt a txt about buying booze, so Matt and I decided to do a United Nations mission to help the poor, under privileged, under aged children of the T.P.O. massive to get booze. But it turned out that said children were busy being entertained (or whatever it is that Maynard does), so Matt and I sat around and talked about being old, and how the youth of today write incomprehensible text messages and that we never did bloody stupid stuff like that when we were teenz. Then we listened to Suicidal Tendencies.
Matt leant me his Mac OS X install disks (the lucky bastard has a Powerbook G4), so I’ve just spent the last two to three hours (I seriously don’t know how long it took. I totally lost track of time) upgrading to the cool new operating system version they called Panther.
It’s nice, it’s faster and slicker and choicer and this entry is really just checking out how things work in it.
In other news, I am delighted to have acquired a selection of Polish communist-era currency. My favourite is the 100 zlotych note, because on the back there’s a bit of communist propaganda. A series of red flags form the background, while “PROLETARYAT” is printer over the top. Amongst the other writing is “Swobody! Fabryk! i Ziemi!” which I think means “Liberty! Factories! Land!”, but I will have to check that out with Comrade Jakub..
Nothing much exciting happens with New Zealand money. There are no regimes overthrown, massive cases of forgery, drug money or any of those other situations that require currency redesigns in other countries. How many times has the pound sterling been changed? All New Zealand got was the new plastic money with more vivid colours. Right, they can decorate Britomart with those and carry on the gay disco theme.
It was a dark and stormy night. I braved the gusty winds and pelting rain and drove to the King’s Arse to see Trucker play.
Trucker hadn’t really played together since their bass player’s other band got really successful (See this for a bit of back story) But a few years ago they had recorded some stuff, so their bass player decided to use his new found international rock clout and release an EP with some of their new songs on it.
I’d always thought that Trucker were destined for greatness, but they didn’t quite make it. I was talking about that tonight with Petra, and she mentioned that someone said that Trucker were about five years ahead of their time. Poppy, but with a real raaaar guitar sound. Five years ago everyone was still loving techno, now garage rock is big, the Datsuns are kicking international arse.
Doing what MSU had done at their 10th anniversary extravaganza, Trucker also assembled all previous line-ups and played a selection of their songs since 1996 with Jamie, Stan, Paul O, Paul T, Dolf, Terry and Julian all rocking out.
It was brilliant. The old songs were cool, the new songs were electrifying. They did a kick-arse version of “Vatican,” which has always been my favourite song. I bought the EP, “Wasted In Heaven” and got all seven Truckers to sign it. Dolf mentioned that about only 50 copies are being sold in New Zealand - the rest are going to England and Europe.
I don’t know if Trucker will ever get the recognition they deserve, but I’m happy having their new EP and having seen them play a really good show.
Last night Ryan had organised a get together of cool people, but due to one reason or another, I was the only cool person who showed up. But that didn’t matter. The coolness that Ryan and I generate when we are in a small room is quite enough. We met up with James and had dinner at the Thai place in Mercury Plaza. I noticed that the chick who took our order wrote it down in Thai, which I found reassuring. We all had Pad Thai, which is the national dish of Thailand. I know this because I read an article about it in the Thai Airways inflight magazine.
Back at Starks bar, we were soon joined by Daniel and Heloise. The topic of conversation went from religion (boring) to politics (boring) then to sexual politics (yeah!). I remember at one stage James reckoned that women would be just as leering and openly pervy as men, if it weren’t for years of social conditioning. I’ve heard other guys make this claim, and it’s interesting, but why not the other way around? It’s nice to think that maybe men only act all pervy because they have been socially conditioned to act in such an overtly masculine way, and that if left to their own devices they’d actually be quietly appreciative of women, like women are of men. Or maybe men are men and women are women and society doesn’t have much influence.
Oh no. It’s Valentine’s Day and I’m talking about sexual politics.
My traditional Valentine’s Day ritual involves turning up the self-loathing dial to 11 and going to see a romantic comedy on my own. I noticed that “Under the Tuscan sun” was on, and that might have been disgustingly fun, but instead I went to the gym and ran for 45 minutes. In the midst of my treadmill session I saw a semi-famous media guy I know. He offered to hook me up with some freelance writing work. It sounds terribly glamourous, yet I suspect I might have to file it away under “not my forte”.
Evan Dando is playing a couple of shows at the Bollix next week. I’m considering going, but I’m not sure if it would be as cool as the three previous Lemonheads gigs I’ve been to. Y’know, it’s been 11 years since the Frank Mills incident (to be explained at a later date), things change.
I got this off Yesmum, and it seemed like fun. As well as just making up the names, I’ve also given them a bit of a personal description.
Exotic Foreigner Alias (Favorite Spice + Last Foreign Vacation Spot)
Cumin Apia will introduce you to her relaxing tropical massage technique and steal your wallet.
Socialite Alias (Silliest Childhood Nickname + Town Where You First Partied)
Bob Hamilton will make you his famous “Bob-tini” cocktail.
Fly Girl Alias (First Initial + First Two or Three Letters of Your Last Name)
R.Gal will out-dance you, and you’d better not be lookin’ at her man, bitch.
Rock Star Alias (Any Liquid on the Bar + Last Name of Bad-Ass Celeb)
Vermouth Hopper has written enough new songs in rehab that when he gets out he can leave his ungrateful asshole bandmates and cut a solo album.
Diva Alias (Something Sweet Within Sight + Any Liquid in Kitchen)
Tic Tac Palmolive will not be going on stage until the pink shagpile rug in her dressing room matches the pink drapes, as per her written request.
Girl Detective Alias (Favorite Baby Animal + Where You Last Went To School)
Kitty Hillcrest in on the verge of uncovering the orphan smuggling racket being run out of the reference section of the library.
Barfly Alias (Last Snack Food You Ate + Your Favorite Drink)
Almond Water remembers the old days, before that asshole ran off with his secretary, before social services took away the kids, those days… they were golden.
Soap Opera Alias (Middle Name + Street Where You First Lived)
Hilary Norma is close to getting her hands on the Von Brandt family fortune, but first must ensure that her innocent twin sister is not released from the mental hospital.
Back in August last year I had a fitness assessment done at my gym. I learned that my body fat, biceps strength, back flexibility, and aerobic fitness were all “poor”. My blood pressure was low (not bad-low, just lower than average, which is better than higher than average), and my resting heart rate was “fair”.
I decided that it was time to have a follow-up test done, and had that today.
Despite doing weights thrice weekly, and having visibly gained muscled mass, my biceps strength is still that same as it was five months ago. My back flexibility has slightly increased, as has my aerobic fitness, yet I’m still not very flexible or fit. Dammit.
However, my resting heart rate has gone down a bit, and my blood pressure is still lowish. But the best result was the fat percentage. In the last five months my body fat has gone down from 37% to 27% (18% is typical for a serious athlete), so I’m rather pleased with that result.
All that hard work does eventually pay off.
Also, thanks to the secret special anonymous benefactor who donated 2 months of paid LJ time. Thank you, that is much appreciated.