I would normally save something like this for a Friday linky, but I just watched it and now I want to share the love. Here is a ten-minute doco about Wellington’s finest 80s cheese-rock dance troupe, the Real Hot Bitches, as they head down to Christchurch to break the world record for synchronised dance. You’ll be punching the air and dancing in your chair.
I hope the mormon boys they speak to half-way through were in the crowd at the end.
(This is a segment from digital TV show The Gravy, one of whose presenters this year is a Real Hot Bitch.)
Category: Wellington
Pecha Kucha 5
Made it to Pecha Kucha last night, first one I’ve got to. It’s a format for creative types to share Some Stuff using a 20-slides-with-20-seconds-per-slide format. Was gud.
Briefly, I particularly enjoyed:
- Tim Bollinger, whose distinctive comics-based political activism was great fun;
- Jared Forbes of Lumen who talked about remodelling the visitor centre at Mt Bruce nature reserve;
- Maurice Bennett, the guy who makes art out of toast, who was just as much fun as you’d expect;
- Chris Jackson talking about chair design across 2000 years;
- Joshua Judkins of global geektech darlings Ponoko, who talked about playing the Lost Ring alternate reality game and blew my mind a bit with some of what happened after I stopped paying attention (my earlier post on the Lost Ring);
- and of course Edward Lynden-Bell of this parish, who talked about the Drake Equation and the likelihood of intelligent life existing elsewhere in the universe.
It was good fun and definitely worth the $9. Pecha Kucha nights are springing up all over; check your local area to get in on the action.
Freeze for Climate Change
This Friday there’s going to be a Freeze in many centres around NZ. Random people will assemble at 1pm and freeze in place for 5 minutes. Volunteers will hand out little flyers about climate change to people.
It’s for the UN’s World Environment Day, June 5. This year’s host is Mexico City, whereas last year it was good old Wellington, NZ – not that you could tell. Although the Freeze guys did their first run then too:
They expect many more people this time out. The WED theme this year is specifically climate change oriented: ‘Your Planet Needs You – Unite to Combat Climate Change’. There’s a specific focus on the Copenhagan meeting in December, which adds to the messages out of the massive Kyoto Science and Technology Forum in December, which identified Copenhagen as the crucial moment; and the recent talk by Bill McKibben of 350.org pushing for a global day of action in October. You’ll be hearing a lot more about Copenhagen as we get closer to the conference, but the take-home message is that everyone involved in climate change response is looking at this event. This will be where things happen, or don’t happen, that set us on our global course.
So: Friday. Standing still in a street. If you click the videos in my Friday Linkys you’ll know I’m a sucker for that kind of street theatre-intervention. Will it save the world? Of course not. Will it help? A bit. And every little bit helps. Check out the website and head along. If you’re not in NZ, figure out what your area is doing to mark the day – there’ll be something happening. Keep your eyes open and if you can have some fun along the way, great.
Oxfam NZ has a petition on this same subject.
Another reason to care about Copenhagen: it is the stomping ground of REPTILICUS.
Snail Chase In Wellington
Hear ye hear ye: delightful friend Ed’s film The Last Great Snail Chase is playing at the Film Archive in Wellington this Friday and Saturday (7pm both days).
This is a chance to see this very interesting, expressive and entertaining film on the big screen (or, indeed, at all).
Here’s an interview with Ed about the film at Lumiere, a couple of reviews at Flicks, and my post about seeing the premiere two years ago.
Gamblerz in Dubtown
Not many people turned up to see the Gamblerz Crew perform yesterday, presumably because hardly anyone knew it was on and knew who the Gamblerz were. They missed out; it was wild. I have never seen moves like I saw on that stage.
Well, except in vids like this one, showing the crew in June ’08:
‘Gambler’s’ motto is ‘Happy b-boying.’ It’s also ‘enjoy b-boying,’ but I want to define it as ‘happy b-boying.’ Happy B-boying! Isn’t this the fundamental reason why we all dance? I start with a fresh mind, to make a b-boying scene where not only Gambler but all Korean b-boys can be happy and can enjoy b-boying; hoping to upgrade the Korean b-boying scene and to help it develop more in terms of the b-boying spirit, so that more people can learn about b-boying and understand it, approach it and enjoy it, and find happiness in that enjoyment; so that everyone can pursue happy b-boying. – crew founder Darkness, quoted at length in a Wikipedia page that will be extensively revised before too long.
Between the two Gamblerz sets a bunch of other dance crews jumped on stage, including some seriously little kids showing off their moves. Pity the Welly b-boys who had to come on not only after some of the world’s best b-boy talent but also a whole gaggle of cute kids.
Anyway. Free world-class entertainment = good.
People and Borders
The Alligator‘s gone back home. Hopefully not for too long; he’s undergoing immigration department processes to get back here and be able to work. He’s young with no dependents, a skillset that’s in the NZ skill shortage list, experience running a successful business and plans to start a new one here; just the kind of person our systems should be set up to encourage, one would think. It still seems to be a long slog with little comfort to be had and little certainty in outcome
He’s not alone of course. Sonal is searching for a way to get back into the UK, for love, for work, for every good reason. 2trees went through epic battles with the same country’s immigration section that only begun to be resolved when he married the local girl he’d been with for years; and that still hasn’t been the end of it.
Sonal asks bluntly what immigration controls achieve. And certainly, there is plenty of room to question that, in a globalised world where money flows easily.
I don’t have any answers, at least none that I can vouch for – I could happily expound on some random theory or other but that would have only a stopped-clock’s chance of being correct. In fact I don’t really have anything much to say at all. I just wanted to mark this stuff out for future though. And perhaps to suggest that, this thing we have of seeing the promise of the world, and allowing people to sink connections into different places but then making it so hard for them to stick around unless they can buy their passage? That isn’t a good way of doing things. Not at all.
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Wellingtonians: I am rather excited by the arrival in our fair city of the Gamblers, one of Korea’s premiere b-boy teams. I highlighted these guys in a Friday Linky back in June last year – linking to this incredible article about them at Salon. Sunday, Capital E, 2.30-3.30 is showtime. They’re touring other centres in NZ too.
Wire and Request
First thing, cross-posted from my LJ:
“Wellington – buy The Wire now.
If you are in Wellington, and if you like The Wire, stop queueing to borrow it. Get yourself along to Borders Lambton Quay where you can get seasons 2, 3 and 4 for the princely sum of $9.99 each (down from $59.99 each).
You read that right. Borders goes a bit wacky with their pricing sometimes and no doubt this is a system error of some sort, but there was a whole display with 9.99 Wire seasons. They’ll probably fix it in a day or two, like they did when I bought Under The Mountain for $7 (down from $30) but it is entirely legit while it lasts.
I bought ’em.”
Second thing:
If anyone going to the big wedding party on Sat is free during the day and can lend a hand setting up, drop me an email. We’d love to have a couple extra bods…
Rasslin’
Urged on by Buzzandhum, AndyMac and TuataraLad, I joined a posse for my first ever night of home-grown pro-wrestling entertainment at KPW’s Halloween Howl 3.
It was very much fun.
I think Whetu the Maori warrior was my favourite in the ring, and the high-energy cheating manager Charlie Roberts was my favourite out of it, but the whole show was hella entertaining. And it was nice to see a short but heartfelt tribute to recently-deceased veteran Al Hobman, who was remembered by the “legends of NZ wrestling” including NZ’s most famous wrestler Steve Rickard.
The only way it could have been more fun is if the mysterious Dr Diablo had been on the card – I’d love to see him demonstrate how he earned his PhD in Pain!
Aaargh.
A report by Greater Wellington regional council recommends a five-year moratorium on wind farm development at Belmont Regional Park, five years after the council called the site a “world-class wind farm opportunity”… “With the increase in wind energy projects in New Zealand, issues of cumulative effects on the landscape and visual aspects are starting to arise,” said the report, written by the council’s manager of development and strategy.
The above is from this Dom Post article, which ran this as a front-page story and presents the ‘visual aspects’ as the main reason for the moratorium. Surely, surely we are past the point where ‘visual effects’ should be halting a project like this? How much closer to disaster do we have to skate before the scenic views of our hills, nice as they are, are put in proper perspective?
Aargh. The report is not available yet on the GW website. I look forward to reading it for myself.
Shihad!
After solving the postcard mystery I of course made a point of getting along to the gig. New Zealand’s greatest rock band once again showed their class, delivering a storming set to a delirious home crowd. Included a couple of songs I’ve never heard live before, an acoustic performance which I’ve never seen them do before either, and copious guest appearances from friends and members of the opening acts.
(Bonus cool: Karl of the ‘had joining openers the Mint Chicks to fill out the band for their anthem, Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No!)
I was grinning pretty much the whole time. Everyone sang along the whole night. They played Screwtop and it was awesome. They played One Will Hear The Other and it was awesome. It was such a happy gig!
Still NZ’s best live act. Rawk.
(Turns out Off-Black was there as well, he has words and photos!)