Archive for June, 2007

The Shireless

Published
by
Robyn
on June 28, 2007
in Fiction & Fun
. 1 Comment

I was over at the iTunes story searching for “Baby It’s You” by legendary 1960s girl group The Shirelles. Initially it didn’t seem to be there, but eventually iTunes found it, and I discovered that the search had been complicated because the group’s name had been incorrectly spelled The Shireless.

But this got me thinking. Like, wouldn’t it be totally awesome if there actually was a group called The Shireless?

The Shireless would be a group of aging British folk singers. Due to a run-in with the establishment in the ’60s, they have found themselves banned from residing permanently in any one shire, leaving them shireless.

So they band together, buy an old caravan and they drive from shire to shire, helping people in need, singing songs and - when they need petrol or cider money - painting houses at reasonable rates, before moving on to the next shire.

Of course, this would be an ideal premise for a TV show. Each episode would be set in a different shire, with The Shireless helping a different person (or people, because in today’s telly we like our multiple subplots). Each episode would also include The Shireless performing a classic 1960s girl group song in their unique folky style.

And The Shireless wouldn’t be restricted to England. In a two-part special, they visit the Ka’anapali Shire on Hawaii’s beautiful Maui island, where they swap their guitars for ukuleles and help some Hawaiians and tourists and perform a folky luau version of “Will you love me tomorrow?”, driving home the message about the importance of safe sex on vacation.

The Shireless would be an instant modern televisual cult classic, much like The Sopranos, Lost, Six Feet Under and Pop’s Ultimate Star.

Normally I’d charge thousands of dollars for my creative service fees to come up with such an idea for a TV show, but getting into the spirit of the interwebs 2.0, I am offering this idea to anyone under the spirit of creative commons.

I expect to see it remixed and on YouTube within a week.

Old management

Published
by
Robyn
on June 24, 2007
in Uncategorized
. 5 Comments

I was down at the Mt Eden Village shops, when I saw a sign outside the Sierra Cafe proudly proclaiming that it was under new management.

Sierra’s an unusual cafe. It’s sort of part of a chain, but without the fierce franchising strictness of, say, Starbucks. There’s room for individualism within the stores, as well as local touches like exhibitions of flowers-that-look-like-vaginas paintings. (Bad cafe art exhibitions are one of my favourite things!)

Now, under old management, Mt Eden Sierra did a really nice range of sweet things. My favourite was their ginger slice. I’m a bit of a ginger fan, me, so it takes more than a generic ginger crunch to please me. But their ginger slice was tops. It was small but thick, and it had a dense, chewy base, with slivers of coconut, giving it a really satisfying texture, and it was topped with a thick, spicy layer of ginger icing. It was the perfect complement to a latte.

I’m a little wary of business owners who make a big deal of the business having changed owners. It assumes that a) the old owners were rubbish, and b) the new owners are better.

But what awaited me with Sierra’s range of sweet things under new management? Generic ginger crunch. A giant slab of crumbly, boring old ginger crunch. No longer a special weekend delight. I could buy this sort of thing from any old cafe. In fact, the entire range of delicious sweet things was gone, replaced with generic cafe slices.

It’s taken away the one point of difference that kept me going there. I might stick with Frasers cafe in future - they still do good sweet things, and have pleasingly bad art exhibitions.

But as for Sierra, I can only hope that the new management eventually becomes as good as the old management.

There we go

Published
by
Robyn
on June 23, 2007
in Uncategorized
. 2 Comments

The LiveJournal ties have been severed! I have officially stopped posted to secretpassage.livejournal.com! It’s a strange feeling.

I’ve been delaying it for ages because LiveJournal is heaps of fun. But it’s ultimately more important for me to be able to take all my online writing - secret-passage.com, LiveJournal, and new stuff - and have it all in one place.

So while it’s kinda sad to say goodbye to the posting part of LiveJournal, it’s really exciting to finally have my website up and running. And I’ll still have my LiveJournal Friend page, which is my most visited website.

And I like that due to the magical powers of RSS, the stuff I write here can still appear on LiveJournal and my Facebook profile. You can nae escape me.

Hey, does this mean I’m a blogger now?

Unhand those sexy items

Published
by
Robyn
on June 11, 2007
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

The Auckland final of the 48Hours film competition was on Thursday, and it was a brilliant evening.

Fractured Radius didn’t make it into the finals this year, but that doesn’t matter cos that’s not what we’re there for, man. So was just able to enjoy a selection of 12 of the best films from Auckland teams.

The winner, Camp Fear by Mukpuddy, was a really well done animation about two monsters at a camp. When they accepted their award, one of the Mukpuddy dudes gave a shout out to James, Faith and me for the reviews we’d done on the 48Hours forums. This was such a nice feeling - all that sleep deprivation, Civic numb-bum and having to sit through the less than awesome films in the heats was worth it.

But if you want to see Fractured Radius’ film “The Big Job”, here ’tis. I get blown up in it, which was a rather freaky experienced to endure on set, if you know what I mean.

I also highly recommend Gun Man by team Bald Faced Cheek. They have a similar sense of humour as fRad, and this year paid special tribute to fRad by using our catchphrase, “shit my balls”. I especially recommend this film if, like me, you are hot 4 Yorkshire accents.

I like 48Hours, and being able to spend a few months a year embracing my film geekness.

Too many films

Published
by
Robyn
on June 4, 2007
in Film & TV
. 0 Comments

I spent my evenings last week at the Civic theatre with James and Faith watching all 177 films in the heats of the 48Hour film competition.

We took one heat each per evening where we paid attention and furiously scribbled notes in the dark, which we attempted to decipher and next day and guide us to writing concise and insightful reviews for the masses.

Interested parties can find them here: Heats 1-3, heats 4-6, heats 7-9, heats 10-12, and heats 13-15.

The competition requires that each team is given a character name and trait (Jerry Reed, a hypochondriac), a prop (rope) and a line of dialogue (”What do you call that”) that must be used in the film. It’s interesting how many teams uses those to build their entire film around.

This might not seem like much, but after you’ve seen a dozen films where Jerry Reed is a perpetually sniffling, pill-popping sickie who thinks he has “the Aids”, you start to switch off. And it’s the ones who make Jerry a minor character and do something more original with their main character that really stand out.

As for my team’s film, well, it wasn’t our best effort. We didn’t take our own advice and filled it with too many in-jokes that most audience members didn’t get (and probably were annoyed that they didn’t get), and the film’s ending was really insubstantial, which is another way to annoy viewers. But having said that, the stuff in the middle got a good reaction, particularly Jimmy Can’t-Face’s urgent message. (Coming soon to YouTube!)

What I like best about the 48Hours heats is seeing how teams grow from year to year. Case in point, teen team Halcyon Entertainment, who in 2005 gave us the worst film ever, the notorious Graduate Massacre. But they came back last year with a competent musical, Next, Please, but this year they surprised us all with a sweet, tender story of a boy who befriends his hospital wardmate, a girl with cancer.

And of course there is the opportunity to see films that would never normally get a screening in the mighty Civic. A puppet penis who’s going to be “sick” on his owner? Two teens dressed up as senile veterans? A group of teens trapped in a shipping container who spend the whole time swearing? It’s all there.

It’s a great way to spend a week.