Hubris.co.nz

So the amount I’m mangoing, calling everyone “you fucking stupid whore” (although mostly in my head), yelling at Sebastian, using up all our bandwidth downloading porn, crying at everything on TV (including Grey’s Anatomy recaps and reruns of episodes of Rockstar: Inxs – although to be fair, it was the one where Marty sings ‘Wish you were here’) and being as ravenous as the wolf suggests that it’s almost time for the red right hand, which means it’s been more than a month since I was in San Francisco and I still haven’t written up my holiday. Where the hell did the time go?

Well, I suppose I did spend a couple of weeks obsessing over the First Annual Wellingtonista Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. I tried to be as consultatative with the group as possible, but in the end I figured someone just needed to take charge and get it done – much like my New Year’s Eve plans with the tripleK whereby I searched for fucking ages to find a bach for us, found a great place in the Orongorongos, everyone said that they were totally keen and now of course, no one can commit to it so it’s off. If I was to continue on a “sometimes I really do feel like my friends let me down when I go to a fuckload of effort”, I’d mention how I was short of five votes to win the best Wellington Web Writer, and how many Hubrettes didn’t vote (not to mention most of my real life friends) but I’m not that sort of whinger am I? No indeedy.

Anyways, the awards night on Friday at Might Mighty was fabulous , even if I arrived late because I spent an eternity blow-drying my hair and waiting for my taxi to arrive.

Self portrait in the Mighty Mighty bathrooms, which are the same intense candy pink as the loos at Occam

Hadyn has handily put photos up in his flickr account if you want to bask in the blow-dried goodness, except that of course I am making a stupid and chinny face in almost every photo. But on the whole, the photos are awesome and it was very exciting having an Official Photographer with capital letters and all. Plus, I wrote out speeches for all the award presenters to read – although they were allowed to say whatever they felt like – so it was most amusing to see grown men speaking like the wannabe valley girl that I am. After quickly downing a cask red wine in an attempt to slow down my heart beat which was having palpitations from eating too many chocolate-covered coffee beans, I drank many a tasty martini made by the nice bartender with the Hitler hair, and then switched to sweeter cocktails. I chatted with people from the blogosphere (haha! I know) and decided that a slightly tipsy Martha is totally my new BFF and ever as we gossiped like mad and she ran around on secret errands for me (*).

Hadyn, Martha, Glen. Note the goats that Martha appears to be throwing. You know who else throws goats? The NAZIS.

Eventually after all my other fellow Wellingtonistas had left – and I was really stoked that they thanked me for my organising efforts and deemed it a success that we will repeat next year – I sat around making Nazi jokes with Hadyn and his friend who reminded me rather a lot of Sammy from AUT, but that might have just been the fact that they talk about sport a lot. My toe was driving me crazy with pain from my drunken “hey, you know what’s a good idea? ripping open your blisters to drain them!” surgery the night before, so I was very glad that I’d eventually accepted there was no point in even trying to wear my heels, as my maryjanes were bad enough.

Nevertheless, I made my maryjanes take me up to Ladyfest at San Frindigo to see Katy dance with the Real Hot Bitches.

The Real Hot Zombie Army

Boy bitches!

I wasn’t actually sure who was going to be there, so I was super glad that Chrisana was there playing records in between acts cos I got to talk to her lots.

Big pimpin’ up in SFB(H).

They’re putting a bar out on the balcony. Laaaaame. The balcony’s already too damn small in summer. Sigh.

They already moved the bar to the other side of the room from where it used to be when the bar was Indigo

There were all flavours of lesbian in attendence, from cowboy dykes to total girlie girls (and yes I am in fact totally making snap judgements about their sexuality, pretty much based on nothing at all, since there were plenty of some straight couples around too), but I was just too damn tired to oggle properly, given how hungover I’d been all day so eventually I just had to take myself home.

Behold the ladies!

After all, the night before, on Thursday – if, like me you’re losing track of the narration, I had attended the opening of Helen’s shop, Modern Love. The shop is at the top of the Plimmer Steps, one shop down from Madam Fancypants, and it’s bloody gorgeous, as you can see in these pics:

Modern Love at night

Horses in my frieze… Well, Helen’s frieze.

The party was also astonishingly packed, so it’s just as well most people were dirty smokers.

Inside the shop

Outside the shop

And again

We ended up sitting in the carpark across the Plimmer Steps because it was raining, and as Helen had managed to get DB to sponsor her opening (product placement: Stark the RTD is pretty damn drinkable as it is sugar free or something like that, and tastes just like flavoured carbonated water), and talked and talked. Eventually after almost all the booze was gone, we hoofed it over to Mighty Mighty, where I stared at a girl for ages before finding out she was the identical twin of a girl I went to uni with (Not Shirley’s Evelyn though), and learnt about the wonders of Castlepoint Ale – a 750ml bottle for $7.50. Nice.

Needless to say, by the time Saturday rolled around, I was fucking exhausted and was able only to go with Karen to the award-winning Maranui Surf Cafe for delicious brunch.

Surf club participants participating out the window

And then we went to sit in the sun drinking frozen daquiris at home. That’s as exciting as the rest of my weekend got. Wahoo. And now it’s Monday, and I learnt how to update our website at work todya which makes me so very very happy, and I’ve been doing our intranet too whcih means I’ve been handcoding all day and so now I think I will bid you farewell.

xojo

I hope you appreciate that right now I could be soaking in a bath scented with Frozen Lemon Custard flavoured bodywash from Sephora in Times Square and reading Everything about me is fake – and I’m perfect by Janice Dickinson and intead I am here updating my journal. Okay, partly I’m still here because I’m intrigued by the Watch This Space alt rock show on C4, but a good part of it is loyalty to my beloved readers. If you feel a similar type loyalty to me, may I encourage you to vote for me in the First Annual Wellingtonista Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. Even if you don’t want to cast a vote for me (what, not even as the answer for “The best thing I’ve had in my mouth all year is…” ?), you should still go along and cast your vote for something. And then I will tell you where the award ceremony will be, and you can come along, and laugh at me falling over in my high heels.

And now that I have done my pimping, and now that Bjork has been reunited with her besuited (is that bespoke) cat lover on the television and I’m about to explode with cuteness, I can get on with telling you about what I have been up to lately. except uh oh, am I crying? Stupid awesome dancing with cat video. And speaking of cats, here’s some Power. This show rocks.

There was much much Cat Power on Lisa’s car stereo yesterday when we went out to Petone to look at the pier. Turns out it can’t really stand up to its peers (ha HA), but excursions are always nice. Especially if you’re the type of person who has been at home far too much lately watching two seasons’ worth of Arrested Development and trying to figure out if you are more in love with Gob or George-Michael. I am that type of person. Smoo, meanwhile, appears to be gay for Tobias. But I can respect that and not judge him. Much.

I joined a new gym, and learnt how to do their circuit. It’s all about 40 second bursts. The place is a labyrinth, the lockers are tiny and the staff are terrifying in their enthusiasm, but they have a massage bed, box fit classes and it’s two blocks from my work, so that’s a big hurrah. And holy fucking crap it feels so damn fucking good to be exercising again. So good that I must use a multitude of bad words, obviously.

I didn’t go today though because I didn’t want to have to lug my gym bag up to Craftwerk, so I suppose it’s just as well that we had a fire alarm and I had to run down fourteen stories in order not to die in the theoretical burning flames (as opposed to non-burning ones?). I was worried that it’d be crap cos the people I was supposed to go with canceled at the very last minute, but I found a couple of my fellow Wellingtonistas there – Hadyn who was there with his awesome John Campbell shirts, and Martha was of course pimping out her tshirts that are too Babylicious for you babe (Also: Lisa has some disturbing but AWESOME music in her car. Hence the Destiny references). I bought some artwork and some tiki earrings and then settled down to drink wine with Martha and whine. Then I dropped my artwork off at Karen’s house because I didn’t want to carry it any further and came home.

A couple of days ago I went into hotmail to retreive an ex cow’s email address because I don’t have MSN at work, and I found out that because I hadn’t been into hotmail in a while they reset my account. This means that if I hadn’t copied it out into 101 Stories I would have lost the very first love letter I ever wrote anyone, Tori Amos and Barbara Kruger quotes and all. It also means that I lost the whole folder of yours and my email corrospondence from back in the day, which made me seek out the printed version to make sure it actually existed because I am still waiting for a reply to an email from April. Which I’ll get in 2009. Maybe. But I reread the letters, and I started wondering if I’d made you up, would I have included as many apostrophe catastrophes on purpose, to make you more flawed and therefore more believeable, or would I have just been too anal to allow that? I know that if I’d made you up I’d never have chosen Posh Spice as your favourite spice girl. That’s just indecent now, although I suppose she wasn’t Skeletor then. But I didn’t make it up. I suppose it’s beside the point anyways, as now Watch This Space has finished, and I can go and have my bath now. Janice is waiting for me after all. But before I go, did Chris Cornell really have to do a James Bond theme?