Specifically, this is due to the innovation of vajazzling, the application of stick-on gems to the lady area, and its male counterpart, the pajazzle.

So that got me thinking – why stop at clothing and genitals? Why not extend the bedazzling principle to other things? So I picked up a few sheets of stunning stick-on gems and got to work turning some boring objects into breathtaking works of bedazzled beauty.

First of all I started with something really basic – a ’90s-era Sony microcassette recorder. I figured I could bedazzle it and then take it along to an important media event and make all the real journalists jealous.

Well, this was a bit of a disaster. The bedazzling on the speaker area blocked the sound from playing back, and the bedazzled micro cassette tape wouldn’t fit back inside the slot.

I was pretty upset at this and had a good cry.

I reached for some tissues to dry my tears, when suddenly inspiration struck me. Tissues are really boring, with their plain white fibres. I reached for my bedazzling kit and soon turned the dull tissues into stunning, fashionable bedazzled tissues.

Feeling buoyed and much more chipper by this breakthrough, I decided to go shopping for some vitamins. I was planning to take the bus into town, so before I left the house, I bedazzled my Snapper bus card.

The Snapper card has the cool fish design, but it’s a bit boring and not very fashionable. I soon bedazzled it up, emphasising the fish logo, but adding stylish new bedazzled dimensions.

Down at my local chemist, I picked up some women’s multivitamins. As I looked at the bottle, I couldn’t help feel that it was not very stylish or fashionable and could actually do with some bedazzling.

Out came my kit and I got to work on it, making sure to add a wee diamond to each pill in the bottle. I was pretty impressed with my ability to transform a boring old bottle of vitamins into a stunning, trendy bedazzled masterpiece.

But then I went to take a vitamin and came to a horrible realisation: I could not swallow the pill if it had a bedazzle stuck to it.

I looked at what I’d been doing and I felt like a bit of a dick. Bedazzling vitamins? What had I been thinking? I slumped into my La-Z-Boy recliner and discovered I was all cried out. There was only one thing for it. I needed to drown my sorrows in another kind of bottle.

Exhibit M

22 February 1990. The 1990 Grammy Awards, recognising the musical output of 1989. Young MC and Kris Kristofferson present the Grammy for Best New Artist. “This year, the nominees for Best New Artist are making all kinds of music,” the bespectacled author of Keep It In Your Pants says. “And each one of them expresses himself in a unique way that commands attention,” Young’s elder co-presenter concludes.

The nominees are announced, along with a video clip of a respresentative song. There’s Neneh Cherry, rippin’ shit up with Buffalo Stance; the Indigo Girls belting out some harmonious acoustic pop on Closer To Fine. So far the applause is polite and appreciative.

Then comes Milli Vanilii’s nomination, along with the braided pair singing, “Girl you know it’s true. Ooh, ooh, ooh, I love you.” And dancing. And staring with those needy eyes. The audience breaks out into screaming and rapturous applause. Yes, yes, Rob and Fab!

Back to Soul II Soul and a bit of their art/house/soul/pop song Back to Life (However Do You Want Me); and finally gravel-voiced rapper Tone Loc rounds out the nominations with his Young MC-penned track Funky Cold Medina.

The winner is announced. Milli Vanilli. The room erupts with screams. Yay!

Rob and Fab receive their award, and Rob makes this speech:

“We wanna say thank you very much, but we wanna say there are a lot of artists here in this room, there are a lot of artists outside in the world, who could achieve the same award that we achieved today. And it’s an award for all artists in the world. Thank you very much.”

That night, all the artists in the world gave silent thanks to Milli Vanilli.

Exhibit L

April 27, 2034

“Come here, my little comes. Gather around and I’ll tell you why we used to like the Milli Vanillis in the olden days. Oh, they were so pretty. It was like if you got Justin Beiber, made him brown, cloned him, gave him too many hair extensions, and dressed him in lycra bike pants, a jacket with giant shoulder pads and clompy boots. And how they could dance! They used to do this thing where they would jump up and spin around and their dreadlocks and braids flew about gaily. And that Rob, he had the most beautiful eyes.”

“Grandma?”

“Yes, child.”

“Who’s Justin Bieber?”

Exhibit K

November 16 1990. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences withdraws Milli Vanilli’s Grammy for Best New Artist.

The main point comes down to that the vocal credit on the album specifically named Rob and Fab.

But the awarded recordings themself hadn’t changed. Milli Vanilli hadn’t changed. It was just that the two fellows on the album cover and in the music videos and dancing on stage were different from the men who sang on the record.

But somehow that affected the recording.

Exhibit J

It’s a bit like Schrödinger’s Cat. It’s not until you lift the lid on the album that you can form an opinion on the music. If the cat is alive, there’s a couple of handsome singers on the album and it’s a great album; if the cat is dead, it’s ordinary looking session singers on the album and it’s a terrible album.

Exhibit H

January 1990. Happy new decade. I had a $15 record voucher from either my recent 15th birthday present and/or Christmas the week before. I’d recently purchased De La Soul’s debut album Three Feet High and Rising and was really enjoying it. Yeah, soundtrack of summer.

So I was feeling a bit adventurous. I wanted something a bit urban, a bit gritty. Something that would keep reminding me of my summer holiday in Auckland and not the impending return to rural Hamilton.

I looked around a forgettable record shop (remember, kids, this was the early ’90s, when record shops were all over the place and could easily be forgettable), but couldn’t find anything that took my fancy.

Then I saw something on the top 20 rack of tapes. It was Milli Vanilli’s All or Nothing (US Remix Album). I’d heard their songs. They were ok. I bought the tape, listened to it a few times but it wasn’t very captivating.

One of the album tracks was Girl You Know It’s True (NY Subway Mix). This suggests someone has taken the original Girl You Know It’s True and remixed it to reflect the gritty urban beat of New York’s public transport system.

In reality it’s like someone’s heard MARRS’s groundbreaking samplefest Pump Up the Volume and decided to apply a similar style to Milli Vanilli. But instead of using an experienced DJ, it sounds like they gave the work-experience kid a Fairlight and some Grace Jones, Sly and Robbie, Michael Jackson, and Deep Purple singles and let them have at it. With disastrous results.

If I really want to feel a stab of regret, I can remind myself that at the time, The Stone Roses album would have been out there on the shelves for me to buy.

Exhibit G

April 2 1998. Let’s try not to think of Rob Pilatus’ final night on earth, alone in a hotel room in Hamburg, an accidental overdose. Let’s try not to think of the drug rehab and the assault charges and the relapsing and the neediness and the depression. Let’s try to remember the good things.

Exhibit F

After it was revealed that Rob and Fab were not the people singing on the Milli Vanilli records or dancing in their videos, the public outrage made it clear – there is no room for lack of authenticity in pop music.

Yet, surprisingly, the Indigo Girls did not see their sales go through the roof in response to this newfound desire for musical authenticity.

A lesson was learned – cheat, just don’t get caught. Today no one’s quite so bold as to hire pretty frontmen for frumpy singers. But there’s Auto-Tune to tidy up messy singers. Or what about getting a great singer to record the demo, which the mediocre singer memorises, right down to the quirky phrasing. And the potential that ProTools offers for chopping and layering to disguise flaws.

But why are we still obsessed with authenticity in music? Why is it ok for some types of art to be polished to an artifical state of perfection, but not ok for others.

Exhibit E

We hide our love for Milli Vanilli. We disguise it as contempt for the ’90s, beecause the ’90s were awful. At the moment, at least.

Milli Vanilli gets filed away with Crystal Pepsi, biker shorts and giant hair – pop culture anomalies that will never happen again.

Because the past was awful and the present is better. Apart from the bits of the past that were golden. We cherish those.

But that’s not the Milli Vanilli bit. That’s the bit where we pretend we never bought a Milli Vanilli album. Or if we did, we thought it was awful.

We don’t remember all the songs that went to number one all over the world, or the joy people got from dancing to Baby Don’t Forget My Number (NY Subway Mix).

Perhaps that actually happened in a parallel universe, where Al Gore was president and the World Trade Center still stands.

Exhibit D

Q. Do you like Milli Vanilli?

A. No, I do not like Milli Vanilli because I think that they are crap!!!! I mean, they don’t even write their own songs or sing on their records and they have those braids which look really STUPID. Also, they do those dumb dances where they go from side to side, which look really LAME. Plus they wear really weird clothes with giant shoulder pads. Shoulder pads are so mental. I like proper singers who are actually talented, like Margaret Urlich, Jamie J Morgan, Ngaire and Madonna.

Exhibit C

I mean, it’s not like they were the only ones doing it. Technotronic had blue-lipped fashion model Felly lip-syncing in their Pump Up the Jam video; petit Zelma Davis stood in for plus-size Martha Walsh in C+C Music Factory’s Gonna Make You Sweat video; and it was shockingly revealed that Paula Abdul’s singing partner MC Skat Kat was not actually a streetwise cat, but was, in fact, two human males.

Exhibit B

Rob did the grunty singing and Fab did the rapping, but there always seemed to be a few more male voices in there too. And maybe there was even a voice of caution from the future.

It’s a tragedy for me to see the dream is over.
And I never will forget the day we met.
[Multi-platinum pop career], I’m gonna miss you.

- Girl I’m Gonna Miss You

Exhibit A

Now, at first glance, this would suggest a hilarious radio-station parody of the Eagles’ classic song with the lyrics changed to reflect the unique cultural nature of the Hutt Valley.

But it could also mean that the “Hotel California” lyrics are actually about the Hutt Valley. This isn’t about the dirty LA music scene of the ’70s. No, it’s about life in the Hutt.

I think the latter is the more likely scenario. Let’s examine a selection of lyrics.

On a dark desert highway

Dark – the high hills of the Hutt Valley mean that the sun sets earlier, plunging the valley into darkness.
Desert – while not technically a desert, there are parts of the Hutt Valley that do feel like a barren desert. If not geographically, then architecturally.
Highway – State Highway 2 runs the length of the Hutt Valley, and includes the road engineering marvel that is the Petone Interchange.

I heard the mission bell

This is actually when you get a text from your mate who says “wanna do a mish?” and you are all “kewl” and then you show up to his place and go real hard, eh.

And I was thinking to myself, “This could be heaven or this could be hell.”

The Hutt Valley offers many different types of experiences – the New Dowse gallery, the Lower Hutt civic buildings, the Upper Hutt Roller Skating Club, vast tracts of car-centric suburbs, gangs, Queensgate mall. These could be considered “heaven” and/or “hell” depending on what your hobbies and interests are.

So I called up the captain, “Please bring me my wine.”

The Hutt Valley is just over the Rimutakas from the Wairarapa, a rich wine-growing and grape-growing area of New Zealand. The “captain” this lyric refers to is obviously involved with the Toast Martinborough festival, and is about to pour a festival-goer a sample glass of pinot gris.

Welcome to the Hotel California

The Hutt offers a range of fine accomodations, ranging from budget accommodation, to four-star motels for the dicerning traveller. And there’s also that one with the steakhouse attached, which is quite good if you like steak but don’t want to have to walk too far to your bed.

Mirrors on the ceiling, the pink champagne on ice.

This is obviously a reference to the wide range of products available from Westfield Queensgate. You can go to the Warehouse and buy some mirrors and then No-More-Nails them to your bedroom ceiling. Then you can celebrate your handiwork with some strawberry Lindauer. Man, that stuff’s real yum. But you should make sure the No More Nails has set hard before you lie down under it, because if you were sitting there enjoying a Lindauer and one of the mirrors fell on you, that would be really annoying and you’d probably spill the Lindauer and then you’d have to go and change the sheets. What a blimmin’ hassle.

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

The Hutt Valley is a prison that will trap you for life.

Robyn Gallagher real name

Princess Roshonda Boutros Meow-Meow Taaniqua O’Gallagher. Which is also my security answer for online banking.

What can I say that can be expressed like the sunshine?

Like warm banana peels playfully slapping my shoulders.
Like fluorescent tubes from a happy office.
Like meteorological baguettes, feeding me with brightness.
Like a thousand yellow highlighter pens.
This is how you make me feel.

Wedding pens

Let me tell you one thing – you stick with a pencil. Because in a couple of years’ time, you’ll be back on my doorstep with a suitcase under one arm and a child under the other saying, “Mother, I made a terrible mistake. Oscar was not right for me!” Ink is not good enough for that rogue. Sign your name with a light pencil and keep an eraser in your pocket at all times.

Transvestite and Auckland and smoking and New Zealand

“Well, hello. You must be new around here. We don’t get many new faces these days.”

“I’m actually just visiting. I’m from Tasmania.”

“Well, you’re in the big smoke now, darling. And speaking of smoke – if you’re going to light up, you’d better do it out on the balcony.”

“But I thought you could smoke inside here. It said on the website…”

“Oh, that blasted website. Do you know, that has caused us nothing but trouble. Ralph put it up back in the ’90s but he forgot the password for it years ago. It has old prices, old photos and the claim that we are “Australasia’s only transvestite cigar bar.” Nothing but trouble.”

“But I came all the way here.”

“Sorry, darl. Rules are rules. Oh, look. You’ve got a nice face and you’re wearing those control-top tights well. We have a smoking room out the back for staff breaks. Just don’t tell the Ministry of Health!”

“Thank you. You’ve made me a very happy man.”

“I’ll show you the way.”

Team scarf

Team Edward!!!!

Sleep deprivation effects

Team Jacob!!!!!

Rap song on the dole

Every day I go to the office on WINZ
and this is where my fun begins.
I get the dole and buy some booze
and get into a drunken mood.

Don’t want no job. I’m on the dole.
I ain’t got no self-control.
I’m a figment of your imagination,
oh listener of a talkback station.

Rap, rap, rappy, rap-rapp.
Rap-rap, rappy, rappy.
Rappy, rappy, rap-rapp.
Word.

How did Hamilton Lake get its name?

There was a lake and it was in Hamilton and they looked at it and they said “there is a lake Hamilton so we shall call it Hamilton Lake”. And they did and it was good.

Turning 33 poem

Now you are 33: a poem

Many a notorious man or woman
has reached the age of 33:
Chubby funnymen John Belushi and Chris Farley;
wife of JKF Jr, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy;
Richard II (blame his cousin Henry);
Evas Braun, Peron and Cassidy;
writer William S Burroughs Jr and rapper Pimp C;
soulman Sam Cooke; conceptual artist Leigh Bowery;
Jesus and Bon Scott (of AC/DC);
and writress Robin Hyde.
All these people were 33.
33 when they died.

Are you interesting?

No, not really.

They obviously know that I fear the internet, so they were cleverly running a competition to “win the ultimate music experience” if I signed up. “Awesome,” I mentally exclaimed. “If I win I’ll get to go back in time and see the Pixies play in London in 1987!”

But sadly, Mastercard’s definition of “the ultimate music package” is somewhat different to mine – the prize package in question involves Aotearoa New Zealand’s lite rock legends The Feelers.

The pamphlet explained that “this fantastic package”, would fly me to Rarotonga, give me seven nights at a beach resort, and I’ll get to “sing in the chorus of the new single”, “appear in the music video” and “hang out with the band while they record”. And there will also be “photo and memorabilia signing opportunities”.

Now, I like fantastic things as well as ultimate things, and people who know me well know that I’m a sucker for a memorabilia signing opportunity, so obviously I was dead keen to enter this competition and win it.

But I wanted to be sure that I was making the right choice, so I pulled out a guided meditation tape, popped it into my Walkman and went into a elevated state where I could channel forward in time, experiencing how a Rarotongan holiday with the Feelers would be. While I was in that state, I also wrote myself a postcard every day.

Monday
I’ve just arrived in beautiful Rarotonga! My hotel room appears to be a sort of fale, but with a modern design aesthetic more akin to what Westerners call a “broom cupboard”. Yeah, it’s a bit small but I don’t care! I’m in a tropical paradise with the guys who brought us “Venus”, “As Good as it Gets” and their 2006 hit song “Weapons of War”.

Monday
Back home at long last! I was delayed at Customs for five hours due to the the unique and exquisite Feelers autographs in my passport being considered “defacement of Crown property”. But I finally got it back and will now be listing it on Trade Me. Fortune will be mine! Best holiday ever!

In light of this, I have decided not to sign up for the Mastercard Applause service.