Hubris.co.nz

Not that long ago, the London Time Out ran a feature on pirates in London to celebrate the release of Pirates of the Caribbean 2. Way to be hip, Time Out. Everyone who’s anyone knows that the actual most important movie this year is Snakes on Plane – or as some like to call it “Motherfucking snakes on a motherfucking plane”. So, in tribute to this movie that opens on Thursday, the Wellingtonista is proud to present this very special activity guide to recreating snakes on a plane in Wellington:

Snakes

An obvious place to start looking for snakes would be the Wellington Zoo. But a look at their FAQ turns up this tidbit:
“Laws set by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests (MAF) and the Department of Conservation (DOC) state that snakes cannot be imported in to New Zealand.”
Well that’s all very good and well, MAF, but what about the snakes that make it over here on the planes? Where are they going to go huh?

The Wellington zoo does have a reptile collection, so maybe you could get your cold-blooded fix there, since you’re not going to be seeing the tuatara all that often anymore otherwise.

So since there are no real snakes available in New Zealand (apparently!), a trip to the Met Shop on Swan Lane off Cuba St might be in order. Surely there will be toy snakes to be found here. Otherwise a trip to any dairy or supermarket should turn up some sour snakes – and also some jet planes.

Planes

Now that you have your snakes, it’s time to go and find a plane. You have three options here. The first is the most logical – you head to the airport. Park at the end of the runway out by Moa Point, climb onto your car bonnet ala Wayne’s World, and wait for a plane to come in. Hold up your snake in front of your eyes, and there you have it. Snakes on a Plane. It lives up to the hype, right?

Or head to a toy shop, or perhaps a model store and buy yourself a little plane. Put your snake on the plane. You are now a part of a cultural phenomenon.

Finally, if all else fails, get fish cakes with snake beans takeout from Chow and head out of town to the Horowhenua Plains. Aren’t you punny?

Okay my dear loyal readers from around the world, I need your help. In fact, it’s not just me that needs your help, it’s Africa. Which also happens to be the subject of the next Country Club. Yes, since we’ve neglected that continent so badly so far, we’re going to do it all at once on September 2, and we’re going to do it like Live Aid. And therefore you should too, and then we can link it up all around the world. And that’d be awesome. In Wellington, we’ll dress up like rockstars, eat some Africanish food (that as I plan it in my head bears more than a little similarity to the Caribbean feast, but that’s where the origins were, I suppose) and then we’re going to do Singstar and deliver our stunning concert performances. I’m going to suggest to everyone who comes that they might like to make a donation to a charity that I’ll finalise later, so that as well as having the awesome time that we always have at Country Club, we can do a little bit of good as well. Awesome. And now that’s out of the way, on with the week!

And the second thing that I wanted to talk about in the general category is who is subscribed to my rss feed? Only Jessie is listed publically. Come on kids, you show me yours and I’ll show you mine. And here I go with the showing:

Lessons Learnt on Thursday

Reality /Performance / Results

Reality Show

Wahoo, the ‘webisode’ isn’t even on the Rockstar site yet, but I have recapped it for you. How l33t am I?

You know, I almost miss Zayra. Oh no wait, I don’t. Haha. I should also apologise for not talking about how when Supernova did their song, they did it on film rather than video, and how I should have mentioned that it was obviously pre-recorded. But I didn’t. But if you care that much, you’d have read all that on the forums. Unless you’re relying exclusively on me to tell you all about all the Supernova scandal. Oh god, the pressure!

And speaking of pressure, that’s what the rockers are feeling now that the Zar Crash is gone. They say it’s quieter in the house without her, and that her goodbye speech was great. Dilana interviews that it was very ballsy of Zayra to go up with an original, because singing an original song undresses you. And reveals your lotion and your thong, apparently.

Storm drinks a toast to Dilana, front woman of Supernova, while Dilana looks smug. And Storm wants a go singing the song too. Really? Why? Let’s face it – it was a pretty shitty song. Dilana’s all “you might have a chance to” and interviews that she can’t imagine anyone else fronting the band now. Oh Dilana, you are the new JD. I love the way the editors have made me hate you so.

Toby pies Ryan in the face for getting the encore and Ryan looks like he’s pretending to pretend to cry. But we don’t have time to dwell on that, because the press are coming to do a junket interview with the rockers, and this means we must all keep our fingers crossed for another “human/beings” revelation, okay? Cross those fingers, and let’s get on with it…

Lukas is all “you have to know how to handle the media” and then when he’s talking to someone from Fox, he is asked if he was a fan of the band growing up, and comes up with the brilliant answer “I actually had sex for the first time listening to Metallica” – for the record the song was ‘Unforgiven’. That’s all very well and true, but you don’t see me auditioning for Aspen now do you? Heh. Toby is finally clean-shaven and looks much hotter for it. He says he could survive for a year touring with the band depending on what medicinces are created. Storm is told that she shakes like a man when she meets her reporter, who turns out to be the mean journalist, who tells Storm that she’s got nothing special, implies that Toby isn’t a real rocker because he hasn’t got enough tattoos, and asks Magni who he doesn’t like in the house. Magni is like “you’re mean!” and I want to give him a cuddle. Ryan interviews all articulately, except that Jason Newstead walks in while he’s at it, and that flusters him.

Lukas is asked if he thinks anyone is faking it to get the job, and every single person on the internet starts coughing and going *cough Lukas cough cough*, but he says he doesn’t want to dog any person, but that apparently won’t look good in Rolling Stone. Dilana says that she doesn’t think everyone’s hearts and minds are as set to win this thing as hers is, and she knows who is serious and who’s just along for the ride. The reporter says “let’s name those people”, and she says Toby and Magni because he wants to be with his family. Then she’s asked about how she felt when she first heard the song, and she says that she told everyone she loved it, but some people were like “oh I think the lyrics suck”. The reporter says “Who said that?” and everyone on the internet again starts coughing and saying “Um ME!” as loudly as they can. But Dilana says Storm and Ryan hated the lyrics. And then Dilana says Patrice shouldn’t still be here. And Jason says that there’s going to be repercussions any time you say something bad about someone else in the press and I tremor with glee thinking about Dilana getting a roundhouse kick to the face. Dilana tells the mean radio reporter that she wants to strangle Lukas every day, and it makes me giggle. Then the radio interviewer gets ahold of Lukas, and asks him if his sunglasses inside is a rockstar thing. Hehe. He says he’s just hungover, and takes them off, and calls her ‘baby’. She tells him what Dilana said about him being two different people, and so he interviews that Dilana needs to mind her own business, and gets really dicky to the reporter. Hehehe. Oh rockers, how is it that you don’t see when you’re getting played? I mean, apart from Ryan, because he is Mr. In Control. Jason interviews that if the media treats you with disrespect, then you can treat them with disrespect back, that is allowed. How about your fans, Jason? Should you sue them for downloading? Lukas says that that Dilana needs to think before she opens her mouth about someone behind their back on television, and that’s the fine line between professional and punk. Ummm, Lukas, the pot just called to say you’re a negro. Do you like granny smiths? Well, how do you like them apples, bitch?

So with all that bad feeling generated, song selection is going to be interesting. This week there’s two originals, and everyone’s going to want one. The reason Toby and Ryan want to do the originals is because their songs “f*cking rock”. And then Ryan adds “My mom loves my song” and I giggle at the computer, which makes me happy cos he’s normally so serious and Intense. Storm also only wants to do an original, and she says she hasn’t fought enough, and then she says she’ll box for a song. Ryan’s like “that’s not really realistic”. It’s more The Contender cross-over. And Patrice says she’ll stand up all night and not eat and not sleep to win an original, so oh, it’s a Survivor cross-over too. If these guys are so familiar with Mark Burnett’s work, how the hell did they open up to the reporters that much? Except I guess that we didn’t see clips of Patrice and Storm cos they were wiser than Dilana and Lukas. Magni says Patrice should get an original because she’s been in the bottom three 3 times. Aww Magni. And so Patrice gets it. And Storm goes for ‘Cryin’ instead because she thinks she can sing anything. And Magni asks if he can play guitar with her, and if his wife will be happy with Storm sitting on his lap burying his face in her breasts. Storm’s all “your wife loves me and I’m sitting on you like a brother” and Magni’s like “i have two brothers and that has never happened before” and I giggle with glee a little more and remember how in the first week I was all “Storm’s boobs are so fake” and wrote her off for that but now I like her a lot more.

Storm’s doing ‘Cryin’ and that makes me happy because I know that Aerosmith suck, but I used to have the biggest crush on Alicia Silverstone, and she had the same backpack as me in that video, and then I got my mum to make me a dress like she wore in the ‘Amazing’ video. Back to Rockstar though, and Dilana wants ‘Every breath you take’. She should work with Puffy. I’m sure he’d bring his lotion and his thong. So Toby pretends he wants that song, and gets Dilana to run around the pool naked. She says “I ran around the pool naked. Because I’m tough. And I’ve got a hot body…… For a midget”. And those three words almost redeem her to me, but no, I still hate her. For a midget. And Toby says “you look like a twelve year old boy with a wig” and I start to like him a lot more.

Apparently she went for that song because it’s her mother’s favourite song, and she interviews that it’s going to be her best, strongest performance to date, cos she has such a huge connection with the song. Oh really? I can’t help but feel like that means she’s going to fuck it up. And she tries for a falsetto and ends up just huffing it, like the bit in ‘Hush’ when Riley’s trying to use the voice prompt in the lift into the initiative, but of course he can’t because the Gentlemen took away everyone’s voices, and the music makes that “dong! doing!” sound that they always use when people are being dicks, and it makes me happy. Is this going to be her Jordis’s ‘Dream On’ without Jordis’s likeability? Probably. Toby and Ryan are playing pool, and Toby says he wishes she’d shut up, and Ryan’s like “is that her? I thought it was the dog” and Toby says “She’s becoming Jill” and that’s a shout-out to me, right?

Speaking of Jordis, Toby’s singing ‘Layla’and he’s trying to make it sound more like a Supernova track, which probably isn’t such a stupid idea. You know, there’s no sign of Supernova playing on any of these songs, so maybe it’s going to be a surprise performance or maybe they’re too tired from their original number to play again. Magni is singing ‘Teen Spirit’ (dammit, back to the Nirvana) but he’s sick, poor baby. Ryan’s singing his original song, called ‘Back of your car’ which is about the world coming to an end, and there’s people in the church praying and there’s people making love. Who will you be? Paul interviews that Ryan is funny to work with (read: an ass) because he micromanages. And he tries to teach Jim a dance-move. Fuck you, Ryan, Jim is teh awesome, and needs no teaching. He could learn you a thing or too. But I like the sound of Ryan’s song, and I’m (as always) looking forward to Wednesday.

Oh, and over the credits, they show footage of Magni handling the “what do you think about Lukas’s make-up?” with incredible grace (“oh, I thought that was just his face, that he was some sort of weird Canadian breed”) and Ryan interviewing that he grew up reading Teen and Vogue and that they’re better magazines to read than Maxim. Umm, WHAT. THE. FUCK. ? If he’s trying to show his sensitive side again, like when he wouldn’t box Storm because he’d never hit a girl, he’s got it all wrong. The way Teen portrays girls is a thousand times more badder for girls than the way Maxim does. Puke puke.

Reality /Performance / Results

The Performance Show

I was at Snakes on a Plane last night (and it was FUCKING AWESOME) and so when I came out and turned on my phone again I had a barrage (well, three) of text messages all talking about what the ladies were wearing. Nice. So home I went to my taped performance episode. And Gilby has brought his dog along tonight, making me hate him a little, because dude, you’re not actually Paris Hilton eh.

When they recap what happened over the week, they only show song selection and Dilana’s nude run, not her total and utter bitchiness and skankosity during the press interviews. Innnnnnteresting. I wonder if perhaps the webisodes have a different editing team and that’s their quiet way of rebelling against the inevitable, like how someone at my work stuck stickers with “Diet” and “Regular” on the two taps of the water cooler (it wasn’t me, but I wish it was). Because I’m sure if greater America knew what Dilana was really like, they wouldn’t keep voting for her. Unless Jeb Bush was running the election maybe.

But anyway, since Patrice “fought so hard” for her original (oh really? I thought she just kind of sat back and Magni said she should get to do it and everyone went “well, she is only here to showcase her original talent and not to be part of the band, and surely she’s going home this week so okay”), she gets to step up and do it first. She’s wearing more eye liner than usual, and she looks fucking gorgeous, and so comfortable on stage, which I know we’ve talked about before and how she’s almost too comfortable. Her song is jangly and happy, like Guyville Liz Phair meets Eight Arms Veruca Salt. I quite like it, but it’s so not Supernova, and everyone knows that. Dave says “I’m going to give you the same advice I gave Zayra..” and I’m like “what, check yourself into a mental clinic right now? That’s unfair”, but he is of course suggesting a solo career. She says that when she was 19, (so that’s a good fifteen years ago, mind you), she made a pact with the guitar player in her band that she’d never work a day job again, and apparently she hasn’t since, and that’s pretty fucking rock’n roll. So long, farewell Patrice. I liked you, for what that’s worth. And maybe I’ll buy your album.

It’s the return of the Nirvana, and Magni says that he chose ‘Teen Spirit’ because like ‘Creep’, it’s an anthem for his generation, and I’m like “that’s SO true!” and squeal like the fan girl I am. But of course, my VHS is super stretched (ha ha, I’m so going to use that as another ‘sausage down a hallway’ euphemism in the future, if I remember), and the sound goes wobbly on me. Still, the first cords kick that thing in my heart that remembers how very important grunge was to me (although if you follow that link, you’ll see that my paragraph on legal matters is probably no longer valid), and my pulse speeds up. Even though he’s sick, Magni hits the notes better than Kurt did, but just the idea of having our anthems so cooped makes me a little not happy. But I do love the way he smiles and points to the other rockers when he sings “our little group has always been and always will until the end” – it comes across really really genuinely and I don’t think anyone else could have done it like that. And T’Lee asks Magni why he didn’t play guitar, and Magni was like “I didn’t want to be tidied down” and Tommy’s all “you don’t need to be tied down with a guitar, you can take it off and smash it”. Umm, Tommy, not everyone’s shooting as much smack as you that they think a rolling guitar cage would be a good idea, you know. But as it happens, telling Magni to smash his guitar (which is extreme Gibson product placement, like how toothpaste companies give away toothbrushes with bigger heads so that people use more toothpaste) sets up the next song rather well.

Ryan’s performing an original too, his song ‘Back of your car’. Now, if you’re dedicated enough, you can go to his myspace page and listen to the piano version of this song, but as he explains to Supernova that he’s played in all kinds of rock bands, and although recently he’s been doing a lot of piano stuff, he’s changed the arrangement of this song because he thinks it’s a track that Supernova could really get on board with. He’s dressed simply, black pants, black tshirt, and black guitar (and his “heal the world” or whatever it is arm bandage), and I know I made fun of him for trying to teach the House Band some dance moves, HOLY FUCKING CRAP his performance blows me away. The song is catchy as hell, and he prowls around the stage with his guitar, leading them to do cut-tos of Magni, apparently trying to show that Magni is jealous that Ryan is rocking it out, but come on man, it’s MAGNI, he’s far too much of a gentleman to be like that, there’s no Lukas/Dilana rivalry there. But yeah, I actually say “FUCK YEAH” out loud a couple of times. I’m not sure if I like Ryan as a person, but he is definitely very very smart. He’s the new Marty. Remember how Marty said in interviews with INXS how he chose to do newer songs like Franz Ferdinand and the Killers because they fused dance with rock, and that INXS were the pioneers of that, and that he had what it would take to bring them into the now? Ryan choses his words that carefully when he talks to the band. Dave’s like “who the hell are you? What the fuck happened to you?” because he was so electrifying, whereas if you read my recap of the first episode I was like “Huh? Ryan sang… ummm… something… I don’t remember” (and while we’re at it, remember when I hated Magni and compared him to the Rasmus? Don’t worry, I hate myself for that too), and Ryan’s like “I got laid!” and whether or not that’s true, it gets the laugh and it shows the whole ‘I am like, totally a rockstar’ attitude. And if that song came out as a single I’d buy it. Well no, I’d download it. But that’s beside the point.

One of the texts I got was from Harvestbird saying “I’m thinking you could do justice to a top cut like Storm’s, which is incredibly sweet, but very not true. Sure, we’re both 6 feet tall and do boxing, but I’m like, two Storms big. But in her corset, I realise why exactly it is that I’m so drawn to Storm, and it’s because she is totally Faith, the Vampire Slayer. With a little Mean Girls era Lindsay thrown in (or maybe that’s just boob pervage). Storm does a mean version of ‘Cryin’, but it’s a little too ballady, and she really really needs to bring the rock if she wants to stay in contention. T’lee is of course all “I wish you were wearing less”, and that’s just awesome, I hope that at the next job interview I go to, someone on the panel says that, because I think that’d be a good sign of a smooth road ahead. You can’t have it both ways, you know, Supernova – either this is a job interview or it’s a perve fest. Storm’s like “I could crush you with my little finger” in her head, but she laughs it off on stage.

The sexual harrassment continues when Dave tells Dilana that next week song selection is at his house, cos he’s got a pool, and T’Lee’s like “I’ve got a pool too!” and Dave is like “yeah but my pool is olympic sized”. Cock fight! Dave’s apparently going out with Jenna Jameison now, which is interesting because I want to read her autobiography, and I also want to read I’m with the band which according to Amazon.com was co-written by one Dave Navarro. Anyway, do you remember how in Bardot’s video Sophie was dressed like she was a bird, with a skirty tail and stuff? Well, Dilana has chosen to recreate this outfit, out of old newspaper. With high heeled roman gladiator sandals. Her hair is straightened and looks really good, but you don’t really notice, because as the texts I got from Heather say “THE LASHES! O MY GOD THE LASHES!” with a follow-up text a minute later that says “…and not in a good way”. Someone apparently thought it would be a good idea for Dilana to wear pink and black eye lashes that are – with no exaggeration here – AS BIG AS HER FUCKING FISTS. And of course the reason she’s wearing htem is to draw attention to her eyes, because she’s singing ‘Every breath you take’ which of course contains the line “I’ll be watching you” and when she jabs her stubby L** S*** fingers at her eyes to illustrate this, I hope for a second that I’ve somehow managed to enchant those fingers and she’s about to gouge out her own eyes. But apparently not. Her voice doesn’t hit the notes, but it’s not quite the dog whining of the webisode. It’s definitely her worst performance so far, but Supernova are very mild with it. I suppose they can’t be all like “dude, you suck” when they let her sing with them already. Plus, Jason’s the fall guy today and he’s like “Was there a reason you sang that song?” as a total planted question, and Dilana’s all “yeah, it’s my mum’s favourite song…” which we knew from the webisode, “… and I haven’t spoken to her in years” – which we didn’t know, which just goes to solidfy my theory that the webisodes are cut by someone who hates her, and the performance shows are written by someone who loves her, because now we can be all “awww that’s so beautiful and deep”. And also somewhat disturbing, that Dilana is apparently, according to the song anyway, stalking her mother like a lover scorned. Riiiiiiiiight.

Toby rearranges ‘Layla’ a little bit, but no one really pays attention because in another gimmick move, he takes off his shirt. Gilby’s all “what does that say on his chest?” to T’lee, because Toby has the letters “EVS” written on his chest, which makes me think of Jessie and her catchy-like-syphilis habbit of dropping off the ends of words and adding an ‘s’ instead, but then I’m like, “Whatevs, I’m sure it’s like, a charity thing, or a dead grandmother thing” but when he’s asked, he says that it’s what people in Melbourne say instead of whatever. Who knew? Jessie, you’re like, like a rockstar. Haha.

Lukas, who has been cut to every time Dilana gets praise, starts out singing ‘All these things that I have done’ by the Killers in his singing voice, but quickly reverts to his mumble-mumble growl, and I tell Bart that Jason is going to spank his ass for it, but strangely enough he doesn’t. In fact, although this is Lukas’s second-worst performance ever, the only criticism he gets is Gilby asking him not to turn his back on the audience so much, which suggests to me that Lukas will be singing with Supernova tomorrow night. Although perhaps T’Lee’s incredibly insightful comment of “Cheque please” as a criticism. Who even knows anymore?

The bottom three are going to be Patrice, Toby and either Storm or Lukas. I would actually like both Storm and Lukas to be in the bottom three so that I can see what they do for their own choice. I’m pretty sure that Patrice must be going home, although I’m no longer sure that Storm’s going to be in the top four. I think maybe Ryan has pushed his way in there. I don’t think he wants to win, but I think he wants to take it as far as possible, just like Marty. I think he deserves the encore too.
Reality /Performance / Results

The Results Show

Brooke says that in three short weeks one of the people on stage will be in Supernova, and I’m like, hang on, only three more eliminations? Some doubles are coming up. People on the TWOP forums say this is because of the other band called Supernova who are suing, and there’s some kind of stay of execution until the middle of September so they need to wrap up the show by then. Or something. Hmm…!

As the TWOP summary starts out, “More evidence tonight that if Dilana wins this thing, it won’t be through strategy”.It seems that after the performance show, when she was very very average and sang “Dilana, Dilana, Dilana” as part of her song (WHAT?) and Ryan fucking killed it, she told him that he’d have been nothing without the House Band. Well, I’ve heard both versions of his song, (okay, a whole bunch of times, I’m a little obsessed now), and while I like the Rockstar version better with teh full band and all, he’s not singing about no lotion and no thong, Dilana. It’s a good song, dick. I’m aware that you wouldn’t know one if it got caught on your labret piercings and all, but still… Dave tells everyone that they’d all be nothing without the house band, and everyone at home goes “duh, that’s why we’re watching this and not Idol – we’re not in it for you, Dave”. There’s footage of Dilana telling Ryan that she’s got more fans than him, and Magni chimes in with a “We’ve all been growing throughout the show (which is true) but you’ve been doing the same thing (which is also true!”. Delicious. Like a Red Delicious. How do you like them apples, Dilana? Then when they do a little pre-recorded rave about the awesomeness which is theirspace, Dave says “one of the fan’s comments was that maybe there should be two singers in Supernova – Dilana and Lukas” and Dilana’s like “Over my dead body”. Way to be professional. Oh, and I have to rage against the person who posted on the TWOP forum saying “Hubris, they name is Dilana, Dilana, Dilana.” Because um, Hubris’s name is Jo. Don’t you compare me to that midget, bitch!

Toby gets the ‘honour’ of singing with Supernova, and for the first time I see that it kind of works, that together they can all sound as dumb as a sackful of hammers. The song’s called something about five cliches, and I’m like “but there’s only four of them on stage”. They don’t cut to film this time, or bring out the booty dancers, and I’m sure that’s totally because of the TWOP forums on the matter. The song is completely unmemorable, but that’s partly because I was really drunk. I do know that it reminded me of a song that I couldn’t think of the name of. Haha, is this the BEST. RECAP. EVER or what?

I guess they didn’t wanna let Ryan have the recap for two weeks in a row, so they’ve decided that tonight the encore performance is showing the footage from the webisode of Dilana slagging off everyone in the house during her interviews. She tells Dave “I guess they’re making me the villan this week” and I’m like, dude, Dilana, I don’t want your fucking shoutouts, back the fuck off. Dave asks Lukas, who tonight is wearing blue eyeshadow like I do sometimes, what he thinks about that all, and he makes a blah blah unprofessional blah blah noise, and Dilana tries to explain that she meant that she wants to take care of him like a mother hen, and then Lukas is all like “EVS!” which makes me laugh a lot because apparently Toby is as infectious as Jessie.

First up in the bottom three is Magni, and all of Iceland and I are like WHAT. THE. FUCK? But I figure people didn’t vote for him so that they’d hear him again. He sings Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Fire’, which you may remember best from Cassandra singing it in Wayne’s World (No? Is it just me?) and it’s absolutely fucking stomping. He plays the guitar but moves around the stage, duelling with the House Band, and he knows how fucking awesome a job he’s doing. This isn’t a bottom three ‘save yourself’ song, this is a motherfucking encore after he joins the house band and tours the world to raputous acclaim. This is the triumpant end to an epic gig. Hells yeah. Okay, so I mentioned that I was rather drunk when I watched it, and Magni was making me moisten my panty gusset rather a lot, but I stand by my assesment.

The second person in the bottom three, unsurprisingly is Patrice. When her name is called out the rockers pretend like they didn’t know it was coming, and Storm makes her “why god why?” face. Lukas reaches behind him to pat Patrice’s leg sympathetically, which endears him to me somewhat, and not just because it reminds me of a boy who was gladhanding me so much in Good Luck recently that I tried to move his hands away and he ended up stroking my boots instead. Heh. In another bout of “ha ha, it’s funny because it’s true” like the title of the Supernova song, Patrice sings a Pretenders song called ‘Middle of the Road’. She says she changed the arrangement, but i can’t tell. I’m bummed that this is her last song the world will see, because it’s so so boring.

Finally in the bottom three is Toby, and it so should have been Lukas. He sings ‘Plush’, and it’s good…. if he was playing in a pub coverband down at the Espie. Which he’s not. But of course because he sang with Supernova, they’re not sending him home tonight, so we’re left to contemplate who Supernova might possibly be sending home. Here’s a hint: it’s not going to be Magni as they struggle to say anything bad about him at all. In the end Tommy Lee says “Patrice, this is the fourth time you’ve been in the bottom three, and fans buy our tickets, so you’ve got to go, baby”. Nice, I like the honesty there. And speaking of liking the honesty, check out Dave Navarro’s website – it’s surprisingly unsanitised of his opinions.

Today I changed my MSN tag to ‘slowly losing the will to live’ because it feels like that. My life’s blood is trickling out of me. LITERALLY. And some fuck has taken away the box of tampons that was in the first aid kit in the kitchen. How rude. I took the morning off today to stay in bed, having spent all day at work yesterday writhing around in pain, then taking so much nerofen plus that I got dizzy but still feeling the pain. That left me pretty much unable to do anything except build up a library of RSS feeds and stalk my shiny ex cow-orker after people discussed him in our project managers’ meeting (yesterday with bonus cake!). Now I remember why it was awesome not to have periods for so long. And apparently I have four months worth of cramps to get throught right now as well. Fucking radsville. At least my boobs aren’t sore anymore.

Yes, this is what my life is like. It’s Wednesday afternoon which means that I have to avoid the internets until 8.30pm so I don’t get any Rockstar spoilers before the performance show, but I’m feeling too sick to work. I would dose up on more nerofen but that’d be the easy solution. Yesterday we had a flat dinner for which I made a tagine. It was perhaps not the most authentic tagine ever, but it was fucking tasty. I still had to abandon it to lie on the couch moaning though. It’s just as well that I’m not pregnant, because my parenting skills are pretty crap and I wouldn’t want the second coming to be unable to refrain from scratching the couch.

In another example of how lame and behind the times I am, I dreamt about Chuck Norris the other night. He had grey streaks in his hair so I suggested to him it might be better for his career if he got them dyed, and he was like “I’ve got cancer, you’re so insensitive!”. Luckily I woke up before he gave me a roundhouse kick to the face. In a better example of awesome internets, I got this fantastic email this morning:

“FW: Hubris Horse Shampoo

I was interested in purchasing some hors shampoo as recommended in Horse and Pony – have I got the right contact? ”

I wrote back going “hahaha no, you really really don’t”. It’s an easy mistake to make, I suppose, although why the fuck would anyone call their horse shampoo Hubris? Do you want your horse to fall? Hopefully now I’ll get like a thousand hits from people wanting the horse shampoo. At least they’ll be a better class of people than the many who land here looking for animal sex. Also, now I think maybe I shouldn’t have run that particular google search since I’m still at work, but oh well. I rang up Bond & Bond on Monday to ask them what the fuck was up with my laptop and they said it’d probably be done yesterday but they’d call me. They haven’t called me. They also said that it wasn’t the power supply, it was something else that was really expensive, so I’d better not have to pay for it if they didn’t contact me to let me know. Hopefully it’ll come under the guarantee. I should have tried to pay more attention, but the guy wasn’t quite the clearest English speaker ever, and it sounded like he was yelling so I was holding my cellie way away from my ear.

I think the new Pulp is out soon with my reviews. I’m never entirely sure though. Other things of note? There really aren’t any. This is totally a filler entry. But you guessed that already, right? And now can I take some more painkillers please? I can’t wait to go and have a spa at the gym after work. Perhaps I’ll even do a little exercise too, if I feel like going crazy. I have another boxing lesson tomorrow and I’m scared because I haven’t worked out how to wrap my hands properly yet. I think I’m getting pretty good at the cross, however, so that’s something. And my arms have finally stopped hurting from the keg stands so at least I can thank my incredible stomach pain for something.

Reality / Performance / Results

The Reality Show
I realise that I didn’t complain about them putting a camera on Gilby’s guitar while he was playing. What is this – The Amazing Race? So I will complain now, as they recap it in the webisode. Let me complain again about that word. And be glad again that Shakira and Mr Maroon 5 are gone. And that now I get to see footage of everyone in Vegas. Vegas baby, Vegas!

So the private jet is spraypainted with Supernova, but I’m going to bet that it’s actually just computer-altered, cos I bet that’s cheaper. T’Lee’s waiting on the jet with bottles of champagne and Jagermeister, because can we get in a little more product placement? Yes we can. I’m going to put in a story about a private jet here, if you will allow me a digression: The father of one of Brad’s classmates was Keith Richards’s neurosurgeon, and apparently they got to be quite good friends, so Keith arranged for the doctor to fly to New York so they could hang out some more, but his jet was busy, so they used Tom Cruise’s, and apparently Tom Cruise’s jet is stocked with all of his movies. And also apparently Tom Cruise is a dick. What a surprise. But back to Rockstar: Supernova instead of Trapped in the Closet.

They go to the Hard Rock Hotel and see all the memorabilia there, and for some reason they get Zayra to talk about it, and she says she can’t wait for her own stuff to be up there. Perhaps the producers thought this would be a good chance to get her to actually learn somethign about music, since she seems to know nothing about it. Inncidently, in all the rockstar blogs, all the rockers mention how Storm knows every single song that they’re presented with at song choice. Go Storm!

They go see the venue that Supernova’s first gig is going to be performing at, and famous rockers such as David Bowie, The Rolling Stones and errr Seal have played there. Jason says that it was good for the rockers to go there and realise what they’re going to do, because the first impression of Supernova as a band is going to take place where they’re standing. Because apparently the whole TV show Rockstar: Supernova doesn’t actually exist, or perhaps it makes no impression on people. Well, I suppose those wacky kids with their internets do have the memory of goldfishes. What was I writing about again? The awesomeness of custard yoghurt? Quite possibly.

Ryan says that now the remaining eight rockers will want to win it. Just as well Phil’s gone then. They go up to the Presidential suite, and it’s crazy like the movies – or perhaps you know, The OC when they went to Vegas for Caleb’s bachelor party. And that means that Rockstar: Supernova is now partly responsible for what’s going on in Lost. And oh ho, there is scandal afoot in the presidential suite when Dilana comes up to T’Lee and says with a screen caption “By the way, I just wanted to let you know that all these ______’s can go home”, and I’m not sure what word they bleeped out, but I am ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CERTAIN THAT THEY DIDN’T NEED THAT MOTHERFUCKING APOSTROPHE. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGGH. Then she says “You don’t have to say a damn word” She interviews that she went and had a word with Tommy, and it felt natural and what she actually says is “I can sing, and I can draw a _________ crowd, and I can hang with the boys”. She then says she wishes they’d hurry up and bump everyone off so they can get on with it. Oooh girl, you nasty! So you were trying to fuck up Lukas with ‘Creep’. Ha ha, sucks to be you, shortass.

T’Lee, who is wearing a ‘Mr Happy’ t-shirt (way to traumatise children all around the world, buddy), tells people to have fun in Vegas, they drink champagne and next thing you know, Ryan is lying on the bowling lane (Zayra: “a bowling alley in a hotel room, what a great idea!” Like, a greater idea than a latex jumpsuit? Surely not!). Are you sure that’s a good idea Ryan? You’re not the most popular guy in the world. And Gilby bowls at his head, very very slowly. If that was Jill he’d have bowled at normal speed. Lots of hot girls show up, but strangely enough they fail to stack the room with hot men as well. The random girls dance on each other in an incredibly unhot display of psuedo lesbianism. Toby interviews that a couple of the contestants couldn’t handle their drink – and that he was one of them. We cut to seeing him hugging Jason going “I’m smashed, man”. Jason interviews that a couple of people couldn’t hold their drink, and that he was watching them because it was definitely part of the deal. “They’re always representing the band – at a party they don’t have to go and get so smashed that people are laughing at them”. Poor Toby. He thought he was doing the right thing by playing up his g’day mate Aussieness. Ryan says that at 10.30, a time when you could still get your grandparents on the phone (Ryan, can you call up my Oma and tell her I love her please? Good luck with that), Lukas and Toby, the “rockers” (his air quotes) of the house were passed out on the floor. He says “this is our dream, and I’m not throwing it away by drinking too much”. He is, however, apparently perfectly happy to hook up with the hired bitches. Isn’t he supposed to have a girlfriend back in New York? Perhaps one of the audition parts is having a three way with T’lee.

Storm says everyoen was hungover and tired when they got back to the mansion, except for Dilana who pours water in Lukas’s belly button and jumps on his bed. Apparently it’s her birthday so she wants to party, and by “party” she means tie up Toby while he’s lying on his bed. Ryan of course was all Mr Sober, so he finds the songs first, and one of them is called “Your Original” and the sheet music is blank. Do you think they meant ‘Original by Leftfield? Heh. This week they’re stripping it back and going acoustic. Gilby’s going to be playing ‘Solsbury Hill’, which just makes me think of that family-feelgood-movie Shining. Hopefully they’ve realised that they need to fight for that song. Ahh yes, they do. Dilana is wearing a flowered bathing cap. Ummm, what? She’s my least favourite this week, and I appreciate that this means that they’re cutting it so that she is this week’s villan – especially when they show a clip of Storm interviewing “I don’t even think Dilana wanted to sing ‘Solsbury Hill’ – she just wanted to fuck with Toby” . Lukas tells her that ‘Cat’s in the cradle’ would be awesome for Dilana, but she’s all “I wanna play with Gilby”. But she agrees to give the song to Toby if he strips off totally naked and runs around the pool. He says he was still half drunk so it would be a good idea – “and I just want to let everyone know it was a really cold day”. He’s wearing tight boxer shorts which are definitely the best kind of male underwear, but I still don’t understand why people go on about the hotness of him. Perhaps for Americans the accent is a novelty. He keeps his hat on when he does his run. Oooh he has some abs. But we don’t get to see penii. Zayra says she cannot believe what Dilana made him do. Umm, Zayra, we cannot believe what you make yourself do. So shut up. She fights with Ryan over the original song, saying she should get to do it because she’s always in the bottom three and might not get another chance. Ryan isn’t giving it up for her. Toby suggests to him that he should do ‘In the air tonight’ which I agree Ryan could kill, so he takes it. I’m intrigued to hear an original song from Zayra, to be honest. Can batshit insane people write songs? Let’s find out.

The House Band say it’s a pretty simple song to learn. Oh, it’s in another language. Spanish I suppose. Or Plutonian. Toby doesn’t get the ‘Solsbury’ beat. The bandleader calls him intense, and it’s cut together to make us think that he’s going to fuck it up. Storm’s singing ‘I will survive’. Ouch. Mostly that song makes me think of the version we sang at the last Hens’ Party I went to, which was all about men with tiny penises and thank god for batteries. Storm’s trying to mix up the song to make it not as disco. She’s freaking out about the arrangement, but I bet she’s going to be okay. I can’t wait to find out…

Reality / Performance / Results

The Performance Show
This may not contain the usual level of detail and intrigue as my recaps usually do, so I apologise in advance, but I’m in a fuckload of pain, incredibly busy and in a fuck-off bad mood, in such a bad mood in fact that I’m considering taping the results show tonight and watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition instead tonight so that I can fully get my bawl on. Luckily Anji’s sent me through her notes so I can use them to flesh out this effort.

We get recaps of Vegas, but not of Dilana saying to Tommy how everyone else can go home cos she’s going to win this thing. Innnnteresting. I wonder how much Interweb access the rockers are given, and whether or not they get to watch the reality episodes while they’re updating their their-spaces. Speaking of the their-spaces, I’m sure that someone else must be writing Brooke’s because it seems a little too literate for her. I’m going to be talking more about their-spaces tonight, I think.

Tonight’s episode is going to be acoustic and stripped back, so what’s this? What’s Dave doing taking his shirt off? Oh right, he’s stripping it back. As is Tommy. Woo-ha! But the camera cuts away before they start comparing tattoos. I wish that the house band had issued a mighty badoom-CHISH for that terrible joke. But as always, they are consumate professionals. Is consumate the word I’m looking for here? I mean, other than in a “I want to consumate my love for the house band with them” kind of way. I don’t think it is. But I don’t care.

The rockers get berated again for not fighting harder for the chance to play with Gilby, except of course Toby who ran around the pool naked to win the chance. Tommy tells him that he has a nice ass, so Toby reverts to his psuedo Australian ‘mate’ ness again. Dick. And Zayra is congratulated on stepping up to sing an original when everyone else seems afraid. Speaking of original songs, remember the webisode when everyone wrote their own lyrics and Dilana’s was all “bring your lotion and bring your thong” and everyone on the forums said it was the Worst. Lyrics. Ever. and compared it to JD singing ‘We are the champions’? Well in her their-space Dilana’s like “I thought my song was great at the time”. Yeah and smoking that crack rock was awesome at the time too.

Speaking of crack rock, Zayra’s up first, wearing a sequined black bra and a giant red parachute. She stands behind a mike playing a guitar, and sings her original song, in Spanish. Her subduedness, and the fact that she’s not fucking up a song I like, means that this is my favourite performance of hers by a thousand miles, and behold the awesomeness of the lyric translation she posted: “Your crazy waves hitting my hungry hell / Until you make me want it”. Oh wait hang on, that’s not awesome, that’s laaaaaaaaame. Gilby says that it was nice to hear her do her thing but he’s not sure how it fits with Supernova, and everyone is like “duh!”.

Anji says: “NOT SuperNova! How will we know if the words are really really cheesy?? Is her song another Lilith Fair example? Do you think she?ll appeal to a wide audience if she is alienating so many with the language barrier? That said, I don?t actually mind the song.”

In the ‘stylist”s space, Miles has written that he’s got a lot of comments from people about how Magni needs to dress up more – well tonight, he’s been forced into a white suit. Supernova ask him if that’s the most dressed up he’s ever been except for his court appearence, and I’m intrigued. I still remember the cute cute baby, so I can forgive the white suit. Magni sings ‘Starman’ gorgeously, and cements his place as my total favourite. Gilby says he wishes Magni got the audience to sing along more, but that it was great anyway. Not the most rock’n roll ever, but what can you do with a string quartet? Before I forget, at one stage Supernova give the string quartet the big ups, and Dave’s all “I’d especially like to big up the blonde one” and she goes “eww, I learnt to play an instrument so that I wouldn’t have to make my living staring in creepy midget porn actually buddy, so why don’t you go back to your lameass wife that you’re divorcing and make another MTV show about that process?”. I’m astonished at how much she manages to convey with one cringe.

Anji says: “more Bowie? I thought that was pretty loungey and wondered if they?d accuse him of being too Vegas again. And a white suit is NEVER good. I thought he was perfectly pleasant, but not exciting, not intense.

Patrice has obviously been paying attention to TWOP comparing her hair to a cocker spaniel’s ears, and she’s got dready extensions in it. It looks awesome, but the dead cat hanging from a belt over bike shorts arrangement does her no favours. She sings ‘Message in a bottle’ and her voice is as always awesome, but Supernova do sleeping faces throughout it. She’s going to be the next to go, and I think she’s resigned to that now. Her their-space even says “Even if I don’t make it, I’ve got my album coming out pretty soon”. Does anyone actually want to win this?

Anji says: “I thought her voice was really pretty when she sang softly at the beginning of the song, and was something we hadn?t heard from her before. I thought she did really well, and I liked her hair too. Shame the boys weren?t so into it ? I liked it done the classic way.”

Lukas says in his their-space that he’s doing ‘Hero’ because it’s by a Canadian. You know what else is by a Canadian Lukas? The NAZIS. I mean, ‘Summer of ’69′, ‘Man, I feel like a woman’, ‘You remind me’. Blame Canadia eh? He’s got bare arms and a white collar which makes me think he’s Sonic the Hedgehog crossed with a Chippendale dancer, and that’s not a picture anyone should have in their head ever. I definitely prefer Lukas’s version to that of the (officially) ugliest man in rock, but Supernova nail him for sitting down, and also Jason goes on about how he’s closing his throat again. According to the TWOP insiders, the reason you don’t normally see many comments from Jason is not because he doesn’t say much but rather that he says too much and is hard to cut up into soundbites.

Anji says: “Lukas ? The song is GAY!!! But he sounded really good, and performed well, for someone who was sitting. Dumb excuse to say he was recovering from Vegas ? what kind of hard man is he??!! Nonetheless, I think they really like him and he could definitely be a contenda.”

Storm got stuck with ‘I will survive’ and sings it the best she could, in a suit so padded that even ‘Express Yourself’ era Madonna would turn it down. I don’t understand why she’s covering herself up so much. I mean, she’s told us to google, and I imagine that means we can see it all, so why oh why is she making such conservative clothing choices these days? Oh, apart from showing her ant segmentation last week. A thing I do really like about Storm though is that when others are singing and it cuts away to her, she’s always singing along and smiling, not scowling like Dilana or Lukas do if someone else is singing well. She tries to dediscofy the song, but it’s a bit of a mess. She takes the guitar part from Cake’s cover, but with the suit and all, boy, it just doesn’t work, and all of Supernova tell her that they hated it. She takes it very gracefully in her stride, and says that the song is pants, while Dave points out that Marty Casey did great things with ‘Baby one more time’ last season. Yeah, but that song KICKS ASS. And besides, he just did a cover of the Travis cover anyway. And if I’m getting all uppity about Marty Casey then this must mean I really like Storm.

Anji says: “Storm ? Once again, very stagey. I didn?t mind the arrangement ? I mean seriously, what can you do to help such an unbelievably AWFUL song?! But, ooh, NASTY trousers, and the shoulder pads?? I enjoyed Tommy?s comment very much (for once) ? ?saut?ed in wrong sauce?!! But I still think Storm?s awesome cos she just seems so composed and self-assured in the face of criticism.”

Toby of course ran around naked for ‘Solsbury Hill’, so it’s nice to know he’s stopped singing it “solbury” as he was in rehersal. I really have to quote the TWOP recaplet here because it nearly made me piss myself: “Supernova is impressed with Toby’s commitment, which suggests to me that Dilana really needs to stop trying to manipulate her fellow contestants. It always just backfires on her, and Wile E. Coyote? Not a rock star.” Does Gilby’s guitar really have a HEART for a hole? What’s he playing – a carebear? Toby sounds okay, but I wish he was Magni. Or maybe Marty Casey. And when he starts playing the bongos, I’m like no no no, and I laugh that Jason’s drumming along, but T’Lee’s all “Bitch, back the fuck away from the percussion or I will cut you down like a motherfucker”.

Anji says: “Toby ? I do love that song. I thought his voice sounded pretty good for it, but the Peter Gabriel one has more notes, more tonal variation, and he seems to have skipped some of that. Nice bongo, nasty screeching at the end. And shouldn?t the NAKED and the BONGOS have come together at the same time?”

Ryan says in his their-space that he’s officially the roller-coaster constestant. I must have missed the passing of that by-law, but okay, fair enough, one week you’re up and one week you’re down. This week he’s gone all Captain Ahab on us, standing on stage in a big black peacoat like he’s on the prow of a ship sailing on into the stormy night. I think he looks hot, but I’ve gone off him after reading his “please vote for me” crap. But when have I ever not fancied wankers, particularly if they have big noses and broody angst? Exactly. He’s singing ‘In the air tonight’ so I have ‘Stan’ quite firmly in my head when it starts, but he manages to push it away. You know, I can actually quite easily imagine him singing ‘Sussudio’ whilst wearing a plastic raincoat and cutting Jared Leto up with an axe. That would be awesome. But yes, an intense song, and an intense singer work well in combination together, and Dave says it was the best performance of the night, and I can agree with that. Jason’s been miming the “he’s CRUSHING IT” during the performance so I know he’s picturing Ryan in the band too.

Anji says: “Ryan ? Seriously, every time that man starts singing I think Creed. I know it?s a good voice, but it BUGS me. Maybe too common with power-ballad groups. He?s pretty good with his intense stare thing though. He would also suit the band I reckon. He?s certainly no snag. Good performance and vocals, it?s just a REVOLTING song. Nice work on the loud-to-quiet too!! The boys of the group are getting stronger?”

Dilana’s up last, just for a change, and Bart says “she looks like a witch, and like she’s trying to be a slut but she can’t” and that’s true. Her tatty short black flared-sleeve dress that laces up down the front looks like a rag Stevie Nicks would clean her car with. I am big with the Dilana-hating this week, so the editors of the webisode have done their work well. Dilana’s singing ‘Cat’s in the cradle’ and to be honest, it’s more boring than Ugly Kid Joe, and even they hate everything about her (If you don’t get that joke just yet, it’s okay, you can have Three Days Grace. Hahah HA. Oh I am fucking hilarious). And yet Supernova go nuts for it. I don’t get it. Dave’s all “if my dad wasn’t here right now I’d cry”. Blah blah blah. And they even say “sorry Ryan, but Dilana was better”.

Anji says: “Dilana ? I really do enjoy her voice. It strikes me every time. I think she got one of the lyrics wrong though! I liked it, but it wasn?t special. I hate to say it, but I think Ryan was better…”

Well, they said that Dilana was the best of the night, so I guess it’s not a stretch to say she’ll probably get the encore, and maybe Ryan too. And I guess they’d go non-accoustic. The bottom three will be Patrice, and maybe Storm and Zayra, with Patrice going home. Anji says “BOTTOM 3: – Storm, Zayra, Magni (not borne out by initial results, but we?ll see)”

Just for laughs, this is the elimination order I think it will go in:

8. Patrice – always the same thing
7. Zayra – people will revolt if she gets much further. There’s no way she’d ever front the band.
6. Toby – he can’t quite cut it with the big boys.
5. Storm – she’ll never make her stage presence less theatrical, and if she gets another bad song, she’s outta there.
4. Ryan – can’t rock it out enough
3. Lukas/Magni – this one’s a toughy, cos Lukas doesn’t open up his throat enough, but Magni might not be insane enough for the band, plus he might just decide to give up so he can get back to his family.
2. Dilana – a woman is NOT going to win, but they’ll take her to the edge to pretend like she might.
1. Magni/Lukas – see my previous comments.

Reality / Performance / Results

The Results Show

OH. MY. GOD. They finally did it. Thank fuck.

So they recap the previous night and repeat everyone cringing at Storm’s song, and she takes it manfully in her stride, and Dave tells her he wished she’d done it ironically like cake, but that he knows he can give her criticism because he knows that she more than anyone can take it. Which is true, because Storm is fucking awesome and every time she makes “what? How could they be in the bottom three?” faces and sings along with whichever rocker is on stage I love her a little bit more.

Then Supernova go and land a surprise on me, which is that they’re going to pick someone to sing an original Supernova song with them, and the audience starts screaming for Dilana as if they know something I don’t. Dammit, how’d that happen? They cut to a clip of everyone in the recording studio and do a montage of all the rockers singing a line, and Jason says that the competition is by no means over, but there’s one person who did something different. And Gilby’s all like “well you all think that a woman can’t lead our band” and I’m like Gilby, is that a shout-out? And so of course Dilana gets up, and she’s got her hair scraped up into a fauxhawk, and man, I just hate her. It turns out that the song she’s singing, which is something like ‘leave the lights on’ fits in quite well with her “Bring your lotion and your thong” school of lyric writing, because the chorus goes something like “leave the lights on, because everything else in the room is going to be off”. I guess they’re unplugging the clock radio then… And then the thing happens that means that I know that neither Ryan nor Magni will be winning this competition, because they’d have more intergrity (or faux intergrity in Ryan’s case, perhaps) – booty dancers come out, dressed like they’re fresh off the set of a Paula Abdul video, and they shake their thangs all over the stage and surge around Dilana, and I’m texting WHAT. THE. FUCK. ? to various people, because ewww!

And then it all makes sense as to why they could declare Dilana the best performance of the night before, because people would expect her to get the encore, but instead it goes to Ryan, and I really like his performance again, but that might be because he reminds me so much of a combination of many young men that I have known that I can almost taste his cock in my mouth. This means that he and Magni have both had two encores, and that makes me happy. And yet, Magni is in the bottom five, along with Storm, which makes Dave unhappy, and non-suprisingly Patrice, Toby and Zayra.

Zayra sings first, and announces she’s going to be doing a very serious, intense song called ‘Razor Blade’ by Blue October, and that she’s going to be doing a very serious, intense performance. Silly me, I didn’t realise that ‘serious and intense’ meant “heavy breathing, screaming and turning around to show your panties”. Perhaps this is why I will never be famous. Patrice is not surprised to be in the bottom three, but she steps up her game and says she’s going to take a risk and do something rocky instead of the ballad she had planned, so she takes on both the Hole curse and the ‘do better than Lukas, ha ha’ snark, and performs ‘Celebrity Skin’. The TWOP recaplet says at least she doesn’t forget the words, but um, she kind of does, she fucks up verses beyond the point of what they must do in order to shorten the songs, and she can tell that she’s doing it too, but she covers it up much much better than Lukas. She also wanders around the audience, and the stages and goes and sings to Supernova, putting delicious tasty emphasis on the “have you ever felt so used up as this?” lyrics, which is what Lukas should have done in the first place, and so despite the fact that she’s wearing a white shirt that looks not unlike a strait jacket, she does pretty well. She’s definitely a better singer that Courtney, but I have no idea if she’s as a good a lyricist.

Last in the bottom three is Magni, which is received widely with boos, but I am happy because I know it means I get to hear him sing twice. He decides to go for ‘Betterer than Lukas Part Deux’ and picks ‘Creep’, which he says he chose because it’s an anthem for his generation. Awww it’s adorable because it’s true. He does a pretty much straight forward cover, so it includes the chuuuuuuur ch ch ch guitar shift into the chorus, and that is awesome. And he’s so much more authentic than Lukas, and oh hey, what’s that water trickling down my face out of the corner of my eye? Ummm, I must be warming up for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Honest. Plus I have so much love for his beanie and tree of life tshirt combination. Supernova of course tell him that he is miles away from going home, so they send him back to the other rockers while they debate Zayra’s risk-taking versus Patrice’s always-in-the-bottom-threeness. In the end, they decide that Patrice has more potential for their band, and just like that, the reign of Crazy is over. Which means that my predictions were wrong. Crazy.

I can’t wait til next week! Except it’s request week, where they’re going to be doing old songs again, unless you go and cast your votes for them all to do the ‘wildcard’ songs. Which others have done before, but still something new is better than the same thing again.

I fought off my anxiety over whether or not anyone would actually show up for America at the Country Club with the phrase “Well KateH is coming, and that’s all that matters”. But then when I went to Chrisana’s goodbye Paramount drinks on Friday night, after expensive but tasty Thai with Karen at the Oriental Thai, everyone was like “fuck yeah!” about coming, so I informed them that the official colours of the university were black and green, because that was the colour of balloons that I’d happened to buy at the supermarket the night before.

This of course meant that Saturday was spent in cleaning the house and decorating the lounge with said balloons which had been blown up by me and the boys with the aid of a balloon pump the night before while they watched the Steel Mill and I tried not to get beaten up for making derogatory remarks about metal, and green and black streamers, and rasturbated banners that said “Pledge Eta Beta Pi!!!” and “Pledge Gamma Gamma Gamma!”. The boys, meanwhile, went to Bunnings and apparently had long discussions with one of the men there and spent $38 and came home and built Liz the Funnel with valves and all. Why Liz? Because apparently all funnels are supposed to be named for whores. Bart said “Liz Phair!” and I would have growled at him except that I knew he meant L** S*** instead. Smoo was like “Liz Phair’s still a whore” and I was like “hush your mouth! She’s a boring suburbanite mom now. I miss the blowjob queen!”.

The keg was delivered in the afternoon, and we had many long discussions about where to put it – if we left it on the front doorstep, would ferals come up and steal it? But if we put it inside the dining room, would it make a mess? Eventually we compromised by closing off the kitchen door at the end of the hallway and putting it there. I dressed myself up in the university colours

This pic was actually taken at the end of the night, so imagine how fantastic I must have looked sober. And yes, I do appreciate that anyone who knows me probably has very little idea of what I actually look like sober…

and was just about to go and pick up Brad and Karen when I got a voice mail on my phone from some guy saying “I got a link to your blog from Public Address, and it sounds like you’re inviting all and sundry to your party, and I don’t know anyone in Wellington so if I ask politely, can I come?”. I was like “huh? I don’t write a blog” but since the guy had left his number twice, after he took my interogation questions in good stead (“1. Gilby or Izzy? 2. Who would win in a fight between a pirate and a ninja? 3. What word did you use wrongly in regards to talking about my website?”), despite him giving all the wrong answers I texted him my address, warning that the party would be fairly small – around 16 people or so, and that he would stand out.

It turned out that at first, the party was very split, with Bart’s Eta Beta Pi clustered in the dining room, while us Sorority sisters were in the lounge. Ash or perhaps Kristen even said when Sebastian came running in “Sebastian, what are you doing in here? You’re a boy!” and I was like, ummm, what about Brad? But we mixed it up more when people went outside to do funnels:

Bart sucks it down

LisaB takes in her own body-weight in beer, while Kristen is caught in the act of being so very 2006 with her camera-phone

Eventually, having laughed at the boys enough, Gamma Gamma Gamma were also persuaded to do keg stands.

LisaB fearlessly went first, and achieved full verticalness. She is our hero

Ash loved it so much she went twice

KateH showed up late for the party but hurried to make up for lost time

I was worried that they wouldn’t be able to hold me, but they assured me they could, and so I did a couple as well. The first time my arm slipped and hit against the keg which wasn’t fantastic, but holy crap, keg stands are my new favourite thing in the entire world ever. EVAH. Except that I am so fucking sore today, or at least I was until I took a lengthy spa at the gym in my lunchbreak instead of doing a proper workout. I am naughty. My arm also got hurt when we jumped Smoo as soon as he came home from work and forced him into a kegstand while Bart paddled his ass with a cricket bat, except that he got my wrist a lot more than Smoo’s ass, and Smoo kicked out, and knocked Kart over, but to be honest, I’m not sure if she even realised. Even Karen did a keg stand when we agreed to let her put a plastic cup of daquiri and straws down on top of the keg so she wouldn’t have to have beer.

And of course, because it was Country Club we passed around our pieces of trivia, and I made everyone hot dogs (which were fucking good) and also oatmeal cookies (I really should remember to bake more often) and assorted other snack foods. Eventually most of the people had left (*), so me and Karen and KateH and Bart and Smoo just sat around the dining room table eating apple pie and vodka jelly. Bart was falling-off-his-chair drunk, and incredibly entertaining. He decided to call up everyone in his phone who wasn’t at the party, and even though it was 3am, we let him. Yes, we are enablers. And we laughed our heads off. Then Karen left, and KateH and I decided that it was time to watch Mischa Barton die, so we did, even though the boys were dividing their time between bitching about it and falling asleep. I am so so so so glad I got an Auckland friend to attend a Wellington friend and Country Club event, and that it all went well. We only made $85 back on a $200 keg, which sucks, cos obviously not everyone who drank it chipped in, but meh, I generally spend about $100 on each Country Club anyway, by the time I add up all the costs.

In the morning KateH and I went and had coffee (She was like “I didn’t think I’d stay, but of course I did – when have I never stayed after one of your parties?” and I racked my brains trying to think of an answer), then I spent the day doing laundry and watching videos, dozing, and avoiding the large pile of dishes in the kitchen. I wonder if they’ve been done now…

September’s Country Club will be Morocco, after we realised that we have totally neglected Africa, and then there’ll be a German Octoberfest in October, strangely enough. Then when I come back from San Fran, we’ll do a Mexican Day of the Dead, and that’ll be all of North America polished off…

There’s a $351 amount on my credit card right now from spending ten minutes on the phone this morning and a half hour researching on Monday. Why do I tell you this? Well because a 50 litre keg of Mac’s Gold will be delivered to my house on Saturday, and I need you to come and help me drink it. And pay for it. I’m a little scared that no one is going to come to this Country Club, because after all, everyone hates America. I don’t know why though, I mean, America is like, awesome. So you should come on Saturday, because there will be fraternities and sororities (you should totally pledge to Gamma Gamma Gamma), and American food, and illegal hazing, and vodka shots, and beer beer beer. And maybe Showgirls and/or The Breakfast Club. It starts at 8pm. Like, awesome!

This week I am all about being aware of my body. Partly this is because I’m about to get my first period since like, April, and I’m crampy as fuck, especially in the o moment, and my boobs are insanely sore. Stupid fucking cold weather. In better in touch with my body news, I can feel my stomach muscles! Apparently there’s muscles in there. Who knew? I mean, obviously you can’t see them, and it’s not like the blubber’s going to stop jiggling any time soon, but I can feel something working when I do my sit-ups or leg lifts or remember to lean back when I’m doing lat pull-downs. I’m astonished. It’s a good feeling. And now I will shut up about this crap after I remind myself that I’m starting boxing tomorrow and I really need to get a fucking sports bra like six months ago. Stupid small boob-to-back ratio.

Things that I have done recently included having martinis with some of the fine people from the Wellingtonista. It was terribly civilised, proper and grown up. I also traded 101 Stories with Martha for something from Babylicious which is Aotearoa-made baby clothes. It was all very civilised and grown-up, which was lovely, but when I snuck out to join my cows and ex cows at the Poon I was like “Phew, now I can say ‘vagina’ again lots”, and two ladies sitting on the balcony gave me dirty looks as they left. Hah! We then tried to have dinner at Sweet Mother’s Kitchen but it was fuuuuuuuuuull so we ended up at Boulot, you know, just for a change, prompting much discussion about how weird it was to be there before midnight. The pizza was as always still good though, but there was something weird going on with me because I stopped drinking around 10pm and was almost falling out of my chair with tiredness by midnight. Very very unlike me. As a postscript, I had lunch at Sweet Mother’s yesterday and they have fish tacos. Heh heh heh. I had beef ones though that were rather tasty, and I think the place has a lot of potential.

Saturday meant a cocktail party for my workmate’s Hens’ Party, thankfully sans stripper. It was held at the house of one of my company directors, who happens to my workmate’s mother, and everyone had to bring a bottle that was assigned to them. I stepped up to the blender and made many fantastic concoctions, including my first ever mojitos, not in the blender. Maybe I should become a bartender when I grow up. Or perhaps a mixologist.

Before I went to the cocktail party, I spent a very enjoyable day sorting through my newer CDs to decide which ones I wanted to keep (not many of them), then eating a leisurely breakfast with the paper at Coco, and then browsing Real Groovy for hours as they figured out my trades. For $2.75 out of pocket I bought Funeral new on CD for Karen (to go with Birds as her birthday present, although after I bought Birds I realised I had to keep it for myself because it had a DVD and Karen doesn’t have a TV, but luckily I was furnished with another copy, thanks doll), and then on vinyl I bought Interpol’s Turn on the Bright Lights new, and Beth Orton’s Central Reservation which is curiously spread across two records, but is nice to listen to while doing the semi daily yoga-ish stretches and it doesn’t remind me of 2000 anymore which is super good, and The Dark Side of the Moon and one of the Tour of Duty soundtracks. I <3 the trade-in, although that was like 16 CDs worth. I guess you get what you pay for. Or what you don't, in this case.

On Sunday we went to Capitol for Karen's birthday dinner. The girl serving us wasn't as fantastic as the usual staff, but the food was still all very good and I was well happy with the Jim Barry shiraz that we had after a pretty bland Mt Nelson sav. It turned out that the witloof in the chorizo, almond and witloof salad was really really bitter. I didn't see that one coming! Because apparently I am an idiot.

Last night we had flat dinner, although the idea of sitting around the dining room table was nixed in favour of sitting around the lounge table on account of that being where the heater was at. I thought the weather had got all nice and mild, but man I was wrong wrong wrong. Then the boys went and got out Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and it was just as good second time around. Movies that have their characters arguing with each other about adverbs while trying to solve crime and accidently killing people make me hot.

Today at work I am doing more phone support for this website that I now work on quite a lot, which in a “the internet is too small” twist, this young lady does as well, except from the other end. I’m also writing lists of things that I need to do but can’t really be bothered doing, and I’m trying to stay away from TWOP forums so that I don’t get any spoilers on tonight’s episode of Rockstar: Supernova. You can tell that it’s okay to be into Rockstar because Russell Brown said so. Sort of. And on that note, it’s time for me to go and get back to work. Awesome. But I will see you on Saturday, right? RIGHT?

Reality / Performance / Results

Okay, before I get started, if you don’t get why I love Rockstar so much, please go watch the videos for a couple of performances last year – choose Jordis singing ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ or Marty doing ‘Wish You Were Here’, and then hopefully you’ll see. Otherwise, check out an episode of NZ Idol and compare it to an episode of Rockstar and then give me a call from hospital after you’ve gouged out your eyes.

I can’t believe they let Dana go when she had grown so much over the past five weeks. That’s insane. Sure, Shakira sang the verses of ‘Alone’ okay, but the chorus was still that full-on hideous “more louder is more betterer” bullshit that she always pulls out. And she is so taaaaacky. Ewww. I mean, obviously, Dana was never going to win. But she should have stayed another week. Jill shouldn’t still be here. And don’t even get me started on Zar Crash. And while I’m not getting started, it’d be awesome if I could stay away from the TWOP forums and recaps but I can’t. I really can’t. So I’m not even going to try.

The Reality Episode
Patrice doesn’t know why she’s in the bottom three. Brooke Burke wants to lie on the piano while Ryan plays. Well, I suppose the piano is less wooden than you, Brooke, so it might be a good match. Gilby shows up on a motorbike. I must interject now and talk about how much I’m currently in love with Gilby, even though apparently he and his wife started the craze for real low rise jeans with their label Frankie in 1998. And Frankie is named for their daughter, and there are articles linked from the TWOP forums about them that are just super cute. But I digress.

Back at the mansion, they all get electric guitars from Gibson, and Gilby plays a song for them and tells them they have to individually write lyrics and melody for the song and then perform it for Supernova the next day.

Lukas says the Supernova song makes him want it to pump it to ten. He’s obviously not a real rockstar or he’d turn his amp up to eleven. A fun wikipedia fact about Lukas is that he sings on Macdonald’s ads in Canadia eh, and also various cartoon soundtracks. YOu shouldn’t let someone who can’t even speak English talk to kids, right?

Dilana’s song is about living in the rockstar mansion, apparently. Storm goes running to write her song and she looks a lot more like Lindsay Lohan then she did the week before. Ryan wears a lot of eyeliner while he works on his song, and interviews about how authentic he is, but how his music is opposite to Lukas’s. Also his dress sense is totally opposite, given that Ryan dresses like a normal person while Lukas is wearing half a dozen necklaces. Apparently he’s the new Mr. T. Yeah I’m still angry about him fucking up that Hole song, in case you couldn’t tell. And Ryan gets shitty with him too for bugging him while he’s trying to write.

The next morning Gilby asks if they had enough time, and everyone says yes, and Ryan is like whaaaaaaat? because of course he didn’t even party the night before he was working so hard. His song sounds like Live vocals crossed with ummm something a little honky-tonkyish. Storm jumps up and down in a not very supportive bra. Jill forgot to put on pants and T’Lee says that she is a really good singer who always oversings. Gilby laughs at even interviewing about Dilana, and Jason says her song was cornball – strangely enough given that she’s singing about lotion and thongs. Lukas says his song rocks, it’s dirty and sexy like himself. Hmmmm. Well okay, it sounds pretty good. But he’s still an ass. He’s so the new JD. I am waiting for a human beings moment from him.

Magni’s fiance and baby show up and it makes me wanna cry because oh my god, what’s cuter than baldheaded rockers looking all softy? Oh no wait, that’s right, I’m coming up on a period, of course I’m going to be emotional. But holy crap that baby is cute. Magni is definitely in my top three now.

Song choice time! We’ve got Bowie, ‘Creep’, and umm I didn’t see what else. Dilana takes the songs out of The Room to the dining room table. Gilby’s going to be playing on ‘Won’t get fooled again’, so Dilana takes it. I wonder if she’ll grind. Ryan says “this isn’t a house of brilliant strategists, this is a house of musicians, so maybe that’s why we’re not all going for the Gilby song”. Dilana wants to show him that not all girls grind, and she says maybe she’ll headbutt him. Heh. Then she tries to convince Lukas to sing ‘Creep’ so that he can show Supernova his sensitive side. They talk about about him opening up his throat again. Hehehe. Yes, I’m still five. But also, remember how when they had a vocal coach and he was all “I’ve never formally trained”? That’s bullshit cos he went to some singing and dancing academy, according to Wikipedia. And Wikipedia never lies. The episode closes with him standing by himself in a spotlight at night trying to hit the note. I hope he can do it. The only thing worse than people covering Radiohead is people covering them badly. I’m looking at you here Zed…

Reality / Performance / Results

The Performance Show

So there’s all sorts of footage about how people didn’t want to play with a member of Supernova for various reasons, which is cut basically to make everyone look like whiney little brats, which of course means that Supernova gets pissed and Dave says that if he was in charge Dilana would win right now. Then Gilby takes off his jacket so he’s in a t-shirt and I swoon a little because he’s working the wrist cuff thing, and he gets up to play ‘Won’t get fooled’ again with Dilana. Her crazy hair is tied back in a big headscarf, so she looks very different than normal. She’s also wearing burgandy leather pants straight from the wardrobe of Season five Buffy which make it apparent that actually, Dilana has no ass. I never realised that before. And she sings the song just fine, and as promised, doesn’t grind on Gilby. Now some of the posters in the TWOP forum for the reality episode were like “why does Dilana keep going on about how Jill did the grinding? Get over it!” but seriously, do you think Gilby’s over it? He’s probably still waking up in the night screaming, and I bet it’s affected his lovelife with his lovely-sounding wife, because I’m sure he poured lysol over himself to try and get rid of the Shakira smell, and lysol’s just stingy. So as far as I’m concerned, Dilana can make as much fun of Jill as she likes. And the band love it.

Speaking of Jill, tonight performing ‘Mother Mother’, which is a flatout odd song, even if Brooke says it’s “Grammy nominated”, she’s Storm-lite, and she pulls off the same Avril Lavigne performance that Jenny did before she got evicted. She’s finally realised that “dressing like a rockstar” means going less heavy on the lip liner and more heavy on the eyes, but her eyebrows are totally black and look incredibly wrong. Plus, she’s wearing shorts and I can’t help but think of gofugyourself rants against formal shorts, and also unlaced clumpy boots. That’s not pratical, Jill! You could trip and hurt yourself. Although according to her official MSN bio it says that she had a pair of boots by Steve Madden named after her. Who the hell is Steve Madden? But nevermind. Supernova say it’s her best performance yet, and it’s true that she didn’t scream, but also she wasn’t fit enough to pull off all the running around she did while still hitting the notes. I haven’t said it yet today, so I’ll say it again now: I hate Jill, so I nearly piss myself when someone (probably Gilby) says “You know, I figured out why I’m scared to criticise you – it’s because you remind me so much of Carmella Soprano”.

Brooke’s all “somewhere in this auditorium is Ryan Star” and the new spotlights shoot through the crowd and pick up a hairy hooded figure making his way through the audience. Yes, that’s right, I said a hairy hooded figure, because it turns out that Ryan is wearing a wig over his hood. As you do. And he has a thick band of black makeup all across his eyes, ala Michael Stipe’s blue at Live8, and I am like WHAT. THE. FUCK? And text the same to Anji. And the feminist in me is glad that I get to bitch about male clothing as well as female clothing. But oh right, he’s singing “Paint it Black”. Of course, silly me. That explains the black tights. As the TWOP recaplet says “Good thing he didn’t sing “Honky Tonk Women,” because I’m not sure I needed to see him decked out like a truck-stop waitress. ” His vocals are on, but the energy seems really fake, and he’s taken the ethnicy bits out of the song in order to strip it back, and I’m just not feeling it, dawg. Supernova are like woah though, and say “you are totally a contender” which is funny, because when Brooke introduced him she said “Ryan proved last week that you are a contender”. And it’s also funny because season two of The Contender is now on in the States and as it’s Mark Burnett too they’re all about the crossover – the rockstars keep blogging about hanging out with the contenders. And if I gave a crap about boxing other than looking forward to my lesson today of course, and read Contender sites, they’d probably be talking about the rockstars. Nice work.

Storm’s white pants (white pants? What is she, a fourteen year old girl three years ago instead of a 37 year old now?) reveal that she has that curious ant segmentation-type torso, like D’Angelo or Pink. Creepy. She’s singing ‘We are the champions’ which of course JD absolutely slaughtered last year which led to the whole “Mig has already recorded the album with INXS conspiracy theory” after Mig was able to fucking kill ‘We will rock you’, although given that he was in the Queen stage show, that’s just as fucking well. I swear this much because it’s what rockers do, like when Jason was confused by Ryan and Dave was like “It was the * Jason, and you know it”. Storm sings it rather well, but she’s all standing in one place and so T’Lee worries that they’ve scared her into taking out her craziness, and she’s like “don’t worry, I can still rock the crap out of you” and I laugh.

Brooke says “there are two questions the world asks itself every week – what’s the weather going to be like, and what will Zayra be wearing?” I thought it was like “what’s for dinner, and why the fuck is she still in the competition?” but hey, I’ve never hosted Wild On, so what would I know? As it turns out, today Zar Crash is wearing huge fuckoff black platform shoes, a top hat and long black wig, and a skintight strapless flared gold latex jumpsuit. I don’t want to alarm you, but I’m pretty sure she’s not wearing any panties under it either. She’s singing David Bowie’s ‘All the Young Dudes’ so maybe this is her interpration of Glam Rock. Harvestbird texts me out of the blue to say that she looks like Willy Wonka, and haha, it’s funny because it’s true, and I’d like to encourage the rest of you with my number to text me similar thoughts as we watch. Curiously, Magni is playing the guitar for her. I’m not sure why. Maybe he’s into autoerotica, in the David Cronenburg Crash sort of way. What is autoerotica if it’s not getting off on car crashes anyway? Hmmm, if only there was a place I could go to where I could type in a word and find an answer. Perhaps monkeys could deliver me the information in a tube of sorts. Oh, it’s masturbating. I should have known that. Well I suppose that’s probably what Zayra will resort to next on stage. For the record, her singing it pretty atrocious too, and at one stage I’m pretty sure they’ve turned off her mike. Bless you, house band. Dave says if this was Rockstar: Pluto she’d win, and someone says it’s important that their singer have confidence. The TWOPer recapper suggested last week that people realise Supernova aren’t going to send her home until much later because they are also fans of her auto erotica, people are now voting for Zayra so that she doesn’t end up in the bottom three so that we don’t have to sit through two songs from her a week. Hehehe.

T’Lee says he feels like playing the drums when Josh announces that he’s singing ‘Interstate Love Song’ and Josh is like “What? Are you serious?” and it’s like the first time I’ve seen Josh in any kind of likeable light. He stands playing the guitar for this song which is boring boring boring and he misses his cue once again. Filllllller. The band say his voice sounds good, which is true, but meh.

More footage is shown of Magni with his family who were flown over to visit him, and his baby is perhaps the cutest thing on the face of the planet ever. Magni comes out with just an accoustic guitar and he sings “the Dolphin’s Cry”, and despite the many years I spent making fun of Live with Tom, I suppose it helps that there’s not a ridiculously bloated video with water crashing through an alleyway knocking down models, because all of a sudden my allergies flare up, and there’s something in my eye. It must just be dust, right? Right? I mean, I wouldn’t cry when someone was singing a Live song. That’s ridiculous. But they do cutaways to his fiancee in the audience and his baby wearing protective ear muffs, all Apple Paltrow-Martin at Live8 except cool, and oh, just the vulnerability in his voice, and the beauty of just him in the spotlight and wow, I really should take some allergy pills. Magni is now officially my favourite. Especially when he gets all choked up when Supernova ask him how it was having his family over. How moved was I? Enough to spend 99 cents on a text vote and then leave the realative warmth of the lounge to go and vote for him three times online as well.

Patrice is singing ‘Instant Karma’ by John Lennon which I thought I didn’t know until it came to the chorus. She does the playing the guitar thing, sticking to what she knows, and I’m like oh Patrice, why? I like you, but you’re going to be in the bottom three. Where’s the over-the-top drama? Where’s the ridiculousness?

Lukas is wearing a silver brocade jacket that’d make a nice bedspread. He’s toned down his eyeshadow to display his sensitive side, but the shoulderpads are still totally unnecessary. His delivery of ‘Creep’ starts out as a muted affair, which I’m a bit disappointed in, because I would have loved to hear the house band to the chick-chick-chugga-chugga lift into the chorus. He winks at Supernova when he sings “I don’t belong here” making me wanna punch him in the face, but when he launches into the “Run, run, ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun” bit he totally nails the note and gives me chills. He’s opening up his mouth and letting it pour out as Jason has always asked him to, and that’s how I know he will get the encore, although I want Magni to, but Lukas hasn’t had it before. Did anyone get double encores last year? I should check that out and report back to you.

Toby sings ‘Burning Down the House’ exactly as if he was Brandon Flowers and he was with the Killers, until Zayra brings him out a megaphone swathed in an Australian flag and it becomes apparent that he actually thinks he’s Scott Weiland. Dave tells him it was an unnecessary gimmick, but Supernova like it. I suppose none of their bands were exactly models of restraint and taste either.

Bottom three are Jill, Patrice and Josh, or maybe Zayra though I have my doubts, and the encore will be Lukas’s.

Reality / Performance / Results

The Results Show

I was of course right about Lukas getting the encore. Dilana looks pissed off when his name is announced, which gives some weight to the theory that people on the TWOP forums have been bantering about, that she only told Lukas to sing ‘Creep’ cos she thought it’d fuck him up – but I still don’t believe that. Or do I? I do hate on the South African accent after all, and she must get that Lukas is probably her strongest competition in terms of being the other person who appears to be right for the band. Then Supernova then announce that they’re giving out two and I’m stoked that Magni gets it. I’m also stoked that plugged in, I’m not nearly as moved, so maybe I’m not going to start liking Live after all. Phew! That was a narrow escape. Supernova tell the rockers that if they survive tonight they get to go to Vegas with them, and dude, how fucking awesome would that be? I’d even sleep with Jason Newsted to get to go on that trip – and I imagine he’d be a crier. Actually, perhaps sleeping with Jason wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world – he’d order me to “CRUSH IT” and I could deliver. I digress.

The bottom five are Zayra, Jill, Patrice, Ryan, and Josh. No surprises there. Jill’s the first person in the bottom three, and she’s dressed like my sister used to dress in 1989, light-ish jeans with holes in the knee that are a little baggy and look like they’d be slightly tapered, those stupid undone boots again (although full credit to Anji for never wearing those) and some kind of ugly black top, which would be fine if she didn’t announce she was going to sing ‘R.E.S.T.E.C.P’. I always knew she got the wrong memo and thought she was on Idol. And she belts it out as she always does, and I’m like, woah, awesome display of subtly there Jill – NOT. Yeah that’s right, it’s so bad it makes me revert to 1991 slang. In fact, it’s so bad it makes the House Band sound bad, and that’s never ever happened before. And yes, I know that most of the House Band also play for Michelle Branch, and that she’s not the coolest singer ever, BUT she was on Buffy so I think they were too, and that version of ‘Goodbye to you’ was killer, and Tara was leaving, and Willow was crying in the bathroom and oh, it was so sad and beautiful and tragic. Obviously I need to revert to a happy place to deal with the Shakira.

Josh is also in the bottom three, and he sings umm hmm, I can’t remember what he sang at all, and the TWOP recaplet doesn’t tell me. I guess that says a lot about Josh and the memorability of his performance. I do remember him bobbling his head about like Phil x 1000 though, and that he sang strapped in to his guitar again, so it’s obvious he’s had enough and wants to go home. Ryan, meanwhile, does not want to go home, and he makes that rather clear, along with how cunning and calculated he is when he says he’s going to be doing a Depeche Mode song “but I’ve changed the arrangement to make it more like what you want to hear…. which is what I like as well”. Nice work there Ryan, aligning your values with theirs. Now how are you at raping girls in the closet?

Ryan sings it well enough for Supernova to say thatt they want to see more of him, so it’s Jill and Josh left, and then the awesome happens, and both of them get kicked out! Josh asks if he still gets to come to Vegas, and in that moment I love him a lot. But I am happy that they are going. Now when the fuck will they evict Zar Crash? Stop voting for her! Hearing her sing twice will be okay if it means she’s finally leaving.

Oooh look at me, I’ve finally got my journal kind of current. Except for filling in my RAGE about Dana being eliminated instead of Jill. Or Zayra, naturally. But let’s not talk about that (or the boards that I have been reading, or the tears that have sprung to my eyes today watching clips of Marty and Jordis…). Let’s talk about me instead!

Firstly, what I left out of my Auckland recap was that while I was at Annabel’s, she pulled out her copy of Boys Boys Boys Boys Boys as I emailed her a copy of 101 Stories, and it was soooooo weird reading it again. Did I really write that? Did I really live that way? Strange. No wonder people have mentioned what a progression 101 is. But I would still really love someone to send me back a copy of Boys because I haven’t got one. Please? Someone? I know they’re mostly pretty bad photocopies anyway, but maybe someone has one of the A4 versions that they could send me? Thanking you in advance.

Other things that are good in my life right now is meeting up with the rest of the Wellingtonista crew tonight for martinis (except for me because I am under 30), and then a cocktail party tomorrow night for Cinta’s hens’ night. Then on Sunday dinner for Karen’s birthday. On a much healthier for me note, I signed up to do personal training boxing sessions today. I’ll get to hit stuff! Yay! I think that will be fucking awesome stress release, and also I’m trying to mix up my exercising, because I don’t want to get bored and I really need to step things up for the sake of my wrist and also not dying on the flight to America.

I am so looking forward to America, like woah. The time is creeping closer and closer. In fact, America at the Country Club is next Saturday August 12. We’re having a kegger Frat/Sorority party with John Hughes and Showgirls. And a pillow fight. And junk food. And initiation ceremonies and hazing. You should come along. In real America news, I rang Kate at some ungodly hour last Friday night when I got home. I was aiming for her birthday but kind of missed, and also I was drunk and lonely, and I miss her! All the same, I’m really not looking forward to the phonebill.

This afternoon I am sniggering at the Peaches CD I’m listening to and trying to postpone doing more phone calls, but since there are a hundred people on my list (almost literally – once I finish assembling my list there will be anyway), I suppose I shouldn’t put that off for much longer. Work is interesting right now in terms of RFPs, and black holes, and also new projects that I am working on, and the fact that I went on some weird trip on Tuesday and cleared out about four things I’d been sitting on for months. Go me. And now I must go and pee. It’s important that I tell you this, honest.

Finally, just some links to things I’ve been up to lately – TV Squee / Rockstar Obsession / Pirate and Auckland photos. That’s about all. OH! And I have an RSS feed that works now, which I would add in to the bottom of the page, except that without a laptop I can’t FTP in, but you can find it at http://hubris.co.nz/rss apparently, according t the wise Heather. That’s it now. Ask me some questions about what you would like me to tell you about.

Okay, so a couple of weeks ago I had four nights in Auckland, and such is my obsession with Rockstar: Supernova and my lack of laptopness (update: it’s with Bond & Bond for hopefully fixage), and my surprisingly large workload (project managing. Me. Whodda thunk it?) that I have yet to write about it. So now I will.

Wednesday
I flew up on Wednesday 12 July in the afternoon. My shuttle picked me up way too early and my flight got delayed so I can happily report back that Wellington Airport, while better-looking than Auckland, is incredibly boring. Still, finding a $25 Whitcholls voucher to spend on magazines is nice. One of these days, I really must get myself a subscription to Q since it’s the only magazine that I read which I totally respect. I mean, apart from Pulp, of course, but I hear the music reviewer for that genuinely likes the Spice Girls, so what would she know? I was staying at the Comfort Inn again, this time in a one bedroom suite that captured all the afternoon sun, so that sucker was hot. Crazy Aucklanders thinking that they’re in winter when they so aren’t, everyone’s heater was turned up way too high. The suite didn’t have a bath, unfortunately, but the shower was oh-my-stars-I-think-my-scalp-is-being-caressed-by-angels strong. And it’s always nice when no one has written on the walls of the bathroom in their own blood (Smoo is so fucking feral. That’s not part of my Auckland story, but seriously, who the fuck does that? Bart cleaned it up for me when I expressed my total and utter disgust. I wish I’d taken a photo first, because it was actually kind of funny).

First up on my Auckland agenda was meeting Annabel for a drink up at the Odeon. I hadn’t seen her since 2001, but we’ve had many an online conversation since then so it didn’t seem too unnatural. Once the Odeon started giving us the dirty “We’re closing. Get the fuck out now” eye, we went over the road for another drink at Galbraiths, and I decided that I should platonically set her up with Heather, since they live near by each other and have a lot in common.

After that, it was back to my room to try and get a nap in before the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Holy crap that gig was overflowing with gaxys and hipsters! I’m pretty sure that every tight pair of black jeans, little op shop dress and Karen O haircut was in attendance. Drunkenly. And noisily. Holy crap there are few things I hate more than drunk 18 year old girls. I don’t understand why the fuck someone would pay over $60 for a concert ticket and talk the whole way through it. I had to restrain myself from punching people. I should have moved away, but as I was feeling so very old – I arrived while the Mint Chicks were playing and instantly cursed myself for forgetting ear plugs -, I was standing at the back behind the padded barrier and laughing at people who tried to walk through it. And wishing that I was Karen O, of course. I liked it when she screamed, because all the stupid bitches shut up for half a minute. They played songs I didn’t know, and drew out the beginnings to many things, and she writhed around under pieces of shiny material. I waved my fist in the air for ‘Phenomena’ and the long-intro’d ‘Y Control’ and got teary when they came back for their encore with ‘Maps’. I also spent a lot of time thinking about other gigs I’d been to at the St James, including the Roni Size gig where I took e for the first time, and the True Colours gig when I didn’t realise I was going to fall for the boy I’d just left sleeping. Afterwards I thought about taking the bus back up the hill but I couldn’t stand the gaxys anymore so I taxied back up for more glorious showers, even though my feeling-oldness had kept my moshing and therefore my sweatiness to a bare minimum. Man, no wonder it takes me so long to write these kinds of entries, I go way too overboard with details. Nevermind.

Thursday
The next morning I had brunch at Benediction with Elisabeth from Pulp and this time I successfully managed to keep from calling her Carla even a little bit. She said nice things about my reviews, which is always pleasant to hear (who’d have thought that good feedback would be like, good? Woah Jo, you’re out of CONTROL), and loaded me up with many more CDs, including the new Muse, which made me squee with joy. But on the inside of course, because I was pretending to be a cool Aucklander. A cool Aucklander who was nevertheless very impressed when the electronic bus timetables on K’Road proved to be quite accurate. I headed off to Grey Lynn to meet up with Jessie, and so I got to see her very posh offices. Then we went for lunch at Delicious, because I’ve always heard good things about it. Holy fucking crap, that place is delicious. We had bruschetta, and then I had roast beetroot ravioli with smoked ricotta, and every mouthful was like a thousand orgasms. We lingered long over it, and then gave the dessert cabinet the glad eye. After some quick agonisations, we decided to share a piece of pistachio praline chocolate ‘cake’, on the grounds that while their tiramisu also looked amazing, it was more common. The cake was pretty much like tiramisu anyway, with the added bonus of pistachios. Wow. It was like dying and being brought back to life and being fed really fucking awesome sweet desserty treats, without having to die and be brought back to life. My similes are fucking rocking today, I must add.

She dropped me off at Real Groovy so that I could cash in $50 worth of booksellers’ tokens on records: You are free by Cat Power, Funeral by the Arcade Fire, and most exciting of all, Horses by Patti Smith, which was the reason I bought a record player in the first place (now I can totally satisfy all my own fantasies – well as far as sitting on the floor playing myself Patti Smith records goes, anyway. Although my record player is a little too high up in order to do that comfortably. Perhaps I should rearrange my room). Of course I ended up having to spend twice as much as I had in tokens, and the same thing happened in Farmers when I was using vouchers to buy more foundation and also lip gloss because goddamit, I haven’t bought any in a very long time, thank you very much, and no I don’t have an addiction, fuck you. Then I went up to Rakinos to meet Sam for a coffee. Well, I had wine, he had water, and he talked a lot about sales techniques. It made me laugh.

After that it was back to my hotel to be incredibly disturbed by Juice TV (why oh why did anyone let Panic! At the Disco record a song that contains a line “haven’t you people heard of closing the goddam door?” in such dreaful all over the place timing? Their phrasing is like a thousand times worse than the Manic Street Preachers or Silverchair, and that’s saying a lot. Not to mention emo as fuck. I wish my hair was emo so that it’d cut itself. Heh), read, and nap some more. I love holidays with their rich nappy goodness. Around 7.30, I headed off to Annabel’s house where I had arranged to meet Heather before our dinner. This meant I got to meet Elton, which was very choice, and the girls got to meet each other too, instead of just stalking online. We had wine and watched Rockstar and Heather and I were having such a good time we asked if it wouldn’t be too weird if we got our food and ate it there. Annabel pulled out a folder of menus, so we took that as a sign, and Heather went and fetched us Meekong. Mmmmmmoney bags. Mmmmmmmmmmm so much tofu. Mmmmmmmmm goodness. Thanks for dinner Heather – it was an awesome birthday present. Eventually though we had to tear ourselves away as we were due to meet KateH at Match Bar to watch Sam play.

Sam had said that Match has a crappy crowd, but myyyyy god I hate the rich white trash even more than I hate the faux emo gaxys. Not that I judge people on sight or anything, but why the hell are you bothering to order Moet by the bottle when you’re so drunk that you break your glass every time you go outside for a cigarette? We were sitting close to the doors and counting broken glasses, and there were at least eight over the course of the night – from a fairly small crowd. Some of the guys got so drunk that they had to be carried down the stairs. Not pretty. It was lovely to catch up with KateH. We sat and talked for a long long time in egg shaped chairs, and then once they were done playing we went to Denny’s with Sam once he was done trying to get KateH to buy in to his pyramid scheme. By that stage it was after 3am (Did they play ’3am’? I’m pretty sure there was at least one Matchbox 20 cover. Ahh covers, good times. KateH and I laughed and laughed and laughed) and Auckland was drowning in mist. You couldn’t see the Sky Tower, or even more than ten metres in front of you. It was fucking excellent. So pretty and spooky (*).

Friday
Friday had been booked in as Heather’s and my Cultural Day, but I was feeling a little sloooooooow because I’d got to bed after 5am. I met her up at Altezzano and nearly fell flat on my face a couple of times. That whole walking thing is kind of tricky sometimes. We decided that the counter food on offer was not enough for people who’d had salty $18 tequilla cocktails the night before and so we made our way down to Galbraiths. It was about 11.45 at that stage, and Galbraiths was shut. Oh the horror! We needed our greasy NOW! Or rather THEN! Instead we strolled down to the House of Knives to browse amongst the shiny objects (but not the Shiny), having our minds boggled trying to figure out who would own a $1600 knife block. I mean, yes, good kitchen knives are important, and I’m gutted that Horrible Jonny stole my chef’s knife from the famous samurai sword village, and I wish that Del had gotten around to steeling my current knife before Bart broke up with her, but $1600? Woah. We strolled back up to Galbraiths and joined the throngs – and there were throngs – who were also doomed to waiting outside because it was late in opening, but eventually we made it in, ordered large plates of meat, and took our beers out to the back garden. The last time I was in the garden there, it was my last day of work at the Med School and I flashed my cow-orker so that I could win our staring match. The time before that was before the Placebo concert which is a whole diferent era of life (dates! and bedding! and being asked to be someone’s girlfriend!), and boy, Auckland sure likes to stir up the memories huh? It was a gorgeous day. I rolled up the sleeves of my long sleeved tshirt as we basked in the sun and the beer made me come up with the funniest/stupidest joke I’ve come up with in a while:

Q. What’s that noise coming from the BeeGees’ herb garden?
A. It’s just the chives talking.

Ha ha. Heather had chives on her shanks, obviously. Obbbbbbbbbviously. Our master plan called for us to be going to the museum right about then, but we weren’t sure if we could be bothered walking all the way to the domain from where we were at, since we were between two kinds of public transport that could have gotten us there, but then I had the genius idea of busing down to the art gallery and taking a link from there afterwards. Of course, my genius didn’t actually extend to remembering that the 27*s don’t go down Wellesley St, and so we got off on Symonds St and went for a very big long walk down and around Albert Park (and of course on the bus on the way home we realised that if we’d stayed on the bus we could have avoided that). Still, gorgeous day and walking is good for you. The fact that my feet had been screaming at me since Wednesday was irrelevant. I like the quiet echo of the art gallery, and I’m awed by the fact that they have stuff that’s almost a thousand years old, but there were no new exhibits in the old gallery, and then by the time we were done with that, our feet were too sore for the new gallery. We had coffee on the pretty terrace up amongst the trees away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and decided to call it a day then.

More nap, more Juice TV, some vodka purchasing, and then Jessie came over for a drink. She found me in my pyjamas, because they are pale pink with skull & crossbones on them, and what is more awesome than that? Pretty much nothing. Except for italics. We had a bit of a goss, and then cabbed it up to K’Road where my darling social secretary KateH had arranged an AUT dinner for me at Saigon. I even have photos of it, see?:

Brad, who was up in Auckland to shoot a short film for his course, Shirley who was off to Europe the next day, and Nigel who was still flush from winning
48 Hours and you can view his movie here

Andrew-from-Hamilton, KateH. Not pictured: KateH’s friend whose name I can’t remember. Or me.

I think the woman at Saigon was a little bit in love with me. She kept touching me. Maybe that’s just because – as usual – I played The Dominator and chose all our food. Mostly I did really well too. The noodles were a bit unnecessary.

After dinner, we went to The Musket Room in Ponsnobby. It was pretty crowded, but we managed to find ourselves a table and Brad ate one of the mozarella balls that they brought to our table, thinking that they were complimentary, until we got kicked out of that room because apparently it was a private function. We managed to find ourselves a big table though, and Clayton showed up, hurrah!

Shirley, leaving the next day. Clayton, not hating my guts.

We had some good talks about his career, and he’s doing all these amazing things which is awesome. I also invited him to Amy’s Pirates & Cheerleaders party for the next day, because he’s always loved of the young girls. I think Brad’d had a few drinks too because he gave me a big talk on what an awesome writer I am, and blah blah blah. I say blah blah blah not because it’s ever boring hearing about how awesome I am, but rather because I’d had a drink or two myself, and so I can’t remember all the correct wording, rather just the sentiment behind it. I really liked the Musket Room, apart from the private function kerfuffle and a few girls who were a bit too foolishly dressed (White summer dresses? Really? Sienna fucking Miller called to say you look ridiculous). They were playing ‘Fascination Street’ when we arrived, and then the music mix continued to be really electic, with lots of new wave and also indie and general goodness. Plus it was so dark that I had to read the cocktail menu by the light of an obliging young man’s cellphone. But all good things come to an end, and I found myself back at the hotel watching O.C reruns before I knew it.

Saturday

Jessie and Heather came to get me at some ungodly hour of the morning, and we set off for the French food markets somewhere in Parnhell. Jessie’s magnificant parallel parking skills came in handy, and I nearly died queuing for ages in an incredibly busy cafe to get pretty dreadful coffee, but once I had the cup in my hands, and a couple of quick wine tastings, things were much much better. We tried a multitude of tasty tasty things, talked to scensters and finally settled down with big containers full of hot gnochi. Gnoochi? I can’t spell. But I can eat. Oh boy can I eat. I can also take pictures, although Jessie doesn’t like to be on the internet, so I will show you a picture of Heather instead, because she never complains:

I did mention that it was early morning, right?

I can’t remember what I did on Saturday afternoon. I must have done something, right? Oh yeah, I went and camped out at Benediction again and read their magazines and drank their much better coffee. Heather had said that she’d come to Amy’s party with me, because I didn’t think I’d know many people, but then she wavered, so I promised to pay for the taxis and buy her vodka, and that we’d only have to stay an hour if it was terrible (although I knew it wouldn’t be) and so she duly showed up at my hotel to do semi shots of Russian Cocaine with me (licks of instant coffee, shots of vanilla vodka and then licks of sugar not off a lemon since we didn’t have any), lace me up and take photos of me dressed up as a pirate:

Mary-Kate, me, Ashley trying to escape

We cabbed out to Amy’s (“Give me an ARRRRRRRRRRRR”), found our way down an impossibly long driveway, and much red pirate punch and good times were had. I got to talk to JSR and Annette lots, and Amy had three costume changes. Her speeches were done in the form of “I have never”, personalised specifically to embarrass her, which was fantastic. I talked to new and interesting people, and Clayton showed up and did the same. And then I KICKED ASS at Singstar. I was undefeated on the night, and achieved my all-time personal best score of 9200 on ‘Material Girl’. Woohaa! Thank you so much for having me Amy, even though I’m sure I overstayed my welcome. I do that a lot.

Sunday

On Sunday the lovely Jessie picked me up so that I could have somewhere to leave my suitcase all day before she took me to the airport, and in exchange I bought her brunch at Deve. Heather popped in to see us so that we could giggle at her gossip, and then she took me to her house where I sat on her bed in the sun, ate home made cookies and dozed a little for a while, before I went down to Occam to catch up with first Penny and then Bopha. Hurray! And then I cabbed to Heather’s to watch the Gilmore Girls and umm, now I really have to wind this up. Flew back in the evening, Anji picked me up. That’s all. I thought I had other bits and pieces to say, but apparently I don’t. I <3 the 09 though.