Posts by andrew llewellyn
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Mind you, that kid who decided to have a smoke while he was sniffing kerosene was probably unlikely to be one of the future movers and shakers.
Are you referring to the 5 teenagers in Blenheim, one of whom died, who were inhaling from a BBQ LPG cylinder in the back of a car when one of them decided he needed a smoke?
Anyway... we were woken up at 2am this morning, by drunken youths shouting & screaming, throwing crackers (yes, where DO they get them from?) and setting fire to letterboxes.
How do I know they were drunk? Because on my way to work not so long ago, I had to pick my way carefully through the broken bottles, fireworks carcasses & chunder at the cable car look out, where not coincindentally I suspect, someone had ripped all of the park benches out of their brick foundations & arranged them in a semi circle to look out over the harbour.
Really, I wouldn't mind if they went somewhere & shot skyrockets at each other instead.
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"I recall crappy little things called 'Mt Vesuvius' and 'Mt Egmont' whose flames barely rose a foot ..."
They still barely rise a foot.
And yeah, I can remember taping loads of thunderbangers together, twisting the wicks together & we'd play handgrenades at each other...
and the skyrocket battles with the flats across the other side of Nairn Street... so it probably is my memory.
But, the closest I ever came to igniting myself was when I bought two of these weird birdcage things - bear with me - you hung them from someplace, lit the wick & retired, and it did this clever, yet unspectacular chinese lantern thing & unfurled in coloured embers to become a birdcage complete with a little plastic bird on a swing.
At least the first one did. The second one fizzed & then went idle. After leaving it a while, I inspected a little closer. WHen my face was about a foot away it exploded with an almighty bang so that I landed on my arse in fright, looked up to see just a piece of string hanging from the roof.
Some months later, I came across a charred plastic canary about 30 metres away in the empty section next door.
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But did you?
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I'm happy to see the end to indiscriminate fireworks sales.
Partly it's because some people seem a lot less responsible than we were (and we were pretty irresponsible - so that may be just my perception) and the fireworks seem to be crap compared to what they were (might also be my perception).
Although, it occurred to me we should ditch November 5 as our fireworks night & have it in Winter, out of daylight saving - two reasons, 1. it's less of a fire risk, and 2. kids don't have to stay up so late till it gets dark enough for the show.
As for kids & live venues, our 14 year old attended an Odessa gig the other night at the San Francisco Bath House (once we'd persuaded the Mrs that it was no longer a massage parlour), but they had 2 shows - one earlier on for the youngsters, with no alcohol, and a later one where presumably, the older fans imbibed.
I thought that was pretty great. But probably a bit naff for an 18 year old.
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Do they have to be NZ shows? I'd like to put in a plug for the advertisements during the L-Word on Prime - the show is shite (except it's always a pleasure (cough) to see Mia Kirshner & Karina Lombard on our screens), but the ads are really pushing the limits
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Hah! That SunnyO guy is a twisted barstard if you ask me.
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Gosh, I'd forgotten Newsroom ever existed...
But OK - Scoop & the Hard News emails used to inform me, Flying Pig got me books that Amazon did not stock.
Public Address & Onebefore.org got me blogging.
Got to agree that internet banking has changed my life...
On the international front - google, gmail & bloglines have changed things for the better too.
One site/service to watch perhaps - whoiswhere.co.nz