Debate Issue 23, 2010

ISSUE 23 2010 I

SHIHAD INTERVIEW

ISSUE 23 2010

BIG DAY OUT LINE-UP REVEALED

OCTOBER ODYSSEY

FASHION WEEK REVIEW

1

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*Travel restrictions & conditions apply. Prices and taxes are correct as at 29 Sep 10 and are subject to change without notice. Prices quoted are on sale until 09 Oct 10 unless otherwise stated or sold out prior. Prices are per person from Auckland in economy class unless otherwise stated & are subject to availability. Airport departure fees are additional. Additional fees specific to your flight routing or stopovers may apply. ‡ Carry on baggage only, additional costs apply for checked luggage. Some domestic and international airfares are instant purchase, check with your consultant for details. Seasonal surcharges and blackout dates may apply depending on date of travel. Capacity is limited & will not be available on all flights.

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Trips are only operated if minimum passenger numbers are met and consist of passengers paying full price. Travel Insurance is required to be held by all Intrepid travellers. All airlineIntrepid taxes, travel insurance, domestic airfares if required, any additional meals, any extra sightseeing or activities, any additional acco mmodation, personal spending money, passports, travel visas required, transport to and from departure point and all other ancillary costs, as well as obtaining any of these, are the responsibility of the traveller. Please refer to the Booking Conditions at www.intrepidtravel.com.Lan Airlines Prize Conditions: Flights are economy class & are subject to availability.

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this issue of

on the cover Drawing

by Soo Park

editor Samantha McQueen samantha.mcqueen@aut.ac.nz

printer PMP Print Ltd.

all rights reserved. designer Nonavee Dale nonavee.dale@aut.ac.nz Deanne Antao

sub editor Jared Van Huenen

contributors Mike Atkins | Jo Barker | Jonathan Camp | Alicia Crocket | Tenani French | Brendan Kelly | Melissa Low | Hayley McGehan | Minh Ngoc | Soo Park | Heather Rutherford | Meg Rivera | Catherine Selfe | Tamsyn Solomo

This publication is entitled to the full protection given by the Copyright Act 1994 (“the Act”) to the holders of the copyright, being AUCKLAND STUDENT MOVEMENT AT AUCKLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY INCORPORATED (“AuSM”). Reproduction, storage or display of any part of this publication by any process, electronic or otherwise (except for the educational purposes specified in the Act) without express permission is a break of the copyright of the publisher and will be prosecuted accordingly. Inquiries seeking permission to reproduce should be addressed to AuSM.

disclaimer

Kate Campbell kate.campbell@aut.ac.nz

Material contained in this publication does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of AuSM, its advertisers, contributors, PMP Print or its subsidiaries.

publisher

debate is a member of

advertising contact

4 5 6 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 21 24 26 27 28 30 33 34

ISSUE 23

AuSM Gig Guide Editorial Letters Creative Corner The Great Race - Bathurst AuSM Update How To / Recipe University Education Debate Commonwealth Games ASPA Awards Reflection Andre The Giant Internet: Schizo Hypocrite?

Big Day Out Shihad Interview Quiz / Retail Review Columns Suggestions / Horoscopes Agony Aunt / DVD giveaway Fashion Week Diaries Reviews Spot the Difference Micro-celebs

AuSM – Auckland Student Movement @ AUT (Inc.)

10% permanent student discount* We buy and sell second-hand textbooks* - instant cash if you sell Over 100,000 books in stock* - no waiting weeks for books to arrive Four stores Auckland wide Open Monday to Friday or buy securely from our website 24/7

www.ubsbooks.co.nz ISSUE 23 2010

City Campus Phone 366 4550 Fax 366 4570 Email aut.city@ubsbooks.co.nz

Akoranga Campus Phone 489 6105 Fax 489 7453 Email aut.akoranga@ubsbooks.co.nz 3

PRESENTS

4 – 15 October AuSM x Red Bull “re –energize zone” with Air Hockey table, bean bags, Nintendo Wii @ WC202 All day Mon 4 October Free Feed Manukau Dodgeball 12-2pm Manukau Monteiths Monday Vesbar Free pool from 6pm Tues 5 October Free Feed North Shore Vesbar Pub Quiz 6pm Win bar tabs and spot prizes Futsal Champs 5-7pm NShore Gym Netball League 7-8pm NShore Gym Wed 6 October Vesbar Students Combo Day Food and beer combo just $7.50 all day Turbo Touch 12pm & Handball 1pm North Shore Gym Futsal Champs 5-7pm NShore Gym Netball League 7-8pm NShore Gym

4

Thurs 7 October Free Feed !"#$%$&'()$!*+,",-'.$/,0.)

Social Touch Game 2-4pm Manukau Campus Comedy Night featuring Gish, Brendon Lovegrove & Jarred Fell Vesbar 8pm Fri 8 October Hypnotist Guy Carter Vesbar 8pm Sat 9 October AUT Blues Awards sponsored by AuSM Vesbar North Shore Sun 10 October Breakers Open Day North Shore Events Centre / Entry by gold coin donation

12 October Sausage Eating Comp North Shore 14 October Octoberfest 15 October AuSM Presents 2010: A Bass Odyssey featuring Optimus Grime and MC Billy Fluid + more @ Vesbar

18-22 October AuSM Exam De-stress Zone A relaxation zone with food, music and massages @ Vesbar

29 October Vesbar Halloween Party

Don’t Forget Nominations for AuSM Awards

Coming Soon...

11 October AuSM SGM 12pm at Marae Free Pizza and refreshments. All welcome.

closing soon.

More info online: www.ausm.org.nz

reception

U

nlike most seven-year-olds, ds, an who still believe they can make it as a world famouss n rock star or will fly to space when at they grow up, I always knew that d I was going to be a writer (and ng when I finally learnt the meaning of the word, journalist). Sure, people temporarily swayed me into different professions (Why did you have to make being a lawyer so awesome, Reese?) but after meaningless affairs with economics and law, I was back with a pen in my hand. Even through my three years of communications, when fellow journalism wannabes were blinded by the dollar signs and glamour of PR, I was determined to be one of the hundreds around the country reporting on what matters around the country. I didn’t even mind if I had to do a story on fluffy animals (which I sadly haven’t had to yet).

Throughout the years, people have asked (in our annoying accent) why I would want to be a journalist. After all, compared to other professions, you work twice as hard for half the amount of money. You get calluses on your hands and you’re prone to RSI, arthritis and other crippling bone diseases. You get hate mail from the general public because they don’t agree with what you’re saying. Most people are afraid to talk to you because they don’t want to be made part of the story. The law gets on your back if you refuse to reveal sources, even though journalists are always taught to protect their sources, no matter what. Just look at John Campbell and that medal business.

The truth is, I didn’t get into journalism for the same reason most newshounds did. I’m not a political nut and the idea of being a political journalist gives me shivers. I’m not an avid sports fan, so I definitely couldn’t wing my way through countless interviews with rugby legends, cricket greats and swimming stars (although, at least I wouldn’t get star struck). I’m not seasoned enough to be a travel writer, and while I went through the New Zealand education system, I don’t have huge desires to specialise in that field. I’m also not the typical stereotype of a journalist. If you look in the movies of the “good old days”, journalists smoked like chimneys, kept a bottle of scotch in their desk as a pick-me-up, talked faster than the average person thinks and magically pulled pencils from various parts of their body. Aside from one of those (and I’ll let you guess which one) I don’t partake in any of “classic” journalistic traits. But I will plough through all of these fields of journalism and take all the stereotypes thrown at me if it means I will end up at my chosen destination: entertainment journalism.

Now, before you scoff and spit at the page in front of you, I’m not talking about salacious gossip a la Perez Hilton or TMZ (although I admittedly indulge from time to time). I’m talking about the journalism most of you actively read: interviews with musicians, artists, actors, directors, producers and everything in between. My ideal job would be watching the latest TV shows and providing rousing commentary of each episode and unapologetically ripping it to shreds. Before you say “that’s not a job”, take a look online at the LA Times, Vanity Fair or New York Magazine. All are reputable magazines with readers that have arguably high IQs, and all of them have writers whose job it is to talk TV every week. Seriously, a job where you rate the quality of Glee numbers each week? Sign me up!* But until then, this job is ticking lots of “dream jobs” categories. I get to attend advance screenings of movies (some which come with free popcorn!), review CDs before they’re in stores, interview some of the coolest people in New Zealand and have working email relationships with some of the loveliest people in New Zealand movies, music and media.

Seriously, to all of you, you have all helped evaluate this magazine to award-winning standards (see page 14).

Now, not to get all blog-gy or anything, but what would your dream job be? Professional sunbather? Ultimate party planner? New Zealand’s next top model? Remember, if it exists, you’ll find it on Seek (or general cyberspace). *To me, the only job better than watching TV for a living is being paid to sleep for a living.

And I’m sure there’s a professional job title for that too.

City Campus Level 2, WC Building 921 9805 8am-5 pm Mon-Thurs 8am-3.30pm Fri North Shore Campus Level 2, AS Building 921 9949 8.30am-3pm Mon-Fri Manukau Campus MB107 921 9999 ext 6672 9am-3:30pm Mon-Thurs

management Sue Higgins General Manager 921 9999 ext 5111 sue.higgins@aut.ac.nz

representation Veronica Ng Lam AuSM Student President 921 9999 ext 8571 vnglam@aut.ac.nz

advocacy Nick Buckby Liaison Manager 921 9999 ext 8379 nick.buckby@aut.ac.nz

marketing Rebecca Williams Marketing Manager 921 9999 ext 8909 rebecca.williams@aut.ac.nz

events Barry Smith Events Team Leader 921 9999 ext 8931 barry.smith@aut.ac.nz

media Samantha McQueen Publications Co-ordinator 921 9999 ext 8774 samantha.mcqueen@aut.ac.nz

sports Melita Martorana Sports Team Leader 921 9999 ext 7259 melita.martorana@aut.ac.nz

vesbar Zane Chase Vesbar Manager 921 9999 ext 8378 zane.chase@aut.ac.nz

For a full list of contact details plus !"#$%&'"(')*+,'&-.(('./0'&-*0%/-' executive visit: 1112)3+,2456278

ISSUE 23 2010

5

Dear Debate, I loved your version of the October Calendar! I thought it was quite cute.

Keep up the great work, I love the creative stuff and the activities like quizzes and crosswords you can do. I find them really entertaining!

Personally I would love to see more creative stuff in the Creative Corner in Debate.

It’s always great to see the the letters sent to Debate to be quite sensible! Unlike one time when I picked up an issue of Craccum by chance and read to some of the letters - it makes me wonder how high the IQ of letter contributing students at AU were! Not very high I’m sure!

Keep up the awesome work as always Debate!

- F. Dragon Dear Debate, On Friday of last week, I was walking past AUT Business school on my way to class. Shallow pockets and powerwalking do not mix for a safe wallet transit - my wallet fell out.

Once I discovered this, I was horrified and mildly distraught. I checked everywhere I had been, and did everything I could to locate it, but somehow, I knew it was gone.

On Sunday afternoon, I received word that a certain Geoff had found my wallet. And against all odds, on Tuesday morning, Geoff of Counter Cafe reunited me with my dear wallet and it’s contents. Thank you Geoff, for not only was the wallet featuring an Australian map (-5 points) but I am a UoA student too (-1 point) - both plausible reasons for dealing out some pain. And remember Geoff, if you want that morning tea I promised I’ll only be too glad. :) Thanks again, - Jon Colyer To all the smokers on the city campus, Does smoking make you unable to read signs? There are signs near the library that say no smoking and I always see filthy smokers lighting up there. I can see that you don’t care about your health, but you should at least care about the health of the little kids that are in the play centre underneath!!! You have plenty of places where you can smoke your cancer stick so stop blatantly breaking the rules. YOU’RE NOT COOL! - Anon Dear Debate, Just me, your friendly neighbourhood letters writer! And I just want to say I was dissapointed with the lack of

6

responses to my marijuana rant. To the the one girl who did, thank you!

I am glad to see you like my points on alcohol and tobacco, and i love it “There is no way one can cause violence whilst in a state of immense exhiliration”. Perfectly sums it up, I say we get the entire UN together, lock em in a room and get em high as hell! That’ll stop wars, who’s with me?! Now onto what I hope will create responses. I was impressed to see debate doing a pro vs anti religion debate. However I thought the No side should have fought harder! I mean the Bible speaks of cannablism by christians, nowhere in the bible does it say no sex before marriage, the jews crucified one of their own, then blamed each other, and that book is the bloodiest, most brutal book ever written. Where else can you find cannablism, rape, murder, crucifixion, adultery and the other sins committed, yet its all good because they’re Christians? Nowhere.

Anon It’s been there for a while, but the feeling is just getting worse.

I just can’t deal with the sign saying AUT UNIVERSITY on Wellesley Street, I see it every time I walk to work.

I have a degree from AUT. Auckland University-goers have traditionally looked down on AUT, but I’ve remained safe in the knowledge that the communication studies degree is highly regarded in comparison with similar courses from other universities. People would joke about AUT, but there was little substance to it.

But AUT seems hell-bent on embarrassing itself with branding that will tar all students current and past. I mean, Auckland University of Technology University? REALLY? Could my alma mater possibly have lower self esteem? WE ALREADY GET THAT IT’S A UNIVERSITY, IT’S IN THE ACRONYM. SPELL OUT THE WHOLE THING IF YOU NEED TO. Don’t tell me that you really let the jokes get to you? Now they’ve really got something to joke about.

Signed, - Disgusted Auckland University of Technology graduate Dear debate, Heard through the grapevine (Twitter) that you won some awards for the mag. Just wanted to say congrats!

I’ve been reading debate magazine since 2008 and this is the first year I’ve picked up every issue and read it!

Shot on the great mag and keep being AuSM (haha, geddit?).

Debate reader To the kind person who... chased me down the street to give me back my USB… thank you! My whole life was on that stick and even though I thought you were a serial killer at first, I’m totally grateful.

Please print this debate so everyone can know how awesome some people can be. hello, just wanted to write a letter in response to the article about immigrants integrating themselves into the new zealand culture.. of course they should!! I mean, they are in new zealand now, not back where they were from. They should experience everything that new zealand has to offer and they won’t get that if they won’t let go of their own culture, even a little bit...i’m from outside of auckland and it really surprised me actually how many different races there were here!

And true, they bring aspects of

Shihad Big Day Out Commonwealth Awards October

their culture into nz which we new zealanders can benefit from but seriously, if you’re say..chinese and you speak chinese and you only have chinese friends and you eat chinese food and you go to a chinese school...i mean, you’re in nz now! broaden your horizons a bit folks! :) it wouldn’t hurt.

A few things to comment on issue 22: The five ways of personal vs virtual world article - excellent we need more humour, sick n tired of seeing the same stuff in debate, come on we are students we need something else to read other than intellectual stuff. TV on a 13” screen article - the main reason why nz tv is dying its all crap there isnt anything on!!! And lastly commonwealth games have been cancelled before common knowledge, during WWII and subsequent wars around the time of the olmypics, and when rome invaded greece, and suspended during the 70’s due to milita invading the olympian compound and killing the israelian team. Just some common knowledge for you. :)

Exams Beerfest Chopper ASPA Bathurst

ISSUE 23 2010

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Rin - Meltdown Tamsyn Solomon

Fairy Minh Ngoc

This is killing me and your eyes are boring into me like two sharp blades.

I’d cry for you on a much brighter day.

But you’re not who you used to be.

You’re different.

Like those sudden pink days in summer?

I’ve lost you entirely..

And then you hold close those memories, you can’t make anymore.

I am here... now, but you seem to have walked another mile.... on another road.... on the outer-side of a parallel universe...

Ducks Hayley McGehan 8

On Another Day Pooj GypsyPirate

PREVIEW: THE GREAT RACE

BATHURST 2010

by Jonathan Camp

I

t’s that time of year again – October equals Bathurst. It’s the one race that captures the close attention of many millions of people around the globe, both the dedicated fan and the non-car person. It rates higher than any other sporting event in Australia, attracting more viewers than the AFL grand final and State of Origin. That’s just a couple from a myriad of reasons to watch the ‘Great Race’, especially if you have not done so before. Let’s dig into why this year’s race is going to stand apart from all that has gone before.

The biggest game changer is this new co-driver rule announced at the end of last year, which caused some controversy with many teams. This rule forbids full time V8 Supercar drivers from pairing up, forcing them to stay in their own car and co-drive with a non-regular driver. This may not sound a huge deal on the surface, but let’s just look back on the last 10 years of Bathurst wins, and you quickly see the dominance of main game driver pairings such as Skaife/Richards, Murphy/Kelly and Whincup/Lowndes. The reality is no team has won in the past decade separating their full-time drivers. Putting all your eggs in one basket so to speak has been the best chance of winning the great race. But now that this has been ruled out, it’s blown the competition wide open and changed the whole strategy and dynamics of how the endurance races are prepared for and executed.

The inevitable backlash of this rule is the cost increase and higher demand of top quality drivers, which some pointed out that the big teams could snatch the best co-drivers by offering the largest pay check. Some teams have gone to great lengths to get an edge on the competition and prepare their co-drivers by putting them in the Fujitsu V8 Series to gain some miles, as there are strict restrictions on testing. The Kelly brothers have been the most vocal critics of this new rule, but many such as Tim Edwards and Ross Stone have embraced it. This is because the rule has merit. Keeping the drivers in their regular cars means the number of contenders for a win/ podium will increase possibly two-fold, since more full-timers will be on the track at any one time than in pit lane. And they will be qualifying and racing in their normal cars, liveries and numbers they normally compete in during the season – a positive for the many sponsors. I think what it also adds is value to the contribution of the co-driver, as well as a greater element of unpredictability. Nearly every year, the same drivers have competed for the top spots, but with the new rule, it leaves it wide open for potential winners.

Looking back, last year was a fascinating race with contenders moving in and out of the lead pack as rain and safety cars interrupted the running.

Fuel economy became the hot topic, as the new E85 ethanol burnt fuel 30 per cent quicker than the previous race fuel. This put a lot down to well played strategies, strong team effort and quick decision making ability.

Whincup and Lowndes were a real threat, even after a drive through penalty early in the race. Jason Richards achieved second place the third year in a row, and the almighty combination of Skaife and Murphy nearly rained on HRT’s party. Eventually, Tander and Davison played their cards right and ended up best off for the last stint of the race to come out on top, in a race that had a mix of everything.

More recently, the Philip Island 500 – or the curtain raiser to Bathurst – gave a helpful indication of how the drivers rank and perform in a ‘mini’ endurance race, half the distance of Bathurst. One of the standout performances of any co-driver was Steve Owen. He stunned everyone, myself included, claiming pole position with the fastest lap in qualifying. He went quicker than his full-time driver team mates, Whincup and Lowndes. Just sensational – somebody give this guy a full-time drive! The shocker on race day was Whincup’s car dropping oil on the track less than 20 laps from the end, which looked to be a Team Vodafone 1-2, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

Lowndes and Skaife claimed a memorable victory, having not teamed up in 10 years. Unfortunately for Whincup, his championship hopes are fading, leaving Philip Island even further behind Courtney. I’m sure he’s hoping that a co-driver won’t ruin his day. A DNF at Bathurst would nearly destroy ISSUE 23 2010

his championship chances.

Bathurst ultimately now has become a series of segmented sprints than an ‘endurance’ race. We conventionally associate endurance with pacing yourself, keeping steady, and not burning out too quickly. But, long gone are the days of Brocky with his arm casually resting on the window, cruising his Torana home to victory. Much advancement in engineering, technology, and reliability of the cars has pushed the limits of race pace to the point of a fiercely competitive 1000km sprint race. This adds to the intensity to the last hour of the race where everything comes down to the wire. There are many strategy factors, such as fuel economy, tyre life, drivers, pit crew, weather, and team engineers and managers. The two most significant at Bathurst are: firstly, fuel economy and when you take your pit stops. Secondly, making sure you have a good car after 850km.

The nature of Bathurst, however, is that you can do all the work, get the strategy right and have the car speed at the end, but bad luck can still ruin your day. The Great Race’s history is littered with heartbreak stories, but what they all have in common is the pace and strategy to get track position for the run home, from either the last pit stop or safety car. From there, it’s a frantic sprint to the chequered flag. Therein lies the beauty of Bathurst - in its complexity. This race is the ultimate team sport, where one, solitary weak link could bring the whole show down. So who will win? You’ll have to watch and see come Sunday October 10. Don’t miss it.

O ITED T VIT ARE IN U O Y

N DA0YTH E P O S EAKER OBER 1

BR NDAY, OCT SU

BURGER KING BREAKERS V BARTERCARD ALL STARS NORTH SHORE EVENTS CENTRE DOORS OPEN 11AM: - 11AM-12.30PM: KIDS BASKETBALL CLINICS - 1PM: GAME TIPOFF - 3PM: MEET THE PLAYERS

ENTRY: GOLD COIN DONATION

PARKING: FREE PLUS - PRIZE COMPETITIONS, ZM MR WHIPPY, & MORE...

NZBREAKERS.CO.NZ

9

It is your last month of lectures and we have heaps planned to energise you before the exam stress takes hold.

HYPE UP AND CHILL DOWN Starting today (October 4), we have the AuSM Re-Energise zone sponsored

by Red Bull in WC202. Come and check out the air hockey table, Wii and bean bags between lectures. On October 18 the room will transform into a sanctuary from study with free head and shoulder massages, snacks, giveaways and more.

We also have a massive free comedy night planned as well as hypnotist and 2010: A Bass Odyssey event. DonÕt miss the annual Octoberfest at Vesbar on October 14. ItÕs the next best thing to being in Germany. Get there early if you want a steinÉthey sell out quick! Keep your eyes peeled for our Octopus posters around campus for more information on the October Odyssey festival.

COMP WINNERS Congratulations to the winners of all our latest competitions. Sean Page won the Snowboard and Lizzy Styants got the Chemical Brothers tickets. Complexions Contemporary Ballet tickets went to Anne-Marie Holder, Emily Redwood and Julia Osborne. Opera tickets were scooped up by Sara Mills, Kaira Phoon and Janet Murray.

The Diary Design Competition went off Ð thanks to Gordon Harris for providing the prizes. First place went to Hayley McGehan for her NZ Music Month inspired piece. Watch out for it

10

!"#$%!&'($)**$+ &*,-#-$'!.!,/!0$&$1',2!3$ with second and third place getters receiving $250 each from Gordon Harris.

Buzzy by ehan Hayley McG

LIKE YOUR LECTURER? ThereÕs still time left to vote for AUT lecturers, librarians and staff who go above and beyond the call of duty. Winners of an AuSM Award will be recognised in a ceremony later this year.

More details on our website.

SAUSAGES AND PIZZA Ð BOTH FREE Next week will be a big-un with our SGM on Monday and the North Shore Sausage Eating Comp on Tuesday. If you 4,--!0$56'$+'-#$-&6-&7!$!&#, 7$.5418$ come down and check it out, you wonÕt believe how many sausages one person can eatÉ.and what it looks like when they try to!

If you can come along to the SGM (Monday, October 11 at noon in the Marae) please do. WeÕre giving everyone free pizza, refreshments and there will be spot prizes up for grabs. All AUT students are welcome to attend. We need your help to pass constitutional changes, set the membership fee and 9607!#$1*6-$+**$#:!$!"!.6#,/!$.56 .,*$ member positions. Agenda available online.

What is a serving size?

By Alicia Crocket

I’ve lately fallen in love with Sara Lee’s mini frozen cheesecakes. To me these are the perfect dessert – small enough you can have two or three without worrying about how much you’ve just eaten. Ideal! But it does make me think about how ridiculously large portion sizes are these days. I’ve talked about portion inflation before but when you start comparing food portions with what a serving size should be you begin to gain an appreciation for how easy it is to eat too much.

So what is a serving size? This table gives you an idea of what a proper serving size is.

Tell me, when was the last time you went out for pasta and were served only one cup of pasta? Two cups is the minimum these days and same goes for rice with stir-fries and curries. Now let’s think about fast food serves. Remember when the Big Mac was the biggest of the McDonalds range? Now, out of the 15 burgers McDonalds offers, eight

1 Share with a friend.

2 Get the café to cut your food in half and give you half to take away and half to have there. are larger than a Big Mac! And then there’s the all you can eat buffets...

In fact, let’s not go there, that’s far too scary.

But eating out is not the only problem area when it comes to portion sizes. Portion inflation is happening everywhere. Only one cup of pasta for dinner, you must be mad! The pasta bowls everyone gets given when they go flatting hold at least three times that amount; put one cup of pasta with sauce in there and you’ll feel totally ripped off.

So how can you beat portion inflation?

Where possible buy a smaller portion, you might be spending more $ per gram of food but if you only buy the smaller size you still save money.

3 If you’re at home, invest in some smaller bowls and plates so you can serve less and still feel like you’ve got a good plateful in front of you.

4 Don’t have extra on the table. Make sure you have to get up and walk to the kitchen if you want some more.

5 Put some aside for lunch tomorrow before you start eating.

Remember it takes your stomach at least 20 minutes to tell your brain that you’ve had enough to eat, so allow enough time for the message to get through before getting a second, third, or even a fourth helping of spag bol.

ROAST VEGETABLE, CHICKPEA AND FETA COUSCOUS Serves 6 - 8 / Cost: $2.23 per serve (including feta) / Dairy free if no feta

150g dried chickpeas OR 1 x 400g can chickpeas 6 cups diced roasted vegetables (kumara, pumpkin, potato, carrot) 1 red onion, sliced in half and roasted with the other vegetables 1 capsicum 4 -5 sundried tomatoes 300g couscous 2 teaspoons stock powder 500ml water 100g feta, cut into small cubes

Dressing: ¼ cup red wine vinegar Dash of balsamic vinegar 1 teaspoon mustard ¼ cup oil 1 tablespoon lemon juice Salt and pepper to taste

Couscous is one of the quickest, easiest grains you can make. If you’ve not made couscous before it’s well worth putting it into your cooking repertoire. I tend to buy it from the bulk bins rather than in the packets because it works out cheaper. You don’t have to add the feta – it can be quite expensive but it’s amazing how just a little bit can add lots of flavour to the final product.

DIRECTIONS 1. If using dried chickpeas soak them in boiling water for at least 1 hour and then boil for 20 minutes or until cooked

5.Just before the vegetables are due to come out of the oven boil the water with stock powder in a pot

6. Once boiling add couscous, put 2. Roast the roasted vegetables at on lid and turn the element off 180 – 200°C. If you want to add and leave to sit any spices to the veges feel free to 7. Fluff up couscous with a fork do so at this stage and stir through with the roasted 3. While the veges are roasting cut vegetables, chickpeas feta and the the capsicum and the sundried dressing tomatoes and sauté them until the capsicum is soft 4. Add all dressing ingredients into a jar and shake until combined

ISSUE 23 2010

11

Is university the best education?

CATHERINE SELFE

NO

It didn’t teach us to ride bikes, dress ourselves, to swim or to drive. It has taught us to take notes, read text and use APA referencing. A university education offers a very specific type of learning. We are taught what is applicable to our degree and the things that should help make us employable.

It is an education but it is not the best education.

Life has been teaching us lessons from birth.

By the time we reach university life has given us countless lessons ranging from the trivial to the lessons that shape who we are. We have learnt that fire burns, jumping from a tall tree will hurt and no matter how many times the wind changes it will never freeze your face in that horrendous expression you pulled. The education university should impart is one that can aid us in becoming ready for a career.

However, so often people forget that a degree is just a piece of paper. It says you did the time and the study (which you are still to pay for) but it does not say you are capable of doing a job. In today’s society a university degree is often necessary to allow you to be considered for a job but there is a difference between being qualified and being able. Even once you are hired you will have to re-learn many things as well as learn, for the first time, skills particular to that job.

Too often the lessons we learn at university are considered disposable knowledge to students. We study hard to remember facts for a test, assignment or exam but once that paper is done we feel the information is obsolete to us. We retain what we think will be necessary but exclude from our memory banks what we do not. This shows students do not regard all that they learn at university as important so how can we say that what we learn is best.

Too often university is not used as a tool to teach us quality career based lessons but as a place of limbo. It is not unheard of that people rack up large debts from continuous study at university due to the fact that they don’t know what they want to do with their lives. University is used as a large waiting room for these people until they decide how they want to fit into society.

For many careers, such as a doctor, a university education is paramount but numerous jobs would turn out just as many qualified employees if they were to offer apprenticeships. Apprenticeships teach you what you need to know while on the job and you get paid to do it. University graduates often have to settle for unpaid internships as the only way to get into the industry of their choice.

University should be giving us the information to help us succeed in the work force but now it seems it is being used as a money making facility. New degrees are constantly appearing and New Zealand is moving further and further away from an apprentice-based working industry. It is now possible to get a Bachelor of Hairdressing and a Certificate of Retail. Hairdressing is a very practical career, one that benefits from hands on learning. Retail procedures differ from store-to-store based on the company’s policy which makes the teaching of retail in universities minimalistic in effectiveness.

There are certain things that can’t be learned in a lecture hall as well as things that shouldn’t.

University can teach us many things. It can expand our knowledge base, educate us on elements of a particular industry and teach us the value of information. It is a valuable education but nonetheless it is not the best education. Living, doing and gaining experience can make us thoroughly more educated people than through university alone. Life teaches us about relationships, tolerance, other cultures and it does this in a more effective way then in a classroom. To have a relationship with someone, to be tolerant of another and to accept the cultures of the world is endlessly more useful then to debate on the theories of these.

12

JARED (Ed note: I must applaud Jared for actually attempting to say that university is better than life.)

YES

The obvious argument against university being the ultimate education is all about ‘the University of Life’. Besides that being a shitty analogy for people who were too lazy to succeed at something real, I propose that life is not the ultimate education and, perhaps more importantly, that life would be shitty without a sound and complete university education.

Everyone always says that university is hard and “oh, I’ve got so much to do”. I believe university (if done properly) is quite hard and arduous at the best of times. For that reason, university teaches you heaps about succeeding, despite constant pressures. Life doesn’t do that. I’ve never panicked in the morning because I had to brush my teeth, eat my breakfast AND have a shower. Life isn’t challenging like university. More importantly, without university I would be way shit at Bejewelled. You might wonder what the merits of Bejewelled are, and to that I say shame on you.

Bejewelled teaches us about friendship and compatibility, about colour based discrimination and about competition. The only thing life ever taught me was to do up my shoes before going on an escalator. And even then I think my Mum had something to do with it.

University teaches us about people. When I first started at AUT, I had about eight friends. Now I have at least 11. That’s because university taught me that talking to new people can be beneficial and in some cases, fun. Life would have you believe that talking to people will get you stabbed or even worse: made fun of. Because life is angry and relentless. It doesn’t cut anyone any slack and it’s never keen to hand out second chances. I knew one kid that failed the same paper five times; university never turned its back on him and now he’s an assistant shift manager at Subway. He doesn’t attribute that sort of success to ‘life’. University propelled him to those lofty heights and university will get the credit.

Speaking of credit, does life ever give you any? I was mowing the lawns on the weekend, doing a good thing for the universe, and then out of nowhere I get stung by a bee. What the fuck, life? University means that smart, older people have to say nice things about me, which is excellent for a struggling student’s morale. Also, in my three years of university life, the only bee I’ve ever seen was on my Media Ethics exam. See what I did there?

Another issue I have with life trying to teach me things is that everything has to have a lesson or a moral. Hey life, fuck off you’re not Dr Seuss. If I make a bad call, life makes me pay for it big time with a hangover/breakup/prison sentence. University just tells me not to worry, and that I can try again for a small fee. This shows quite conclusively that university is much fairer than trying to learn from your mistakes. Also, it is easier.

The most valid point suggesting university’s educational superiority is its structure. Life is random, and bad things happen for no reason (re: bee story).

Sometimes bad things happen to the same person over and over and over again, irrespective of whether they have kindness in their hearts. That’s shit.

At university, if you fuck around and take drugs instead of just drinking too much and getting violent (the acceptable practice), it is likely that you will fail and/or need medical attention. If you try somewhere near your best and only drink spirits on the weekend, you will get good marks. It’s that sort of kind of cut-and-dried consequence that makes university the best decision your careers advisor ever made.

Dikshit’s Comm Games may go Delhi Up.

By Jared, who wrote this last week and hopes itÕs still relevant.

P

hotographs leaked by a supposed ‘Games Official’ last week show appalling conditions in the Delhi athletes’ village, some of which showing filthy toilet and bathroom facilities, dangerous areas still under construction and leaky, flooded housing. In an official press pack sent out in late August, Indian officials described that despite some setbacks, the village was on schedule and even included photographs of completed rooms which, it has been revealed, were fakes designed to hoodwink CommGames leaders around the world.

Despite those assurances, it has become increasingly obvious that the athlete’s village and, in fact, the entire Commonwealth Games is not ready.

Perhaps more pertinently, Delhi isn’t ready for it. With the monsoon season in full swing and the city getting rained on for the last month, construction has been slow and decisions have been slower. At the time of print, a week out from the Games’ commencement, it is still uncertain whether they will even happen. And here’s where this article stops being factual and starts being about what I think.

I think it’s ridiculous that a massive sporting competition (no matter how redundant it may be (more on that later)) can be so unorganised with no real structure. They’ve had seven fucking years to do something about it, and yet they’re rushing around finishing stuff like it’s 3:30 and they’ve got an essay due. Considering the lovely town of Hamilton, Ontario (that’s in Canada for you geographically challenged kids) was Delhi’s only competition when the host nation was named, I’ve compiled a good old fashioned comparison list, implying rather unsubtly that Delhi was the wrong choice:

Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit is making big calls this week after disturbing revelations that the Commonwealth Games athletesÕ village is in terrible condition less than a week out from the opening ceremony. In one of the most contentious issues in the GamesÕ history, athletes from around the world are pulling out in their droves amidst hygiene, security and terrorism worries in the Indian capital. These issues, combined with serious doubts from chef de missions throughout the Commonwealth, have left a looming question mark over the 2010 competition and questions over whether ; 0,& $5<+.,&*-$:&/!$&##!41#!0$#5$:550=, >$#:!$'!-#$ of the world.

Do the Commonwealth Games organisers use MS Paint? Based on the decisions we’ve seen thus far, I think we can conclude: yes. Sending the Commonwealth Games to Delhi is like letting your disabled friend drive your new car because you feel sorry for him. It’s nice, but it’s not going to end well. And this particular disabled friend has driven the languishing CommGames car into a lamp post.

The most staggering part about this whole ordeal is that athletes are still going. If I were good enough to represent New Zealand at anything, I would definitely not be going to Delhi. Sure it’s the pinnacle of some athletes’ careers, but if getting killed by a terrorist is the other option; I’m staying home for sure.

On top of all of this speculation and controversy, one particular fact rings true as the most important: the Commonwealth Games aren’t even that important. Largely due to the non-importance of the Commonwealth in general, the Games are like a stink version of the Olympics and when you take out the USA, China and Russia (the three top medalling countries from Beijing 08) that stink version gets a lot stinker.

So if the CommGames really did start yesterday, it’s a miracle. If any of our athletes actually went, I hope they do well and, more importantly, I hope they’re all safe.

Seems pretty clear cut to me. I’d like to see the table that the actual organisers came up with, though something tells me it looked a lot like this:

ISSUE 23 2010

13

A reflection of the 2010 ASPA awards Left to right, the debate team: Ben Hope (column writer), Kate Campbell (marketing), Jared (sub-editor), Samantha McQueen (editor), Nonavee Dale (designer), Scott Moyes (sports writer).

W

hen you flick through debate each week, you probably don’t think much of the words splattered over the 36 pages. You might eagerly devour your horoscope, skim through the reviews or chuckle at humorous articles, but for the most part, each week’s debate is probably a fleeting memory.

Lucky for you – and the AuSM organisation that hired me – it’s my job to remember every piece of work that goes into this magazine. This includes the crème de la crème of the crop, which were entered into the ASPA awards, held on September 25 at Tamaki Yacht club. ASPA-what? Yeah, that was my reaction at the beginning of the year. ASPA is the Aotearoa Student Press Association; basically all the student publications around the country. Throughout the year, we all share emails, stories and general banter, while at the same time preparing to fight in an ugly battle to the death* at the annual ASPA awards.

This being my first time clutching the reins of debate, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. debate took out the Best Small Publication in 2005, but since then, symbolic medals have been few and far between. My subeditor Jared did nothing to help my spirits when he informed me we probably won’t place in anything, except for maybe sport, but that’s cool because there would be free booze and nibbles at the event. Now that’s what I call an inspiring pep talk. Add half the attendees bailing the day of the event and you had one lonely editor, who was debating (pun) whether to show up at all. Luckily, free nibbles got the best of me.

Let me just say that the male journalists really went all out for this event.

I was originally feeling overdressed in a purple strapless dress but then I saw a guy in a navy blue suit, complete with bowtie and suddenly I felt I was standing in front of Chuck Bass. If only the suit was purple. And he had a billion dollars. Even Jared – who had said he would turn up in a t-shirt – spiffed up nicely in a tie/vest combo. Stoked. After randomly (and sometimes awkwardly) introducing myself to the competition and polishing off my journalism sword I spotted the host, David Farrier, eating tiny sandwiches and sporting an eco-friendly supermarket bag. I saw this as an opportune time to wow him with my journalistic wit and knowledge. We ended up talking about the awesomeness of Metallica. This was particularly impressive because I don’t actually listen to Metallica. Host won over: check.

Once everyone had semi-met and had stocked up on glasses of wine or beer (in case the bar tab ran out) we all shuffled into a room full of tables (I successfully recruited Unitec’s party to make up our empty chairs). David Farrier took an eerily familiar approach to hosting by reading out hate mail from his listeners. Perhaps that’s the in thing to do in broadcast journalism these days? Nevertheless, I’m impressed he managed to host above the journos constant shouting and occasional heckles.

The first categories didn’t have debate nominations in them so I switched off a tad (if you really care, the full list of winners is below) but we started off our awards haul with a bang by scooping a !"#$%&'()$*+#,$-%"#$ Cover. While I went up to collect this award, I can take no credit other than saying “this is pretty, we should put this on the cover”. But I applauded for Dipika Patel, Hayley McGehan and Soo Park, who were the three artists/ students responsible for our win. We followed this up with a !"#$%&!'()*& for Best Reviewer; this one I can take credit for because I did actually write the reviews nominated. I think the word “thoughtful” was mentioned in the comments, but that could have been my ecstatic imagination.

We had a bit of a lull after this with !"#$%& (Victoria), Canta (Canterbury) and Critic (Otago) hogging all the awards. Points must be given to !"#$%&, who celebrated with enough spirit to please any cheerleading squad. Seriously, I thought they had won a bonus prize of a Suzuki swift or something. Luckily, we got a chance to beat them when our very own Scott Moyes, first year university student and contributor, won +, -&.*)"!&/#,& Best Sports Writer. To be honest, if we hadn’t won this award, we would have been pissed; anyone that can compare the Melbourne Storm to a game

14

by Samantha McQueen of Monopoly ought to be recognised. More awards were sprinkled, Craccum,' !"#$%& and Critic made a couple of appearances and then it was intermission, where the bar tab ran out (beating last year’s record of 9pm) and the delectable table snacks appeared, which our table devoured in minutes.

The second half kicked off with another win for debate, but it wasn’t for any categories. I won some old guy’s greatest hits CD because I knew who was in the middle of David Farrier’s human centipede (it was Suzanne Paul. I don’t know why I know this). This was followed up by a third equal placing in Best Feature Writer (which I could again take credit for) and a second equal for Best Feature Content (this piece was by Jessie Colquhoun). Then came the big one for us; the winner for Best Small Publication. I’d love to write that we took this out, but alas, (!)%$&* – having won nothing all night – swooped in and won. Again. But debate did come third, which is still impressive, considering we haven’t placed in years. Next year, we’ll be number one. You heard it here first. Critic beat !"#$%& for the Best Publication category, and I think I actually saw tears from Team !"#$%&. Yikes.

By this stage, everyone was a bit “drink happy” and throwing around various addresses of after parties, none of which anyone knew anything about. After attempting to decipher various mumblings from a glazed eye individual, our team discreetly exited the premises to party long into the night**.

Until next year, ASPA. *Not an actual battle to the death, but a journalistic battle. Words hurt, people. **Partying may have taken the form in a 10 hour sleep. debate placings at the ASPA’s: 1st = for Best Cover 1st = Best Sports Writer 2nd = Best Reviewer 2nd = Best Feature Content 3rd = Best Feature Writer 3rd = Best Small Publication

Full list of winners : Best Website: Craccum Best Headline: Craccum Best Cartoonist: Craccum Best Photography: Canta Best Illustration: Critic Best Sports Writer: debate Best Education Series: Salient and Critic Best Humour: Satellite Best Reviewer: Salient Best Columnist: Canta Best Cover: debate, Salient and Satellite Best Editorial: Critic Best Feature Writer: Canta Best News (unpaid): Canta Best Feature: Canta Best Design: In Unison Best Small Pub: Magneto Best Best Pub: Critic

Andre: The Big (sometimes) Friendly Wrestling Giant (noun) giant: !"#$"%&#'%$#()"*'+(,"-."/+0,(1+&#$"/%2,"#$3"/4(,$'415"#00,#(/" %$".-676-(,"#$3".#%()4#6,/5" 2. a very large person, impressive in size or qualities YouÕre only as big as you feel. Unless youÕre 7 ft 4Ó. Then youÕre big all the time. ÒItÕs not my fault being the biggest and the strongest. I donÕt even exercise.Ó -Andr the Giant on being the biggest and the strongest ÒAnybody want a peanut?Ó -Andr the Giant on rhyme schemes

by Brendan Kelly

P

rofessional wrestling is, for the most part, lame. I’m not saying there isn’t a lot of skill involved in the ‘sport’ (note: that is an extremely loose use of the term sport. Most sources refer to professional wrestling as a performing art, and although this article isn’t exactly singing the praises of the homoerotic arena spectacular, I figured I may as well give it at least some sort of credibility); I’m sure that poorly imitating actual fighting is a talent that takes years to master. I’m just not quite sure why you would bother.

However, for all the scathing remarks I have about professional wrestlers, there is one man who has graced the pro wrestling circuit for whom I have nothing but respect. A man so titanic that even my sarcasm could never pervade his aura of general largeness. He is a man of truly epic proportions.

He has gone by many names: the Eiffel Tower, Giant Machine, even The Eighth Wonder of the World; but to most of us, he is known only as André the Giant.

André René Roussimoff, born in France on May 19, 1946 suffered from a condition called acromegaly, meaning that he was a huge motherfucker. At the height (pun!) of his career André was billed at 7 ft 4 inches and weighed in at around 230kgs. In order to put this into context, picture in your mind Jonah Lomu, arguably New Zealand’s greatest rugby player and general icon of manhood. Now make him twice as heavy, a foot taller and add a French accent four octaves sub-James Earl Jones. You now have André the Giant.

André left school after eighth grade, and eventually left home as a teenager to become a wrestler in Paris. It was difficult for him to train, however, because the French are pansies and no one would wrestle a guy who weighs as much as two baby elephants. He did manage to wrestle in Europe, Africa and New Zealand before signing a contract to fight in Japan under the title ‘Monster Roussimoff’.

After annihilating the majority of Japan’s wrestlers and inspiring the blockbuster film Godzilla, ticket sales in Asia began to dwindle. In need of a new audience and pool of people to massacre in the ring, André was introduced to a certain Vince McMahon, who signed him on to wrestle in the WWF. André made his debut in the WWF in 1973, which was full of muscular guys in lycra touching each other (not as much as today though).

At this point I would like to stress the fact that being a WWF star does not make you a talented athlete. A WWF star is at best an actor who is too shit to be in an actual stage show/television program/movie/Bunnings ad, and so instead of getting a real job spends all their time at the gym and pretends to hurt other people in a similar situation for a living. I consider André the Giant to be different for two reasons.

ting; this number has been checked and confirmed by several sources (what sources? Your mum). Another such story tells of the giant drinking 327 beers before passing out at a hotel bar, at which point no one could move him and he had to be left there to regain consciousness. As well as this, he also beat the shit out of Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage during his career, which shows that he only picked on the annoying and the imbecilic of the world, and by all accounts it seems like he was a genuinely nice, friendly guy.

Sadly, André René Roussimoff passed away in his sleep in Paris on January 23, 1993. He was in Paris attending the funeral of his father.

If you’ve seen The Princess Bride (if you haven’t, get fucked), or you watch old wrestling videos (I don’t. I’m sure they’re great but I don’t and I’m making an assumption), you’ll know that André the Giant was and is a legend.

He died at the age of 46 due to the crippling disease which ironically had also brought him so much fame and success. I don’t usually end on an emotional note, but I feel that for a titan such as this there is really no other option. André, may you live on in our hearts and minds, and in my living room every time I watch The Princess Bride. If you’re in the afterlife or whatever maybe you could gorilla press slam Hitler or something. Just while you wait for Rob Schneider to turn up. That’d be awesome.

1

If he felt like it, André the Giant could have dominated most other sports. The guy was fucking HUGE. There is no doubt in my mind that had he felt like it, André could have chucked a shot put, sacked a quarterback or devoured any convenient livestock better than anyone else could.

2 The Princess Bride.

The first point is solid. The second point should be self explanatory, but probably isn’t. If there is a list of movies everybody has to see before they die, it contains Dirty Harry. It contains Raging Bull. And, in the form of The Princess Bride, it contains fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, monsters, chases, escapes, true love. And a giant. In the form of André. And he is awesome.

And it’s a fucking good movie. You might be thinking, “John Cena is in movies too”… you’re a dickhead. If you’ve ever seen The Marine you will know that John Cena is not in movies.

If you’ve seen I Love You, Man you may be familiar with a scene where Jason Segel says “it took André the Giant a barrel of beer to get drunk, sometimes two”. This is true. He once consumed 197 pints of beer in a single sitISSUE 23 2010

15

? e it r c o p y h ic n e r h p o iz h c s a : t e n r e t in e

Th

by Mike Atkins

I

came across an article a few weeks ago. It was one of those “explaining social media websites” pieces that seemed to fuel the internet as if the internet was impervious to the laws of thermodynamics, and is able to perpetually create its own fuel. (Seriously, why is half the writing on the internet about the internet?)

This piece asked why we feel the need to announce the minutiae of our lives through Twitter and Facebook status updates. However, it stuck in my mind because it offered logical human-nature-based answers, instead of just throwing its hands up and shrieking “what‘s the world coming to?”, like those pieces usually do. People like to say Facebook makes them over share and be banal somehow, because it absolves them of the responsibility, but really, we’re all banal over sharers when given the opportunity. And because the internet gives us all the opportunity, it can be discomforting how alike it reminds us we are.

It’s for this reason that it’s quite easy to forget that the internet is made up of individuals, and to start thinking of it as one massive, homogeneous entity, because everyone on it seems so alike. Sure, sometimes they fight, but we all have internal quarrels with ourselves from time to time. At worst, these disagreements seem like merely a schizophrenic moment in an other-

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16

wise harmonious whole.

I came across one of those schizophrenic moments just last week, on one of my favourite music sites, Spinner.com. I’m writing my exegesis at the moment, so all this web surfing is really procrastination. Spinner has bite-sized little distillations of articles from other online publications that you can read in seconds, so procrastination feels less guilty there. One “articlette” was about an NME poll that listed the 10 best and worst covers of all time, and the other was a link to a site where you could download a bunch of covers by big name indie bands.

This doesn’t sound too schizophrenic, until you take a look at the NME list. Calling it conservative would be an understatement. It doesn’t like pop and it doesn’t want to hear any of that modern crap. In fact, it seems vaguely embarrassed about even liking covers (because “the original’s always better”, I suppose), and so it leans heavily on songs that most people probably didn’t know were covers. The Beatles’ Twist & Shout, The Clash’s I Fought The Law, and Jimi Hendrix’s Hey Joe, all make the list.

As you can imagine, the worst list is the exact opposite. It’s mostly pop and lesser known covers of very well known songs. The songs on that list just sounded like blasphemously bad ideas, even if you’d never actually heard them. Since it was a democratic internet poll, I suspect the votes were in fact cast without anyone having to actually hear the songs in question. It was the joyless fucks of the world, sitting in their bedrooms sulking about how real music is made by white men with guitars, who elevated Britney Spear’s I Love Rock ’n’ Roll to the top of the “worst” list.

True to the stereotype of joyless fucks who think about music way too much, I don’t need to listen to Britney Spears doing a Joan Jett song to know that I probably don’t want to. But without listening to it, I’m not going to call it the worst anything. I’m careful with my words, not just because I’m writing them down, but because joyless fucks, like myself, have way too much power these days.

With casual fans not buying music any more, it’s the joyless fucks who control the market. Every ill-thought out utterance that becomes the opinion of the elitist music literati, decides what actually gets bought! Lord help us when those opinions get on to the internet, and spread like viruses to the entire hive. Have you noticed less covers being recorded lately? I could be imagining things, but I have.

The site where you could download the covers is a dirty commercial promotion for Levi Jeans, and so they stretched the definition of “indie” pretty widely into pop. Colbie Caillat is there, and so is Jason Mraz, and surprisingly theirs are the best tracks (although they’re the ones the critics would’ve rejected before they ever listened to them). Colbie Caillat does Maria by Blondie, and Jason Mraz does Spirit In The Sky, which is just the sort of sublime-to-ridiculous blasphemy that NME would hate.

This little internet dispute was actually like the internet was having a guilty-pleasure moment, rather than a schizophrenic one. The internet heard Caillat’s hit Bubbly in a hotel lobby or a supermarket and found itself singing along. It noticed she really was a pretty wee thing with a nice voice, but had to bury her under The Kills, Passion Pit, and She & Him to preserve the cool that it only thinks it has.

It’s ironic that a grand democratic institution like the internet squelches popular tastes, but then again, things have always been ruled by vocal minorities (I’d be a hypocrite if I scapegoated the internet in this, but the internet has made this easier). When something in art is off limits, then everything is potentially off limits and artistic freedom is a joke. I suppose the message of the story is a plea to listen to things, before you criticise them.

And everyone out there is basically the same; they don’t know any more than you, so don’t let the internet tell you what to think.

IGGY AND THE STOOGES PHOTOS SUPPLIED BY BIG DAY OUT

The ultimate tribute to summer.

by S Samantha aman am antha tha a Mc McQueen

On January 21, 2011 thousands of Kiwis will descend on Mt Smart Stadium for a festival that has cemented itself as an essential summer experience. While the sun isnÕt guaranteed, writhing, sweaty bodies dancing (or moshing) to 12 straight hours of music is.

The BIG DAY OUT, now in its 17th year in New Zealand, is New ZealandÕs answer to Coachella or Glastonbury, where thousands pay tribute to summer. The acts certainly live up to this pressure. Next yearÕs headliner is metal juggernaut Tool, who last rocked the stage in 2007 as part of the fastest selling Big Day Out of all time. Promoters are positive they Ð along with the likes of Iggy and the Stooges, Rammstein, M.I.A and LCD Soundsystem Ð will pull the crowds again.

I sat down with Big Day Out event co-ordinator Etienne Marais, who has been working Big Day Out since the very beginning, to talk about the festival, the acts and his experience of the music extravaganza that we all know and love.

M.I.A.

TOOL How long have you been organising the Big Day Out? !"#$%&'!#(!)*&!+$,)!#(&!-(!.//01! !,)2$)&'!#33!"#$%-(4!-(!#(&!#3!)*&!5#(5&,,-#(! stands. It wasnÕt probably until the third one that I was working directly on the organisation side of it.

How many people are involved in organising the acts?

Because we are part of six shows in Australia, most of the international bands are 6##%&'!67!)*&!)"#!487,!"*#!#"(!)*&!,*#"!9:&(!;&,)!2('!<-=-2(!>&&,?1!#(&!"*#,&! home show is the Sydney Big Day Out and the other organiser owns the Melbourne Big Day Out. :&(!@8)!)*&!+$,)!A-4!B27!C8)!#(!2('!)*&(!<-=-2(!D#-(&'E! !)*-(%E!)*&!7&2$!23)&$!)*2)F! TheyÕre really hands on as far as the bands... theyÕre biggest part of the organisation that they take control of. To a lesser extent they obviously control the rest of it but the bands are their thing.

When do the organisers start sourcing and booking bands for Big Day Out? I guess itÕs an all-year round process. A lot of the New Zealand bands are approached by us just as much as they apply for it themselves. We always try to choose bands 25$#,,!)*&!,@&5)$8G1!62(',!"-)*!*-4*!@$#+H&,!2('!62(',!)*2)!'#(I)F! )I,!2!@$&))7!*2$'! process, especially this year when we have so many international bands and not as many spaces.

For this one, looking at the announcement it is a very heavy affair this year. Do the organisers try to mix it up each year?

Absolutely. I guess thereÕs kind of a cycle where itÕs heavier and it pushes the boundaries in that way and then every so often we have a pullback year. Like, for example, "*&(! 447!J#@!"2,!H2,)!7&2$!-)!"2,! 447!J#@!2('!K*&!;*-)&!L)$-@&,1!-)!"2,!2!,G2HH&$! event, a bit more chilled. We donÕt want to stereotype it. ItÕs not a solely metal show.

And even though itÕs heavy itÕs quite diverse heavy. WeÕre pretty happy with the line-up this year. !"#$%&'()*$$')#&)+,-)!#.)$/-0),$1)234)#/)35"3/6-)1-4-)+,-()!$$7-58 I wouldnÕt be able to tell you exactly. I know that at last yearÕs event we were talking about this yearÕs event and who was going to be the headlining act. That said, it wasnÕt going to be Tool at that point. But who played the year before Muse? I think it was Rage Against the Machine Ð but we knew Muse was going to play the next year. So itÕs pretty random. Sometimes bands know about the Big Day Out and they want to play it so they will book it that far out, but other times itÕs a month, a week, two weeks before.

ISSUE 23 2010

In 1992, when it was just in Sydney, there were less than 10,000 people and in 2009 there were more than 250,000 people. Was that magnitude always the goal for BDO? No, I donÕt think so. Certainly it was never a corporate agenda. Ken West is the artistic driving force behind the event because he loves bands, loves music, loves new G8,-5E!H#=&,!2$)1!-)I,!6&528,&!#3!*-G!)*2)!7#8!4#!)#!A-4!B27!C8)!2('!)*&$&!2$&!)*-(4,! like the lightning electric guy and thereÕs art everywhere. [ThatÕs] a really important part of what makes the Big Day Out different.

Where are you situated on the actual day? ;&I=&!4#)!2!625%,)24&!@$#'85)-#(!#3+5&!)*2)!&=&$7)*-(4!-,!5#()$#HH&'!3$#GF!M2G@6&HH! [Smith, the Big Day Out promoter] and I sort of spend all day running around. We have hourly meetings with basically the stakeholders, which are St JohnÕs, the police, security, liquor licensing, but in between weÕre running around. !5&$)2-(H7!2-G!)#!)$7!2('!52)5*!)*&!62(',1!(#)!)*2)!7#8!&=&$!4&)!)#!"2)5*!)*&!"*#H&! thing but maybe catch a song or two. I always stop to watch the headliner act for a few moments, even if it is part of work.

Since youÕve been on since the beginning, in your personal opinion, what has been your favourite Big Day Out? ItÕs really hard. 2000 was amazing, because it was the biggest line up in the world at the time. It was like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters, Nine Inch Nails, Chemical Brothers... it was just off the hook big. Other high points for me were watching Nick M2=&!-(!.//NE!O8&&(,!#3!)*&!L)#(&!P4&!-(!QRRS!"*&(!)*&-$!JFPF!6$#%&!'#"(!,#!)*&7! played on the last stage at the end of the night. I guess my memory of the early ones are pretty special.

ItÕs been in New Zealand since 1994 and obviously itÕs grown bigger, but has the general vibe always been the same?

WhatÕs the most remarkable thing about the vibe and the behaviour of people at the event is that they behave so much better these days. We used to have say 10 or 20 arrests a day... a year wouldnÕt go by where you wouldnÕt see somebody getting walked around by the police with their arm behind their back, red-faced and swearing at them.You just donÕt see that anymore.

Why do you think that is?

IÕve got no idea. The police even remarked that people used to say Òfuck off, pigsÓ and now they say Òhave a nice dayÓ to them. I think the police are a bit bored there. ItÕs lost its aggressive vibe, which is really quite amazing. But no one really knows what the reason is. We could take the credit for it by saying that itÕs organisational and IÕd like to think that it is to a certain extent, like if you give people toilets and you give them water and try and look after them they will try and behave better.

17

If yo ouÕre no ot entirely faamiliar with Shihad, you G-4**)!+('!!2!33&"!G7,)-337-(4!$&3&$&( (5&&,!-(!)*-,!

-()&$$=-&"F!L**-*2'!*2=&!*2'!2!52$&&$$!+ +HH&'!"-)*! as many upps and down ns as bands thaat have beenn togettheer twice as long as theem. TheyÕve also had a veery full yeaar, putting ou ut a new album, playyingg a tour in n which theyy played two of thheir claasssic albums in their entiireety (one off whicch is beeinng perform med at the 20 011 Big Day Out)), openninng for AC/D DC, and bein ng inducted into the New w Zealand rock ÕnÕ rolll haall of famee.

Add to thaat the fact baassist Karl Kipp penbergerr is a seasonned d interview w subject and d knows oing to want to o talk exacctly whhatt youÕre go abouut, befo oree you men ntion it. Whicch leaves me withouut the opporrtunity to givve you expo ositoryy bits of info ormation in thee questionss, oulld all be a bit dauntingg. and this co Goo od thinng we have th hings like Kaarl being an engaaging and d enthusiasstic speaker, and Shihad w ZealandÕs biggest band to o keep you u being New interrested d, ehh?

Do you really need to get people into it?

Every albumÕs a challenge. ItÕs fresh, new Shihad music. WeÕve 4#)!2!=2$-&'!)7@&!#3!32(!62,&1! every album, we make some happy and others not happy. I donÕt know whoÕs going to like this record and whoÕs not. ItÕs one of those things you canÕt pre-empt.

ItÕs not something that we think about when weÕre writing the record. These days we make records so that weÕre happy.

IÕve always thought of Shihad as being a band that wears its heart on its sleeve.

Each album has been really expressive of what youÕve been going through at the time, and thatÕs something that fans can latch on to.

Lyrics are JonnyÕs thing. A lot of his lyrics are... he has his personal lyrics, where he writing about relationship things. Songs like Bitter and You Again were his Òfuck youÓ relationship songs. Then the other side of the lyrical content is shared &T@&$-&(5&1!)*-(4,!"&!2HH!,*2$&'! together, whether itÕs on tour, debate: DonÕt you have or in the past, or just issues that half year cycle, where you go better things to be doing on we feel strongly about. Whether from creating, to writing, to the day your album comes or not that strikes a chord or recording, releasing, and out? not is secondary, but weÕre not touring. And then you start it Karl: Releasing the record in that alien that weÕre the only New Zealand, you kind of want all over again. Some of that time, people thinking these things. thereÕs not much on. ThereÕs to be a part of that day.You not much on when weÕve just want to be able to gauge how You do hear that in done a yearÕs worth of touring. itÕs going on the day. the lyrics. But what I By that time, itÕs time for us appreciated about Shihad is to get out of each otherÕs hair that youÕre a unit. The lyrics What I mean is: you put the before we kill each other. are one thing, but whatever album out there, and thatÕs part one of the process, and And thatÕs when we get a lot of is getting expressed by them is in the music as well. the publicity is part two, and Sundays.

IÕd feel strange if I wasnÕt K*&!+$,)!,#(4!#(!)*&!2H68G! surely thereÕs got to be a "#$%-(4!)*#84*1! I'!6&!4#-(4! is called The Final Year Of The Sunday in between. Òwhy arenÕt we doing any Universe, and all year we called I suppose there were a few interviews? WeÕve just done an that Massive Sabbath. It didnÕt Sundays earlier on in the year. have lyrics until about three ItÕs feast or famine with this job. album, why arenÕt we getting people into it?Ó months ago. We called it Massive It goes in a two to two-and-a-

18

Sabbath because the music reminded us of Massive Attack 2('!AH25%!L2662)*1!-3!7#8!52(! ever imagine [those two] mixing together.

The music has its own identity long before the lyrics turn up. Jonny gets his book out with all of his music and his lyrics and his ideas. After weÕve lived with the music, he starts to piece together what music 2('!H7$-5,!+)!)#4&)*&$F! )!-,!U8-)&! weird, in that a lot of time is spent on the passion of the music and the lyrical content is added close to the end.

I remember I used to

imagine that the lyrics came +$,)!2('!&=&$7)*-(4!52G&!3$#G! the inspiration of the words. But for us, itÕs never been like that.

ItÕs counter-intuitive to how we write music, which is: turn up on the day, jam and not think about -)!)##!G85*E!2('!H&)!)*&!V#"!4#F! I like the fact that it comes from the music and from the sound.

Given that it is all about the music and the feeling, how does that manifest in the new album?

One thing that I notice as I look at the song titles is that thereÕs a lot of stuff about the future.

ISSUE 23 2010

WeÕre at a point in our career where enjoying what we do and meaning what we do is more important than itÕs ever been.

ItÕs not to please fans or to @H&2,&!)*&!H26&H1!-)I,!)#!%&&@!8,! in the band. The priority for us is to enjoy this job. We all have #)*&$!,)833!4#-(4!#(!-(!#8$!H-=&,1! we could very easily go and do those other things and leave Shihad behind. ItÕs kind of fragile in that we have to make sure we still enjoy this job. But itÕs good in a way, because it keeps it real because none of us want to waste our time pretending to do something. I know damn

well that the day that I stop doing this for the right reasons, I would be so quick to do something else.

Listening to it, it seemed very metal, and that was a big change from the last one.

ThatÕs just what we do. Longterm fans would realise that we change around. What ends up on the album totally depends on whatÕs happening with us, and where our heads are at when weÕre writing the music.

One thing that we do a lot #3!)*&!)-G&!-,!"$-)&!SR!#$!0R!

19

songs, and pick an album out #3!)*#,&!SR!#$!0R!,#(4,F!A8)! the thing that we did with this album (which is what we did with Killjoy) was that we pretty much wrote the songs on the record and left it at that. There are usually 10 or so songs that are ballad-y, mellow songs because we donÕt listen to metal all the time. Anyone whoÕs passionate about music listens to a varied amount of music.

WeÕve never felt that weÕve had to do things a certain way, so 7#8!4&)!)*-,!"&-$'!&66E!2('!V#"F! IÕm really proud of Beautiful Machine. People say that itÕs mellow, but I just donÕt think

But this one, we purposefully didnÕt spend too much time on the hippy ballads... or as we call them ÒJonnyÕs gay songs for JesusÓ. ThereÕs a song on the middle of the album called IGNITE, which we wrote last year, which just kind of hung around. Then at the end of it all, when we were putting the track listing together, it just felt right.

You guys often say that live is where youÕre at. You guys have such consistency and such sharpness live. How does that contrast with 5$#/.)+,#/.&)+,3+)4-9-6+) where youÕre at now?

of it. Regardless of the type of material that youÕre playing, it still comes down to whether you mean it or not and whether youÕre feeling it, and all those things that you canÕt pretend.

I can totally see when a band is not enjoying their time, or when theyÕre incompetent. ItÕs a common thing, great records, and a shit live band. For us, when it comes to [being] live, itÕs about the intent and Òhow big can we make it?Ó Opening for AC/DC, was that a sort of a legacy thing?

Because that was one of ($%4):4&+)&,$1&)+$$;

[The more recent AC/ DC support gig, earlier this year] came at a really good time for the band. WeÕve been questioning what we do for a while, since America. That was a really good kick up the arse, in a positive way, bringing us back to why we do it. Back in the &2$H7!/R,E!'#-(4!)*#,&!PMWBM! shows... I didnÕt know before that whether I was into this band thing, but I knew after that, I so knew that that was exactly what I wanted to do. Twenty years pass, and all of a sudden youÕre offered the tour again, and this time, seven albums up, (we hadnÕt even done Churn

ÒItÕs counter-intuitive to how we write music, which is: turn up on the day, jam and not think about it too much...Ó "*&(!"&!+$,)!,8@@#$)&'!)*&GX1! it was just such a pleasure. We came off that incredibly happy and revitalised, and then we got stuck into this record. I thought it was a really great way to start off this year.

I used the word ÒlegacyÓ there. ThatÕs the award youÕve just been given, isnÕt it?

of it as being that way. It was exactly what we were going to do and what we meant to do for that record. We wouldnÕt be here if we just did heavy record after heavy record. We need it for ourselves to move around. Call it Òsoul searchingÓ, or whatever.

20

Some albums more than others, thereÕs the intent of having what we write end up on the stage. The performance, and the end product, is subconsciously always there. I know that when we are writing, there is a point where I am imagining it live, and the performance

Totally, that was my second ,*#"!"-)*!L*-*2'F! )!"2,!/QE! we were supporting AC/DC on their RazorÕs Edge tour. I was still in my last year of high school, I had bursary exams the following week (obviously, I failed. I didnÕt fail rock nÕ roll, though).

Yeah, thatÕs weird. It feels strange because weÕre releasing a record, weÕre still trying to prove that we rock, and yet we get this pat on the back. WeÕre really grateful, but itÕs business as usual for us. WeÕve got a record out, and who knows, there might be another record after this.You never know.

ItÕs been funny looking back. Doing those Killjoy and General Electric shows was kind of a retrospective. We had to relearn a bunch of shows that we hadnÕt played in a bunch of years. It was kind of nice going back in time and touching on where we were as younger kids.

Getting this Hall Of Fame thing added on top of that, is really cool, but ShihadÕs still got more to do.

debate quiz Who is the New Zealand CEO of the Commonwealth Games Federation? a) Suresh Kalmadi b) Mike Stanley c) Dave Currie d) Michael Hooper

Who is the ACC Minister? a) Nick Smith b) Steve Joyce c) Judith Collins d) Roger Douglas

The musical cast of which movie-musical are set to reunite $/)+,-):/3')&-3&$/)$2)*,-) <43,)=#/24-()>,$18 a) Moulin Rouge b) Mary Poppins c) Sound of Music d) Rent Champagne can only be given its name if it comes from...? a) A special type of grape b) A region in France of the same name c) The brand Moet and Chandon d) A type of cheese MTV New Zealand announced last week that they would !-)6'$&#/.)+,-#4)$2:6-)#/)?-6-@!-4A)@37#/.),$1)@3/()&+322) redundant? a) 17 b) QS c) S. d) 47

Which New Zealand prime minister was among the group who founded the UN? a) Helen Clark b) Richard Seddon c) Robert Muldoon d) Peter Fraser What are the names of the two main characters in the classic novel Wuthering Heights? a) Isabella and Linton b) Ellen and Hareton c) Catherine and Heathcliff d) Amy and Steve =,$)!%#'+)+,-)1$4'5B&):4&+)1$47#/.)6348 a) Henry Ford b) Wilbur Wright c) Orville Wright d) Karl Benz =,#6,)6$%/+4()1$%'5)($%):/5)C/.-')D3''&A)1,#6,)#&) :6+#$/3''()5-<#6+-5)3&)E3435#&-)D3''&)#/)+,-)?#&/-():'@)F<8 a) Venezuela b) Brazil c) Argentina d) Columbia

1D 2A 3C 4B 5B 6A 7D 8C 9D 10A

Tool has been announced as the headliner for the 2011 Big Day Out. How many times have they previously performed at this festival? a) One b) Two c) Three d) Four

Retail Mystery Shopper SUSSING IT OUT FOR YOU FIRST. SMOOVE 55-57 HIGH STREET (SHOP 1J IN LITTLE HIGH STREET), AUCKLAND CBD MON-THURS: .RPY!Z!NJY FRIDAY: 10AM - 7PM SATURDAY: 10AM - 5PM SUNDAY: 12PM - 4PM

V

PRICE RANGE: CLOTHES FROM $25 (SALE PRICE) ACCESSORIES: FROM $10 WEAR TO UNI? SOME PIECES WEAR TO TOWN? COULD DO FOR GUYS OR GIRLS? BOTH, MORE GIRLS STUFF THOUGH

enturing into the Little High Street building for the first time in years, I find myself in Smoove, attracted by some pretty cute clothes on the mannequins outside. I find this area off High Street is really good for shopping, with a mixture of cheap and more expensive options, depending on where you look. I see several shops with some great gift ideas on my way through (there’s only three months until Christmas after all!). It turns out Smoove has two shops these days, located pretty much opposite each other. One is their new store I’m told, with their latest stock on display, while the other is more of an outlet, housing mostly sale clothing and accessories. The price range starts pretty cheap with some of their sale items in the outlet store, right up to some leather jackets in their newer ranges.

Checking out the new store first, there’s quite a variety of stuff for sale.

The shop has some really cool bags, with various celebrity faces on them, which would be great for uni. There’s everyone from The Beatles to Jimi Hendrix, and I really quite like them – they’re quite different to your usual

branded bags. I come across some nice ‘reworked vintage’ dresses for $90 (there’s lots of pretty floral clothing pieces in here actually), then nearby find some cool $160 helmets. There’s some pretty random stuff I have to say! The latest t-shirts, with some designs I’ve seen around a bit, start at around $55. It’s pretty pricey for a shirt but still, they’re quite cool. Moving through, there are some men’s options as well; cool shirts, pants and a few jackets. The jewellery cabinet holds some really unique designs – I love the big, flat, gold necklaces and earrings.

The ‘outlet’ store has quite a range as well. The racks are loaded with sale clothes, again for both girls and guys, and starting at around $25, these are really affordable. There’s some similar stuff to what’s in the new store; the older stock comes here for clearance. I spend a while pouring through racks of cute dresses (from ball-like to cocktail), t-shirts and jackets. This is far from a chain-store, there’s a huge variety of items and with two stores to look through, there’s bound to be something for (almost) everyone.

This review was written by a graduate in Retailing. If you are interested in retail and why people buy, take a look at papers in the Retail major in the Business School. You don’t have to be a business student to take the papers, so check out the website today!

ISSUE 23 2010

21 21

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

22

PRESENTS

ISSUE 23 2010

23

TO START OFF WITH, I NEED TO SAY THAT I THINK Comms girls are great. I wasn’t clear enough in my last column, so there it is in written form. I’ve only been doing this column thing for a year; I started off to help a friend and then, because I can be quite opinionated, I thought “hell let’s keep doing it”. I know of some people who read this and I appreciate that. But mostly the idea to write a column isn’t so much about wanting to be read or recognised. I reckon it’s more like a blog; a written something you can put out into the world to express feelings of whatever, thoughts about nothing and meanderings of vagueness.

Recently a small congregation of student media kids settled in for a riveting ASPA award ceremony at the Tamaki Yacht Club. Hosted by the ever un-funny, slightly effeminate, Foodtown canvas bag toting David Farrier, the night was a raging success. Most universities put in an appearance, some of which managed to miss the ‘cocktail’ dress code, but ye should not judge, lest ye be judged. From the small number of people who showed, there was a great bit of banter, abuse and drunken revelry. Though there were two or three judges for every category, none of them made an appearance, which was nice.

One guy from Canta (University of Canterbury) showed up, took half the awards then headed on back to shit in a bucket and boil water.

Pity votes anybody?

Special mentions: 1) Nexus (University of Waikato) editorial team who won not a lot, but when they picked up best editorial dropped the c-bomb, but without the Paul Henry comedic wit, then proceeded to play the circle game, until the editor fell off a chair in the sitting position.

2) David Farrier and his self deprecating way of reading comments from his viewers a la Paul Henry. Another badly formed copy cat.

3) The fact the bar tab ran out by 9pm was less than appealing.

Come on Fairfax, put a bit more on the bar!

4) To the reviewer from Salient, leave the jokes to the professionals 5) For being high and mighty towards everyone, Craccum really didn’t clean up well at all, in both the award sense and their personal presentation.

From the evening one great highlight was from the meeting of the editor of the TIT, the Timaru Institute of Technology. It has two programs, a diploma in hang gliding and a course in electronics. The Tit is a weekly publication on one piece of A4 written by the editor Joe (who was campaigning, quite successfully, to become a member of ASPA), and Len a funny man, who can’t tell jokes.

Overall the experience was quite interesting, watching all the other student publications vie for number one spot, so they could proudly display their photocopied certificates in their offices, be proclaimed the funniest, most student oriented, balanced publication. Considering how many people go to university, and how many people write these publications, I reckon they all did a damn good job. Go student media!

P.S. If you ever get a chance to talk to Farrier, ask him about his Norwegian metal story about brains. It has no moral, is quite gross and insanely droll.

P.P.S. Scott, congratulations again; first year and already an ASPA award winning sports columnist. Good man.

24

ea ls

M

gD ea

, s l Hee MEN

ARE

LIKE

ls

by Ben Hope

li n

But hey! That’s just what I think

&

Se a

by Elana Kluner RAINDROPS.

WE

AGONISE

over the dry spells, but when the storm comes, we find ourselves wandering where our umbrella is.

My friend Arlee broke up with her boyfriend about nine months ago. She is a beautiful and intelligent girl who would have no problem finding another one.

Except, for the last nine months, she hasn’t been approached by a single guy (no pun intended). She made herself available as much as possible. She even asked her friends to hook her up, but there were no men in sight. It got to the point where she would blame herself for men not being into her. She expressed to me how badly she just wanted a boyfriend to come home to and how she wished that her prince charming would sweep her off her feet and take her away.

All of this continued until two weeks ago. A metaphorical storm had hit her house and shook her world. Boys were dropping on her doorstep left and right. She got asked out on two dates, one by a guy she works with and another by a man she met at a club. Along with these, she bumped into an old crush on the street and her ex started calling her and asking to see her as well. At first, she was so excited that she was wanted by so many men. She said yes to the two dates and asked her old crush and her ex to meet her for coffee (at different times, of course).

All of these meetings went well and she told me she could really see herself with any of them and didn’t know which one to choose.

She wanted to keep her options open so she didn’t make a wrong decision, but after a while she started to feel the storm. On top of these four men, nearly every time Arlee went out, she had men throwing her pick up lines and trying to flirt with her. Her phone inbox was loaded with texts and her voicemail was almost full. She felt so overwhelmed and just wanted to hide. So, I handed her an umbrella, make her a cup of tea, and told her to take a seat.

Arlee told me that whichever guy she was with at the time, she felt as if she liked them the most, but as soon as she was alone and got a text from the other one, her emotions would shift. She asked me, “Why do all men come at once and what are we supposed to do?

How do we choose?”

I think this is like anything in life. Take shopping for example.

When you are desperate to get all dolled up for a night out, you never can find what to wear and the stores that usually carry your answers are drawing blanks.

When you walk into your favourite store months later while strolling home from work, it feels like you could buy everything on the shelf. Every outfit you try on fits, except you can only afford one. You can either save your money and walk out of the store with nothing, or you can take that one outfit you know you will love and need on that next special night. But how do you choose which one?

It’s called sacrifice.

Maybe one outfit is cheaper than the rest, or can match one with a wider variety of your current wardrobe, but know the one you choose, you chose for a reason and you will love it and wear it with all your heart, soul and fabulousness.

neet's totally metal

by Frances Gordon

THIS COLUMN MARKS THE SECOND TO LAST

AMERICANS ARE OBSCENE, AND I DON’T MEAN THAT

column of the year, and I know you’re all going to be very sad about this. For the last two columns I thought I would look back on the highs and lows of 2010 in the metal world. Because no one likes to end on a downer, I thought I would look at the down sides of 2010, with the highlights in the next column.

2010 has been a bit of a depressing year for metal fans.

Not in the sense that the music sucked or anything like that, but everyone kept dying.

Even for a genre of music where lyrical themes include death and dying, that doesn’t mean we’re happy when one of our own dies.

This didn’t happen just once this year, it happened three times in the space of just a few months. First in April was the sudden death of Peter Steele of Type O Negative.

Rumours had started circulating late on April 15 (NZ time) that Steele had died, but with many fans knowing the bands history of practical jokes, including faking Steele’s death, a lot of people did not believe it at first. It was confirmed later that day that Steele had in fact died, and a day later the band made a statement on their website regarding it.

There seemed to be an endless supply of tributes to him, including Type O Negative’s previous record company, Roadrunner Records, who wrote a long remberence page to him on their website.

Very little has been revealed publically about the circumstances surrounding his death; all that is really known is he died of heart failure after a short illness.

This is in contrast to the death of metal icon Ronnie James Dio, who died in May after a six month battle with cancer.

The public was kept up to date with Dio’s condition thanks to his wife and manager regularly making statements.

After being diagnosed in November 2009, it had appeared that Dio’s health was on the rise as late as March 2010.

On May 4 Dios current band Heaven and Hell were forced to cancel tour dates due to Dio’s ill health, but remained hopeful about Dio’s condition and future tour dates. On May 15 rumours started circulating that Dio had died, but his wife Wendy contacted metal new source Blabbermouth, informing them that while Dio was in hospital and not doing well, he was still alive. Finally on May 16 came the news that Dio had passed away in hospital. A public memorial was held on May 30, and the numbers attending exceeded the capacity of the 1500 seat church.

Finally, while I am not a fan of Slipknot, it was never the less saddening to learn of the death of Paul Gray in his hotel room. It was later found that the cause of death was an accidental overdose. Gray’s wife was pregnant with the couple’s first child at the time.

Also filed under “enough is enough already!”, Polish black metallers Behemoth announced their front man Nergal had been rushed to hospital with an unknown illness and cancelled their current tour dates.

It was later revealed Negral had been diagnosed with leukaemia and is currently undergoing chemotherapy whilst awaiting a bonemarrow transplant. Hopefully Negral pulls through, as the metal community certainly doesn’t need to lose another musician this year.

in a bad way. I just mean when they do something, they go all out no matter what. Everywhere I have gone thus far I have been surrounded by folk who aim for the absolute greatest and expect nothing less from those around them. So, when I went to my first college football game of the season I knew I was going to have a whole lot of fun.

Football is a big deal in these parts. It’s not just a game, it’s a way of life. To give you some perspective, Game Day is even more important than God’s day of rest (and that’s saying a lot coming from the Bible Belt of the Midwest). People go all out. Parking lots turn into huge tailgates where from 7am families grill, drink, play football and drink some more.

I didn’t really know what to expect at first from my first football game. We were playing McNeese State, some no-name team from Louisiana who had been paid $500,000 to play our division one team. The general consensus was that Mizzou would slaughter McNeese, so I was a little worried I was going to be bored. It was around the time I saw the Stealth Bomber (that oddly resembled a UFO) soaring over the stadium during the national anthem that I knew my purchase of season tickets had been a good investment.

I definitely wasn’t bored. Hell, you didn’t even need to understand football to be having a good time.

To be honest – a football game is something you can’t really describe; it’s something you have to experience. But I am going to try. Basically, take every football game you seen in a movie, every stereotype – the blonde cheerleaders being tossed into the air, the marching band that struts in formation whilst wearing ridiculous hats, the 6ft football players who have the looks but lack a little wit, the baton twirlers and amplify all of that by about a million. I never thought I’d be saying this but ALL OF THE STEREOTYPES ARE TRUE! And it’s wonderful.

Like every school though, we do have a few quirks. For instance, when Mizzou scores a touchdown or a field goal, members of the Army’s Reserve Officers Training Corps fire off a cannon (yes, a real cannon, I’m sure you can imagine my reaction the first time that happened. Needless to say, it was embarrassing). After firing said cannon they then run to the touch line to perform push-ups in formation in accordance with the number of points Mizzou has on the scoreboard.

Then there are the cheers. They’re all pretty simple, and to be honest when I first learnt them I felt a little bit lame. But when you’re standing in a stadium with 60,000 other (slightly intoxicated) fans singing and dancing to ‘Mizzou-Rah!’ or swaying in unison as The Missouri Waltz plays, there’s honestly no better feeling.

Before I came here I never thought I’d be the football type. The closest I’d ever got to football was studying Remember the Titans in 5th form English and even then I vowed I’d never like “that pansy version of rugby”. But I guess even the strongest can be persuaded with the help of a stealth bomber and a couple of pre-game drinks, that is.

ISSUE 23 2010

25

by Tenani French

Like it!

Give right rule change ge Finally we are getting rid of the dangerously archaic give right at !"#$%#&" '!%("'(")$! !*("$+,-&($).#/(0("1 !2( "3%(4$'5+5.6(+5')"("1#(5#%"( thing this government has done so far. What they propose is that we adopt the rule that virtually every other country uses which is nice and simple: if there’s a car in the way you can’t turn. So for instance if you are sitting in the turning lane to go right and an oncoming car is turning left into the same street you have to wait for them to go before you can. If there’s a car in the lane you’re crossing don’t go. Nice and simple. Bout time.

Do it!

Vote

It’s getting down to the wire now folks, your votes have to be mailed back no later than this Wednesday to ensure it gets back in time to be counted.You may not think it’s all that important to vote and get the right people into council, local boards and health boards but it really is. Think about how much you’ve complained about the city in the past month. Really.

0"3%(+(.'"7( %!3"( "8(0,(6')39#(#9#$(&':4.+ !#;(+5')"(4+$2%7(,''"4+"1%7(<+& -2+( Festival, rubbish and recycling collection, public pools, public transport, libraries, the zoo, museums, beaches, the Lantern Festival, water prices, *$+,-" 7(:+$ !+%7(&#:#"#$ #%7(&'::)! "6(1+..%7(;'*(&'!"$'.7($'+;%('$("1#( airport (and that list could go on for pages) then you simply must vote.

You have no right to complain if you don’t vote. If you do vote and your candidates don’t get elected then feel free to bitch and moan as much as you please. Until then, shut up.

Hate it!

Fuel price ce increases iinc ncreas as How are you handling the newly supercharged petrol prices? Since last week’s tax cut (and subsequent GST rise and introduction of extra fuel taxes) have you been better off or not? How much more are you paying for petrol? Isn’t this a wonderfully new world with less tax and more cash?

Yeah... I didn’t think so either.

Love it!

Big Day Out announcement nt ='(#!;('!(+(4'% " 9#(!'"#("1 %(>##2(03;(. .#"* 2#("'(1+9#(+(.''2(+"("1#(-$%"( announcement for next year’s Big Day Out. =1#(;+6("1#6(:+2#("1#(-$%"( +!!')!&#:#!"( %(%'$"(',("1#()!',-& +.(%"+$"("'("1#(%)::#$(%#+%'!/(? !+..6( the end is near and we can feel the air heating up, daylight savings kicks in and you swear you can smell tequila and sunscreen. I’ve heard people saying this is the best lineup in years, and they’re probably right. BDO is certainly positioning themselves for the indie kid market with acts like LCD Soundsystem and Crystal Castles. Heavy rockers will revel at the chance to see Tool and Rammstein. Oldies have got Iggy and the Stooges and John Butler Trio and the hip, urbanites can party to the amazing M.I.A. and Lupe Fiasco. Sure there are a lot of returning artists but it’s a pretty well balanced lineup and sure to please a lot of people. Not sure about yet another price hike but with a line up like this no doubt the show will sell out yet again. !"#$%&%'("()*%#$+,-".)/"#$+,0"#$%"(#/1%,#"*2((%(")!"345",%%1"#)"0,)6"27)/#8"(%,1" /("2,"%*2+9"#)"1%72#%:2/#;2<;,="6+#$">?/--%(#+),(@+,"#$%"(/7A%<#"9+,%;

26

ARIES (March 21-April 19) You need to start being more negative.Your friends are becoming upset with all your smiles and jokes.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20) The stars have something boring planned for you this week. It will involve cats and sandwiches.

GEMINI (May 21-June 21) With uni getting harder and job prospects looking thin over the summer break, you may feel a little down this week. Cheer up, you grumpy shit.

CANCER (June 22-July 22) Remember how good you felt when your primary school teachers gave you stickers? Give other people stickers; you’ll make friends and seem nice.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) You will have a romantic encounter with a gay Scorpio this weekend. Confusing much?

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) Toward the end of this week you will suddenly realise that this horoscope is not going to come true.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23) Sex is on the cards this week! The stars predict a steamy rendezvous. Make sure you’re on your A-game or you’ll miss the opportunity.

SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21) You will lose something important this week. Keep your phone and your virginity close.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) Don’t answer the phone on Wednesday or things will take a turn for the worse.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) The stars overheard a meeting between pigeons on the weekend. They will try and shit on you. The pigeons, not the stars.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) Your computer is conspiring against you, save all your uni work onto a usb because the lunar movement has predicted a hard drive collapse.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) A dodgy octogenarian will give you an offer you can’t refuse this week.You should still probably refuse it.

Dear Agony Aunt I feel like I am a little overweight and would really like to lose a few kilos. I canÕt afford to go to somewhere like Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers but I think I need some advice on what kinds of foods I should be eating as I donÕt really know. I donÕt have much money and IÕm on a tight budget. Can you help?

From Overweight

Dear Overweight

Did you know that at AUT Health, Counselling and Wellbeing Centres there are 4th year Student Dieticians (that means almost totally qualified!) that you can see for FREE! They can advise you on anything to do with food and nutrition and can help you work out an eating plan that will fit with your student lifestyle and budget. They can certainly help with weight reduction and any other concerns, e.g. low iron levels and tiredness. To make an appointment phone 9179992 Wellesley Street Campus.

Dear Agony Aunt I am worried about my friend. If we arrange to go out she will stop eating for the day so that she can have as much alcohol as she wants and not gain any weight. She always gets really drunk and I end up looking after her all night instead of enjoying myself. I have tried telling her this cannot be good for her but she doesnÕt seem to take any notice.

From Friend

Dear Friend

Have you ever heard the term “drunkorexia”? It’s a slang term that basically means restricting your food intake and drinking your dinner in order to stay slim. Unfortunately this is a growing trend among young people, particularly women between the ages of 18 and 24. You are right to be concerned about your friend as this is a very dangerous way to behave and could have grave consequences.

It is not surprising that your friend gets drunk quickly. Food slows down alcohol absorption in the body so by drinking on an empty stomach you’re more likely to get drunk faster. The consequences of being drunk and out of control can be devastating. Often people lose their inhibitions when drunk and do things they wouldn’t normally do when sober. Obviously you don’t want this to happen to your friend so you are protecting her. All very admirable but not very fair on you. I suggest if your friend won’t listen to you and continues to drink in this way you stop going out with her. Let her know you do not want to be responsible for her and that she has to take responsibility for herself.

Apart from the dangers associated with alcohol she is seriously depriving her body of essential nutrients to maintain a healthy body. Drunkorexia is strongly associated with eating disorders, particularly bulimia (gorging food and then throwing up). She may have some issues around this and need professional help. You could try gently talking to her about ways of getting help and support. Tell her you are worried about her and concerned for her safety. Health Counselling and Wellbeing offer a free counselling service to students; this might be good place to start. Or she could log onto the AUT website and access counselling online. For help and advice call Health Counselling and Wellbeing on 9219998 for Akoranga Campus or 9219992 for City Campus.

www.5aday.co.nz www.knowyournumbers.co.nz www.heartfoundation.org.nz

GIN WIGMORE THE GRAVE TRAIN NATIONAL TOUR With very special guests

The Snowdroppers After taking on the United States Gin Wigmore is heading back to New Zealand with “The Grave Train” National tour this October.

2010 has been a stellar year for the diminutive Auckland-born singer, her debut album “Holy Smoke”, which features the chart-topping singles; “Oh My”, “I Do” and “Too late for lovers” is very close to hitting the quadruple-platinum mark in New Zealand.

WIN TICKETS TO HER AUCKLAND SHOW ON OCTOBER 9

ISSUE 23 2010

Email rebecca.williams@aut.ac.nz with your name, address and contact phone number to go in the draw.

If you miss out on tickets, you can buy 27 them at www.the-edge.co.nz

Fashion Week Diaries 2010 / PART2

by Heather Rutherford Thursday’s Highlights

8pm: Stolen Girlfriends Club.

10am: Twenty-Seven Names.

For me, going to TwentySeven Names was a last minute decision. After a late night at Nom*D, a 10am start was a bit early for me to be at the Fashion Week site. However in the end, my curiosity won out and I managed to get myself down to the Viaduct. Thankfully my diligence did not go unrewarded and TwentySeven Names turned out to be one of my favourite shows of the week.

The collection was titled ‘The Fearsome Five’, which is a reference to the designers’ (Rachel Easting and Anjali Stewart) high school days in the 90s. It consisted of gorgeous cropped blazers, college jackets and cuteas-a-button dresses. As usual the music was upbeat and pumping, which even had fashion stylist Derek Warburton dancing in the front row.

Twenty-Seven Names have long been masters of the girlishly cute dress but this season is probably their strongest yet.

The Stolen Girlfriends Club collection titled ‘last night’s party’ ended up being another favourite of mine. For a label with such humble beginnings with quirky t-shirts and ripped jeans they have sure come a long way. The collection was inspired by the all too familiar scenario of waking up the morning after a raucous party. Hydrangeas mixed with cigarette butts adorned everything from fabric to hair; this motif is sure to be a big hit this upcoming winter. The styling fit in well with the theme of the collection; the male models had lipstick kisses on their necks (one even appeared to have a black eye), and everyone had crumpled, passed-out-on-the-couch hair. My favourite piece from the collection was a floor length sheer white dress worn over highly visible Stolen Girlfriends Club lingerie. My respect goes out to anyone bold enough to pull this number off!

11am: Group mini show. Next on the bill was a group show consisting of ethnically inspired Whiri and Mena, and New Zealand icons Liz Mitchell and Turet Knuefermann. After two days of fashion that is marketed towards a younger age bracket, it is refreshing to see a more sophisticated collection on the runway.

2pm: Matchi Motchi. Going into Matchi Motchi, I thought I had a fair idea of what to expect. Their invitation, website, and any photos or media I could get my hands on indicated a practical and demure label.

What came out on the catwalk was more Lady Gaga meets 70s sci-fi than anything else. One outfit consisted of three giant tulle balls made into a dress, reminiscent of the Viktor and Rolf S2010 ready-to-wear collection with a hint of bumblebee. Yes, I am just as confused about this as you are.

Well if they wanted to draw attention to the technical capability of their label, they did just that. I, on the other hand left feeling a bit bemused, albeit thoroughly entertained.

TWENTY-SEVEN NAMES

2010 New Zealand Fashion Week was an equally exhausting and exhilarating affair. It has been amazing to see how far the industry has come in 10 short years, and to see what the very best of New Zealand fashion design has to offer for Winter 2011. Here is my final round up of the best of New Zealand Fashion week 2010.

My 2010 New Fashion Week Awards Best Invite: Nom*D – more like a programme for a play than anything

TRELISE COOPER KIDS

else, definitely the most unique invite, to match their unique ‘installation’/ fashion show Best Hair: WORLDÕs sculptural hair on the women was a definite standout Best sound track: Trelise Cooper for kids and Twenty-Seven Names; both energetic and got the audience moving Best Model: Elly Sekikawa – widely acknowledged as one of the audience favourites, this girl looked so amazing strutting down the catwalk Best meltdown: would have to be one of the mini-models at Trelise Cooper for kids…. Aw bless them Best Goodie Bag: Kathryn WilsonÕs contained pairs of her shoes and the goodie bags from Trelise Cooper for Kids contained ‘Fashion Fairytale’ Barbie dolls

Most Spectacular: WORLD. Nothing about this show was anything less than grand

Best Front-rower: Stylist Derek Warburton, who also wins the best dressed award

28

Friday’s Highlights Fr 12pm: Miro Moda.

I have looked for forward to this show all week. AUT pos postgrad student, our very own

Blaire

A Archibald ,

made his Fashion Week deb after winning first place in the Miro debut Mod fashion competition. Blaire was Moda ins inspired by an old photo of his granddad (wh played for the Maori All Blacks), and (who bas based his collection on 1940s menswear. p I particularly liked the combination of pleated, baggy pants with the short man mandarin collar and the use of contrasting col coloured panels. I went along to support Bla Blaire, my fellow AUT compatriot, but also bec because after interviewing him near the th year I know just j beginning of the how talented as a designer he is and wanted to see his work in the flesh. I think it is fair to say his work was one of the highlights of the day and one of the best menswear presentations of the week.

!"#$%&'Trelise Cooper kids. Even thought there was nothing in this show even remotely near my size, it was another fashion week highlight for me. It was held in the ginormous Westpac tent, which usually has a very long runway. However, given the size and stature of the models it was halved in length and also adorned in giant plush toadstools and a moving windmill. Trelise Cooper’s childrenswear collection for the upcoming winter was absolutely stunning with the mini-models covered in brightly coloured flowers, some even wearing giant bow headbands.

Gorgeous as it was, the show was not without its ‘hiccups’. Some models were too bashful to take to the stage and there was a bit of runway congestion when one group of models just decided to ‘chill’ at the end of the catwalk. The show ended with a ‘bang’ as all the models and Trelise herself congregated on the catwalk and pink and white sparkly confetti exploded over the stage.

5pm: NZ retrospective show. This year New Zealand Fashion Week celebrated its 10th anniversary with a ‘retrospective’ showcasing of the iconic styles from the catwalks over the last 10 years. Designers included WORLD, Zambesi, Nom*D, Workshop as well as many others. I felt very lucky to have been there to witness such an important part of New Zealand fashion history, although the t rowdy singing drunk guy experience was slightly diminished byy the sitting directly in front of me. The final look in the retrospective was from WORLD’s iconic collection ‘There is no depression in New Zealand’, a collection that probably was one of the best in New Zealand fashion history. When the models came out to do their final walk, Pieter Stewart, the events organiser from day one was presented with a bunch of flowers and received a standing ovation.

A very fitting end to the week!

NZ RETROSPECTIVE SHOW

HEATHER RUTHERFORD DIPLOMA OF FASHION TECHNOLOGY

YAN GUO DIPLOMA OF FASHION TECHNOLOGY

KIERAN RITCHIE BACHELOR OF COMMUNICATIONS

BOMBER JACKET: VINTAGE DRESS: KAREN WALKER SHOES: STORE IN NEWMARKET

DRESS: ZAMBESI SHOES: CANÕT REMEMBER

T-SHIRT: ED HARDY JACKET: DIESEL JEANS: DIESEL SHOES:'()"'(*+,-' YAMAMOTO

ISSUE 23 2010

29

Charlie St Cloud

Ignite

Directed by Burr Steers Film Review by Meg Rivera

Shihad CD Review by Mike Atkins

THERE ARE SEVERAL LEVELS OF DISAPPOINTMENT ON THE

WHEN SHIHAD WERE BEING INTERVIEWED BY PAUL HENRY

movie expectations scale, and this movie is right up there with The Last Airbender.

on Breakfast on the morning Ignite came out, Henry talked about the negative reaction their last album Beautiful Machine got. I was a little mystified by that one. I certainly didn’t detect any negativity, which I took as a sign of how far we’d come since the days when every Shihad move was criticised as if they were running a small war-torn country, rather than making rock music.

It was one of those movies where the trailer was heaps better than the actual film but only because it contained all of the good parts of the film. Now think about it: if all the good parts can be condensed into a two and a half minute trailer, you’ve got yourself a flop bigger than a ham sandwich.

The film itself is based on Ben Sherwood’s novel The Life And Death of Charlie St Cloud. Charlie St Cloud is a promising sailor who was granted a sailing scholarship to Stanford. His high school graduation foresees grand things for him, and with his last summer before shipping out to university about to begin, Charlie promises his little brother Sam he would play catch with him every day before he goes.

But, like all melodramatic teen dramas, Charlie and Sam get in a bad car accident and Sam dies. What follows is an annoyingly predictable plotline of Charlie going into a crazy funk only to be pulled out of it by the charming ingénue who was once upon a time the geeky girl in his class. Throw in a few nauseating love scenes in a graveyard, a Cockney best mate and a grizzled Kim Basinger and you pretty much have the film.

I don’t mean to be so scathing. I really did try and give this film a chance. I personally find Zac Efron a decent actor, especially after his work in 17 Again, but this film has only set him up to be a whiny bitch who needs to have a chocolate bar to feel better. He does play the part of wounded puppy quite well, and the scene where he meets Sam again in the woods is the highlight of the entire film.

Charlie Tahan plays Sam, the tough little kid who absolutely adores his big brother. His performance was slightly better than expected, but I think his character should have been developed a little bit more, even if only to add more redemptive value to the film. But I guess it’s hard when you’re a figment of your brother’s imagination.

Amanda Crew plays Tess Carroll, the ever-present love interest. She’s had minimal success in films such as Final Destination 3 and Sex Drive but this would be the first drama she’s starred in. She isn’t bad, but there are times where you can’t figure out if her acting is because of the script or if she really is just meant to play bit roles. You choose.

Which is why Shihad going back to their rock roots is not entirely necessary, but very welcome. Shihad making an album that is more similar to Killjoy than anything else in their catalogue is probably the biggest surprise in music of the year. For everything Shihad had achieved in their career, surprising their audience was never one of them. Every Shihad album so far has had a label attached to it before it came out; “the metal one” (Killjoy), “the big one” (The General Electric), “the American one” (Pacifier), “the angry one” (Love Is The New Hate) etc. Those tags always distracted from the music. Pacifier, for instance was far more disliked that it deserved to be, but without one of those tags we get to focus on the music. Yay. Because of that, listening to Ignite is a bit of a strange sensation; like we’re listening to a whole new band who are somehow very experienced. That new band must be quite highly influenced by Shihad, because they’re able to emulate Shihad at different parts of their career. That is the most important and noticeable thing about the album; It’s sort of like a proxy greatest hits that touches on every part if their career, but never dwells anywhere. It’s a greatest hits for die-hard fans rather than for casual listeners, as it focuses on the early stuff.

This can be a little jarring, as it means shifts from the (relatively) ballady songs, to some real heavy ones. That’s not a criticism though; those jarring elements make for an exciting listen. A song like Nemesis (Dark Star), or I’m A Void take their chugging power from the way they grab the listener by the collar and shake the loose change out of them when they’re least expecting it.

There’s also a glorious lack of polish to this... in places. The tracks that sound like older Shihad numbers really do sound like they were recorded by the band of Killjoy era, with all the messiness that it suggests. The closer Cold Heart is particularly like that, but so is the great Nemesis, which has bits Chris Knox could’ve come up with in his Toy Love heyday.

But then there are tracks like the title track, which are so sophisticated they could only have come from an experienced band. Ignite is a great track, with its sonnet like bridge and subtle, glassy guitars.

Ignite is an album that is impossible to characterise as a whole, except as a collection of very Shihad songs.

!"#$ %! ))

On the whole, I would not recommend paying to see this film in theatres. Go download it or something, because I sure as hell would rather spend my $10 on something else.

Beautiful Machine was a very un-Shihad album. It wasn’t my thing, but Shihad had earned the right to do what made them happy. The fact that the audience just shrugged and kept moshing was a sign of mutual respect and maturity.

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30

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Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole

Evolution: Past, Present, and Future Deceptikonz CD Review by Mike Atkins

Directed by Zack Snyder Film Review by Meg Rivera

I WAS LUCKY ENOUGH TO HAVE WATCHED THIS MOVIE FOR

WHY DID WE NOT NOTICE SWING BY SAVAGE? WHY DID THE

free, but I would be happy to tell you all that this movie is worth paying for.

Americans so fondly take to it? And, more importantly, is it a question we want answered? I have to wonder about that last point, because of the implications of all the possible answers. Is it that we’re used to ignoring our homegrown hiphop artists? And if so, is it because we weren’t very confident in their abilities because we’re natural self-deprecators, or because they weren’t very good?

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole is the film version of the first of a book series.

The film starts with Soren and his brother Kludd and their little sister Eglantine.

Soren is a dreamer, endlessly fascinated by the legend of the Guardians. Kludd is the more cynical brother, the realist.

One night, Kludd pushes Soren out of a branch and they end up kidnapped by two evil owls who take them away to a dark place where they are forced to pick apart owl pellets in search for “flecks”, little metallic nuggets that power a mysterious contraption. Soren manages to escape with a little Elf Owl named Gylfie and together they strive to find the Guardian owls so they can rescue the other kidnapped owlets.

Prior to watching this film I had absolutely no idea what I was going to find.

I’d seen the trailer once and thought, “Fighter owls, how rude!”. I look back at it now and consider it a blasphemy; this is a film of noble spirits and good intentions, where hope and sheer will overcome the obstacles of the mind.

Notable voices were Jim Sturgess, who voices the lead owl Soren. In a mix of various accents, the brash Australian lilt pops up quite sorely but it lends a youthful and carefree colour to the character.

David Wenham (Professor Lupin to you, Potterheads) voices Digger, a Burrowing Owl, a quirky and often off-centred character who helps in the search of the Guardian owls. Anthony LaPaglia voices Twilight, an eccentric Great Grey Owl with a taste for music and bad rhymes. Listen to his lullaby as he sings everybody to sleep.

The animation was fantastic! I have never seen so many slow motion sequences in an animated film and the 3D effect made it so much cooler! Each owl is beautifully created and quite accurate to what it looks like in real life.

I did however, shut my eyes every time the owls’ nursemaid Mrs Plithiver came on the screen. She is a snake and I am deathly afraid of them. Can you imagine a snake coming up on a massive screen and in 3D? Shivers.

On the whole, I would definitely encourage you all to see this film. I would even go as far as to encourage you to join me as I read the books. It would be the Lord of the Rings of the owl world, in terms of epic and of story line.

You will especially enjoy the scenery of brilliant orange sunsets and towering mountains. The pace is perfect, and the story line is sound. Go see it. It’ll be a hoot.

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ISSUE 23 2010

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Evolution: Past, Present, and Future is a double album, with one disc being a compilation of past efforts, and the other being a new album. The compilation makes a case for having it a penny each way, and the new album, unfortunately makes a case for the latter.

But, man, is Swing by Savage a good track. It was released on Savage’s debut in 2005, and wasn’t quite ignored (it did go to number 1), but it wasn’t exactly a stayer. Those who missed it first time around, were given a second chance when it was re-released as a bonus track on his American-backed second LP. This is your third chance, as it’s here too. I had to point that out, as it makes all the near-misses here worth it.

Hip-hop groups typically operate as the reverse of the old saying about chains being only as strong as their weakest link for some reason. They seem to be able to not only tolerate weak links, but to support, and nurture them. Probably because in hip-hop, there’s not one person for each job, and the guys get to bounce things off each other. Deceptikonz had its weak links; mouths that couldn’t keep up with thoughts was a common problem, but the presence of a bunch of guys, all dealing with it together makes it work. And as a result, when they went solo, they knew how to handle their strengths and weaknesses.

That comes through on the “past” disc, which is mostly their solo stuff. If it was only Swing, the disc would be worth it, but there’s a few other gems too. Truth be told, it’s the collective tracks that are the best; Elimination, and Don’t Fuck With Me are awesome, but it’s clear when they go solo that Deceptikonz was a nurturing ground. When they go solo, the guys continue doing what they do best.

The “Present and Beyond” is a little bit of a mystery. “Beyond” isn’t quite right, since this is their last album, but it’s fitting since they sound like they have much more life left in them. I haven’t been able to find out why it’s their last, but it seems to be something outside of their control as they seem to be stuffing everything in before it all comes to an end. That’s the fault with the disc; Some of the tonal shifts are quite jarring. If all of the moods that are present had been given room to breathe over a few discs, the result would have been something masterful.

But there is an upside to that. It makes for an impressive demonstration of what they can do. Man, if only we were looking forward from this point, not back.

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31

Passive Me, Aggressive You

The Secret Lives Of Dancers

The Naked and Famous CD Review by Melissa Low

TV3, Tuesday at 8pm TV Review by Rebecca Williams

THE FIRST TIME I HEARD OF THE NAKED AND FAMOUS WAS around eight months ago. I remember sitting on the couch, flicking

FINALLY, A NZ SHOW YOU CAN SINK YOUR TEETH INTO. The Secret Lives of Dancers is easily the most titillating television I’ve seen in years.

through the music channels on Sky. Their music video for Birds came up on Juice TV and I stopped chewing on cornflakes for a moment to watch these images of flowers, silhouettes, and band members being wrapped up in ribbon. I didn’t understand the meaning behind it all, but I remember saying to myself “yeah, this band will never make it mainstream in NZ. Their sound won’t be heard in the top 40 hits”. I should really eat my shoes for saying that, because after the success of their song Young Blood debuting in the number one spot on the New Zealand charts, The Naked and Famous have released their debut to a growing group of followers.

Listening to their debut album, Passive Me, Aggressive You, is like being on a long drive. Not the sort of long drives where you’re frustratingly stuck in city bound traffic at 7.30am, but the drives where it is nearing sunset and you’re speeding out of the city, trying to make your way towards the nearest beach.

You have moments in the journey where it is really eventful and exciting, but the slower and softer parts have you in a dream-like hypnotic state, like driving on an empty and open road.

All of This is a really catchy opening to the album. One that draws you in with its head rocking beat and upbeat vocal duet, then ties you down with its bouncy guitar solo. To stop listening at this song gives you the wrong impression that the band is merely a pop sound. As it moves onto Punching in a Dream, more synths come out and Alisa Xayalith’s lead vocals really shine. They scream, they plead, they wail, and they get your attention. This is the same with Young Blood. The song is like an anthem that cries in angst and frustration, and even though the lyrics may not make literal sense instantly, they’re soaked with so much emotion it doesn’t matter.

Many of the other songs on the album continue to have that electronic/ alternative feel. The track Eyes feels like a slow and dreamy Ladyhawke track, with an underlying 80s synth vibe, while Frayed has elements that remind me of Radiohead’s In Rainbows album. These different sounds help mix it up a little between the tracks without drawing too much attention away from their sound.

I wouldn’t say this album is flawless however; some songs in the album don’t seem to fit as well as others. A Wolf in Geeks Clothing is a real hit to the senses, like driving into really loud and messy road works at a chaotic intersection. The song’s intro becomes more unnecessary noise than anything else. Whether it is an attempt to make sure the songs are recognised to be individual and unique, this one track just feels really uncomfortable and out of place.

Despite that, the Passive Me, Aggressive You is a great debut album. I hope this band doesn’t become another victim of radio overkill, or that Australia claims them as their own. I can tell The Naked and Famous still have a lot to offer to New Zealand music in the future.

32

You don’t need to be a fan of the ballet to enjoy this soap opera, all the action is off stage. It’s only natural that a bunch of super-fit 20-somethings who spend all of their time rubbing up against each other in leotards and hot pants would turn to each other for gratification.

In the very first episode, dancer Katie explains how she started banging (or as Katie calls it: “Making love to”) the principal male dancer Michael when his WIFE and CHILDREN left for Australia. Katie announces this to the country quite happily and goes on to explain her mother’s reaction to their affair (or as Katie calls it: “relationship”). Suddenly by episode two, their love is on the rocks and by episode three it’s all over….or is it.

They go on tour and Katie seems to have put their names down for the same room (whoops) but Michael just isn’t interested. She whimpers to the camera about how they are happy to have a loving relationship without being in a relationship (?) as the camera switches to a shot of completely disinterested Michael hiding from Katie in the other room.

That night, Michael makes Katie sleep on the couch and that’s when things go from sadly obsessive to Fatal Attraction.

Unluckily for Michael/Luckily for Katie, they are paired up for a number of duets despite their awkward relationship. Suddenly, in the midst of practice, Katie falls....Did Michael drop her on purpose or did Katie orchestrate the whole thing simply to get his undivided attention?

As Katie rolls around on the floor like a possum that’s been run-over, I rewind to watch the fall in slow motion. Not only did Katie have enough time to save herself from falling, but she barely fell a foot. My suspicions are confirmed later in the show, when Michael is giving Katie a guilt-ridden back massage in “their” room. Camera pans up to Katie’s face bearing a smirk that only a cat with cream could produce.

Will Katie be able to perform next week? Will she try to get pregnant if this ploy fails? How many of the other ballerinas is Michael boffing? How many guys are watching this show and wishing they started doing ballet too?

As if this drama wasn’t enough the principal female ballerina Abigail is nursing a catastrophic injury, new recruit Lucy is learning the ropes and the gang hit the road on tour.

Originally produced for a Saturday afternoon timeslot, the show proved so good that it was upgraded to prime time. It works because the dancers are interesting, young, modern and professional athletes. They have to battle serious injuries and intense training on top of hormones. It’s gold.

Tune in next week for the buff bods and/or high drama and/or scandalous affairs as the troupe start their nation-wide tour.

e h t t Spo nce e r e f f Di

spot Correctly identify the FIVE differences in Correc the two photos then circle the and drop your entry !"#$%#&'$!()'(*"$+&,-$#./0(1$#'$"2($3#4$#!$"2($* 5($#.$"2($ '(5$5(3)"($*")!5*1$#'$6#*"$"#$5(3)"($78$9#4$:;;:$<(==(*=(%$ St before 12 pm Thursday. WhatÕs up for grabs? A $10 voucher for one of the cafes at your campus: the Counter, Beanz Cafe, Lime Cafe, the Hub Cafe or Manukau Cafe.

Congratulations to Issue 22 Winner, Parwana Kazim! (City)

He’s back! By ‘Chopular’ demand.

As seen on TV’s 7 Days and The Ronnie Johns Half Hour, Heath Franklin brings his award-winning comedy alter ego, Chopper, back to NZ for a return tour of his 2009 smash hit, Harden the Fuck Up, New Zealand! this time with a lot more mongrel and a shitload more moustache.

The world’s gone soft since the ANZACs first stood on the beaches of Gallipoli. Global financial crisis, climate change...sometimes life seems a bit tough, and you just feel like finding a quiet corner and having a cry. Well its times like these that Chopper thinks you should take off your skirt, grow a moustache and harden the fuck up.

New Zealand needs a new kind of motivational speaker, a new life coach for a new age. From the rugby World Cup to hands-free mobiles, mangoes, Switzerland, to anti-smoking ads, even Darth Vader gets a punch in the soft guts by the International Ambassador of Hard.

So, if you missed Chopper last time, or went out for a whizz and missed a bit, this is your chance to catch one of the world’s funniest comics, live and in stabbing distance.

"Australia’s funniest comedy character...”

* * * * * SUNDAY MAIL

hopper! ets to soewes aC Win tick kycity Auckland Friday, November 5 and Saturday, November 6.

S t kets to both sh We have tic ntact details and preferred date. Winners will be notified by email. illiams@aut.ac.nz with your co ca.w2010 il rebec23 To go in the draw emaISSUE

33

Scott Miller Bachelor of Communications What do you think of this year’s first Big Day Out announcement?

Awesome. I’m most looking forward to Lupe Fiasco If you were stranded on a desert island and could only bring three things, what would they be?

My iPod, a fridge full of full and Sam Miskinmim In your opinion, what is the best café in Auckland?

I don’t go to cafes. I could have said something witty like Burger King or something Which book, comic book or TV series would you most like to see adapted into a film?

Ones that haven’t already been adapted What is your porn star name (first pet’s name, first street you lived on)?

I don’t own a pet so it would just be Sunnyside

Joe Crooks Bachelor of Health Science What do you think of this year’s first Big Day Out announcement?

Pretty sweet. I really like Lupe Fiasco If you were stranded on a desert island and could only bring three things, what would they be?

A subway, a David Bain jumper and Dwayne Rowsell In your opinion, what is the best café in Auckland?

Wild Bean at BP Which book, comic book or TV series would you most like to see adapted into a film?

I really don’t know What is your porn star name (first pet’s name, first street you lived on)?

Sharky Sandringham

Amber Young Bachelor of Arts (double major) What do you think of this year’s first Big Day Out announcement?

I’m excited because of Plan B If you were stranded on a desert island and could only bring three things, what would they be?

Mel, a boat and a paddle In your opinion, what is the best café in Auckland?

If I told everyone it wouldn’t be the best Which book, comic book or TV series would you most like to see adapted into a film?

That’s such a good question. The Hills; imagine that?!

It would be insane What is your porn star name (first pet’s name, first street you lived on)?

Paws Princess

Mel Tozer Bachelor of Arts/Social Sciences What do you think of this year’s first Big Day Out announcement?

Amazing. Plan B and Lupe If you were stranded on a desert island and could only bring three things, what would they be?

Amber and my two cats In your opinion, what is the best café in Auckland?

I actually don’t have one Which book, comic book or TV series would you most like to see adapted into a film?

Life of Brian. No... The Jersey Shore What is your porn star name (first pet’s name, first street you lived on)?

Aggy Orakei

34

Elena Hegmann Bachelor of Media Management (Germany)

Daniel Trinborg Masters in Business

What do you like most about New Zealand?

The nature. I like the beaches If you were stranded on a desert island and could only bring three things, what would they be?

Sun milk, sushi… I don’t know, a game or something. I really bored really quickly In your opinion, what is the best café in Auckland?

One of the Starbucks Which book, comic book or TV series would you most like to see adapted into a film?

How I Met Your Mother. They could make lots of movies out of it What is your porn star name (first pet’s name, first street you lived on)?

Rudi Bahnhot

What do you like most about New Zealand?

Being Norwegian, I like the weather. And all the culture If you were stranded on a desert island and could only bring three things, what would they be?

Swimming shorts, toothbrush and probably a bottle of Jack In your opinion, what is the best café in Auckland?

I really like Cima on High Street Which book, comic book or TV series would you most like to see adapted into a film?

How I Met Your Mother, !"#$%&"'( What is your porn star name (first pet’s name, first street you lived on)?

Nordlitoppen (the northern top)

PRESENTS

ISSUE 23 2010

35

2011 DIARIES IN STORE NOW

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