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.

I hate to draw attention to these things, but the Sunday gossip pages reached a new low in the last week, with reports on:

a) an unknown “celebrity” apparently thinking that 15 was old enough for a prostitute he allegedly purchased services off, and,

b) the release of Philip Sturm from prison, after serving time for five counts of sexual violation.

Both were reported in the slightly breathy tones that the papers reserve for reporting of other earth-shattering events such as Charlotte Dawson’s hair extensions; it seems to have totally passed both of them by that both stories concern themselves with rape and sexual violation, which under NZ law is viewed second only to murder, not to mention any moral or ethical concerns.

So what is it with these gossip pages? Why do Wilson & Horton and Fairfax only publish them in Auckland? (when I lived in Wellington, my flatmates and I enjoyed our weekly savaging of Sunday magazine; they were horrified when I, on my move north, reported back to them on the travesty that is About Town). Are we all really that narcissistic that circulation figures in Auckland demand the inclusion of pages where we might see a photo of someone we know, or even ourselves? Or there is a rash of advertisers in Auckland demanding that their ad go next to an item that light heartedly describes the japes of a 15 year old prostitute?

Adding more to the Wellington Vs Auckland debate, everyone’s favourite Irish hellcat gave her two bits to the discussion recently.

I don’t know about her statement that ” … Wellingtonians can at times display a preoccupation with Auckland that borders on the pathological.” To be honest I think it’s the other way around, perhaps the most desperate example of that was the previous mayor of Aucks, ole Dick Hubbard opening the Auckland festival last year and almost whimpering when he asked the rhetorical question: “Who says Auckland can’t be as vibrant as Wellington?”

I’ve just received a text from the inferiority complex fairy.

Discuss.