I held the last BBQ of the summer at me flat on Saturday night. I reckon it’s a safe bet it’ll be the last because a) no-one else would be foolish enough to hold a BBQ in the dark and b) summer is bloody over, as yesterday’s monsoon / hurricane in Auckland proved.

Anyway, where’s what I learned:
1. If you invite 30 people, and spend the day panicking about feeding everyone and rushing about spending all your cash getting enough food, only half will actually turn up
2. And the vast majority that food won’t be eaten anyway
3. Putting ALL the steaks and sausages on the BBQ at once will ensuring mediocre BBQing all round
4. There is definitely a man shortage, if the number of single females (quite a few) to single males (none) is anything to go by
5. Putting a sign on the door telling people to go around to the back door is a bad idea when there’s no lights out the back
6. If you think you’re running out of beer, and get latecomers to bring you more, you won’t drink any of the new stuff
7. Sing Star is a lot more fun when you’ve had a few
8. It’s one thing to learn a whole lot of songs on the guitar people can sing along to. YOU have to be able to remember WHAT THEY ARE when you’re drunk
9. Getting up early to clean up then going back to bed is a great idea

I really enjoyed myself,and I think everyone else did, too. It’s a good feeling to put a whole bunch of your mates in a room and see if they get on.

3. Young Mums in baseball hats pushing prams at 25 kms per hour. Where are they going so fast? Where?

2. People that work at Real Groovy. You can imagine the interview:
Any tattoos? Nope.
Any facial piercings? Nah.
Freaky-ass down with the kids haircut? No.
Get Out Of Here You FREAK!

1. The Warriors ‘faithful’. I mean, COME ON. There’s got to be something going on there. I wouldn’t eat or drink anything at Ericsson stadium if I were you.

We WON.

We haven’t done that for ages. A cool(ish) $50 to the good.

Katz_ET
Originally uploaded by richirvine73.

That’s #1 as in ‘number one Katz cartoon published on this blog’, that is. We haven’t won for ages.

We’d probably win the drinking, though.

Who’s Katz, then?

If you’ve never checked out the Observer Music Monthly, you’re shit. I really miss my London Sunday morning coffee / panadol / Observer mission, there was just so MUCH to read once you’d lugged it home.

Thankfully, the Guardian unlimited website is excellent, and you can get all the magazines online. This month I was excited to see Douglas Coupland interviewing Morrissey – one of my teenage heroes. Seeing him at the Logan Campbell Centre just after his first solo album was memorable for a) NO Smiths songs, b) his refusal to speak to the audience, despite pleas from the crowd, and c) the kids in the line beforehand singing “Morrissey, Morrissey, Morrissey” to the tune of “Here we go, Here we go, Here we go”. You’ve never heard anything so pathetic as a bunch of indie kids wearing cardigans over band T-shirts trying to do terrace chants.

Anyway. The Chinned Wonder is a notoriously difficult interview, and this is an entertaining piece alright, but Coupland’s wussed out here, making up the word count with the same old quotes we’ve read a thousand times. Surely, having gone all that way, he could have got some new ones.

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Wallace on bFM‘s breakfast show is running a competition to name your top 5 NZ songs ever. As everyone knows, New Zealand music beings and ends with my personal collection of Flying Nun vinyl, but that aside, here’s mine.

5. Scorpio Girls – Supergroove. You can’t hear the opening guitar riff without flinging a jug of Waikato over your mate’s head and heading for the dancefloor. These guys kicked ass at the Riv – bands obviously enjoying themselves onstage ROCK.
4. Victoria – Dance Exponents. They went on to become the best pub rock band ever, but I preferred them **FOGEY ALERT FOGEY ALERT** as the plain ol’ Dance Exponents. I just learned this guitar line, too.
3. Skin – Bailter Space. They are more of an ‘album’ band, but I can’t make a top 5 list without including ‘ver Space. Here’s one off Thermos that you need to hear live for the full effect (which is roughly the same as listening to a plane take off, standing on the runway). I’ve never heard a louder band, but then I was up front checking out Alistair’s pedals.
2. Nerves – Doublehappys. …and you can’t leave out Shane. I love SJF, and Dimmer? Dunno, so I’ve chosen a DoubleHappys number. This one has a chorus featuring a who’s who of that Dunedin Lot, so you’re getting heaps here for the price of one.
1. Slow Sad Love Song – The Verlaines. Graham Downes at his best, from the melodic start to the primal ending. Treads a fine line by having a touching lyric that speaks to all men in their early 20s directly, but also perfect for shouting along to with yer mates. Should have been huge.

Yeah, so there’s no Finns, Rungas, Hip-Hop-ers, and no ‘new’ NZ bands (just how many feckin sub-Blink 182s does the world NEED?), but it’s my list and I get to choose. Nyah.

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A few Calvin and Hobbes cartoons, because it’s Friday. Here’s Slate’s version, and an appreciation from Progressive Boink with some quite heart rending commentary.

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Originally uploaded by richirvine73.

This award goes to the guy in this Rover spotted on Contstellation Drive. Yep, that says ‘HO BA1T’.

Disturbingly, the use of a ‘1’ instead of an I means there’s someone else cruising around with “HO BAIT’. The mind boggles.

I really like loud electric guitars and all the dirty-as noises they make. I used to spend hours with distortion pedals trying to make sounds as f**cked up as possible, and the opening chords of Mudhoney’s ‘Sweet young thing ain’t sweet no more’, one of the dirtiest, shittiest sounding bits of distortion ever recorded… well, it doesn’t get any better.

But really, I love the soppy stuff. I knew there was something badly wrong when I listened repeatedly to the Boogie Nights soundtrack. Night Ranger’s ‘Sister Christian’? Alright, it’s played when Eddie and crew rob the lunatic druggie guy, one of the coolest bits in the film, but ELO for f**k’s sake? Come ON.

But when you think about it, it all kind of makes sense. I love the Beach Boys, and Pet Sounds with all those layered ‘eeeeehhhhhs’ ‘ahhhhhhhhhs’ and ‘ohhhhhhhhhs’ is just a beautiful, beautiful record. And even Husker Du, underneath all those squalls of black noise, really, really want to be a power pop band. Check out their version of the Mary Tyler Moore theme for exhibit A.

Anyway, all this rambling has only lead up to me being able to copy and paste this quote from this Guardian article. Apparantly there’s a soft rock revival on at the moment: “If kids grow up with their dad listening to the Jam and the Clash, where’s their rebellion going to come from? How are you going to wind your dad up? Well,” he chuckles, “playing fucking Supertramp will really wind your dad up.”

Magic.
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