4 posts tagged “nz”
On every website I look at for Olympics news, there is invariably a medals table. And, except in one instance, the medals table looks how I expect it to look: in order of gold medals. So China is first. But this is the way that I have always seen the medals table represented!
The one exception is the NBC website (although I don't look at any other USA websites), which lists the medals in order of total won. Which, as of this writing, has the USA at the top. Back in the day, this would have annoyed me incredibly, and probably instigated a rant about US-centrism and blah blah to tedium. Now, it just makes me smile. Aw, America. You need to be first, don't you? It's been hard going the past few years, looking down the barrel of decreasing influence in the world, and obvious contempt for the fucking around in the Middle East. You need that little boost. I kind of want to give the US a hug now.
In other news, New Zealand is having a fucking awesome Olympics. Go Kiwi!
The Exponents at the Dux de Lux, Christchurch New Zealand, New Years Eve 1995-6
OK, this one is memorable for the occasion, moreso than the music. The Exponents are a New Zealand band that have been around in some shape or form since 1981. Their lead singer, Jordan Luck, is always shitfaced in the shows, and so are most of the crowd. The wiki link says that going to an Exponents concert has become a rite of passage for New Zealand youth, and I agree.
So here we are, New Years Eve. It was the summer (summer! remember, for you northerners) between my 3rd and 4th year of college, and it had been a tough year, so I decided to drop out for summer. No job, no obligations, no nothing. I spent a few weeks in Christchurch, staying with my friend Sez, at her parent's place. Sez grew up in Christchurch. She worked for a few hours a day; I lay in the sun, listening to Ween and drinking. Every other day we took in some cricket. We played a lot of pool and listened to the second Oasis album (I dunno, we were in college, OK?) We drank a lot of beer.
New Year's Eve rolls around and we decide to meet up with a bunch of Sez's high school friends at the Dux. Before we left for the bar, we drank an unhealthy amount of gin so Sez was out for the count before the band even came on. I was propped up by Sez's friends, all of us yelling along to the words for hours. It was one of those epic nights where everyone you meet is your friend and every song the band sings is the best one they've ever played.
The first of these songs, I'll Say Goodbye, is a staple at NZ parties. It's from the early 80s when the band was still known as the Dance Exponents. The second and third songs are from the early 90s when I was starting college.
(terrible quality, but it's the only one I can find on youtube)
Speights is the beer of my hometown, Dunedin. I grew up thinking that beer = Speights; I didn't understand that there were many many different varieties. I'm from the south of NZ, aka the "mainland", and while we're not all sheep farmers or cow cockies, this sort of advertising definitely appeals to most people down there. Me included, I gotta admit it.
There's a whole series of these "Southern man" commercials. They've been running for nearly 20 years - this is one of the earliest.
At the end of 2001, I was writing my PhD thesis. I followed the advice of a post-doc in our department and worked insanely hard for 3 days, then got very drunk for a day. Lather, rinse, vomit, repeat. Good times, good times.
I was also going through a traumatic break-up, with my boyfriend who I had been with for 4 years, and who I was leaving behind to move to the USA. He thought we should stay together, and that he should meet me a year later when his studies were over. I thought that that just wouldn't work. It took me a long time to break up with him, because he was determined not to believe me. In the end, I was very mean to him in order to convince him it was over. I'm not proud of that.
Because I was moving to the USA, I was also all a-turmoil with the whole "moving to the other side of the world, not less an city that I had only seen depicted on Homicide: Life on the Street, and a region that had just gotten attacked by terrorists". So these were very emotional times for me. I drank a lot of gin, and read a lot of Yeats and TS Eliot. While I was writing my thesis, I listened to only a few albums. Over and over again. They were:
So now, any time I hear any song off one of these albums, I am immediately transported back to the end of 2001, about to move countries, leaving my home and all my friends. It's a weird combination of dread and excitement. They were heady days indeed.
