I’ve never bought a Big Wednesday ticket, but (googlegooglegoogle) it costs $5 minimum, and one of the things you have to decide is a heads or tails option for a cyber coin toss.

And then if you win (because you are special and deserve to win), then you get a car and a boat and a beach house and a whole buttload of cash ‘n’ shit. Because you’re special. You deserve to to win. You’ve worked hard.

But the chances of winning Big Wednesday are really really really slim.

From NewstalkZB:

Victoria University anthropologist Peter Howland says people are more likely to die in an plane crash than win Big Wednesday tonight. He says the odds of hitting the jackpot tonight are a dismal one in 38 million, making it a near certainty that if you buy a ticket, you will lose.

“Those odds are so astronomical they’re outside of everybody’s everyday experience … outside of everybody’s ability to comprehend.”

So why do people buy tickets? Well, it helps that there’s a big ad campaign attached to Big Wednesday, as well as extensive media coverage of the big jackpots.

And that’s my general objection to Big Wednesday. It’s not the gambling aspect (there are much worse forms of gambling) or the dumbness of buying a ticket because the chances of winning are so incredibly low. It’s the dumbness of getting sucked in to all the hype surrounding it.

I’m tired of seeing my friends – smart, cool people – standing in line to buy Big Wednesday tickets. It implies that their excellent lives are somehow lacking something. That all the cool things in their lives – their families, the things they create – somehow lack something that only $35 million can replace. $35,000 isn’t enough. Nor is $350,000. No, only $35 million can fill that empty empty hole.

Yeah, you’ve worked hard. You’ve made sacrifices, like not going out tonight because you have kids now and you need to spend time with them while they’re young (How many people do that, eh?) And while you’ve never specifically wanted a boat, if you won Big Wednesday and they gave you a boat, well, you wouldn’t say no to that. You invite your friends over and go for a cruise on the harbour and have a barbecue on the boat and drink pinot gris and Monteiths Radler and other stuff that people do on boats. I mean, it wouldn’t be like that “I’m on a Boat” video (that’s just silly) but it would be quite nice. Yeah.

And surely – because the universe is just and fair and, well, you are are special – surely you’re going to win Big Wednesday and not have one of the five million tickets that won’t win.

Well, if I were you, I’d take that $5 and go down to your local video shop and rent the 1978 coming-of-age flick “Big Wednesday“. Set in the 1960s and ’70s, it’s about three surfer friends (Jan-Michael Vincent! William Katt! Gary Busey!) who go through the turmoil of the late ’60s, Vietnam, love, war, heartbreak and pain.

It’s about how sometimes life is kind of lousy, and how you don’t always get everything you want. But when you look at your life in any closeness, you realise that you actually already have everything you could possibly want.

The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don’t wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules.

It’s all about the mixtape as an artistic and romantic gesture. You carefully – very carefully – choose not just songs but the order in which they are played. And it is these songs and the play order which truly shows how you are feeling (because you are shy and don’t express yourself so well in words).

This idea of a mixtape has haunted me and tormented me because I’d never been able to create a mixtape (or CD or iTunes playlist) that I’ve even been remotely satisfied with.

Example 1

I recently found a tape I’d put together in 1997 full of moody surf instrumental music. It was going to be my late-night driving music, like that scene in Pulp Fiction where John Travolta shoots up and drives around in his convertible. Only without the heroin, and in a Toyota Corolla.

I’m not sure if I ever got around to putting the tape into use, but listening to it with a decade’s distance between when I first held down play and record together, it seemed terribly pretentious and horribly embarrassing. What was I thinking? Oh yeah, Travolta.

Example 2

When I was in Nelson on holiday a couple of years ago, I burned a CD to be my soundtrack on the day I drove to Blenheim. Only trouble was about half the tunes I’d put on the playlist in iTunes were DRM-controlled and wouldn’t burn to disk. And as it happened, they were all the good tunes.

Specifically, there was no Tom Tom Club and I really wanted to listen to some Tom Tom Club tunes and the whole way over on that stupid winding road between Nelson and Blenheim I had to listen to a whole lot of songs that were not by the Tom Tom Club and then Blenheim (on a Sunday!) was silent and grey and still no Tom Tom Club and so it wasn’t until I got back to Nelson in the late afternoon that I could finally get some Tom Tom Club.

Wait, really? Tom Tom Club?

Example 3

My department at work was having a party. The venue was booked, food was organised and then someone realised there needed to be some music. “Hey, Robyn, you know a bit about music. Could make a playlist on your iPod.”

So I tried. First I separated my music into music my workmates would like (Beyonce – “Crazy In Love”, Amy Winehouse – “Rehab”, Gwen Stefani – “What You Waiting For”) and music my workmates would not like (Muffpunch – “Clitoral Thorns”, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – “Fuck Shit Up”, “The Sexual Politics of Meat” – Consolidated).

Then, with the workmate friendly tunes, I tried to make a coherent playlist. But it just seemed about as sexy as old underwear – completely functional, but with no joy to it.

On the night, we ended up dancing to someone else’s compilation CD which alternated tracks from The Prodigy’s “Fat of the Land” and Oasis’s “(What the story) Morning Glory”. Which made me feel so much better.

The closest I’ve ever come to having a mixtape I’ve been happy with was in 1987, when I used to tape songs off the radio. I managed to capture the last 90 seconds or so of Harold Faltermeyer’s synth classic “Axel F” which – at the time – sounded really sophisticated. Yeah, I know.

I also blame High Fidelity for the romanticism of the mix-tape; the “Oh, baby, I love you so much, I made you this tape to express how I feeeel.” Yet all of the mixtapes I’ve received have been for educational purposes, probably from people who feel sorry for me.

So it’s little surprise that I’m a huge fan of the shuffle function on my iPod. I just let Apple’s algorithm pick the tunes for me, guiding from song to song in a semi-random, semi-logical flow. While shuffle can come up with some inspired sequences of songs, it always manages to stuff things up (ruining a great run of 1960s pop with a BBC political comedy radio show), just to remind me that it’s not actually a person. And certainly not a person who cares enough to have made a mixtape for me.

But I’m not about to sink into a deep hole of depression just because Nick Hornby managed to romanticise the mixtape for an entire generation. I’m going to happily listen to my iPod on shuffle, content that it will give me just what I need and a whole lot that I don’t need.

Saturday night

I was going to go to bed but suddenly my roboawesome detectors sensed that out there Something Was Happening. Using the powers of Twitter, I realised that there was a senior citizen punk gig at the Bacco Room, so I threw on my punk trousers and went there.

The gig was called Auckland Tonight and was in honour of Stephen Marsden, the dearly departed singer of early ’80s punk/new wave band The Androidss, and indeed the author of their song “Auckland Tonight”, a song that could only have been written by a band from outside Auckland.

I arrived in time to see The Spelling Mistakes, and was delighted to witness them play “Feels So Good”. How delighted?

@robyngallagher In a hot, basement punk bar. Just saw the Spelling Mistakes play Feels So Good. #happy

The Androidss took to the stage and gleefully, lovingly worked their way through some punk classics. I was getting tired so I left and didn’t see them play “Auckland Tonight”, but that didn’t matter cos I was already in Auckland tonight.

On the way out, I was stopped by a young man from Manchester and his Kiwi cousin, who demanded to know my thoughts on whether having an ego was a bad thing or not. I could have lectured them on the evils of the ganja, but instead I answered their questions (though what I said I cannot recall), and amazed myself and the Manc by identifying his accent before I knew where he was from. I blame Robbie Williams.

Sunday morning

I went to the Takapuna Market with Dylz, Mel and their two manchilds. The markets specialities are fresh food, cheap Chinese goods, and expired foods (hey, all that sugar in candy, it’s sort of preserving it so it won’t ever go off, right?).

We wandered about, learnt of a scuffle that had happened earlier in the day (lesson learned: you don’t say things about that guy’s wife, OK?), I had a coffee but had to queue behind a racist, anti-immigration lady, and generally enjoyed a lovely morning in Takapuna, which is not something that I had thought possible.

Sunday afternoon

On the bus heading over the bridge, I looked at the city unfolding in front of the beautiful blue autumn sky. I couldn’t quite work it out, but despite seeming like it should have been a perfect, uplifting cityscape, it felt a bit drab, empty and devoid of people. Maybe I just needed to wait for a golden sunset.

I headed over to the museum. Unfortunately there wasn’t anything new on (I was in between major exhibitions), but I hadn’t seen Hillary’s axe before. But all that did was manage to trigger a burst of existential angst: Hillary was 34 when he climbed Everest. I am 34. What have I done with my life, etc.

I stopped by the burger joint that’s now filling the gap where Brazil used to live. It’s far too bright and cheerful now, with students lunching their instead of Brazil-era junkies thawing out in the morning sun.

Next I was alerted to awesomeness at Auckland Gallery from Miss City, the cupcake queen.

The gallery had an exhibition of the works of Yinka Shonibare, a British artist who does a lot of work involving bright fabric crossed with dandyism. Oh, I like!

As part of the exhibition, the Auckland Craft Bomb group were doing some embroidery and making fabric badges. So I picked out some orange and green floral corduroy and got right into it.

Sunday evening

I stayed at the Quadrant hotel. The foyer smelt liked roses and had a long walkway running to the lifts, lit with purple light.

The room was less fancy, and indeed seemed to have been built with the idea of “If this hotel thing doesn’t work out, we can always be student accommodation”, but in its hotel form it was still good.

The room had a DVD player, and while I could have rented BMX Bandits from the hotel, instead I bought season two of the totally gay IT Crowd and Snuff Box. Seriously, snuggling up in bed to the whole series of Snuff Box is pleasure.

And then

On Monday I had to move to another hotel near work. In theory it seemed fancy, but the room reminded me of my friend’s parents’ bedroom from the ’80s, the heater wouldn’t heat, the telly was staticy, it smelt like stale cigarette smoke oh, but at least it had a bath.

And that day marked one year since I moved to Wellington and yet there I was, stuck in dull hotel room, leaving me feeling all full of malaise. I didn’t want to be in Auckland any more. I wanted to be right back in Wellington, even if it was being disturbed by thunder, lightning and hail. (Not that I’ve ever been scared of a hearty thunder storm… yet).

I realised that the Auckland I left a year ago no longer exists. Occasionally I might feel like I miss Auckland, but it’s not so much a feeling for a place as a feeling for situations (that no longer exist) people (who have equally changed).

I still get an odd feeling of connection and excitement around Newton (or, at least, the parts that weren’t eaten by the motorway) but even that’s more about perception than reality.

Now I can only deal with Auckland as someone who used to live there and someone who now visits it, like visiting an old boyfriend and wondering, “Hey, I used to love you and now I don’t but I don’t ever remember falling out of love.” It just happened.

What rhymes with Robyn?

Dave Dobbyn.

What to say as weeding MC?

Something about a ho.

What does Buffalo Stance mean?

Let’s start with Buffalo. The Face magazine described it as…

a look an attitude, a gang; a creative collection of photographers, designers, hair stylists, pop stars and models – Marc and James Lebon, Jamie Morgan, Nick and Barry Kamen, Judy Blame, Neneh Cherry, and Mitzi Lorenz, among others – working around the creative hub of superstylist Ray Petri.

Right, so Neneh Cherry’s boyfriend was Cameron McVey, and he was in a pop duo called Morgan-McVey with the above mentioned Jamie Morgan. They had a Stock-Atkin-Waterman produced single called “Looking Good Diving”, which was released with a b-side remix called “Looking Good Diving with the Wild Bunch”. This involved the instrumental track from the song remixed by the Wild Bunch with Cameron’s girlfriend rapping over the top about the Buffalo scene, pimp, prostitutes, gigolos and how she ain’t going for that flashy shit and was in it for the long haul.

When Neneh Cherry came to release her solo album a year or so later, she rerecorded the song as “Buffalo Stance”, and gave it a bit more attitude. Uh. And a motherfucking breakbeat. Yeah. DJ. Tell it like it is.

What does it mean when they say a participle dangles?

If you see that your friends participle is dangling, you should discretely insert a subject or some punctuation to help clarify things.

What happened to Peter Urlich?

FluFFFy1: So, Peter Urlich of Th’ Dudes and Nice ‘n’ Urlich and TrueBliss fame.
Watkins2000: Who?
FluFFFy1: The lead singer of late ’80s pop/funk act B Cup?
Watkins2000: Oh, that guy.
FluFFFy1: So what’s he up to these days?
Watkins2000: Dunno. He doesn’t do breakfast on George FM any more.
FluFFFy1: He went through that swing singing phase last year. That was pretty choice.
Watkins2000: I liked that. I mean, I *really* like that. He kept it real.
FluFFFy1: Yeah, kia kaha, Peter Urlich.
Watkins2000: Kia kaha.

What to do you to paper mache if it starts to go mouldy?

Ok, first you need to tell it to stop going mouldy. If that doesn’t work you could try yelling at it or hitting it. If that still doesn’t work, tell it you are sorry and you love it and buy it a chocolate bar such as Cadbury Fruit and Nut. That should do the trick. If you have any further problems, put it in the hot water cupboard for a few days.

How many people went to beach last year?

OMG, there were so many people there I almost lost count! Muffy was there and Chad was there and Suzie was there and all the kids from the Bellevue came down and brought matching towels. And we all started to do the starfish dance. It’s so easy to do! Shake it like a starfish! There was soda pop and hotdogs and someone even brought cookies! You should have been there. It was ace! Twelve in total.

How do you pronounce Ngunguru?

En-gun-guru.

Brooke Fraser – why does she have a tongue ring?

It’s not actually a tongue ring, it’s a rivet. One day she sang so much that her tongue fell out (I know!). She was on the road and didn’t have time to have it professionally reattached, so she went along to a local workshop where Ron put her tongue back in place with a rivet. Why do you ask? Did you believe that line in Pulp Fiction about blowjobs and tongue studs?

Why do New Caledonia people speak French?

They originally learned it at high school and then went on an AFS exchange to Montreal when they were 17 and came home wearing a beret and swearing at their mum in French. Then when they were working in London on their OE, they went over to Paris for a few weeks and had such a good time that when they came back to New Caledonia they decided they’d just keep speaking French and it’s pretty much stuck ever since.

Who is the MC who use a straw to sing?

I don’t know, but he must really suck.

Why is Robyn wearing my shoes and why is Facebook not working?

Ok, first of all? They’re not your shoes. I mean, I know I took them from your bedroom but that was only because you spilt that jug full of margaritas in my shoes and I couldn’t go to work with wet shoes.

And Facebook is working. It’s just blocked for you because the internet doesn’t work for people who go around spilling drinks in people’s shoes.

Why’s the shed locked?

Look, if you want your combine harvester back, you should just ask. I’ll go and get it for you. I only locked the shed to keep it secure. I wasn’t trying to steal it or anything. What would I want with a combine harvester, any way. Oh, by the way, if you see someone selling a combine harvester on Trade Me and it looks a bit like yours, it’s not. It’s just a coincidence and the auction will probably get taken down soon anyway.

How does a dance card work?

1.  Go to a retailer and load a cash value onto your dance card (minimum $10; 25c loading fee).
2. Go to dance, remembering to swipe your dance card at the door.
3. Dance.
4. When dance is complete, swipe your dance card on a card reader and dance amount will be deducted.
5. Please note: GST not included.
6. Also note: R&B slowjam incurs 2.5% service charge.
7. I like it when your butt goes ba-donk-a-donk-donk.

Will the train leave at 5 on Fridays?

No, you’ll need to get there 10 to 15 minutes before or after. Also remember there are Super Saver Saturdays starting next month, so maybe you can postpone.

How come chimpanzees act like little kids?

Because apparently the chimpanzees don’t have the basic human right which says in law that they are allowed to use a firm smack as part of corrective punishment in good parenting, so they grow up undisciplined and watching trash television such as “Baywatch” and “The Dukes of Hazzard” and “The Shogun Miniseries” and so they act like little kids and don’t even go to university and just sit around all day eating carrots and throwing straw at each other. You can’t even dress them up as aristocrats any more and make them have tea parties because apparently it’s “politically incorrect” and “cruel” and “impairs their development”. And they call this progress.

What are the events that happended in the 10 years before I was born in 1989?

1979 – Mr Ed horse dies :(
1980 – Reagan’s president elect. Good-time dancin’ stopped.
1981 – Couples For Christ is established in the Philippines.
1982 – Little Prince William is born! A blonde manchild who one day will become king! Maybe I will be his queen!!!!!
1983 – The McNugget was born.
1984 – Muldoon got on the nyak and was like “YO WE IZ GOING 2 DA POLLZ”. Lost.
1985 – Bob Geldof runs a charity fund-raiser fair.
1986 – Aw shit – Space Shuttle Challenger blew up and everyone on it died :(
1987 – Stock market crashes; Prozac introduced; modern life declared rubbish.
1988 – Expo ‘88 showcased the best of the world in Brisbane, QLD.

Does weed make you infertile?
 
Think about it, man. The good Lord put the herb on earth for man to smoke. And man and woman have been toking on the sweet sweet mary jane for centuries. And the man and the woman, they have babies. So does the weed make you infertile, the answer is no, brotherman. No, it ain’t.

What do you need to be a cruise ship captain?

• A motivated self-starter with people skills.
• Degree in cruise ship captaining from Southland Polytech.
• One of those captain hats.
• Teenage daughter who has cocaine problem.
• Private cabin for captaining the sexy divorcees who come aboard.
• Comedy eyepatch and plastic wooden leg kit.
• Must have respect for colourful Irish underclasses singing gaily in steerage.
• A boat.
• Ye not be no landlubber.
• Must like: buffet dining; shuffleboard; PINA COLADAS!!!!!
• Must also like mermaids but not be averse to mermans. It can get lonely at sea.
• Applications in “writing” plz.

What is dorky about yourself?

See above.

That is to say, it’s not about those “retro” “classics” like “Come on Eileen” or “Venus” or “Karma Chameleon” or “I’m So Excited” or “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”. Those were the kind of songs that I listened to and enjoyed when I was a child in the ’80s.

Atomic’s about the sort of music that I didn’t enjoy when I was a girl, usually because it dealt with adult themes and wasn’t cheerful and upbeat.

Case in point – New Order’s “Blue Monday” was a massive hit in New Zealand in 1983, but as an 8-year-old, I wasn’t having any of it. “I see a shit in the harbour” – is that how it went? Wot a dumb lyric. And why did “Ready to Roll” have to keep playing it all the time?

Nowadays, however, I get “Blue Monday”. “Tell me how does it feel when your heart grows cold”. Yeah, I get that.

Just as well, I reckon. I mean, it would have been somewhat weird for me, aged 5, to be enjoying “Fade To Grey” instead of Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”.

But the DJ at Atomic did throw in a few of those songs I listened to in the ’80s – “Tainted Love”, “99 Luftballons”, “White Wedding” – and I couldn’t really enjoy them. It was like the music equivalent of playing with dolls or eating fairy bread. It’s something that I associate so strongly with my childhood that I can’t enjoy it as an adult.

If I’m having a kanikani on the dancefloor, I don’t want to keep being transported back to the 1980s, to primary school and awkwardness and Matangi and two TV channels and mind-numbing boredom. But I could understand that for some people, the past is infinitely preferable to the present or the future, so they would probably want to be reminded of their warm, safe childhood in the ’80s.

It’s really enjoyable exploring old music that I’ve only discovered recently. It doesn’t come with feelings of nostalgia or longing for some distant, rose-tinted memory. As cheesy as “Temptation” is, it is dealing with universal human themes (you know, being tempted) that didn’t expire in the ’80s.

The ’90s, however, oh, that’s a whole different post.

So invoking the Official Information Act, I pulled out my box of old diaries from under my bed and googled them with my eyes, to bring you this exclusive report, starting in 1992 when I was 18:

Things I have done on previous Easter Sundays

1992: Crank-called that lady with the eyebrows; went to Auckland Zoo.

1993: Totally sick of my parents treating me like a child! Watched “Clue” on video.

1994: Felt a bit sick.

1995: Drove back from Lang’s Beach. Watched “Say Anything” on video.

1996: Vowed to save logs from IRC to create a “cyber My Secret Garden”.

1997: Saw “Jerry Maguire” at the movies. Thought it was ok but not as great as the hype suggested.

1998: Hung out with a fellow sporting George Michael facial hair (gay!), listened to Gene Pitney (gay!) and the Verlaines (not gay).

1999: Ate burgers at Milford Beach with a nice boy.

2000: Slept for most of the day. Wondered what hot yoghurt would taste like.

2001: Had a really bad bagel.

2002: Wondered if it was ethical to only hang out with someone when he was drunk because he was more fun drunk than when he was sober; embroidered.

2003: Read Andrew Dean’s review of the previous night’s Sly and Robbie concert – like a 2 1/2 hour blowjob, he reckoned.

2004: Was plagued by sneezing, but couldn’t get any antihistamines or aloe vera tissues as the shops were shut.

2005: Saw “I Heart Huckerbees”. Liked that bit in the mud with Schwartzman.

2006: Came up with a concept for a television programme: Bargain Cunt, where wankers buy second homes, building their cunting property investment portfolios. Discovered someone else had already thought of it, sans swearing.

2007: Thought I’d discovered a fixed outcome of a popular reality TV show, only to discover it was just a dummy script.

2008: Did some packing. Took my postcards down from the lounge room wall.

2009: Watched the Doctor Who special. Noted that Wellington on Easter Sunday felt like Hamilton on any Sunday in the ’80s. Wanted to watch “Say Anything” but the iTunes Store didn’t have it, so I watched “Tropic Thunder” instead.

The only conclusion I can make from the above is that Easter Sunday brings out an urge in me to watch Cameron Crowe films.

Well, recently I had a chance to view that episode. It was pretty much how I remembered it (I’m sure I had video-recorded it and watched it a few times back in the day), and now I’ve taken a few screen shots and added it to the post.

Actually, let’s just pause for some lolz. Here’s a screen shot from that same episode of the Absolut CHOGM map – when Newsnight realised that route of the motorcade security loop in Auckland for the Commonwealth Heads of Goverment Meeting looked like a wonky Absolut vodka bottle:

But anyway, watching that old episode of Newsnight – and a few others from late 1995 – it was really interesting to see how they treated that crazy new “internet” thing.

In another episode, Newsnight looked at Auckland art dealers Fox Gallery who had built a website to showcase their art. The interview was filmed at the physical gallery and much of the footage was of actual art on the walls, not online. (Though there were a few crappy shots of the gallery’s website, shown on crusty old Netscape.)

At the end of the story, the URL was shown on screen for interested parties to jot down. It was – steady yourself – http://www.ecentral.co.nz/fox.gallery/fox.welcome.html

Srsly. Remember when URLs used to be like that?

I just googled Fox Gallery to see if it still existed. It doesn’t seem to, but the search results brought up heaps of other Auckland galleries. These days it’s completely unremarkable for a gallery to have a website.

Now, when Fox’s 54-character URL was up on screen, Marcus Lush realised the graphic would actually need to stay up there for a while to give people a decent chance to write it down. So he ad-libbed, saying, “They say the trouble with the internet is that no one’s ever found a use for it. There’s nothing to do.”

And, yeah, that’s almost what it was like back then. There was no Trade Me, no Facebook, no Google. I’d only been online for a few months and while I was thrilled by the obvious potential of the internet, my first website will still about 8 months away and I was still trying to figure out what to do with the internet.

So now maybe the general internet has got to the stage where it’s a bit ordinary and boring; and now if you buy a handbag on Trade Me or watch an old Flaming Lips video on YouTube, people don’t think you’re a “computer whizz” and expect you to be able to fix their PC.

Though there are still corners of the internet that haven’t wiggled into the mainstream yet. For example, as ubiquitous as Twitter may seem, it’s still really hard to explain it to people who haven’t used it; who don’t get why you’d use it, just as 15 years ago they wouldn’t have understood why an art gallery would have a webpage.

But eventually they figure it out.

1996, Mike’s flat, Hillcrest, Hamilton. I was hanging out with Mike and he was talking about cricket, particularly some young whippersnapper from around the way named Daniel Batory or something. I was getting bit sick of all the cricket talk so I sang my cricket song. It’s a bit like 10CC’s “Dreadlock Holiday“, and it goes like this: I don’t like cricket / Oh no. And that’s the end of the song. Many people have heard me sing this song over the years.

2009, the Basin Reserve, Wellington. So, I’m sitting up on the grass at the Basin Reserve watching New Zealand and India play a test match cricket game thing. I’m sitting with Hadyn (who writes about sport), Richard (who also writes about sport), Dan (who writes about movies, but has a season pass to the cricket) and various other people who actually know what’s going on.

Despite my general view of cricket as an annoying, confusing game, I’d decided to come along just to see if it was really as annoying and confusing as I thought.

For a start, I didn’t really know what was going on, so I asked questions such as:

They’re all wearing white – how do you tell which team is batting and which team is fielding?

You look at the scoreboard thing and it tells you. Also, the New Zealand team have wider stripes on their uniform.

Where do the non-batting players go when they’re not batting?

There’s a lean-to tiki shack thing next to the main grandstand. They go and hang out there and make toasted sandwiches.

What’s an over?

A unit of something cricket related? Um, I can’t actually remember, but Dan did explain it quite well at the time.

So, um, when does it end today? Because I know the game thing goes over multiple days, and it’s all a bit complicated with the runs and overs and shit, but I was just wondering when there was an approximate time for it to end because, well, it’s getting a bit cold and windy up here.

Soon, little Smurf. Soon.

I slowly began to piece together the basics of the game, and learned about the strategic move where India could have made New Zealand bat again. (Or was it field again?)

At one stage Chris Martin was batting. This is not the same Chris Martin from Coldplay who is married to Gwyneth Paltrow (lolz!!!). Not that I could tell, given that he was a distant white-clad figure. Apparently Mr Martin is not typically an awesome batter, but he managed to hit a four (what?) which is quite good and everyone yelled and cheered.

After a while I realised that going to a cricket game isn’t necessarily about the sport. It’s more like going on a picnic with your mates, but with the option of being entertained by some fellows in white woollen vests running around in the distance.

And that is something I don’t mind at all.

The only problem is, I listen to most music on my iPod, which isn’t hooked up to Last.fm, so it gets all the songs I listen to on my laptop. And I’ve come to realise that when I listen to music on my laptop, it tends to be something I’m currently obsessing over.

It seems like a rather teenage thing to do – you acquire a new song (or album) that you love and then play it over and over and over again because it is just the best song in the entire world.

As a result, my Last.fm top songs list is skewed to all these songs that I’ve briefly gone mental over in the last five years. And it’s a bit embarrassing because I don’t necessarily have the same feelings or connection to those tunes any more.

But I’m just going to live with it and present my top 10 songs, according to Last.fm, and exactly why it was that I listened to them so obsessively at the time.

1. The Cribs – You’re Gonna Lose Us
I was on holiday in Napier with my laptop but not my iPod. I’d just discovered the Cribs, so every night when I was hanging out in my hotel room, I’d listen to the Cribs’ first two albums. So now I have this strong association between rowdy pop songs with shout-along choruses and Napier. Better than art deco.

2. The Smiths – Back to the Old House
This is nothing more than my favourite Smiths song. It’s a bit sad and wistful and nostalgic, but it’s all about not wallowing in the past because “there’s too many bad memories”. I used to listen to this a lot in my old flat in Mt Eden, so it serves as a nice precaution for any attempts at pining after Auckland.

3. 1200 Techniques – Karma
This song reminds me of driving down a deserted South-Western Motorway in the middle of the night, smokin’ cigarettes, the warm night breeze coming through the window… yet this is an entirely false memory. Instead I’m left with some Australians rapping about karma over Hot Chocolate’s Brother Louie.

4. Van Halen – Panama
I think I can blame this on the Van Halen binge I went on after watching the “Freaks and Geeks” boxset. This song is awesome because a) it has nothing to do with Panama, b) “Panama-uh-uh-uh-oh-oh”, and c) Diamond Dave’s “sex in a car as metaphor for sex in general” monologue (”I reach down between my legs and ease the seat back”).

5. Scandal with Patty Smyth – The Warrior
There’s an episode of The Family Guy where one of the nonsequitor cutaways is of Stewie’s iPod commercial, which shows him doing the iPod silhouette dance to “The Warrior”. Just that little 15-second burst of the song was enough to trigger some long repressed memory, and before long I was obsessively listening to what is possibly the worst line in a pop song ever: “Your eyes touch me physically.” Literally.

6. Morrissey – Glamorous Glue
I saw this on a late night music video show and realised that somehow it had previously passed me by (as has much of Morrissey’s solo oeuvre). It’s got a lurching T-Rex-esque glam rock sound, but what of the lyrics? Apparently the song is about drinking, solvent abuse (which is not glamorous, kids), semen, the 1992 British general election, or all of the above. I just like the bit where he sings “everyone lies, nobody minds” and “London is dead! London is dead! London is dead!”.

7. Robbie Williams – Lazy Days
In the Britpop documantary “Live Forever”, this song is played near the end, when the guitar-based bands were losing popularity in the late ’90s to pop groups and solo artists such as Mr Williams. I scribbled down some lyrics in the darkness of the Rialto cinema to lead me back to it. It’s rather a Britpoppy song, with lots of chuggy guitar, but sadly the fat dancer from Take That went off in another direction when a later single, “Angels”, proved to be a massive megahit.

8. Kaiser Chiefs – I Predict a Riot
I believe “Never Mind the Buzzcocks” is to blame for this tune, with it being used in the Introductions round. And then that lead to me listening to the song, then buying the album, then becoming totally obsessed with it, until now I’m thinking, “Whoa, it’s five years old?”

9. Stevie Wonder – Don’t You Worry ’bout a Thing
Nik sang this on series two of NZ Idol. The teens on the internet were all, “wtf iz diz old ppl song i do not no it!!!!”, whereas I thought, “Hey, that’s an uplifting tune I haven’t heard in a while.” It’s nice to be reminded of Stevie Wonder’s older songs that didn’t suck, even though it’s hard to listen to this one without being reminded of the “Sex and the City” theme tune.

10. The Replacements – Alex Chilton
See, I love the Replacements, but my love for the ‘Mats is mostly centred around their “Let It Be” album. Then one day I decided to let the internet guide me to the best songs off other albums, and that’s how I found “Alex Chilton”. It’s so cheerful and upbeat, and it’s really just about loving music, which seems like a good enough place to be.

Outdoor Knit is the local variant of that international scene (also known as guerilla knitting) where, well, people knit things and sew them around urban objects such as lampposts, park bench slats, rails and trees.

The little grove of trees outside the Bristol was getting well covered with colourful bits of knitting. One of the knitters asked me if I wanted to join in. “Oh, I can’t knit,” I said. I’d sort of learned back in the mid ’90s, but hadn’t touched a pair of needles for almost 15 years.

But the knitter wouldn’t accept that as an answer, cast on for me, reminded me of the basic stitch and – must to my surprise – I started knitting. I did a few rows before wandering off to explore the rest of the carnival.

Later in the noon I returned and thought it would be a really good idea to do some knitting. I was given a piece that someone else had started – a long skinny grey bit, about 10 stitches wide. I sat down and merrily started knitting.

It’s rather satisfying to do. It’s one of those activities where you can just let your mind wander and start making up raps about public transport while you work.

As I was sitting there, lots of carnivalgoers passed by, including those who saw the knitting and wanted to join in. Quite a few older ladies were lured by the needles and quickly started firing off complicated patterns. One girl even started plotting out letters in her knitting, which seems to me like a very advanced move. And lots of people just wandered over and thought it would be fun to have a go, including a lovely young man who’d never knitted before, but soon he was churning out an orange strip, courtesy of some expert tuition from the crew.

Quite a few people stopped to take photos of the knitters and knitting. Seriously, everyone has a DLSR camera these days and everyone feels like they’re taking serious documentary photos that will capture a certain moment in the history of the early 20st century or something. But isn’t it a bit more fun to be most than a passive observer? Isn’t it just a bit more fun for your experience to be something you did, rather than just a photo of something someone else did?

Other people did stop to ask what was going on. I’d tell them it was knitted graffiti, which some people had trouble understanding. A lot of people thought it was some sort of organised knitting group and didn’t seem to realise that most of us had literally just walked in off the street. And the idea of knitting something that had no practical use also seemed to perplex people.

As I continued knitting my piece, it seemed to be getting wider. My 10-stitch-wide knitting had somehow become 30 stitches wide. Say what? Turns out I was stabbing my needle through the loosely twisted wool. But I as quite happy to have made a triangle. Soon enough I had finished off the small ball and sewed it around a tree.

I eyed my wonky grey triangle with a certain sense of satisfaction. It feels good to create something, and thanks to Knitsch and stiX, I did! Now all I need to do is learn to cast on and off, then if civilisation crumbles, I’ll at least be able to knit wonky grey trousers for trees.

Photo from Outdoor Knit’s Flickr stream.