You gotta know what I mean to be the queen of the meme scene

Posted on June 30, 2006 by Robyn

I have done another one of those cut ‘n’ paste “memes”. It shows that I am “actively participating” in an internet community, which is apparently what all the kids are doing “these days”.

Go to Wikipedia.

In the Search box, type your birth month and day (but not year).

List three events that happened on your birthday.

List two important birthdays and one interesting death.

One holiday or observance (if any).

Events:
1809 – The Non-Intercourse Act, lifting the Embargo Act except for the United Kingdom and France, passes the U.S. Congress. (Disappointingly, this is something to do with trade, not rooting.)
1964 – Comedian Lenny Bruce is convicted of obscenity. (Fuckin’ excellent.)
1984 – Subway vigilante Bernhard Hugo Goetz shoots four African-American men on an express train in The Bronx borough of New York City. (“Aids, crack, Bernie Goetz!”)
Birth: 1912 – Lady Bird Johnson, First Lady of the United States (She cleaned up America’s highways.)
Birth: 1949 Maurice and Robin Gibb, English musicians (The Bee Gees) (This “fact” always bothered me when I was a child.)
Death: 2002 – Joe Strummer, British musician (The Clash) (b. 1952) (I included this to make me look cool.)
Holiday: In the Northern Hemisphere, the winter solstice occurs on or very close to this date. In the Southern Hemisphere, the summer solstice occurs around this time. (And in the Southern Hemisphere, this means it’s all downhill to winter.)

It’s also worth pointing out that in on my birthday in 2000, Madonna married Guy Ritchie. Coincidence?

Futbol and Burger Rings

Posted on June 29, 2006 by Robyn

I have friends in other countries who are currently despairing at the Fußball/Football/Futbol-mania that is currently gripping their nation.

So it makes me a little bit relieved that while New Zealand prides itself as being a proud sporting nation, it’s not actually good enough at football to have even qualified for the World Cup.

Best stick to the fringe sports like rugbys league and union, eh?

—

Sometimes when I visit the local dairy during the day, I’ve noticed staff there making up bags filled with various grocery items. The contents of a typical bag would be loose tobacco and rolling papers, a large bag of Burger Rings, a packet of Toffee Pops and a 1.25 litre bottle of Coke.

At first I thought it was maybe an order for an invalid, but then I thought it was strange that such a person would be ordering no basic staples, just junk food and smokes.

But today I finally figured it out. I saw a Department of Corrections logo on a list and realised it’s for prisoners down the road at Mt Eden Prison.

See, life on the inside isn’t all that bad when you have your weekly Burger Rings ration.

Panelising

Posted on June 28, 2006 by Robyn

If you are one of those Auckland-based interweb types who is a regular reader of the Public Address blogs and is subsequently planning on going along to the Great Blend event this Saturday, you will be no doubt be excited and delighted to learn that I will be now part of the panel discussing internet communities.

I’ll be joining danah boyd (internet communities expert who’s being shipped over from America especially for the event), Justin Zhang (of New Zealand Chinese community website SkyKiwi), and Peter McLennan (who was one of my fellow panellists on the National Radio show last year). We’re going to be discussing various aspects of internet communities.

I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve been on a few panels over the last few years, and have discovered that talking about stuff in front of an audience is rather fun.

The event is full so I don’t need to try and talk it up to make people come along. However, I will say this: if you were to show up to the Grey Lynn Community Centre on Saturday at around 7.30, and if the place didn’t look like it was so full of people that it might be considered a fire hazard, and if you were to nonchalantly wander on in, probably no one would notice, if you get my drift. Right on.

Let me stick this 7-inch in the computer

Posted on June 26, 2006 by Robyn

Harvestbird tagged me to do one of those list things. Homie don’t usually play that, but this one was fun, and if it helps just one person give up drugs, well, then it will have all been worth it.

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your livejournal along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

1. Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin
I had an intense craving for this and have been heartily obsessing over it. It represents everything that’s good about America, and makes me want to be in Manhattan.

2. You’re Gonna Lose Us by the Cribs
The Cribs are my new favourite band. This is one has a brilliant shoutalong chorus (“When I’m drunk I can be an arsehole, but that don’t mean I’ve got no class, no.”), that’s just right for boozing with your mates and/or the Jarman brothers.

3. Stars Are Blind by P**** H*****
I don’t care how much of this song belongs to the talent of its singer or not. It’s lovely and sunny and cheerful (though not without its dark moments), and frankly, we could all use a little sunshine right now.

4. Batdance by Prince
Unlike most of Prince’s hit songs, this one gets little radio play, probably because it’s kind of unusual and kind of needed the hype of 1989′s Batman film to prop it up in the mainstream. But it’s a corker nonetheless.

5. Grind Your Bones by Svelte
Svelte is a couple of guys who used to be in Supergroove and the cousin of that guy from Blindspott who used to go out with Nicky Watson. With that pedigree, you’d expect Svelte to be shit, but this one’s dirty and bluesy.

6. Slave To The Rhythm [Hot Blooded Version] by Grace Jones
It’s an 8.18 minute remix of Slave To The Rhythm, one of my favourite songs of all time. The extra times comes from the first half being instrumental which means, yes, it’s karaoke time. Slaaaaaaave!

7. Mary Jane’s Last Dance by Tom Petty
I revisited this in the wake of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ controversy. The song is apparently about Mr Petty giving up the marijuana drugs, but the video had Kim Basinger necrolove. Like Mr Petty says, oh my my, oh hell yes.

In lieu of tagging others, just, like, do it if you want, man.

Tales of the Old Skool 2: The Horseboy Email

Posted on June 22, 2006 by Robyn

The final part of Tales of the Old Skool, brings us an incident even older than my webpage. This goes all the way back to 1995 and involves a hobby horse, Marcus Lush and an email.

Remember Newsnight on TV2? It was a late-night (10.30, usually) news programme that was broadcast in the mid-90s. The first half was the serious news section hosted by Simon Dallow and Lorelei Mason (later Alison Mau), then the second half was the entertaining part hosted by Marcus Lush.

Among the many entertaining things in the Marcus section was the appearance of a hobby horse that was named Horseboy. I think Horseboy had been rescued from outside someone’s house at inorganic rubbish collection time.

An excited viewer had written in with news that they had a Horseboy too, so there was much merriment at the news of two Horseboys.

Then on another episode it was announced that Newsnight had one of those newfangled “email address” things, and Marcus invited viewers to email him. (See, back then, email was a novelty. Its power had not yet been harnessed.) My brother and I decided that we should take advantage of Marcus’ offer, so I wrote a poem about Horseboy:

Horseboy is more than a toy
He fills the screen with love and joy
He’s more than a head on a pole
He fills up television’s empty hole

I would like to take Horseboy for a spin
Lots of fun would soon begin
We could gallop down the street
I think that would be really neat

I like Horseboy’s fuzzy blue face
He travels at a moderate pace
Horseboy is a very nice thing
A good use of old bits of string

Horseboy’s friend has got a mohawk
That must make the neighbours talk
Now that Horseboy has a friend
It seems the fun will never end!

So off it went to newsnight@tvnz.co.nz and lo and behold, a reply came:

brillianty. we will brodcast it. we have put it in out
shrine

lush

And then on the Newsnight of 7 November, 1995, Marcus mentioned that they had received a viewer email, and said something like that is was even more exciting than the viewer faxes on Holmes. It was jokingly called “email of the week”.

The email was shown on screen, including my email address, and the poem was read out on air, which was awfully thrilling.

I wrote in my diary at the time:

On Newsnight, Marcus read out the Horseboy poem. He said something like it proved that not all interneters were geeks.

The next day I got an email from some guy who’d seen the item, scribbled down the address and thought he’d email it to see if it was real. I was excited that he’d emailed me, and he was excited that I’d replied. Such was the excitement of the ‘net back in those days.

So I don’t know for sure, but I think this may point to me being the author of the first email ever read out on New Zealand television. Excellent.

Update – 11 April 2009

Thanks to the magic of the internet, I have recently had the opportunity to see this episode of Newsnight, and have taken a few screenshots of the historic poem reading.

Marcus Lush reading the email:

horseboy