Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Big T-Shirts

Okay I drove out to somewhere and the radio played for me a song from tattoo you it was from 1977 the radio guy said that I remember looking at the record cover wondering that they were still around or they reformed or something I never heard any of it I just assumed from memory it was from the eighties the first year I was aware of was 1979 like I said wow this is 1979 before this I didn't even know about the idea of years. But the eighties. No lets get to t-shirts.
BY TAHI MOORE

T-SHIRTS
I got this idea that big t-shirts and thin pants would be great. I got it from an American Apparel ad with someone in an oversized super low v-neck and would that not be great but so I got a plain oversized t-shirt and it's awful it's like I'm a tiny person in big person's clothes. But the neck was fitting I think that's the problem. I remember a runway shot of someone in a really big sweatshirt with big shoulder pads. That sounds bad too but it's almost good.

SHIRTS
Went for an oversized shirt that sucked also I think it's part because it's white and I'm used to bad white oversized shirts if no one ever wore them to weddings without wanting to it'd be great. Then put on fitting shirt lots better had to tuck it into my jeans but the shirt was white and that was all wrong. In No Country for Old Men, the main guy the star, he wears jeans and shirts that go with the jeans it's really good I think. I went for balck trousers but they didn't go with the white shirt um it's tricky too formal again like the too big white shirt. I think a flash oversized shirt might be good, like polka dot or something.

I say Shirts vs T-shirts shirts win but shirts and jeans are hard going, big t-shirts and jerseys and all that stuff need really big necks, and what else? Who knows. What trousers? Is that why we wear jeans? Really? I watched a Daft Punk movie and this whole town was wearing robot head space helmets and the suits looked good I can see hats making suits make more sense. But who wears hats except for ones that don't go with suits? Should we wear the same suits or find new ones for the future? Is there something new around the corner? Yes.



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Monday, April 28, 2008

WHat Happened to the Future?

BY TAHI MOORE

I don't know about suits. They're a bit of uniform. So what? well, If you're in a wearing suit context, then you can talk about what's a good one, but if you decide to just wear a suit, it's can you get away with business pajamas. Seriously. And it's got to include your hair and your shoes especially your shoes and your shirt and where you are as well. So that thing of wearing the wrong stuff okay, but the problem of suits, when they go wrong, I'm theorising, is that they're disconnected. You know, it's not like you're going to a job interview or something. The wrongness of good clothes has got a lot to do with what's the right thing to wear, which is suddenly very boring.

I don't think suits are very different to army surplus, except army surplus is cheaper.

I want to wear a hat, but fedoras are hard work. Uniforms right? Uniforms from other times. What's a uniform of difference. There are band photos from around some time when a couple of them were wearing these expensive casual suitey trousers that couldn't have stayed that good for more than a couple of months. After that either they'd be boring, mark you as having some fruity style, or be replaced by the next thing. I thought they were wrong calls for the future, but now I think they were the only thing that could have been worn at the time, and if the times didn't catch up, then the only thing to do was to keep moving or be lost to the eccentric call of a personal style. So wear really good trousers. You can always get your skinny jeans back out next month. I've been doing it for years.



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Monday, April 14, 2008

SAAB

BY TAHI MOORE

Why did SAAB die? I don't know. No um GM bought them and made Opels that looked a bit like saabs or something like that and then um.. They use Fiat engines as well, and something to do with Cadillac Chassis. Now they're moving to Germany so they're promoting the Swedishness and the aeronautics. But also there's this thing now about the distinctive looks. This years models looks like last year's Holden. It's true. 4 wheel drive holdens. So I was cycling up a hill and saw a genereal motors saab red saab with a penis painted on it. It's true. Depressing. People say Subaru is the new saab. But GM is meant to be going down the toilet, or they've gone down the toilet but they haven't realised that yet. Yeah and Holden is GM Australia but I don't they're going down the toilet at all. I'm not sure if the same person took the photos or not. Maybe there's a set of guidelines.










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Monday, March 10, 2008

High Fashion Low Fashion No Fashion

BY TAHI MOORE

Watches. Again!

Okay so about a month ago I saw a thing in the Herald saying watches equals jewelery of today blah blah and I remember there being two beige swatch watches. The whole thing about those watches was that they came in blue yellow red block colours. They're plastic. Beige plastic. That's computers from when they looked really ugly until apple sold them in red blue yellow see through block colours and they went like hotcakes right so it's not an eighties thing at all AT ALL. Don't buy a beige plastic watch. You can do better. Example I got a rocket wind up watch stainless steel yellow face super modern design look like something from the bahaus serious. Somewhat cheaper delivered across the world. Except the strap sucks so I gotta custom make something in brown leather or get a cloth strap or something. Anyway I wouldn't bother with watches. I'd bother with a good pair of shoes. This is going in circles. I need a mission.



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CK Stead

BY LYDIA CHAI

I never really got into New Zealand authors, unless you count CK Stead. He is the only NZ writer whom I have read serially. I don't love everything he's written and I haven't read everything he's written. I've only just touched the surface of his oeuvre.

My favourite so far is Death Of The Body, the clever story of a professor of Philosophy who specializes in the mind/body problem. Meanwhile, his wife is a Sufi who chants "I am not this body" all day long. Great setup for a story, huh. It's not really about them, though. There's also a crime thriller. And a story about the story's teller, so it is a novel about writing itself. (Note how that last sentence can be read two ways - I can be clever, too!)

Last Monday, I had the chance to attend a packed lecture by Mr Stead at the Maidment Theatre, titled One Thing Leads To Another.

(Does anyone care about audience demographic for these things? Ages 45 and above: 65%. Young tertiary set: 10%. 1 baby. 1 Witi Ihimaera. Recognizable campus faces: 2%. Asians: maybe 3, of different ages.)

He delivered a narrative of his life as a writer ever since he left his teaching job at the university. Sounds indulgent for a topic, but let's face it, that's what we were there to learn about. Besides, he talked about himself with the same self-effacing humour and also,paradoxically, self-confidence as someone like Leonard Cohen. Only, not as sexy.

Among his narrative were: The discipline of keeping office hours. The glowing reviews of a personal favourite that ironically didn't sell well (Secret History Of Modernism). His almost lackadaisical attitude towards the novel he is best known for, Smith's Dream, which was made into a film. His one and only writer's block that came late in his life, which he triumphed over by making it the subject of a story
(Secret History Of Modernism, again).

He jumped from one idea to the next anecdote to his next intellectual phase to his next story idea - in altogether an entertaining and sprightly fashion.

Academicians, bless their souls, they're just so *interested*. But I think it takes a generous spirit to make research material seem interesting to other people. I really do. So Mr Stead does it for me.


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Sunday, March 2, 2008

Oops

BY TAHI MOORE

Sorry I haven't written for a while. I don't know what's good any more. Someone's wearing something great and someone else is wearing something else that makes the first thing not so great and it goes like this around in circles. All I can think of is to dress well. I don't even know what that means. Stuff that fits well? In good colours? There's so many people dressing sport casual. And there's so many people dressing natty, in loud shirts but pinstriped white and black. How is pinstriped black and white loud? It was invented to be loud, for people who wear perfect fitting suits. I haven't researched that at all. But I think that's how it goes Something about avoiding suits from being uniforms if you can actually wear whatever kind of suit you like. And those loud jeans. Yeah those.

So I predict that if you can find smart casual stuff that fits well then it's hard to go wrong. Maybe. Where can you get that stuff? Do you have to have it made? Can I just go to little brother or something and walk out looking like normal in a sea of ridiculous spoof? Look around. How many people dress like actual human beings and not these this year outlet store six years ago bad super fashions trying to look street but failing even then now you're on some guys arse and cut off at the knees with a patch that says gumf-sports five-oh-seventy with twenty three stitches in green detail. Rebel against rebellion. Go to a menswear shop. Tuck your shirt in or get one five sizes too big and pencil trousers made out of wool or linen or something. Look like there's no chance your clothes are alluding to some tennis club their stable mates belong to and to which they might go if they've got time before hitting the clubs.



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Sunday, February 17, 2008

The Speedway Experience (International Midget* Series USA vs. NZ)

BY LYDIA CHAI

If you visited my home city, Kuala Lumpur, you would probably be struck by the comparative lack of hoons on the roads. Less roars of souped up cars, more drones of the likes of reliable Volvos, Beemers and Toyota Harriers.

Malaysians. We just don't have a need for speed. Wildly out of character, then, that I spent my Saturday evening at the Speedway, Western Springs!

Robert Crumb once described Harvey Pekar's life as being so ordinary as to verging on the exotic. In this vein, out of curiosity and fascination, I invited my Aussie ex-pat friend E. to check out the rubber-meets-dirt subculture with me.

The hoi polloi did not disappoint. Can we say full marks for ambiance? Consider this: a glorious afternoon with a lingering lilac sunset. Well-prepared oldies with their deck chairs, munching peanut-butter-on-celery-sticks. The smells of hot, fatty foods. Even the burnt petrol smelled sweeter than usual.

I scanned the terraces of heads for an audience demographic (though, this is pure guesswork):
Male/Female ratio: 50/50.
Old/Young ratio: 20/80.
Kids: Mostly boys.
Asians: 5.

If you ask me, the sprint cars stole the thunder from the midget cars. These are larger cars with Z-shaped wings on their tops so as to create downforce round the bends. They grunt more deeply and sound great, but someone needs to improve the aesthetic of those adhoc-looking wings.

The event culminated in a 50-lap midget car race with New Zealander Michael Pickens finishing first, but getting bumped to 3rd place for driving on the in-field a couple of times. 1st place thus fell on the cheeky American Brad Kuhn who had spent all 50 laps hot on Pickens' heels. The boos of nationalistic protest went past our Aussie and Malaysian heads.

I am no petrolhead, but if there ever will be a demolition derby, I am so there. I'll plant a tree today.

*referring to the cars, not drivers. I made that mistake, too.



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Research and Development

BY TAHI MOORE

EUROPE
It's been a while. I've been fixing the computer and trying to perfect Gin and Tonic at the same time. I learned that people know a lot about computers because they've destroyed about eight already. I made a cocktail with gin, cointreau, lemon tonic water. Great, but I thought gin and just enough tonic to take the edge off best by far. So yeah the perfect watch I found what I thought was the ideal thing also the plainest thing I ever saw there goes my theory on ugly but it still goes for clothes, most of the time.

BORING IS BESTISH
So what's the ideal jean cut? wore wide jeans around the house. It was great I felt good then they got boring. But they were better than when I sewed them straight and the knees came out saggy it was a fucking mess truly. But I think if you can wear straight thin pants without the shape going funny that's about as good as anything. I was watching a band and they had stoves and the seam at the knees goes forwards in this funny curve. It's off, but I remember cuts from twenty years ago you think they're just recycling but I think the cuts have gotten a lot better. But there's still inherent problems in them that will never go away I think. I think jeans are inherently ugly except by blind luck hence trying on a hundred and eighty seven pairs a year for the average person.

DON'T GO TOO BAGGY ON THE THIGHS THOUGH
The other option apart from fitting thighs and slightly loose calves with no knee bulge was fitting calves and loose around the thighs, jodpured. So I did that. It's great. It looks like the knees are meant to bulge out and they're supposed to be ugly as shit.



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Sunday, February 3, 2008

‘I Like A Pina Colada’ – The Great Pina Colada Quest Part 2

BY SALLY CONOR

If anything, my pina colada obsession has only grown and pulsated since I first blogged about it. I’ve googled pina colada recipes. I’ve pondered the merits of the various glass shapes and of blending or mixing the pina colada. I can’t count the number of times I’ve tried to organise some kind of pina colada party mission or pub-crawl or some other such excuse for me to drink them in company rather than coping with the shame of ordering one alone. But by becoming a cocktail opportunist and tricking people into going for a drink with me and then sneakily ordering a pina colada before they realise what I’m doing, I’ve managed to gather data on four more bars and their pina colada prowess without once having to drink alone! Bonus!

Honey, O’Connell St

My friend and I were both a bit broke but we’d been working hard and had an hour to kill so went in search of some sweet PC action. Honey Bar SEEMS like a real cocktail bar with its long cocktail menu and oddly shaped furniture, but judging by the calibre of the drinks we were served, I’m now not so sure. It was a bit like Deschlers all over again (reminder: vomit-like, viscous, vile). I’m pretty sure the bartender didn’t know what she was doing. BUT the glass was posh and once we’d given the pina coladas ten minutes or so to defrost a little bit (it was basically a pineapple and Malibu frappé) we found they were almost drinkable. However, by this point we’d already switched to wine and were a bit beyond caring. Disappointing.

Dine, Sky City

My Mum’s birthday dinner at this frightfully wanky and overpriced Peter Gordon eatery provided the perfect opportunity to test a high-end cocktail without having to pay for it. Brilliant! Inwardly, I congratulated myself even as my Dad began to prematurely sweat at the expense of the drink, let alone the meal to follow. As one would expect at a restaurant where minimalism is a virtue, the pina colada that I ordered arrived totally ungarnished in a boring tall glass. I’m beginning to formulate a theory that the pina colada is largely about theatre. It’s a performance, an exercise in frivolous bad-taste. Tacky garnishes and the right sort of novelty glass are inherent to that performance. A place like Dine doesn’t do novelty, and their pina colada certainly betrayed this inability to have fun. Unlike at Deschlers and Honey, it was at least a pleasantly drinkable liquid having escaped being blended to a cement-like consistency with an entire bucket of ice. But there wasn’t enough pineapple and the overall result was pretty bland. I certainly couldn’t detect much alcohol and I didn’t finish drinking it. On the other hand, my meal was too rich. Happy medium, where are you hiding? Not at Dine apparently.

Hyatt Hotel Bar, Cnr. Princes St and Waterloo Quadrant

It seems to me that the hotel bar might be the natural home of the pina colada – tourists notoriously have bad taste in everything so it only seems right that the tackiest of drinks is actually ON THE MENU at the Hyatt! My friend had tipped me off that Teresa the bartender seemed to know what she was doing (shaking drinks in a capable fashion à la Cocktail the movie and performing the trick where they taste-test it with a straw) so we figured we’d give her pina colada a whirl. We sat out in the garden only to find ourselves seated next to a guy with a greasy rat’s-tail growing halfway down his back which was a little off-putting. That’s hotel bars for you though. And the complimentary bowl of cashews made up for it somewhat. Our drinks arrived promptly but at first glance were just as disappointing as those at Dine. Same tall glass, same lack of decorative flair. Alas. But the coconut foam on the top was excellent and the liquid appeared to have shards of real pineapple suspended in it! However, the presence of alcohol was in doubt right up until we looked at the bill and saw that no, we hadn’t accidentally ordered virgin pina coladas but were indeed paying fifteen dollars each for fairly ordinary desserts-in-a-glass. Better than Dine. Tangy-er. But still a bit average.

F.Y.I. The garden had a gate straight out onto the street which was wide open… it’s almost like they WANT you to order seven rum-and-cokes and then do a runner.

Mac’s Brew Bar a.k.a. Northern Steamship Company, Quay St

Yeah so these bars aren’t exactly famed for the quality of their cocktails but we were in the area and wanted to check that the stripey shirt crowd weren’t secretly receiving amazing cocktails while the rest of us suffered with our bad sav. I’ve begun to notice that when on a pina colada tasting mission, it is crucial to carefully note the bartender’s response when you request a pina colada. Doubt seems to be the most common response, followed by mild panic and/or fear. So far only Bar 3 and the Hyatt have been either totally fine with brewing such a drink, or have just hidden their horror better. At The Northern Steamship, there was a long pause while the bartender processed my enquiry as to if there was ‘any way you could make me a couple of pina coladas?’

He paused. He said he thought so. He whispered to another young guy who then appeared to call a meeting at the other end of the bar with two female staff. My friend and I covertly watched as they huddled together whispering furiously and then seemed to come to a decision. The young guy started mixing a very strange drink that contained copious amounts of Malibu (hurrah!), pineapple juice and… cream. Not coconut cream, just regular cream of cows. He kinda mixed it all in the glass as he went along, with the ice already in there. I kept trying to pay for the cocktails but the bartenders were ignoring me. We thought maybe we were being punished for ordering such uncool slash troublesome drinks?? Finally they arrived… again with the tall glass and the no garnish. At last I was allowed to pay. We tasted. The result was surprisingly drinkable but the lactosey richness of the cream hit us in the back of the throat, as did the Malibu. Within a minute, the pineapple juice and cream had started to curdle and the ice was melting and forming a sort of scum on the surface. Revolting little white scabs were floating in it after about five minutes. We bravely tried to soldier on but were defeated about halfway through. Top marks to the Mac’s bar team for creativity but really, those drinks weren’t pina coladas and if I wasn’t such a wuss I would have pointed out as much and asked for my money back. Quite repulsive.

I’m beginning to wonder if I’m asking for the impossible. A pleasant, well balanced pina colada seems to be incredibly hard to find, let alone a pina colada with a nice cocktail umbrella or cherry in it. Has cocktail-making really become so po-faced and generally rubbish?? I think I need to hit the flash bars. I need to find the real professional cocktail-smiths in this town. And then I need to return to Bar 3 to determine if that now-legendary first pina colada was a figment of my imagination.



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Karaoke Call

BY AMBER EASBY

I can barely hold a tune and rarely know the words to even my favourite songs. Maybe that is why I love karaoke so much.

Until last night, I hadn’t karaoked in Auckland before. We tried Coherent, having heard about Sally’s killer rendition of Nothing Compares 2 U there a couple weeks back. We were hit with a $20 door charge. It was probably our casual attire (I had worn the same outfit for basketball) so we decided to try our luck elsewhere.

We settled on the old Paradise bar – I am not even sure what it is called now. The host was turning away customers and the place was empty. He gave us a room when we persisted but was reluctant to serve drinks. He said he was working until 8am but they were only open until three. Shady.

The selection was limited and the songbooks, difficult to navigate. It didn’t matter though. We were in a safe place, free of judgment and wait-time for the mic. One hour and $50 later, we had sung nearly twenty songs.

Highlights: Henry’s Lose Yourself, Helen’s Let's Dance and Gemma’s Say My Name. I highly recommend Lovefool as a fun and easy song to sing, especially if you need to redeem yourself after a harder-than-you-thought classic. Gemma’s rendering of Don’t Stop Me Now captured the overall spirit of the night. The finale was a heartwarming group effort: California Dreaming.

I am still feeling the Love Buzz from our efforts and am dying to karaoke again soon. Any recommendations for a new venue?



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Sunday, January 27, 2008

Summer>Torrent

BY HENRY OLIVER

Okay, so summer is generally pretty great: the sun is shining (duh), friends get together more frequently & generally do more interesting/funner stuff, it is socially acceptable to drink earlier in the day, and people generally seem happier and more fun to be around. So what’s the rub? The rub is that TV sucks in the summertime.

(Yeah, so what if it’s summer? I still want to watch some TV alright? I mean how much time can you really spend at a beach? And who feels like reading a novel after a 4AM Iron Chefesque cocktail competition? Not me. And sure, BBQ’s are fun and all – and delicious! - but everyone has their limits.)

First, the kids are off school so there is all the 7:30 family orientated movies to contend with. Second, most of the shows are reruns, so if you missed what happened in Ugly Betty the first time round you’ll be glued to the set but if you didn’t care last year your remote will remain firmly in hand. And third, there’s the Writers Guild of America Strike.

If you’ve been living under a television for the last few months, it basically boils down to this: all the people who write TV shows are pissed because they want to get paid residuals (continuing payment) for use of their writing on the Internet, they want a bigger percentage per DVD sold, and writers of reality shows (yes, The Hills is scripted) want the same basic contractual rights as the writers of any other TV show. The Man (the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers) doesn’t want to pay up and has hired Arnold Schwarzenegger’s campaign manager to try and reverse the inevitable rising tide.

Anyway, THERE’S NOTHING GOOD ON TV. In an effort to comfort to comfort my short attention span, I’ve turned to the three most ironic (under the circumstances) sources of Television: the Internet, DVDs and Reality Television.


Undoubtedly the best source of television on the Internet is BitTorrent – a file sharing system where you download a torrent or ‘seed’ file from a website that when opened with a specific program puts you in touch with other people who send you tiny parts of the file while you send the tiny parts you already have to others. The key to the whole thing is that the sites that provide the torrents are not breaking any copyright laws because the file itself is not a TV show, movie or album at all. It’s just a birdcall to those that have what you want telling them that they should give it to you should they wish to.

My Current Torrent Obsessions:

The Wire Season Five
The last season! Wholly Shit this show is so good. If you like television and you like drama you will like this. In the realm of HBO, this is the Charles Dickens to Deadwood’s William Shakespeare. This season is a pungent cocktail of mayoral politics, financial misappropriation, drug dealing, and the death of the newspaper. Has the same Decline-of-America/Good-VS-Evil/Crime&Punishment bent as The Sopranos but substitutes the zippy one-liners for gritty realism (when I drove around Baltimore it was pretty scary). I can’t believe it will all be over soon. Please Sir, can I have some more?

A Daily Show/Colbert Report
I never seem to be at home or watching TV when The Daily Show plays on C4 so I download it and watch it back-to-back with The Colbert Report, just like it’s meant to be watched. Having been off air for sometime due to the strike, they are back with The Daily Show being renamed A Daily Show for the remainder of the dispute. Now, the both these shows tried to come to interim agreements with the Guild, like David Lettermen et al, but the Guild put the kibosh on it quick and now both shows are back on air without writers. You can tell. The funniest thing about these shows at the moment is how un-funny they are without the writers. It seems almost like a statement of solidarity: “See how much better our show was when we had writers? Pay the damn writers for iTunes downloads, okay?”

Project Runway Season Four

The best guilty pleasure on the VLC these days is Project Runway - the best reality game show since the early days of Survivor. This show is Fucking Funny. I can’t really talk about this too much because I wouldn’t want to give too much away, but if you’ve seen this show before and liked it, you are in for a continuous treat. The clothes are so-so but the freaks are fierce!

When the torrents are too slow (I’ll save the NZ Internet snail race rant for another time) I reluctantly visit my old friend Video Ezy Ponsonby for some sweet box set action. This will definitely go down as the summer of Deadwood. When I actually had a HBO subscription Deadwood never appealed for some reason but Amber and I watched the entire run of the show in two weeks over the New Year period. AMAZING! Al Swearengen is the best character in recent television. He’s hard to keep up with but his iambic hailstorm will knock you to the cold, hard floor.

What lets the show down and holds it back from Best Show Ever raves is some unfortunate scenery chewing from Timothy Olyphant (as Seth Bullock) and the utterly unconvincing romance between Bullock and widow Alma Garret. But, despite these major flaws from major characters, Deadwood utterly succeeds in ever other facet. The show was not officially cancelled but the actor’s contracts were not renewed, though two movie length episodes were planned in lieu of a fourth season. In October last year Ian McShane (who played Swearengen) told a journalist that the show’s sets were to be dismantled and that the episodes will not be made. HBO however is in denial.

We can only hope.



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Doing the Arcades of Fire

BY TAHI MOORE

Yeah so I'm back from the lands of reasonably large shopping malls, so I thought I'd check out some arcades while the perspective is still there.

CHEAP IS GOOD>
The only op shops I found in cheap clothing land had unworn RRL jeans from 1992 for a thousand dollars. I don't know what that means either. After all the struggle last month for an okay pair of jeans, I found myself focusing on increasingly small details to the point where everything became fairly ugly here and there if not all over. It's time not to look too closely. I turned on the radio and didn't bother changing the station. I drove to the op shop where the clothes are 2 dollars a kilo. Either someone had come through earlier or there wasn't much there. I still filled up a sack. I saw some cheap Mondays in Singapore that were almost white, so I got all the really light blue jeans I could. After a bit of basic re tailoring I had some good jeans for eighty cents. Sure you gotta take your chances in these places, but my god, come on. Try to get something you want, that you see people wearing every day, in all the shops in several countries, only to not find it. There it is, sitting on some online shop somewhere that won't ship anything outside of wherever they are. The biggest online shoe store in the world. Come on. All you have to do is stick it in an envelope and write an address. How hard can that be? I guess you can go through a third party international online shopping delivery service for eighty dollars.

THE ARCADES>
Okay so went to St Lukes arcade. What did they have? Um. I'm not sure. Oh yeah. No. Lots of chunky sporty shoes, with the flat broad soles. Well I thought, maybe the time has come for Onitsuka Tigers. I'll go buy a pair.

First we gotta check out Onehunga Dressmart arcade. Here's a few things. In Barkers there were plain t-shirts in a tasteful grey on sale for 30 dollars, which I couldn't handle just yet. In the Converse shop there were some dark blue canvas boat shoes in women's sizes that I thought were good. Um. Some Black Adidas Puffy high tops that came in small and huge. I didn't try any on, so I don't know how they go when worn. The thing about this online shopping stuff is it's tricky trying the stuff on, and when you find something you're sure you'd like, it ends up being a taunt from the strange bureaucracy of capitalissyium . It's true. I don't think they care about money. they just want to not give you anything. it's always available somewhere else. Maybe it's about exclusivity. Lots more chunky shoes. I went to Sole in Vicky Park Market to get some of those shoes that I suddenly decided were good now. I've been to all these places, and there's probably better shops somewhere, I don't know. I'm not that smart.

So In this Sole place, there suddenly weren't any Onitsuka shoes any more. There were always heaps before. I looked around a last time and found one pair, so I got them. These are the ugliest shoes I've seen in a long time. They're mostly purple. They're samples that the shoe co must have sent in case the shop wanted to order some and they didn't because they were TOO UGLY. Maybe sports shoes should look like sports shoes and be ugly and all that, and casual shoes should be minimal and inexpensive, and street shoes should come in brown and black leather, not have logos seared into them, have thin soles, not be pre-distressed, have round toes of varing degress of pointiness depending on how swanky you feel, and should avoid any kind of chunkiness unless they're actually work boots. Or maybe I'm thinking it's good to either dress very well or very badly. Perhaps boredom is the only adversary.



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Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Foreign Report

BY TAHI MOORE

I'm not back in Auckland but then someone was talking about Swedish jeans and then I looked up this company I never heard of, Svensson Jeans, and the pictures looked good, so I looked up a shop that sold them, went there, tried some on, but the fit was really loose on the calf, I mean no good at all. And that was that. I didn't have time to obsess over something I couldn't get hold of it was just down the road. They even had a pair of hand crafted plain the right cut blue jeans from Japan in my size no pocket art or funny threads. They seemed a bit expensive. They weren't overly though, about half what you'd charge in Auckland. This was meant to be a good story, but now I'm just depressed. The sale shall be your only hope young man. Go.



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Monday, January 21, 2008

Barcelona, 1 de Junio de 2007.

BY SARAH HOPKINSON

As you may be aware, from the proliferation of gripping hostage crime-dramas on mainstream television, ransom demands are commonly accompanied by an image of the abducted (often blindfolded, looking suitably terrified) holding a local newspaper. I always thought that this role effectively reduced the newspaper to its essence - its currency and locality. Serving primarily as a marker of specific time and place, it acts as unquestionable proof of a subject’s ‘alive-ness’ on a certain day, proof that they continue to exist. For Fiona Connor’s Free Literature newspapers are the sole material. Mining content from a series of tabloids (the ‘free literature’ on a given day), Connor creates a hybrid version of Barcelona’s principal newspaper El Pais.1 The accompanying video (viewable online) offers a short glimpse of Barcelona as a city marked by vast numbers of newspapers, stacked on street corners, littering gutters. Maybe we are supposed to see the newspaper as a leitmotif for a place; a city succinctly summed up in its recurring symbol. One of those funny idiosyncrasies that tourists always notice.

Despite muddying signature styles, and displacing stylistic cohesion (ransom notes are popularly constructed from cut-out magazine and newspaper letters, precisely to prevent authorial detection) the modified El Pais’ spatio-temporality remains intact. In fact, subsuming all other publications into a strange crossbred whole, the newspaper is reduced, via a process of layering and doubling, to its marker of local-ness and current-ness. The collaged result is a mélange of one day’s worth of news; a concoction of information, imagery and advertising, disseminated in a certain city at a particular historical moment: 1 de Junio de 2007.

The content of this chronicle is largely unreadable, but not necessarily incomprehensible. In construction, areas of text and image that resemble one another, deal with the same topical issue or advertise the same product, have been pasted over the ‘master’ edition of El Pais. Idiosyncratic formats, fonts, proportions, wording and colours prevent a seamless assimilation yet a peculiar sense of cohesion prevails. Quite simply, the collaged pieces appear to signify the same (or similar) thing; they speak to shared concerns. The language barrier further allows us, and Connor, to behold this information pared back to its basic sign-value. Guided by the recognisable terms in the headlines, familiar political images (in this instance of pre-election Sarkozy) and ever-present ads for shiny, new-model cars the viewer is faced with a simultaneously discordant and harmonious whole, both foreign and oddly familiar.

While this fittingly subjective product of an encounter with a day in a foreign city maintains a casualness, this is neither a ‘stroll’ nor a meandering journey. It is less flimsy than that, more directed, more decisive, maybe more like a dérive - if we can take the liberty of thinking the ‘terrain’ as the newspaper, as opposed to the city, and the point of departure as El Pais. Despite this abstraction, both practices share a certain situated-ness – the ransom note’s aforementioned crucial spatio-temporal grounding. A paradigmatic derive - the practice of ‘transient passage through varied ambiances’ - took place for one whole day, ‘the time between two periods of sleep’, in a primarily urban setting, as it was in the ‘great industrially transformed cities’ that the social conditioning was considered most pervasive. Like Guy Debord’s practice, Connor is less guided by chance than the ‘psychogeography’ of her chosen environment. Open to the ‘constant currents, fixed points and vortexes,’ Connor is acutely aware and responsive to the recurrence of certain events and imagery, and their varying representational guises.2 The decision-making process has its own logic, developed in the very act of making. Collage causes a necessary fissure or rupture in the previously self-contained microcosm, opening it out to speak to the macrocosm, revealing a communicative system in perpetual movement and flux, constantly slipping and sliding, feeding off and folding in on itself.

Cutting, sampling, reducing, doubling and obscuring, Free Literature unconventionally maps an experience, a city and a moment, via active engagement with a thing inextricable from that experience, city and moment. Can we see the result as one big, unwieldy ransom note? Perhaps, but I am not sure what the demands are, it doesn’t appear to be asking for anything. Maybe just giving testament, maybe working it out for itself.



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Sunday, January 20, 2008

Not-Auckland

BY SALLY CONOR

Where does Auckland begin and end exactly? In a city that is characterised by its sprawl, it is almost impossible to tell. The only silly metaphor I can think of is a fried egg… built up in the middle and with a fairly definite central area but sort of tapering out into almost translucent thinness somewhere around Albany in the north and Manurewa in the south. Does Orewa count as a suburb yet? It can’t be more than five years before it does, surely.

The disease of mass suburban development is spreading north like a terracotta-tiled architectural plague. The Hibiscus Coast is already being eaten alive by the canker, and soon Orewa will be engulfed, as will acres of beautiful rolling arable land and dark forest. Auckland seems to be something of an insatiable beast, always spreading, always expanding, in the manner of The Blob. Stand still in the outer suburbs for too long and you might find you have been paved over to make way for a carpark.

Two consecutive weekends have seen me uncharacteristically venture north out of Auckland and I have found myself to remark on several occasions: “I really must get out of Auckland more. I find myself forgetting what a gorgeous country New Zealand is”, but if I’m honest, these brief sojourns have left me conflicted. It’s clear that I love Auckland. Most of the time on this blog I won’t shut up about how great I think it is. So any trip away from it, however brief, leaves me feeling mildly homesick and a little discombobulated. The country is so QUIET. You can hear The Wind. You can see the shape of the landscape for miles. You have to drive for ten minutes to get to THE Shop, singular.

For any institutionalised city-dweller, these things are beautiful and pleasant but nonetheless unsettling. I like the country but I miss the city. And then at the same time I resent the encroachment of the city into the country. I want them to be able to exist together in harmony without the growth of the one equalling the death of the other. I want Auckland and Not-Yet-Auckland to sign some kind of Treaty:

“I, Auckland, promise to be a more considerate neighbour and to not keep moving my borders further into Not-Auckland’s territory at night when no one is looking. I promise to be satisfied with the already massive space that I occupy and to focus on utilising it more effectively and making it better for those who already live there rather than exacerbating my already significant problems by ravenously expanding even further. I acknowledge that my expansion problem stems from insecurity and that I need to look inside myself for validation rather than eating more of the country in attempt to fill the void. I promise to respect the integrity of the countryside and to leave it the fuck alone for the sake of Nature and for those small communities that make New Zealand awesome and of which I have already gobbled hundreds. I promise to go on a diet. I promise to purge myself of asshole developers, bad architects and Mark Ellis. I promise to love myself and my brother, Not-Auckland and to respect his private space.”

Cities are characterised not only by what they contain, but by what surrounds them – everyone needs to get away from the city sometimes, and where will we go if Not-Auckland is subsumed into Auckland? Somewhere, somebody needs to draw a line.



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Note Books

BY ASH KILMARTIN



A friend, recently returned from visiting family in China, presented me with a set of three notebooks. The largest, about the same length as my hand from fingertips to heel of palm. The smallest, making it just to my first knuckle from the heel.

The covers are of thin recycled paper, the colour of each a slightly varied shade of golden-tan, a colour I can't help but associate with thrift and pleasing uncontrivedness.
The unassuming nature of the books is further stated by the cover inscription: in red, four characters translated as "note book". Below this assertion, in a position on the page that tells pleasantly of well-considered design, lie two parallel lines. Also in red, they echo in the lower third of the page the form of the characters in the top third, encouraging the owner to make their own inscription – a name; perhaps their own or that of a project to which the book is dedicated.

The cheap material and simple form do not entail shoddy workmanship: the pages of each differently-sized book are bound in six sets of leaves, creating six evenly-sized humps at the spine when viewed from above and six small ridges which run the length of the spine, interrupted by the four adjacent rows of stitching which hold the sets of leaves together.

The text-block (the bound-together paper stock) is attached to the cover by glue at the spine, and secured by white end-papers (the pages attached to the inside covers and the first adjoining pages). Such perfectly-glued end-papers are probably my favourite feature of these notebooks.

The pages themselves are of thin recycled stock – like the covers, the pages differ slightly in colour between sizes. Each is finely-ruled (7mm, by my eye) in indigo ink, with two close lines separating the heavy header-space from the lined body of the page. No margins. All perfectly printed and matched, but for one page in the largest notebook, which is charmingly askew. Here, the lines march off the page at a thirty-degree angle, as though heading dynamically into avant-garde Soviet poster design. Quietly combatting loathed dog-earring are gently rounded corners at the upper and lower left-hand corners.

On the back cover, corresponding in place and scale to the parallel lines on the front, are four lines of characters and numbers. What they describe, I can only guess (or, I guess, ask said friend to translate). Their exact origin is unknown to me, although I'm told they're Government-issue books once given free to employees of the state-owned corporations. That they're apparently becoming harder and harder to find only adds to their mystery and appeal, of course.


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BDO

BY AMBER EASBY

We made it to the stadium in good time. We arrived a little before 4pm, having missed the traffic and spent $20 on a car park close to the front gate. The security was more relaxed than I remembered – a quick glance in the bag, no physical pat down. As a teen, I hid a cask of wine in my underwear to avoid confiscation. My brother once went to the grounds a week in advance to bury a bag of weed and a bottle of Jack Daniels. This time, I was happy to make it through with my water bottle.

Dizzee Rascal had just started in the Boiler Room. The tent was packed and like stepping into a steamy shower of sweat. For the first time, those bikinis and bare chests made sense to me. I was expecting to see a skinny little kid but Dizzee was totally buff! It was a fun show and overall, the best sounding performance of the day.

We queued for the next 45minutes for the Immortals Lounge. It was only worth the wait for the use of clean, flushing toilets. You could also drink beer from a bottle. I tried Steinlager Pure for the first time and was disappointed. Sure – it’s natural but so is urine.

If I see a band I like at a festival, it usually makes me wish I were seeing them at their own (indoor) show. This was particularly true of Arcade Fire. The barricading of the main stage floor made it impossible to see or hear anything, unless you were the die-hard Rage Against the Machine fans who staked their claim (I am watching a lot of Deadwood) early on. I have seen this system work well overseas but here, it was poorly implemented. Long lines and confused security guards meant the flow of the crowd was heavily restricted. I was stuck on the periphery and might as well have been listening to the radio.

We ditched Arcade Fire to see Battles. They were a little too techy for me but Henry loved them. Maybe it is a dude thing. Gemma and I sat at the back and were still able to hear well. I had hot dogs and chips with the good tomato sauce - delicious! Henry sent me text message that I got four hours later, saying “Believe it or not, this is their hit song."

Determined for a more satisfactory main stage experience, we made our way to Bjork a little early. We caught the end of Shihad, a band that must organise their entire year/career around playing the Big Day Out. We managed to secure a slightly better spot. I stood on my tiptoes for as much as I could for Bjork. The marching band of Icelandic teenagers, the costumes, Bjork’s spidey hands – it was an amazing show. Unfortunately the creep factor was growing in anticipation for ‘Rage’. One guy was yelling, “You suck” throughout. I was stuck behind a loud stoner couple who thought they had lost their weed. If I had been at the movies, I would have ssshed them. When they finally found it (in their pocket), they started to roll a joint. One dude wedged himself between Gemma and me, hoping to catch the joint as it was passed back. Another apologized for pushing in with a slow, inappropriate rub of my arms and a “sorry babe”.

We made our way back to the Boiler Rom for LCD Soundsystem, which was everything you would hope. T O T A L D A N C E P A R T Y. Still, I couldn’t help but worry about the muddy ground ruining my shoes or the young girls wearing t-shirts that said, “I am with the band”. During North American Scum, a sixteen year old pushed me out of the way in excitement and I realised, I no longer have the ability to enjoy the festival for what it is. We skipped The Clean to avoid the traffic and were in bed by midnight.



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Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Let's All Plunder Vinyl From Real Groovy

BY DAVE TAYLOR

You're probably all well aware of this, but Real Groovy is a national treasure. If Nicholas Cage was a kiwi, he'd star in films about trying to find it.

Unlike record shops in London or New York, the racks are raked over relatively lightly. And the prices are a steal. What you can pick up there for 2 bucks would cost you 20 quid on Berwick Street.

As music becomes easier to obtain and more freely distributed via the interweb, I find myself drawn more and more to vinyl. You want the latest release? You can grab it off the internet and stick it on your ipod along with millions of other people. You want to hear a 1960s album by Peg Leg Sam? Well, more than likely you'll have to come round my house to hear it because I bought the only copy Real Groovy had. It's not been re-released on CD so it's not been digitised and let loose on the planet of sound so you won't be able to pinch it off the 'net.

I encourage any of you with a passion for music to head down there. If you see an album that:

a) has a nice cover
b) is by a band you've not heard of
c) is priced at a dollar

then buy it! You might be buying an undiscovered gem - for a third of the price of a Magnum ice cream.

Since moving to Auckland last year, I've taken pot luck on a lot of dollar albums (and some pricier) from Real Groovy. As a result, I have a big stack of totally shit schmaltzy 70s country albums. But I also have a stack of amazing albums which
I would have been hard pressed to find anywhere else.

The purpose of this monthly column is to share some of the best discoveries with you. I'm aware I'm slightly contradicting my 'you can only get this at my house' argument by digitising these tracks, but there you go.

So for my inaugral column, I've picked out records by 60s pre-teen sensations, The Bantams, great 70s country by Loudon Wainwright and an album about being a mental patient by Don Bowman and Chet Atkins.

Beware the Bantams - The Bantams

These guys look like a 60s version of Hanson - three blond mop topped lads not yet into double figures agewise. They look slightly disturbing, and I was worried about the people at the counter thinking I was a peado when I went to pay for it. But it was worth it.

This track is their version of the classic Suzie Q. It's got an awesome garage rock production and fuzz guitar lick running through it. The boys do their best to sound older than they are and only the yelp in the middle reminds you that their balls haven't dropped yet.

> Download Suzie Q

Attempted Moustache - Loudon Wainwright III

OK, so a little easier to get this on CD. But I got this sucker for a dollar, and it's truly awesome. The cover photo makes me laugh - anyone who's tried and failed to grow some top lip furniture for Movember will feel a little better after looking at it.

This track is a fine ditty about random acts of violence. 'let's burn down McDonalds' sings Loudon 'tomorrow is sunday / there's going to be parades/back at the house/i've got some grenades'.

Loudon is sooo much cooler than his irritating son. Or at least, he was back then.

> Download Clockwork Chanteusse

Fresh from the Funny Farm - Don Bowman

On this record, there's Chet Atkins' impeccable country picking (knowingly lampooned on 'world's worst guitar picker'), some nice kitschy country close harmonies and Don Bowman singing about being incarcerated in a mental asylum, in the voice of a southern simpleton.

This track is about writing a letter to his sweet heart from inside the funny farm. 'I'm writing this to you with the blunt end of a spoon' says Don and we all share his pain.

> Download Letter to Ellie Mae

I hope you enjoy the tracks. If you do venture into Real Groovy and take a punt, I'd love to hear about it. Join this blog and add your comments below.

And I do like contemporary music too - read all about it at www.artrocker.com



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Shaky Isles

BY SARAH HOPKINSON

Kingsland does not want for good eateries - it has always been over-subscribed in that department. I noticed a new Mexican place has opened in Kalaloo’s place to join Canton, Mekong Nuea, Bouchon, Taboo, Roasted Addiction, Handmade Burgers and The Fridge in the ongoing tussle for our patronage.

When I first moved to the area The Fridge was something of a revelation - with its bountiful deli selection, homemade hot pies and endearing barrista/owner, I was a frequent customer. However general consensus is that since a change in ownership (I can’t think of a cafÈ for which this has been a good thing?) that saw an extension and staff shuffle, it has been on the decline.

Hence my delight when, in the garage-like space that has housed a number of transient ventures, (directly opposite The Fridge) a new cafÈ called Shaky Isles opened its fashionably-unkempt doors.

My first visit was with my father, his partner, my sister, Debi and Harry. A tough crowd to be sure - with an ex-high-country farmer, a winemaker, a vegetarian and a chap that just got back from touring the States frequenting diners - we had most culinary bases and persuasions covered.

And despite my initial reservations that it might be a bit ‘kooky’ (sparked by the wall mural that unhappily resembles a vodafone billboard) I was reassured by the casualness of the order-at-counter service and the great hanging lightbulbs that remind me of the Jeff Wall photograph based on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Whether that association was intentional or not, it worked for me.

I think what Shaky Isles does superbly well is keep it simple. There is not a blue cheese soufflÈ or hollandaise drenched crouton in sight. You can order ‘Good Stuff in a Bun’ or, if you were so inclined, ‘Pig in a Bun.’ They also do some swell pikelets with Raspberry Jam and Marscapone, a very tasty Breakfast Bruschetta and Whittaker’s Hot Chocolate. Everyone was happy with their food and coffee, the only quibble was that Dad's meal was a bit light on the bacon and Harry commented that Petit Bouchon (when it existed) did a better Croque Madame... but c'est la vie.

It is also surprisingly, refreshingly cheap. You’d struggle to spend over $12 on a main, and most of them hover around the $8 mark. Sure, the portions are smaller and the fare simpler but you leave satisfied. I struggle with rich breakfasts anyway and usually opt for a slither of hot buttered toast and a poached egg, especially after drinking too well the night before, so I was certainly not becrying the lack of hollandaise sauce.

I have now been to Shaky Isles three times. All of them good experiences. Always found a table but never found it empty. I now think the honeymoon period is over and we will settle into a comfortable relationship of mutual understanding.



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Hometown Superette Beverage Round-Up

BY SALLY CONOR

Jeez it’s hot! Usually I’m the kind of girl to hide away from the sun like a pasty grub in hibernation, but lately I keep finding myself trekking up Newton Rd in the middle of the day and by the time I make it to Symonds St I’m parched and sweaty. Hometown Superette at the Symonds St shops (next to the wig emporium) is like a cool oasis sans camels. One whole side of the shop is lined with fridges full of nice cold drinks. And such a variety! From your standard soft drinks and fruit juices through to incredibly obscure brands of sarsparilla and strange coffee-in-a-can. The choice is dizzying! Wow!! What follows is a brief survey of those beverages that I have sampled from Hometown so far:

Phoenix Elderflower

Okay so Phoenix is by no means obscure these days. Especially now they’re owned by Charlie’s. Fucking Mark Ellis again. Go away you dickbag! We all hate you! And your stupid advertising website is possibly the most abhorrent money-filching scheme ever conceived!! Get out of our faces and get yourself marooned on a rocky island populated by hungry Kimodo Dragons if at all possible!

So the Phoenix Elderflower drink is really really nice. Sweet and floral and refreshing. Good with gin! I tried it.

Ben Shaw’s Dandelion & Burdock

I was intrigued by this drink. It sat next to a whole lot of other weird-looking ones like Irn Bru, that kinda gross Fanta-like stuff from Scotland. The Dandelion & Burdock can was quite ugly, but I allowed myself to wonder what on earth a dandelion drink might taste like. I had visions of a lovely cool chamomile-style golden nectar that fairies drink out of acorn cups. I ignored the ‘burdock’ bit. This was unwise.

The drink is quite a dark brown and fizzy and almost 100% disgusting. Tastes cloyingly sweet and a bit like creaming soda but way more full-on. Perhaps this is what root beer is like? They were always drinking root beer in Babysitter’s Club novels and I never knew what it was. Kind of fake vanilla-ish and revolting. Avoid.

Mello Yello

Re-released! Again!

A bit like Lift. But not as good.

Lilt Fruit Crush Pineapple & Grapefruit

Another one from the weird shelf. Sounds like it should be awesome right? Pineapple and grapefruit together should be DELICIOUS. It even has a cool can! However, it does say in red letters on the back ‘Contains a source of phenylalanine’.Usually a bad sign. And indeed, this drink is a huge disappointment. Little trace of any pineapple or grapefruit flavour, only a vague, generic ‘fruit’ flavour, some bubbles, and an unpleasant furry coating on your teeth in the manner of Coke. Too bad! It seemed so promising. Sigh.

Ch’i

Yuuuummmmmmmm!!!! So eighties. So refreshing. So so good. Makes me feel a bit like Lana Cocroft when I drink it.

Ribena

Given last year’s false-advertising-vitamin-C-in-Ribena controversy, I thought I would re-test Ribena to see if the fact that it has not very much vitamin C in it detracts from its flavour. I got the kind in a juice-box (of course… does anybody actually buy it in those strange sac things?) and hoed into it with gusto. And then I remembered: I never drank Ribena for vitamin C in the first place! I drank it because it’s so goddam delicious. It tastes like my childhood. There’s something regressive about slurping out of a juice-box… it instantly makes one feel three years old again. It makes me wish I still needed two hands to hold onto Ribena! Remember how awesome it felt to have that much juice that you needed both hands?! They should put straw holes in the tops of big tetra-packs of juice, just so us grown-ups could experience that pleasure again. Kind of like when you get four Kit-Kat Chunkys and melt them together to make one giant Kit-Kat. Makes your hands feel really tiny!

I can highly recommend the Hometown Superette for all your beverage needs. They also have Dr Pepper and the full range of energy drinks if you need a bit of a pick-me-up on your way through town. They have an excellent range of chips as well. My kinda dairy.



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Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Jeans: The Final Chapter

BY TAHI MOORE

(JEANS: The Final Chapter)
This is the land of big. I see people wearing stuff I want to buy. Where do they get it? Where do you get a v neck t-shirt. I got a slightly oversized piere cardan t-shirt with a big round neck like a girls shirt that I like. I found a small shop where the guy brings back stuff from Japan and they only get jeans in my size. So I got some.

CRAFTSTYLING
I had to craftstyle the jeans down from a wide straightleg to the cut that suits me. So I did that, and now after months of searching and going to the other side of the world and recraftstyling jeans from france for the japanese market at a reasonable price I have what I've been looking for. It's a letdown. Jeans aren't worth all that effort. I mean they're not that great. You just kind of need them. I understand why people pay four times as much as they should for jeans that look okay when they try them on. From now on I'm just going to make my own suits.



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Sunday, January 6, 2008

Happy New Year

BY HENRY OLIVER





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Watches

BY TAHI MOORE

I'm in KL. A lot of people are wearing watches. Watches I think are hard because there are so many that think like it's a necessary thing that you kind of pretty up a bit. But the whole cell phone thing yeah you know.

Now, I think that watches are just like it's like you wear one for the look so now it wants to just look like a watch. If there is another layer of re-hiding the watch, it's too much it's too complex you have to just have the thing looking like you got the watch because it looks like a watch. It goes the other way too, it can be too basic like you just got a cheap watch because you need one. No they can never be too basic, nor too cheap looking like it's okay to do plastic becasue it looks just like an expensive watch you know with the gold bits and the flashy writing or whatever and that elegance of style or something you gotta get a cheap watch just simple like the person designing it goes can you see the time? Yeah okay, it's done that's it. Sometimes the cheap watches are really good too, but most of the time they're just like the expensive ones, they have way too much details, the time display just hides under all this crap on your wrist. If there's a useful function in having a watch it's that you can read the time in half a second instead of five seconds. You really want that time thing right tere without being too cluttered up.

But more people are wearing watches. The othodox thing to do is to get an old one with good design. I've been predicting that swatch watches will come back, I don't know. But they still do plain ones which are nice.

I'm looking for a good see through watch I really want a quartz crystal digital see through watch no details. Would that just look too much like a mac? Probably. Okay.

Styles: Railroad, which is about readability, but the official swiss ones have this blob on the end of the second hand.

Dive, I've seen a few people wear them well. Then there are all these watches with bezels and it's like having an altometer on your car.

Pilot watches usually have a triangle at the top, often with a couple of dots. It's all a bit whiffy, I'm sure there are lots of watches that work but the whole theme thing I mean it's not fancy dress here.



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Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Review in a Dream

BY LYDIA CHAI

I'm at a party and Wes Anderson is sitting in a corner by himself. I walk up to him and we start talking about his latest film that has just opened in the cinemas, Darjeeling Limited.

Overall, I think it is better, slightly less emotionally detached, than his previous films. Less production geekiness.

Not a very convincing story arc, though. Two brothers are duped by their elder brother into a spiritual journey in India because he wishes to bridge the silence between them; they have been estranged from each other ever since their father's funeral. Somehow, I don't buy into the cathartic effect of their clumsy journey.

Anderson appears bored and looks elsewhere for a friend or nearby bar to save himself. I hammer on with my drunken commentary.

"And the colours of India, you just like the colours," I blurt out, but this isn't what I mean. I have to do some backtracking.

My listener is tiring of my diatribe, expecting me like any other to accuse him of exoticism. But his interest is piqued when I suggest that his portrayal of India is not one-dimensional. It doesn't do what Sofia's Lost In Translation does to Japan. In fact, he completely repackages his impressions of the country, so that it isn't even India that we are seeing. Not even a mythical India. Just colours.

I wonder if he is just enamoured with the colours of India, that's what I meant earlier. It's not offensive, it's just boring, I say.

I am sinking deeper into my own acidic nonsense.

"All your characters in all your movies are the same!"

At this point, he tells me off by pointing out that Darjeeling Limited was written by three different people, so of course the characters can't all be identical, and walks off to someone who has offered to buy him a drink. I feel like a fool. I could've put it better.



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Black Jeans Okay. Running Shoes No Longer Real.

BY TAHI MOORE

2 things.

BLACK JEANS>

They seem to be just black jeans now. Not a whole lot of people wear them it's just another colour less different from dark blue than acid washed light blue. Maybe I've been bothered with the the colour of my shrink to fits which I think are slightly not dark blue enough. No. They don't have a very good cut. But anyway now I think black jeans have stopped being a bit funny or past it and they're not a sketchy colour any more, which is nice.

SHOPPING FOR SOMETHING>

I don't think there's enough of everything to decide you want a particular kind of pants or shoes or anything and hope to find it from a week of shopping. You'll probably find something that kind of looks like what you want but isn't any good and you buy it anyway and it's a super mistake. Almost everything works by chance because almost nobody who makes clothes has any idea, or they do and make people what they want. That Simpsons episode where Homer designs his dream car which brakrupts the car company looks wrong to me. It'd probably be a huge hit. Walk into any sports shoe shop and look the array of clown shoes on sale and people actually wear them everywhere. It's a true story.

I went to Sole in Vicky Park Market and they had some nice New Balance retro style running shoes, except they had gaint Ns on the sides. I don't want to know who contracted the same shoe gluers, who make all the other shoes, to put these out. I have this intuitive feeling that shoes are no longer made by the company that owns the name. It feels like imitation shoes that just happen to be legally liscenced. It's like buying fan merchandise. It doesn't feel real.



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