And if you don’t have tickets, you may still like to head along to the red carpet, because (along with OMG celebreties that you’d normally only see in the Grey Lynn Foodtown) soul, funk, jazz and hip-hop artist, Iva Lamkum will be performing live on the red carpet before the Awards.
 

The Campaign for Better Transport held a meeting last Wednesday with canidates from all the major parties on public transport. I had a chat to Cameron Pitches who organsed the talk. Here.

Elsewhere in the magazine, there’s a nice profile of a family in Mangere who struggle to get by on two incomes – but the article doesn’t really go anywhere. If it intended to capture a moment in time though, it did a good job. There’s a hatchet piece on the French Canadian Vanda Vitali who’s in charge of the Auckland Museum that uses the threat of “turning into Te Papa” all through-out the article. Exactly what is so bad about Te Papa anyway? Their giant Treaty of Waitangi has me totally in awe. And apparently it’s so terrible to hang a Colin McCahon next to a refrigerator. Umm, can we stop being so fucking precious please? Anyways, the article says that the museum’s Centennial Street is “a cluster of colonial shops with soundtrack of people making clanking noises. It’s usually empty, faintly ridiculous, obviously unloved”. Well fuck you, Metro, Centennial Street was always my favourite place in the Auckland Museum, and I was gutted when Karen and I went there in January and couldn’t find it. I think there should be raves in it. Well, I thought that back in 1997 when I went to raves, anyway.

A useful article is their review of the ten cinemas/chains, with descriptions of their seating, ice cream, movie ranges and prices. But otherwise, this issue is kind of redundant. Damian Christie does a small bio on Phil Goff, who seems nice enough but doesn’t answer the question about whether or not he’ll take over from Helen Clark, and they review some restaurants I’m pretty sure they’ve been to before. Well, at least there was no story on schooling in this issue, for once. My advice? Don’t buy it. Unless you need paper to wrap up a beer bottle that you kicked onto the stone floor by accident in your Samoan holiday fale.

Vodafone is making it even easier for people to connect to the internet – wherever they are – with the launch of revamped mobile data pricing and a smart backend that reformats webpages for easy viewing on a mobile screen.

Now, for up to just $1 a day on the days you use it, casual users of the mobile internet can browse the world wide web easily and inexpensively… without committing to a fixed monthly data contract.

The new $1 a day casual rate gives customers up to 10MB of data.

And how do we know this is actually true? Because we’ve got a new Nokia 6121. And even more excitingly, we’ve got one to give away, so you can have a chance to find out for yourself too. Find out how after the jump.

We want to know how you would use your Nokia 6121 in Auckland. Post your answer in the comments section.

Your story could be as simple as:
“I want to be able to use Vodafone’s mobile internet to cheat when I’m doing the pub quiz up at Shadows”

or it could be wildly creative (and we encourage this!) like:

“As I was drinking at the King’s Arms one rainy Sunday, I noticed that my favourite musician was standing at the bar. Thanks to the gossip I read on the Aucklandista I knew he’d just broken up with his girlfriend, and I was hoping he was up for some consolation shagging. But how to get his attention? I’d tried talking to him before at the Rising Sun but he’d ignored me. Hmmm. A flash of inspiration hit me, and I pulled out my phone and quickly downloaded his latest single and set it as my ring tone. Desperate, I know, but his jeans were so tight I needed some way to get into them. A quick text to my friend had her call me when I was standing right next to him. I pretended to blush, as he looked at me and raised his eyebrows. A couple of Epic beers later, and we were on our way to his musty Grey Lynn basement for ‘band practice’…”

The judges will pick five of the best stories and draw the winner at random from those entries.

Here are the rules of the competition.

1. Your answer must include the name of the phone company, and some aspect of Auckland that makes it the awesome city that it is.
2. You must live in Auckland and have a Auckland postal address for us to send the phone to if you win. (Psst, check out the Wellingtonista if you’re not from around here)
3. The members of the Aucklandista and their partners (PAGS) are not eligible to enter, although we encourage them to tell us a story anyway.
4. You have from now until noon Wednesday August 27 to post your entry.
5. The judge’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

let’s stop for a cone

Originally uploaded by solidstate_

Hello, Auckland. You seem nice, but you can take your bloody hand off my leg. Let’s talk instead - I mean, really talk, not just you nod and grunt over top of your boner (is he finished yet? should I go get my pants?). A word about you.

See, I’ve been giving this some thought, and this is what I came up with. It isn’t me. It’s you. Don’t take this the wrong way - I mean, I don’t want you to think that I’m claiming some sort of inherent perfection, just because I’m taller, smarter, more handsome and have better social skills. I’m just trying to clear the air.

And, I also don’t want you to think that just because I’m another economic migrant from the 0-4 who’s had it up to here (see where I’m gesturing?) with Wellington and it’s pomposity, that this is another compare and contrast where we realise that your city council hasn’t plunged fifty percent of its revenues into statues and paving stones, and that Peter Jackson bypassed your ass, and you suck. No, not at all. Au contraire! Not at all, really.

I have five questions. Riddle me these, and then we can all go home. Slowly.

one: how come, having spent ten bajillion dollars on a central city makeover, it still only looks like your designers had a spare eighty bucks and spent half an hour in Bunnings?

two: how come you hate pedestrians so much? Can’t cross the road without waiting for a long while, in a blitzkreig of rain, with nothing to cower under. If lucky, will skidd A-over-kite on one of those yellow things by the cross lights.

three: where are all your street signs?

four: what’s so nice about Parnell? It looks to me like Parnell is going out of its way not to have a personality.

five: a lot of animal statues. Are you primitive heathen spellcaster fetishists? That’s only incidentally sexy.

Look, don’t feel free to answer all at once. Because, I want you to know that there are things I love about Auckland. One, it doesn’t seem to give a fuck about the rest of the country, it just does its own thing. Two, people put road cones on horse statues, and, for that matter, road cones where ever they fucking please - I don’t know what makes all that so nice, but I don’t think it matters. Three, the food is great, and four…

Four is my favourite. Four is, inside an ugly duckling of a town, inside the Auckland that is “competing with Sydney and Brisbane and New York” according to the mayor, but isn’t actually in their league (”well, the shortlist is New York or Auckland…hmmm…”) is a beautiful town just waiting for a golden age. hey, Auckland, you’re pretty cute at the right angles. Sign me up.

To further introduce myself I’ve been instructed to comment on what I love and hate about the city.

I’m an unoriginal hater – here’s a sample

The traffic. Still.

Ponsonby at night. A place where far too many people go clubbing without irony. It’s not that I have a technical objection to the suburb itself, or even the idea of rubbing up against moist strangers while paying for an overpriced hangover, and indeed I’ve indulged before – but let’s face it - the practice is patently hilarious, particularly for those of us over 30 who do, in fact know better, even if we pretend sometimes that we don’t.

Insipid dress sense. All other places in New Zealand have their own looks – messy, a little frayed around the edges, possibly a bit over-wrapped but at least distinctive. Auckland – you are a paean to label rip-offs, terrifyingly tight pants and shoes that regularly cause podiatrists and chiropractors to wake screaming in the night

I guess that brings me to the part where I have to dish up the love. In many ways a harder task

The weather - the tropics are sweatier and the South is colder. Auckland - go the happy medium.

The harbour – filled with pleasure craft, islands of imaginable size and serviced regularly by ferries, an escape from the traffic under what are likely to be fairly pleasant climatic conditions is only a 25 bucks and a cracker away.

That waft of something cosmopolitan. Despite the generally dull sartorial decisions made by its population, Auckland does exhibit an outward-lookingness - a sense of the infinitely possible and a break from what is parochial. This is most probably because such a large chunk of inhabitants aren’t from Auckland. However, I believe it may be the only place in New Zealand to lay genuine claim to this quality and I, for one, do appreciate it. Mwa.

There are lots of other things I have a casual affection for: Crummer Road – the quietest street in Grey Lynn, Ponsonby Video Ezy, Chocolate Boutique Café in Parnell, Cafe Cezanne, Albert Street’s Food Alley, The Big Day Out, an impressive selection of pub gigs, the Academy and Lido Cinemas, Borders, City Libraries, having four universities to choose from….I could go on. And maybe I will – but, next time.

So, imagine how they could devibe this. Imagine how a person could take the wonderment of Dominion Road and make it suck. How? Taggers? Come on! Being against taggers was so a fortnight ago. Think! Epic amounts of dogshit! Yes. That would be true, if it was true. But the dogs of the Eden Valley seem well restrained, so move on. How about…death…on a grad scale?

Yeah, that would be pretty much a universal bummer. But that’s filed under “dog shit” as not true, yeah? Yeah. And here, by “yeah”, I mean “no”.

At the top end of Dominion Road, right after you pass the Chinese supermarkets, just before you get to the crossing to go down Valley Road or View Road, one or the other, because you get the two mixed up, you walk past Target. Furniture, you think. Not today. Not enough room in my backpack. And then, there’s a reason alluded to above, a reason why you decide not today, not any day. Death. On an epic scale.

Because, Target is the House of A Thousand Corpses. Sprinkled across the carpet of their display window: an invertebrate graveyard. A zombie zoo established proudly across the floor, for all the public to roll up, roll up and have a look at. Cockroaches as big as a matchbox! See many flies as their death throes are recorded for your amusement and pleasure!

See our staff as they vigourously and rigourously don’t vaccum the floor! Entrance is free! Strike that: viewing is free! Who’s going inside now?

Getting the bash has never been so topical.

That is insanely offensive, even coming from a pile of flake like Rachel Glucina, and pisses me off so much that I have nothing further to say about Tony Veitch except for this: I have a code of conduct where I work, and I imagine that you do, and I know that TVNZ does. Ugh.