Robyn’s Secret Passage

The latest news reports say that over 60,000 people are now dead. How incomprehensibly awful.

I’ve just made $50 donation to an aid agency helping out with the crisis. I’m tempted to channel the spirit of ye olde Telethons and challenge you to equal or better that, but things are so awful that every little amount helps.

Stuff to remember:
1. The New Zealand government is matching dollar-for-dollar money raised by New Zealand aid agencies up to $2 million, so a $50 donation becomes $100.
2. If you make a donation of $5 or more and get a receipt, you can claim back a third with your next tax return.

Here are three good charities to get you started. More can be found by googling.

Red Cross
0800 RED CROSS or 0900 31 100 to make a $20 donation

Oxfam
0800 400 666

TEAR Fund
0800 800 777

I was going to do some sort of post farewelling my 20s, but I’ve spent most of today with this mild motion sickness and associated feelings of nausea, then I was really bored so I went to the supermarket and engaged in a bit of lite shoplifting, which was genuinely thrilling for about five minutes, but then I soon came crashing back down into the land of the empty and meaningless, etc.

So, yeah. How about those 20s, eh?

In that time I’ve been to three tertiary education institutions, had three jobs, owned three cars (and that’s where the triplets stop). I’ve lived in 12 different flats, been to seven foreign countries, been on the dole twice, written two shitty novels, walked from one side of New Zealand to the other, and painted my bathroom shelves pink.

I’ve probably done more than that, but due to my spinning head, I’m going to spend my last few hours as a 20something asleep rather than drinking Vodka Cruisers, pashing girls, listening to Ashlee Simpson, or whatever it is that the youth of today do.

Au revoir, vingt. Salut, trente.

There was a work Christmas do today. Not the Christmas do (for that was last Friday, and surprisingly non-eventful), but just one for my department.

It was held at the Balmoral Bowling Club. We discussed how bowling clubs have started to get a bit of hipster chic to them. It’s come about a bit like this:

• That period about four years ago when old-people style became cool amongst the very hip in New York. The Beastie Boys started dressing up like old men, orthopaedic sandals became fashionable, as did other old-people clothing items (found in abundance in second-hand shops).
• Through his TV shows, Mikey Havoc popularised that kind of neo-patriotism, where icons of our country that were previously considered naff, suddenly became kinda cool. Also note that Mr Havoc named his nightclub the Wyndham Bowling Club.
• Shayne Carter discovers the Grey Lynn Bowling club and suddenly it becomes a cool event venue of choice.
• The first Public Address shindig is held at the GLBC, inspiring Russell Brown to declare that “bowls is definitely the new nightclubbing.”

Ok, so with that aside, I can declare that bowls is pretty choice.

The bowling clubrooms smelt like someone’s grandparents’ house. There was a bar, a little nook with a few evil poker machines, pool tables and a darts board, there was a good ol’ barbecue with plenty of sausages, but that’s not what we came there for. Oh, no. We were there for the big black balls and the little white ball.

Teams were decided and the games began. Initially I was quite good. I immediately got the idea that the ball is weighted to one side and therefore has to be rolled to the side of the kitty, as it will then curve in towards it. My team did ok, but somewhere along the line a general vibe of boredom set in and my technique suffered.

By the finals play-off, I was shocked to find myself playing off with another team for last place. I knew things had turned terrible when the game had been all-but-ignored in favour of a discussion about the political situation in the Ukraine (that’s pretty bad, oui?)

But it was lots of fun. My earlier good form has inspired me to add bowls to me list of things I’d consider doing as a hobby. (Though all that white clothing scares me. Is there a goth bowling club?)

The Civic Theatre is celebrating its 75th anniversary and had open days all this weekend. I went along five years ago when it reopened after the massive restoration and I guess I was hoping for something better than that, but, oh no, I was disappointed.

Various rooms had displays set up with old photos and programmes on them, there was a video playing on one of the balconies, “The Mighty Civic” showing in the main auditorium, and an incomplete cabaret was performed in the Wintergarden. I was left wandering around all the rooms and corridors, looking at the all the elephants, tigers and golden decorations and wanting to know the stories behind them, but remaining uninformed.

The Civic historians seem obsessed with Freda Stark. It’s almost like the Civic Theatre served no other purpose than to host cabaret evenings where Ms Stark painted herself gold and danced for the GIs. A neatly sanitised golden lady was trotted out for this anniversary. The main difference being that at the end of the night she didn’t go off and smear her gold paint over some homesick soldiers. Of course, that side of things is much more glamourous than celebrating, say, the 2.30pm session of the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movie in 1990.

But it’s really disappointing that there is a noticeable gap in the history of the Civic. No one seems to care about the history of the theatre from its remodelling in 1975 until the restoration in the late ’90s. Yeah, it wasn’t the greatest thing to have that second Wintergarden theatre wedged inside the building, but it happened and it shouldn’t be forgotten. Ditto the all-over mud-brown paint job, and the succession of nightclubs in the basement.

I’ve also noticed that the since the restoration, the Civic doesn’t feel like an old building anymore. Everything inside is really nice and neat and new. Nothing creaks or smells musty. There are no dark corners any more where decades-old bits and pieces lurk. I remember once heading to some toilets off the side of the stalls. I got about halfway down this steep, dimly lit flight of stairs when I got the heebie jeebies and turned back. The Civic has no such spooky places any more.

The Civic needs to start going bump in the night again.

I’ve just read Anthony Kiedis’s autobiography “Scar Tissue”. There’s a special place in my heart for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Back in ‘92 when I sold my soul to rock ‘n’ roll, it was the Peppers who led me there.

And it was around that time that Mr Kiedis was on his newly-sober anti-drugs evangelism and that made a lasting impressing on me at such an early age that I never considered long-term drug use to be fun or desirable.

Ah, but then he fell off the wagon. In “Scar Tissue”, after detailing his childhood including his crazy dad, he gets stuck into the drugs. There’s a little pot and a shitload of cocaine and heroin. He details his drug use to the point that it ceases to be shocking or scandalous and just become another mundane detail of his everyday life.

And I think, in a way, that’s what any kind of addiction ends up being like. The addict uses their substance not to feel wonderful, not to get high, but just to feel normal, to be able to function normally.

So throughout the book he goes in and out of rehab, writes songs about it, had revelations, and just when it seems like he’s got it all together, he’s back in some seedy motel with a needle in his arm. Oh, but he’s ok now, kids.

The other common theme is all the laydeez. It turns out he’s a bit of a serial monogamist. He appears to not really have been all that interested in one-night stands with groupies, and more into long-term relationships with beautiful women (and he’s always banging on about how beautiful the women are), though he seemed to end up with ladies about as messed up and chemically inclined as he. But it all makes for a good read.

And, of course, there’s the story of his band. But very little of that was new. It was interesting, though, to see that story told from his perspective and to marvel at how a band can stick around for over 20 years with all the problems they’ve had and still keep moving forward.

The book is written with the help from another author, but Mr Kiedis’ voice is unmistakably the one telling the story. The book is full of sentences that are just so cool I will a few here:

“I had been reading a lot of books about whales and dolphins, and I had always been aware of social injustice.”

“Could you please inform the Dalai Lama that Anthony Kiedis is here? I know he must be busy, but I’d like to say hi to him.”

“We piled into Flea’s multicolored Mercedes clown car, which exacerbated the absurdity of my surroundings.”

“Another manifestation of my emotional discombobulation was the Slim Jim episode.”

“I was up all night with visions of Jack Nicholson smoking a doobie with my girlfriend. Arrrrggghh.”

But finally, the most fun bits for me were his observations of my sweet home of Auckland, New Zealand:

“As soon as we set foot in New Zealand, I fell in love with the place. It seemed like a home away from home. There was more plant life than I’d ever seen, and towering majestic mountains and very few people.”

After buying a million-dollar farmhouse on the Kaipara Harbour he gets it dead right as he observes:

“It turned out that I saw the farmhouse on one of the few days of the year when it didn’t rain. Three hundred days out of the year, the country just poured precipitation. It was cloudy, rainy, chilly, blustery, England-on-a-bad-day kind of weather.”

On Auckland’s drug supply:

“I remember being in Auckland on New Year’s Eve and seeing amateur party people on the streets doing cocaine and champagne. It looked so appalling to me. I was glad I wasn’t in their place. The truth of the matter was that there probably wasn’t enough cocaine in a small country like that to keep my satisfied for any length of time.”

And that sums up quite nicely why Auckland is good.