Robyn’s Secret Passage

So somehow I ended up on this Coca-Cola New Zealand mailing list and a couple of days ago they informed the masses that “One of New Zealand’s favourite beverages of the 80’s [sic] is back by popular demand to quench your thirst this summer.”

It turns out this “favourite beverage” is Mello Yello, which was such a favourite that they stopped making it in the late ’80s.

The only thing I remember about Mello Yello was the TV ad, which featured a lady with giant frosted blonde hair (like Princess Diana, but sluttier) at the beach, who sculled back not one but two bottles of Mello Yello, with each drink preceded by a rhyme. Then the voices sang, “Mello Yello makes you feel so good so fast from your head down to your toe. Mello Yello makes you feel so good so fast. You just can’t drink it slow.” This was, like most ads, a dirty lie. It was also not a cool ad, because I remember it being mocked in the playground at my school.

I don’t remember drinking much Mello Yello in the ’80s. Soft drinks were a special occasion drink, and when I had a choice, I would have probably gone for Fanta or the more grown-up, sophisticated choice, Coke.

But not only is Mello Yello being brought back (for a limited time only), it’s also being promoted with an ’80s nostalgia angle. There’s even a MySpace page for it where Mello Yello’s favourite TV shows include The A Team, Knightrider, The Dukes of Hazzard, and CHiPs.

This morning I noticed Mello Yello in the fridge at my local dairy so I bought a bottle. It seemed to only be available in a 600ml bottle, which is ridiculously large and even more than the two bottles the ad lady sunk back in rapid succession.

I drank a bit and it was not a the magic liquid nostalgia experience I seemed to have been promised. It just was this cloyingly sweet, murky yellow fizzy beverage. It didn’t even have a pleasing citrus tang.

But maybe I’m doing it wrong. Maybe the only way to properly enjoy Mello Yello is to rapidly drink it, to slurp back 302 kilocalories in mere seconds and get so high that all your worries disappear and then enter a parallel universe where it’s like the ’80s but without bad coffee, sexism, shops closed on Sundays or that prime-time TV show about dogs herding sheep.

So I won’t be buying any more Mello Yello. It can happily retire to the land of unwanted ’80s nostalgia. And besides, Mello Yello didn’t even accept my MySpace friend request, so, really, it can just piss off.

I went to Newmarket today. I’d heard rumours, but I didn’t realise how posh it had got. Why, I remember in the ’80s when Newmarket was old and rickety and the plastic shop was located in the sloping stalls of the old Rialto cinema.

There’s been a lot of development down Nuffield Street. It used to just be the street that the Link goes down when it turns around in Newmarket, but now both sides of the street have been turned into posh shops.

There are lots of clothing shops (both fabulous and dire) and a selection of bars and restaurants (Otto Woo and Wagamama both have a home there). Surprisingly enough, there’s now a Swanndri boutique, displaying both traditional woollen farm wear as well as modern interpretations. They’re probably thinking Burberry, but it felt a bit like an extension of Speights advertising campaign.

My favourite amongst it all was Kikki K, a stylish Swedish-Australian stationery store. I like a good notebook, me.

I also checked out the Newmarket Fresh shop on Gillies Ave. It’s part of this apparent new trend in posh supermarkets. I was expecting to be very impressed, but I wasn’t. It just seemed like the deli section of an average Foodtown or New World, but spread over a larger area. And for a shop that seemed obsessed with freshness, there were an awful lot of canned and packaged foods. Most of the fresh stuff was fruit and veg, but even some of that was from California. But worst of all, there nice sweet things selection as abysmal. I couldn’t find any exotic chocolates. Just as well the deli at the Mt Eden shops knows how to do it right.

And finally I went to the expanded Smith and Caughey. The old part of the building is now almost entirely make-up. The new part next door has menswear on the bottom and ladieswear on top. It is trying very very hard to be utterly extravagant.

Something has happened in New Zealand society, cos while there have always been posh shops in posh parts of town, it never quite seemed that there was enough demand to that quite that much all in one place. Are the rich getting richer? Are people choosing to spend their money on fancy goods instead of cheaper, plainer stuff just cos it makes them feel nice?

All I know is that while Newmarket is the closest big lot of shops to where I live, I seldom go there.

I never really used to be into graffiti much. I couldn’t differentiate between some angry 14-year-old tagging a bus stop and someone like Askew doing a really awesome piece. But one day a few years ago, Dylz introduced me to Askew (and told me his terrible, terrible secret from the dark history of TV3) and I slowly started paying attention to the graffiti that I saw on the streets.

This year I started to notice the two walls on the corner of Poynton Terrace and Pitt Street. I walk past them most days on the way to work, and one day I photographed all the pieces that were up on the walls.

Then I noticed one part of the wall - furthest from the street - was being graffitied over rather frequently. So far I have five different photo starting from March this year. It’s interesting seeing how the pieces evolve, how elements of the old pieces are incorporated into the new ones.

I also learned how to take better photos of graffiti. Some guy in America messaged me on Flickr and asked me to take photos front-on - no wacky “I’m making art with art!!!” angles.

So here are the five stages of the left side of the south wall of Poynton Terrace.

ITEM: I finally got around to watching “The Lost Boys”. When it came out in 1987, I was far too young and girly to see it (”The Labyrinth”, yes. Hot teen vampires, no).

Highlights included:

- When Corey and Corey’s characters meet for the first time. Their eyes lock over a rack of comic books. Magic!
- Jason Patric’s hotness.
- The rockstar mullets of the vampires, which surely were done so they look even more outstanding when they’re hanging upside down.
- All the vampire deaths are really awesome.

Actually, I should perhaps not post this and pretend that I’d seen “The Lost Boys” back in the day. Yeah, I wagged school snuck into the Embassy theatre. That’s it.

ITEM: At the moment the Disruptiv gallery is showing a selection of works designed to be added to “No Nuclear Fire For Amber” and pals on the VAANA mural. A number of local artists have been asked to come up with some new panels with an anti-nuclear theme, and six will be added to the mural. There are some quite good ones in the mix, and I’m glad to see aerosol art is being included this time around. This is because I am street.

ITEM: If you are making a television news story on South Auckland gangs and you want to make a point about the influence of Los Angeles gang culture on South AUckland youths, please be sure to use a video clip that is at least 15 years old, preferably something by NWA. Everyone knows that teenz are most influenced by the music that was in the charts when they were born. After all, my life is defined by the music of Gary Glitter, the Osmonds and the Wombles.