My highlights from the Oscars before I got tired and went to bed.

– John Stewart is a really funny guy, even though some of the early political jokes didn’t go down too well with tinsel town’s finest. Still his Bjork and Scientology jokes made me laugh a lot.
– Ben Stiller killed in the green suit with his freaky amateur drama student schtick.
– Jack Nicholson wangled the seat next to Kiera Knightly. He’s still got it.
– Nice to see the Wilson bothers giving the award for best short live action movie, and describing how it all started for them with Bottle Rocket, a fine, fine film.
– Will Ferrell is the funniest guy alive, and you know why? Because he plays it absolutely straight.
– Nice to hear Howard Berger who won Best Makeup reference Where the Wild Things Are, obviously the best kids book ever, and soon to be a Spike Jonze film apparently.
– And it was funny to see a shot of the NZ coastline in the King Kong ‘nomination’ montage for Art Direction. Not a lot of actual art direction there, presumably.
– And while we’re on the topic, it makes me really proud to see all those NZers winning multiple oscars (Weta’s Richard Taylor’s up to five now), but TV3’s Belinda Henley was stretching it a tad to say “New Zealand’s REIGN at the Oscars continues. A handful of technical awards is hardly a reign.

– I loved the montages of Film Noir, Biographical, and ‘Social Conscience’ films. I know it’s rilly hip to be all cynical and that, but can I just say (quietly) aren’t The Movies magic?

link

I liked this on <a href=”http://www.gapingvoid.com/“>thegapingvoid, one of the blogs I read. Replace ‘New York’ with ‘Auckland’ and you’re instantly around a BBQ with men in Hallenstiens shirts on talking house prices, bubbles, patio paving, and which Bunnings Warehouse is the best.
link

An ongoing series in which the blogger shares his budget orientated music and / or movie purchases, revealing both something of his refined taste and unwillingness to shell out any decent cash for it.

What Steven Spielberg’s Jaws
Eh? It’s Jaws, man, the one you think of when you’re swimming and you step on something funny, see a fish, hear someone cry out, in fact pretty much anything that happens in the water, you think of Jaws. This one comes with a 50 minute ‘making of’ doco. Plus, it’s Spielburg, and for all the cute kids and aliens that followed this one, the guy knows how to make you shit yourself.
Best bit “We’re going to need a bigger boat”.
Damage $10
link

I attended the Auckland City Bike to Work breakfast this morning – it was well organised, and I got a free yummy breakfast of Vogel’s Scroggin Muesli, which was totally excellent.

It was very strange seeing all the cycle commuters there. It seems to me that it takes a certain (utterly mad) type of individual to cycle through Auckland’s rush hour traffic. And that type of person doesn’t play well with others – there were loads of people there (like me. ahem) on their own, avoiding eye contact with their fellow cyclists, talking to no-one. But themselves. It was like a convention for high school science teachers.

Fair play, though. Cycle commuting, when you take out the random car doors opening, drivers on the phone, or worse, TEXTING, Auckland’s driving rain, road filth flicking up in your eyes and all over your clothes, the heat, the stifling humidity, your utter invisibilty to cars… Yes, when you take all that out, cycle commuting is great fun. You get to notice and appreciate all kinds of details about Auckland you’d never see. You get to actually look forward to your commute home. You get to arrive at work clear headed and ready to go (ish).

And funny stuff happens. I somehow provoked a driver in their 50’s (this happened to me a couple of weeks ago) to give me the finger when I got in the way of their reckless right turn before the oncoming traffic. I gave them the thumbs up.

Sometimes life is sweet.
link

Now you can go here and mess with Chartered Trips. Or anyone else.

link

Drooooooool.
link

Musical highlight one. “I’m Iggy and you’re Kiwi MotherF–kers!” Glad I got to see this lizard-like legend play with the Stooges, who pumped out the big dumb Flintstones-style Rock n Roll like they invented it, which they did, I guess.

Musical highlight two.“Remember, Meg’s not happy unless you’re all happy!” There’s some mixed reviews of the White Stripes show, but I loved ’em. Yeah, Jack should shave his goatee, and yes, he played more instruments than he should have, but the little bugger never stopped rocking hard, and produced some noises from his guitar that I didn’t think were possible. What the knockers need to remember is that Jack and Meg did it all for us – they just wanted us to have a good time listening to their bad ass, dirty-as, swamped out Rock n Roll. We did. And I loved the feedback.

The other musical highlights. The Go! Team were great once they settled into their set. Bollox to The Heralds’ Russell Baille for obviously watching just the first two songs, then buggering off to check out the Lynx Jet tent. Sleater-Kinney were great, as were what I caught of Kings of Leon. And fair play to 2Many DJs for dropping AC/DC in the Boiler Room late on.

Festival punters’ band T-shirt spotting report. Nirvana (several), Ramones (loads), Doors (1), AC/DC (1), Metallica (1). A BIG bonus to Ian for spotting Megadeath, some very sweet action there. No Pearl Jam, though.

Old git’s logistics report. “Nah, I’m not going to drink that much”. “You’ll have to queue up for ages for a beer, eh”. “There’s no bogs there”. “We’ll be the oldest ones there”. “Whine, whine, whinge”, etc, etc.
That was all bollocks, of course. Yeah we did have to queue a bit to get into the Wave Bar, but once we were in we could sit on the grass, talk crap, and pound a few Lion Reds in the sun while listening to the Magic Numbers (derivative shite). Lovely. And once we got down to the main stage area, there were some great loos with no queues in the grandstand. This is important, you know.
As for being the oldest ones there – not even close. I even spotted Roger Sheperd and Colin Hogg taking their places at the back of the herd for Iggy, and those guys are REALLY old.
link

This could change your life.
link