More life in pictures

I really haven't done anything much over this last week except work and watch episodes of Shortland Street in bed late at night with one of my flatmates. There was an incredible moon on Tuesday night, huge and glowing yellow.

On Wednesday night I came home to find a jack-0-lantern on the front step which was cute. This photo is terrible but for some reason the Hipstamatic app was the only one that could cope with the darkness.

And there's been some walking to work and cups of tea and brunches and the usual.

Actually, on Sunday night I went to the final film of the Italian Film Festival. I had wanted to go to a couple of the films during the Festival but didn't manage to fit them in, so had to just go to whatever was on last Sunday evening. It was La Bellezza Del Somaro (A Family on the Verge), a modern adaptation of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Which, thanks to classic movie Sunday, I have actually seen.

The film wasn't as full of Italian babes as I had hoped, and wasn't quite the Italian romantic comedy I'd hoped for either. It was pretty crazy, but I enjoyed it. I thought making the daughter's boyfriend an old man in his 70s was a great modernising of the shock in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

I'm going to do some more knitting today, because that baby is going to appear any day now, before going to watch a rehearsal of The Island Bay Loners' Doomsday Christmas Sing-Along. It's a bit weird because Alex, Ed and I have written it but only Ed is in it and it's being directed by our friend Uther. It's going to be amazing though - it's a mixture of comedy and Christmas songs, so how could it not be the best thing ever?

Up the Garden Path (but not really)

The path to my house is covered with pink flowers, which is very picturesque but also very slippery when it has been raining.

We had Baby Knitters Club last Wednesday. I'm making slow progress on the Pebble Vest. I feel like the finished product is going to be tiny given it's all knit as one piece, so I'd better hurry up.

Last week I went to Bill Bailey, The Keepers and Flowers From My Mother's Garden. I'm going to try to go to all the BATS shows from now on given my new job, so I might have to stop listing them or it will get boring. I also went to La Boca Loca in Mirarmar and it was yum. I'd wanted to go for a while because people had said it was good and I was not disappointed. I especially appreciated the Frida shrine in the toilet. Although, I wonder how she'd feel about her shrine being in the toilet.

I feel like I haven't been to the movies in ages, but that's not actually true. The other week I went to The Sapphires. It was bit too cheesy for my liking. The dialogue felt pretty stale. But the music was fun.

Take me to the beach

On the weekend I went to the beach. It was very, very, very nice.

Amongst going for a long walk, trying to form a biking gang of two adults to rival the biking gang of three small children we saw riding around, eating fish and chips, and falling asleep while watching March of the Penguins, I made progress on my Pebble Vest but failed to take a photo of it. It's pretty boring still. It's just 13 rows of 80 stitches with some stitch markers.

I decided I really, really like Norfolk Pines with their little stars at the top and admired them a lot.

I also made a still life with some flowers I stole from the side of the road, a shell I stole from the beach, and an eggshell blue tea tray and a Crown Lynn cup I wanted to steal from the house we stayed in. I made that coffee in the cup. In one of those stovetop percolators. I don't drink coffee, but I love those contraptions.

Also, I didn't set out to make a still life, just so you know. I put some flowers in a gravy boat on the tray and then put the shell next to it to look pretty and then decided I needed to take a photo and call it a 'still life' like a pretentious loser.

Also, also, it really annoyed me how March of the Penguins was all, 'Why do the penguins march? Because love.' And, 'Now the family get to spend some quality time together before departing, never to see each other again.' Stop projecting human emotions and concepts onto penguins. They don't do it for love. They do it for reproduction.

A mundane novella

Last Sunday I took part in Corner Diary at BATS, which was basically a group of us reading things we had written when we were younger and were, to varying degrees, ashamed of. I read from the diary I wrote when I was eight years old, and the diary I wrote when I was ten. I had the best time and I wasn't embarrassed by the younger me at all - I'm glad I was so precocious and self-absorbed and strange, it has given me the best comedy material possible. Anyway, a lot of my diary entries from when I was ten begin with 'Sorry I haven't written for so long' or 'I can't believe it's been three days/three weeks/three months since I last wrote'. Nothing changes.

That photo above was taken on my way to work one morning just over a week ago. We'd had a lot of rain and one of the walls that the footpath on Glenmore Street runs alongside had even more moss on it than usual; I didn't touch it but it looked much thicker and bouncier (I'm sure moss doesn't bounce, but whatever). And it had little succulent flowers growing out of it. I thought they were pretty cool.

In the last few weeks I have been doing the usual - eating, working, going to movies and shows, writing a Christmas show with Alex and Ed, and various other things. Have I written about the orchestra? I don't think so.

I went to the orchestra one Friday night in August. I asked for two tickets for my birthday because I hadn't been since I was much younger and I had pretty much forgotten what it was like. It was the NZSO and the concert was called Cathedral of Sound, with 'one of the most exciting and ground breaking conductors of our time' Simone Young conducting Mozart's Symphony No. 36 Linz and Bruckner's Symphony No. 5. This really means nothing to me, all I know is I really enjoyed it and I couldn't believe over two hours had passed when we walked out. Simone Young was very animated in her conducting, she pretty much conducted with her whole body so it was really interesting to watch. Which was lucky because we were right near the front so could only see the front part of the string section. The person I went with wore a bow tie. Which was pretty great.

Here are some pictures of food I have eaten in the past few weeks:

The main of the Wellington On A Plate set menu at Le Metropolitain, followed by dessert off the menu. Creme brulee for me and warm chocolate pudding with sour cherries for Kelly.

Tacos from QBT on the waterfront at lunchtime on Friday. A bit of a wait, but so worth it.

Scones with jam and cream (not pictured, obviously) at Martha's Pantry. Two days in a row. As well as the daffodils in that photo, there are blossoms and blooms and bulbs everywhere in the Botanic Garden at the moment. It looks and smells pretty amazing every morning when I walk through it.

Churros and chocolate sauce for dessert at El Matador last night. I drank the last of the sauce out of the cup when I'd finished the churros. So good. Kelly got pancakes filled with caramel, which looked quite crepe-ish and tasted yum.

As for movies and theatre, I went to West End Girls at Circa, which was as expected (the ending was particularly cringe-inducing). I went to Tiny Spectacle / Shitty Lyricism at BATS which was painfully hip. I went to Jerichow at the Film Society (anyone could go along for a donation), a somewhat bleak and sometimes ridiculous, but enjoyable enough German film. I went to One Day Moko at BATS which was beautiful and made me a bit emotional. I saw it in its first incarnation as a Toi Whakaari solo and since then Tim has developed it into an hour long show. He is very very clever and such a strong performer. It makes you think a bit differently about homelessness and people you see regularly on the street, but most importantly it just makes you think about those things and has some very funny moments. Rave over. I went to Moonrise Kingdom last night which was cute and funny and I loved the music (by composer Benjamin Britten).

That's enough.

Oh but I listened to the most beautiful and sad 'This American Life' podcast this week. 'Our Friend David', following the death of regular contributor David Rakoff, whose voice I love. David's life is explored through bits from stories he'd told on the show and it was just so funny and lovely. I love that show.

Movie, film, movie, film, movie, movie, movie, film

Oh dear. It's been weeks. And all I have to show for it is films.

This time last year I was in London. I just looked through one day's worth of photos and found this photo from a school in Notting Hill. I took so many photos and I haven't really looked at them since. I'm still glad I took them though. It's so strange, it feels like such a long time ago.

Anyway, what have I been doing for the past few weeks? Basically, going to the movies. Last year I was away for the NZ International Film Festival, so I more than made up for it this year. I saw ten films altogether:

Wish You Were Here - Australian babes. Holiday in Cambodia goes very wrong.
How To Meet Girls From A Distance - Dean and Richard (and a whole lot of other hard working people) won the Make My Movie competition and got $100,000 to make a feature film. They didn't have a lot of time. It is very funny and well made. All the harbour and Mt Vic scenes made my heart swell for Wellington. It helped that it was a beautiful Sunday the day of the first ever screening, so we came outside and it was like we lived in that amazing sunny city of the movie.
The Imposter - A literally unbelievable documentary. In a very good way.
Tabu - I don't understand why the first part set in the present day had to be so long. I liked the scenery of the part set in what must have been the 1950s in Africa. The love story wasn't the grand romance I thought it was going to be.
Your Sister's Sister - So much better than your 'average' American romantic comedy. Not perfect. I really liked Rosemarie DeWitt. And the main guy.
Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey - A  documentary about the pretty amazing Bernadette Devlin who became an MP in Ireland in 1969 at 21 and has spent her life campaigning for social justice. Because I'm nosey I wish it revealed more about her personal life, as it was purely focussed on her upbringing and political life.
Last Days Here - Don't become a junkie. Even if your early heavy metal career never amounted to much. You will live in your parents sub-basement and think larvae are living in your skin. Pretty depressing. Even though it has a 'happy' ending.
How Far is Heaven - Hiruharama is beautiful and so is this documentary. The Sisters of Compassion teach a pretty good lesson about compassion and patience. The children who live in the settlement with their families have such a different upbringing from the one I had yet we live in the same country. I hope lots of New Zealanders watch this documentary. Especially politicians.
Searching for Sugar Man - By far my favourite film of the ten I saw. The less you know about it, the better. Holy Motors - One of the strangest films I have ever seen. But I liked it. I was glad it had a sense of humour, because otherwise it would have been very, very wanky.

If anything, this festival reaffirmed my love of documentaries. There are a couple I wanted to see that I didn't get to, so hopefully they come back or I can find them on DVD.

Wellington On A Plate has started. On Saturday night I had the $35 set dinner menu at The Hop Garden. We were lucky to get in actually, being the first night of WOAP everywhere that was participating seemed really busy. The food was very, very good. I am excited to try some other new places and maybe finally achieve my degustation dream...

In floral news, here are two photos I took over the last two weeks. A beautiful big magnolia tree on my way to work, and the my new tradition of weekly flowers at work.

Fact for the future: Irises are beautiful but they don't last long in an air conditioned office.

I'll be back in less than two weeks. I promise.

If a tree falls in a forest...

My loyal readership of one has been crying out for updates (even though she's been present for most of the events of note in the last few weeks) and I am not one to let the fans down.

I don't know why I haven't written anything in a while, it feels like both nothing and lots has been happening. I started a new job, I ripped my second half-done bootie out because I made the same mistake as the first time I tried to knit the first bootie, I stayed home most of last weekend in my pyjamas and re-watched five episodes of Girls. It's a tough life. Oh, but also the last two times I posted there was weird white background highlighting on some of the sentences and it made me angry and I couldn't fix it.

Anyway, I can't not record the event that was DJ Plays the Hits. Three weekends ago Ed and I had a joint birthday party at his house. There were giant red balloon columns. We went to the Salvation Army and bought hit records, such as Rod Stewart's 'Blondes Have More Fun' and one with Barbara Streisand and Barry Gibb dressed entirely in white and embracing on the cover, to make mobile-like hanging record decorations and artfully place the covers up the stairway. There was a disco ball. I made 30 cups of jelly and no one could understand why the jelly wasn't alcoholic.

Heaps of people dressed up and there were some amazing costumes. I wore Vogel's toast on my head.

On Sunday just been, we had classic movie Sunday for the first time in a while. I think. Yes. It was the first time since Annie. Anyway, we watched Top Gun in recognition of Tom Cruise's latest divorce. It was pretty hilarious. How many times can the song Danger Zone be played in one film? Many, many times. Why was Tom Cruise ever considered a heart throb? I have no idea. Why does the blue light in the scene in which he and the instructor woman get together make it look like they are inside an aquarium? Again, no idea. I found the flying scenes really stressful. My favourite character was Goose. He wasn't interested in wearing jeans when it was extremely hot and getting sunburnt because he was shirtless while playing an intense game of beach volleyball. He was wearing flowery shorts and an 80s t-shirt. And he played the piano and his wife was a really cute Meg Ryan wearing a great dress. And that's the sum total of my critical analysis.

Ancient History

What have I been doing? I don't even know. But here are some photos from last weekend. I think. It seems like a long time ago already. I was down in Canterbury visiting my Mum.

I finally completed my great Christmas 2011 lavender scheme, by taking the bunch of dried lavender out of the hot water cupboard, stripping the little bits off it, admiring my harvest, and cutting up an old pillowcase to sew two little lavender pillows.

I kept saying it was a small cottage industry and that Country Calendar would be around to interview me any minute. Next summer I am going to really have to up my harvest. 

On Saturday night my Mum, step-sister, and I went to a movie at the Waikari hall. The old screen is still there from many many years ago when movies used to be played and someone has set a projector up in the old projector booth. The chairs weren't exactly luxurious but it was a cute community time. The movie was The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which I had seen before but I knew my Mum would like.

Everything. Again.

It's been a week since my birthday eve. Where does the time go? Age.

Those are some biscuits I made to take to work on my birthday. There's a weird semi-tradition at my current workplace in which people bring baking on their birthday. Which doesn't really make sense, but it meant I got to eat Nigella's extreme chocolate chip biscuits with the five minute quiz, so I wasn't complaining.

I had a really great birthday that included being taken out three times for cups of tea, gifts of novelty socks, necklaces (including a necklace with a tiny working harmonica and a necklace that looks like bunting), and home made fruit leather, pizza with lots of cool people, wine, and me getting angrily adamant about how long someone has to have their full license for before they can teach a learner driver. Turns out I was wrong. It is only two years. Fine.

Alex gave me these tulips which have been the gift that just keeps on giving. They started out all closed and lovely and over the past week, encouraged by the gentle humming of the fridge no doubt, they have opened up and become even lovelier.

On Saturday the weather was yuck but that was more than okay because a collection of people came to my house and played boardgames. Then I proof-read a whole lot of short essays for a non-fiction book my old manager is publishing. I learned a lot about early New Zealand tourism ephemera (namely posters).

Then on Sunday we had classic movie Sunday and I got to choose because it was my birthday and I chose Annie because I didn't think I'd ever seen it before and if I had I couldn't remember any of it and it's very important that I see a seminal redheaded child movie.

Oh Annie, you hilarious but too long musical movie. Daddy Warbucks is both creepy and the best billionaire adoptive father ever. Miss Hannigan is probably me in 20 years time, bathing in gin. There are some strange characters like Punjab, and I was pretty surprised by the sometimes quite intense sexual innuendo in a children's movie.

Monday night saw my flatmate Emma and I tucked up in her bed watching the season finale of Girls. I don't know if I've mentioned Girls on here before, but the season finale was amazing and I now love Girls unequivocally. I really wasn't sure for a while, I liked the first episode, I wasn't that thrilled by some other episodes, I was disappointed we didn't see more of my favourite character (Shoshana), I have read a lot of the criticisms (and the hype) of the show and I agree with some of them, but overall I think it's pretty impressive and I am looking forward to season two.

Tuesday night I saw All My Sons at Circa and was pleasantly surprised. I had low expectations, but the cast was impressive and the script was very good (when considered in terms of the tradition that it comes from). I got a fright at the end which was probably very naive of me, and it made me think about the wider effects of war - beyond soldiers dying and the effect that has on their families.

Last night I went to Flight of the Conchords at the Michael Fowler Centre. The songs were great, they played lots of classics and a few new ones. There were some excellent surprised (especially during 'Bowie's In Space'), and Arj Barker's opening comedy set was pretty funny. I did feel, though, like Bret wasn't that enthused about being there. He seemed to want to just get it over and done with. Someone at work went last night as well and she said, 'Oh I didn't think that, I thought that was just him, or his schtick.' But I saw them a few years ago in Masterton and I definitely think they were more generous with their between-song banter and general attitude. I'm glad I went though, it was so good hearing some old favourites, especially  'A Hilarious Misunderstanding' which isn't on either of the albums but is very good.

And now I'm going to Christchurch for the weekend. I want to take my knitting but I only have carry-on and I'm scared they'll take it off me and it'll be gone forever. It's a hard knock life, for me.

The Baby Knitters Club is BACK (and other less interesting stuff)

My number one comedy partner and psychic twin is currently incubating a foetus. Which sounds disgusting but is actually really exciting. This bootie was begun way back in July last year and abandoned due to PARIS. That seems like a very long time ago now. By the time I got back from my month-long holiday, the baby I was knitting it for seemed like old news and I lost interest in finishing it, let alone knitting its mate.

But now, I am going to knit so many baby things and force Alex to dress her baby in them. It's going to be great.

I had trouble with this first bootie, I ripped the first version out, so hopefully I can remember how I got it right so I can knit a matching one.

Last weekend was Queen's birthday weekend. Alex and I had a marathon classic movie Sunday -

Pulp Fiction: FINALLY. Pulp Fiction was one of the reasons classic movie Sunday started, but Ed watched the copy I bought him for his birthday without me so it fell by the wayside. Alex has seen Pulp Fiction numerous times, the first time she was aged nine, which I cannot comprehend. I couldn't cope with parts of it and I am almost 25. I really enjoyed it though, I can see why it's such a modern classic - the sequencing of the storytelling, the humorous, everyday dialogue combined with some very heavy action and events. I particularly loved John Travolta and I learned a lot about hard drugs.

The Big Lebowski: This was not a planned classic movie, we just couldn't be bothered leaving the house to go across the road to Aro Video. It is strange and funny.

Raising Arizona: I meant to go home, but this got put on and I ended up watching the whole thing (I really extended my knowledge of the Coen brothers back catalogue on this particular Sunday). Holly Hunter is so watchable. Fact: this movie was released the year I was born.

Then, on Monday, I went to the City Gallery to catch Obstinate Object before it finished. It was very cool, a pretty eclectic mix of sculptures that, it could be argued, show that anything is art.

I loved Philip Beesley's Hylozoic Series: Vesica. You went into a small-ish black room and hanging from the ceiling were all these vine, leaf, and flower-like things. It was like being in a surreal forest. And when you touched a wire hanging down from some of the flower-like things, they would light up and move, with a little engine-type thing whirring and sending a vibration down the wire. It was so fun.

Then, Kelly and I went to a Devonshire tea screening of The Queen at the Roxy. I wore my pearls and my royal blue cardigan (although, I essentially just looked like a National voter). I hadn't seen The Queen before, I found it pretty interesting - once you got past the weird casting of Prince Charles and the Queen Mum. I got a bit emotional watching all the real footage from the time of Diana's death - people crying in the streets, all the flowers. You can never really know how accurate something like The Queen is in terms of conversations members of the royal family have and how they relate to each other behind closed doors, but it would be a strange way to live. It made me think about the less endearing side of Diana and just how much the Queen has lived through.

So many movies. I don't know why I feel the need to document them all. 

Everything and nothing really

New permanent sculpture in Glover Park that I saw while walking through on the weekend. It makes me think of hot air balloons, exotic palaces, and tree forts.

In between rehearsing and working, I have seen lots of good things lately. I started writing about them all but then I lost the enthusiasm for it. So in brief:

Two weeks ago I saw The Artist, which I really enjoyed. Last Wednesday night I saw A Play About Love which I also enjoyed.

On Friday night I saw Raoul which had some moments of absolute magic that I am still amazed thinking about, but also lacked cohesiveness and seemed to suffer from having too much money. For example, there were some amazing puppets, but they kind of just came on, had people gasp and clap at them, and then they left again very quickly - they weren't used to their full potential or developed as characters. The parts I enjoyed best were often the most simple - a trick with a big round mirror which made it look like someone had fallen into the mirror and disappeared, some physical comedy in which the guy couldn't get comfortable while sitting reading a book. Overall, Raoul didn't live up to its hype for me.

On Sunday night I saw my last New Zealand International Arts Festival show: Hohepa. A modern New Zealand opera. I really did not like it. Maybe modern opera just isn't for me, but it felt like a bad musical. There were clearly some amazing (especially male) singers, but it felt like we didn't get to hear the full range of their voices because they did a lot of talk singing (there's a flash Italian word for it but I can't remember it). And there's something that just annoys me about people singing such inane things as, 'And Jane was very seasick' and 'We are going to the shops soon.' I kid you not. Those were actual lines.

On Saturday night I saw Hugo, which I LOVED. I went with my little brother who was in town, and it's lucky he was, otherwise I probably wouldn't have thought to go at all. It was in 3D which normally doesn't do much for me but this was so so good. I loved the setting (Paris in the 1930s) and the mystery and all the clockwork mechanics. The idea of an automaton blew my mind. On the way home I was saying to Hunter, 'But they couldn't really have made automated dolls before computers that could draw such detailed pictures - you'd have to have so many tiny cogs and wheels and things inside them, how would they all fit?' But when we came home and I looked it up, it turned out it was true. They really exist. Given I'm scared of dolls, I think seeing one working in real life would creep me out way too much, but as a concept, they are fascinating.

This was Lyall Bay from the deck of Maranui on Saturday morning. It seems a long time ago given that rain, wind, fog, and cold temperatures have now hit town with a vengeance.

Unnerving

Sunday saw our first classic movie Sunday with Ed back in the fold. We watched Psycho. It was very, very stressful.

While I'm glad I saw it and actually really enjoyed it, Psycho encapsulated for me why I don't watch thrillers or scary movies very often, especially when I can't yell at the screen ('Oh great idea, go into the house ALONE you idiot!') or talk to the people I'm watching the movie with ('Why did he do that? I'm freaking out!'). At the end of the movie, I was a bit scared about going home to my relatively unknown flatmates and worried by the thought of having a shower (I did get over that, so don't worry, I haven't given up washing).

However, as a classic movie, Psycho was excellent. I kept thinking how great it would have been to watch without knowing the plot twist. And Norman Bates is such a perfect villain, partly because he is SO attractive. Good work, Hitchcock.

Yesterday was Waitangi Day, so to celebrate our nationhood, I went for a walk along Oriental Bay with my friend Kate and talked about one night stands, and then we went to see Young Adult.

I think I liked it. If you see it, you'll understand what I mean. Or hate it. I laughed, I squirmed, and sometimes I just couldn't watch. Not in a Psycho stabbing-in-the-shower way, more of an uncomfortable, 'I can't believe this character is doing this' way. I really enjoyed all of the performances. I liked that the protagonist was so unlikeable and you never really felt sorry for her no matter what happened. I guess, overall, I did really like it.

Further Fleet Babes, CMS Fail, and Toasted Marshmellows

Turns out my flatmate took an excellent photo during the Fleet Foxes on Friday night. I guess it helps that he is much, much taller than me.

On Sunday we had the first classic movie Sunday of 2012. I chose the movie and it was terrible. I thought it had all the makings of a CMS winner - the lead actress won an Oscar for it, I'd heard the title before, it had Harvey Keitel, Kris Kristofferson, and child Jodie Foster in it and was directed by Martin Scorcese (not that I know anything about him), and there was a photo of a woman with amazing hair on the back cover.

Don't ever watch Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Basically, Alice cries. A lot. She's also really awful to her poor son who gets dragged around with her and left in motel rooms alone all evening while she works as a singer in bars (despite the fact that she's actually not that great at singing and she appears to have a very small repetoire of approximately two songs). The woman with the great hair was a highlight but overall, even the 1970s fashions couldn't keep the movie interesting. A terrible classic movie start to 2012 for which I take full responsibility.

Although Alex made a tart and it was yum.

On Sunday night my two English flatmates assembled a tiny BBQ they bought for $15. We sat outside slightly burning things and then eating them. We watched the clouds turn orange and then toasted marshmellows.

It was great.