The November issue of Foreign Policy magazine, because the articles are rather insightful without preaching to any particular political leanings.
Dragon Age: Origins for XBOX360, an RPG that has been garnering a fair amount of praise.
The new James Ellroy novel, Blood’s A Rover, the last of the Underworld LA Trilogy (American Tabloid and The Cold Three Thousand being the earlier instalments)
A sorely-needed Remington beard trimmer.
The red 18″ mega munny, because it is big and red.
The Gloomy Bear 8″ dunny, because I didn’t already have one.
The only things I have yet to sort out buying are:
Flights to Auckland for Laneway Festival in early Feb 2010.
Flights to Melbourne for HEALTH in late Feb 2010.
Maybe I should just fly from Auckland to Melbourne and just spend the month of February there. Or not.
Issue 2 of FLURO comes out on Monday. It’s a limited print run so chase it down wherever you can.
That’s because all the cool kids read FLURO.
In Wellington that means ALC HQ, Artikel, Dandylion, Eyeball Kicks, Ernesto, Epic, Fusion Surf and Skate, Fidels, Good as Gold, Hurricane Jeans, Iko Iko, Illicit, Little Brother, Madame Fancy Pants, Miss Wong, Milk Crate, Mighty Mighty, Modern Love, Plum, Rex Royale, Ruby, Ricochet, Ultra Shoes, and Ziggurat.
I wonder if Good as Gold has the new issue of Vice.
Vice Magazine used to produce issues centred around core themes, but this approach was abandoned with the last issue. The Turning Gay issue was kinda boring and I’m not the only one who thought so. The brilliance of themed issues like the Iraq issue and the Fiction issue seemed to have been replaced with what amounts to a hodge podge of largely unrelated items.
The highlight of the Noxious Fumes issue wasn’t the cover item on the most pollution-spewing sites in Vice editor home cities (Auckland’s tank farm rates a mention but it doesn’t really rate against the monstrous examples from elsewhere in the world – talk about small ambitions of a small country).
No, the highlight for me was one simple question…
“How would you kick your best friend’s ass?”
The Vice street poll predictably brought out some disappointingly banal “I’d kick him in the nuts / I’d smash him in the face”-type responses.
Where is the malice?
Where is the careful consideration?
Maybe they liked their best friend too much to give it any thought, but my instinctual reaction to the question was something along similar lines to the excellent short story by Neil LaBute in the Fiction issue. Malicious, lasting in effect and completely anonymous.
I’m not saying I want to hurt my best friend in cruel and unusual ways. Far from it. What I am saying is that if you are going to go to the effort of fucking over your best friend, you’d better make a decent effort of it.
Everyone’s favourite record label Modular Records (home of The Presets, Van She, Cut Copy and Klaxons among other stellar acts) now seem to have their own mag called of all things, M is for Modular.
Haha! Yes, I also picked up on the subtle reference.
The first issue has just come out and seems to be free to all and sundry so long as one lives in Australia. Thankfully I’ve got Piers hooking a brother up with a copy.
This comes out on the back of their seventh Modcast arriving in my iTunes earlier today and what an excellent Modcast it is too. 56min of pure gloriousness, esp the SebastiAn remix of Klaxons’ Golden Skans and the 13min Modular mix at the end is quite the smorgasbord of similarly excellent tunes.
I do however wish Gus would get the levels right so we could hear him speak in between the tracks. Quite often I’ve had to turn the volume way up to struggle to hear him say something before he kicks in with a track that almost blows the speakers.
It reeks of homemade lo-fi podcasting (UPDATE: which we love by the way!) but the songs they showcase are something so very very special.
Sure they don’t stick to the monthly mantra but it only makes them all the better to enjoy when they do arrive. Much like an old friend.
Speaking of old friends, Joel the Jet Pilot is coming up to our nation’s glorious capital from the one-eyed south to play a live set at some seedy dancle club in mid-May. If his mixes are anything to go by (and I think they are), I think it beholden on all of us to make an effort to enjoy the aural awesomeness he spins out.
Actually, is it still spinning if you’re working on a laptop instead of turntables?
Surkin can certainly rock the dancefloor from behind a laptop so it must be ok. In this youtube clip he does SebastiAn and then Midnight Juggernauts.
I so want his babies. Yes I know he looks like he’s about 15yo. No I don’t actually want to suffer the misery of childbirth. I just really like the playlists for the sets he does.
Like, REALLY like.
Like, travel to Melbourne like.
Reaching out
Feel free to forward any thought-provoking contributions, questions seeking clarification, matters of particular concern to yourself about this blog, and any achingly witty bon mot to hello[at]hakopa[dot]com
