Robyn's Secret Passage

Earlier in the week, I was part of a conversation where someone asks what everyone’s plans for the weekend are. I responded, “I’m going to see Blam Blam Blam play at the King’s Arms!” And everyone looked at me with blank stares.

I tried to explain, “They’re a band. They were first around in the early ’80s. Their best known song is “There Is No Depression In New Zealand“. Don McGlashan was in the band. He’s that guy from the Mutton Birds. Uh, you know “Nature” and “Dominion Road”. And Blam Blam Blam have got back together for a one-off reunion gig.” There were still a few blank stares.

So it was not all that surprising to find a distinct lack of young ‘uns at the King’s Arms last night. Indeed the crowd had a large number of people who looked like they probably had to arrange a babysitter before they could have gone out.

While I waited for the band to start, I noticed a difference between the older audience there and the typical younger gig-going audiences of today – lack of cellphones and cameras. People were just sitting around talking with their friends. They weren’t texting, nor were they posing seductively for photos, which would later be uploaded to Bebo, MySpace or Facebook.

Finally the gentlemen Blams took to the stage and started with their version of the Doctor Who theme, and then worked through choice songs from their 22-month life.

Now, I’m not all that familiar with Blam Blam Blam’s body of work, but I really really enjoyed the show. None of their songs sounded like relics from early ’80s. They are the sort of songs that could easily be played today and still sound contemporary.

And it was interesting how many of the lyrical themes were still relevant. Police corruption, paranoia about the SIS, struggles with national identity – ripped from 2007’s headlines, man.

The show finally ended with “There Is No Depression In New Zealand” (and how could it not?) which just set the crowd on fire. I like that it’s such a cynical and political song with a really cheerful shout-along chorus. Living in a city where politicians speak of the need for “world-class” footpaths, I reckon this song is still relevant.

A couple of my internet amigos have a mysterious art project webpage, the enticingly titled I Wrote This For You, with the even more enticing URL pleasefindthis.blogspot.com.

It consists of daily posts of a lovely photo matched with words of wisdom, such as this one:

The Far

You got yourself up there. You can get yourself back down.

At a glance, it seems like cut ‘n’ paste fodder for emo LiveJournallers and miserable housewives, but when you look deeper, are the edges a little frayed? Is the author a font of wisdom or is he secretly looking for answers just as much as we are? And when the author says, “I wrote this for you,” is the correct response, “I read this for you”? Or is that reading too much into things?

Nonetheless, this is what the interweb was made for.

Man, this whole Mt Eden gang thing is getting out of hand.

You may recall that, despite recruitment problems, I am a member of the N.O.T.O.R.I.O.U.S 630, a bad-ass gang who refuses to recycle and uses more plastic bags than is really necessary.

And then I became alerted to the presence of another gang, the Mt Eden 274, who stencilled their business on a wall and therefore started a public transport turf war.

Well, it looks like there’s a new kid on the block*. The successful Crips franchise have started up a gang in Mt Eden called the Eden Crips, bringing a touch of sunny Southern California to old Mt Eden, and have put up a sticker to announce their presence:

I’m concerned – the 274 use stencils and the Crips use stickers, but my 630 doesn’t yet have a street art medium to announce my presence. Well, maybe I can just use the medium of the blog to mark my turf. Aw yee-yah, etc.

* It’s the block bordered by Mt Eden Road, Essex Road, Ngauruhoe Street and the park. That’s where all the street art is going down.

I went to Brazil cafe this afternoon before work. There was a sign up on the counter announcing that K Road icon Brazil would be closing for good on September 30! Whoa, there!

I will quickly make a list of reasons why Brazil is (not yet was) lovely.

• The coffee.
• The peeling paint on the ceiling that kind of looked like a map of a strange world.
• The steep steps that are easy to walk up but tricky to walk down.
• The old bus seats.
• The coffee milkshakes.
• The sticky varnish on the tabletops that will rip your newspaper if you’re not careful. That’ll teach you to read.
• The coffee menu displayed on the old computers.
• The beaten-up industrial fittings.
• The pinball machine.
• The faded glory of the old Mercury Theatre days.
• The fierce espresso machine.
• The music, which usually includes some sort of drum and bass.
• The perfectness for it as a morning-after recovery place.
• The dirty boys who hang out at the bar, drinking espressos, telling unfunny jokes.
• The coffee, the coffee, the coffee.

Brazil have a box where you can write down and share your memorie of the place.

K Road is, without a doubt, changing, but I’m not sure what it’s changing into.

Update

Here’s the notice about the closure:

And I’ve taken a few photos of Brazil. Click the latte to see more.

Update 2

The Herald has an article about the cafe’s closure.

Peter Dub Dot Dash has announced the nominees for the worst NZ album cover of the year, such as this gem:

Hollie Smith – Self titled.
“I think the Hollie Smith cover is shockingly bad..what a lousy drawing and then that’s the best part.”

I’d never noticed it before, but the Hollie Smith album cover looks like her decapitated head is being played on the turntable. Watch out – that stylus is gonna cut your throat!

Check out the rest of the nominees.

Mt Eden Village is usually quite a dull place. Sometimes a wide-load vehicle will travel through at 3am with orange lights flashing, and that’s quite exciting, but it’s generally all goody-good in the hood.

But late this morning I was lying in bed when I became aware that a helicopter was flying somewhere nearby – circling, not travelling. Then I heard a few police sirens, so I figured that the po-po were looking for a criminal somewhere in the area.

I heard a man’s voice and a dog panting outside my bedroom window, in the backyard. I looked and there was a cop and a police dog having a sniff around.

Evidently there was no criminal scent around my place, so they moved on, and the helicopter flew away too.

This is really quite exciting, and I will be writing a gangsta rap song about how real my hood is, right after I finish the rap about the wide-loads rollin’ through da streetz.

It’s a Saturday night and I’m having a quiet weekend, so I thought I’d go through my referer logs to see what people googled that led them to my website.

There are a lot of words on my website, and sometimes Google leads people to pages that don’t have anything to do with what they’re searching for.

Here are my favourite searches for the last month, with annotations.

secret passages
This is by far the most common search term, for which I blame my domain name. I also get a lot of searches like “how do i know if i have a secret passage” (Answer: measure up). And I bet the people asking live in tiny apartments.

gangsta rhymes for teenagers
Yo, yo, kids. Stay in school.
Don’t smoke reefer or you’ll be a fool.
Wait till you’re married before you have sex.
And don’t go on the internet.
Word to your mum!

grammar effects of cellphones
I don’t think txt spk has any effect on grammar. The spelling changes, but as far as I can see, the grammar, boringly enough, stays the same. do u no wot i mean??

massage my back
No.

i love justin watkins
I like that idea that someone is so into this Justin Watkins guy that they’ve typed a declaration of their love into google, and just gone where it’s taken them. Or maybe Justin himself is checking up on his admirers. (Hi, Justin!!!!)

streap tease captain & tenille
This one freaks me out, man. First, the searcher can’t spell “striptease”, and also the idea of someone doing a striptease to any Captain and Tennille song, well, it’s the opposite of hot. Shake it to “Muskrat Love”?

nestle “animal bar” vegetarian
Aka, “Are there really animals in a chocolate Animal Bar, and if so, will eating one get me ostracised from my hardcore vegan community? Because I had one for dinner. I was really hungry and it looked really yummy and it was all I had and I ate it. Help!”

tapered harem pants
In the harem, your duty is to the sheikh, and the sheikh likes harem pants for their gigantic voluminous legs. The sheikh does not like it when his wives get ideas in their heads about “fashion” and “nu rock” and “hosepipe trousers”. If you insist on wearing tapered harem pants, the sheikh will cast you out of the harem and take a younger, prettier wife.

what are the names of the band playing in the tree in “there’s something about mary”?
Oh, that’s an easy one. It’s Jonathan Richman, who is lovely and good, and drummer Tommy Larkins.

I finally made it along to Craftwerk, a semi-regular alternative craft fair type event, usually held in St Kevin’s Arcade.

I mainly wanted to go along to see Annette’s Nut and Bee goodies. She’s been busy working over the last couple of year, turning her supercute designs into things like writing paper, badges, magnets, and Moo cards.

I was greeted with a table full of cuteness, and I picked out four fridge magnets, that now have a place on my fridge between the fish and Britney:

I had a look around at the other crafters and their goods. There was some really cool stuff there, though it got a little repetitive seeing the common idea of getting an old thing, splitting it into pieces, and turning the pieces into earrings or pendants.

This crafting renaissance going on at the moment is encouraging. It seems that it’s another thing that’s really able to happen due to the internet bringing people together to, say, buy cool old plates with “Cunt” or “Dickhead” written on them.

I feel inspired! Maybe it’s time to get my subversive cross-stitchery going again.

Today, for the first time ever, I paid attention to the lyrics to the verses of Ray Columbus and the Invaders‘ 1964 hit “She’s a Mod“.

The song is about a guy who fancies a girl and he’s somehow promised to buy her some clothes, but she’s going through all these different fashion styles which is – whoa, there – costing the fellow a pretty penny.

The final verse laments:

Because I wanted her love
I said I’d buy her new clothes.
She took advantage of my trust.
Now I’m broke and completely bust.

The girlfriend finally settles on the mod look, and I think the guy is cheerfully singing this in the chorus because – rejoice – he won’t have to buy her any more clothes!

But as I read these lyrics, I recognised a familiar theme. In N.W.A.’s 1989 song “I Ain’t Tha 1″ Ice Cube warns:

And they’ll get you for your money, son.
Next thing you know you’re getting their hair and they nails done

As a lesson to less savvy men, Ice Cube cautions fellows that women are just after money, and then they’ll make excuses to not have sex with you. His advice is to keep them at a safe distance, just use them for sex, and don’t give them none of yo’ cash.

It’s as if Ice Cube went through a similar situation to Ray, but instead of being happy with his moddishly attired honey, she instead dumped him when the money ran out, leaving him heart-broken and determined to never let it happen again.

So what does a more contemporary take on this theme sound like? Destiny’s Child got there in 2000 with “Independent Woman Pt 1“:

Question: Tell me what you think about me.
I buy my own diamonds and I buy my own rings.

The shoes on my feet – I’ve bought it.
The clothes I’m wearing – I’ve bought it.

So, the well-adjusted modern woman isn’t going to constantly bother her fellow for money to buy nice things – she can buy her own nice stuff with her own money. She’s a bit unsure of how this will affect the traditional male-female relationship, but she’s also quote proud of her financial independence.

Thinking about all this, maybe I’m a really modern woman or something, but the idea of a man giving me money to get my hair cut or buy some clothes, well, it seems really dirty. Beer, yes; frocks, no.

So now all I need to do is write a pop song and/or gangsta rap about my money policy, and I’ll surely be on to a winner.

Over on PA System there was a discussion about the Rugby World Cup. There was mention that Justin Marshall felt that New Zealand rugby players weren’t showered with the same adulation that rugby players in England apparently are.

I commented, which was hilarious because I don’t actually know anything about rugby:

People haven’t moved into full-on “Justin is awesome!!!” hero worship yet because a) he’s still young and still playing, and b) he’s moved away from New Zealand so he’s not here any more.

In other words, you just haven’t earned it yet, baby.

Observant readers will notice that “You just haven’t earned it yet, baby” is also the name of a Smiths song. This was also noted on PA System, and triggered an avalanche of rugby-related Smiths song title rugby comments, which I will list here for posterity.

• LegBreak: Keeping with the Smiths theme, perhaps last night Meg dreamt that someone loved him. Just another false alarm.
• Che: well, this charming man will certainly be hoping to see los puma’s maul the french. strange days, here we come.
• LegBreak: Che, You think the French might’ve started something they just couldn’t finish? That would paint a vulgar picture.
• Che: leg, i know this conversation started as bigmouth striking again, but the world won’t listen to anything less than the pumas winning.

  and as for robyn starting this meme, sheila, take a bow.

• kowhai: Oh Justin, we still love you, only slighty less that we used to…..
• Russell: I guess Justin is just nostalgic for the days when he was the boy with the Thorne in his side…
• Paul: It’s a stretch but on the day of the final, A Rush & A Push & the Land (Cup) Is Ours (enough of the Smiths, pleeeese!)
• LegBreak: Stop me if You’ve Heard this one before, Justin’s just trying to ensure that his Light Never Goes Out.
• Merc: It’s all a miserable lie and heaven knows he’s miserable now.
• LegBreak: Oh MsGallagher, so much to answer for…
• Joanna: You’re not the one for me, Rugby
  You’re not the one I really, really love…
• Richard: Causing Meg to oscillate wildly …..
• Danielle: I think I might be the sporting equivalent of Morrissey at his most morose. I am horribly worried about NZ teams in high pressure situations, and usually expect the worst. Yet I force myself to watch everything, in a frenzy of worry punctuated by moments of sheer terror and very occasional joy. It’s all quite stressful. Call me morbid, call me pale.
• merc: People said you were easily led,
  were they half right?
• LegBreak: One thing that concerns me is Graham Henry, and the headmaster ritual.
  He says its gonna happen now, When exactly does he mean? see we’ve already waited too long

This is probably the only Rugby World Cup related thing I’ll write. Heaven knows I’m, etc.