Halloween is Fun Fun Fun!

Halloween is by far my favorite holiday of the year. I would give up Thanksgiving and Christmas for biannual Halloween (as a compromise I would be satisfied if we stepped up our Mardi Gras shenanigans). Unfortunately, I am accustomed to meeting people who do not share my level of enthusiasm for the celebration (I know you feel my pain Rae Rae) but I was extremely disheartened to hear that no one else in the world (looking at you Germany) really cares about Halloween at all. We Americans allied with some awesome Brits to introduce Halloween proper to the rest of Swampy's.

Oh, I was a tree.

Eels Up Inside Ya, Findin' an Entrance Where They Can

New Zealand rivers are swimming (punny!) with slithery, near blind, toothy eels. The stuff of nightmares endemic to an otherwise gentle country. I have always thought of eels as blood-thirsty, murderous demon creature of the deep (no thanks to the Princess Bride) but I also know that unagi is absolutely heavenly, so you can imagine my contradicting emotions while I was getting ready for some good old-fashioned night eel fishing.

Angling aficionados need not apply to this rather rudimentary endeavor. Eels are not clever, they can't see and they eat nearly anything (including cat food). Basically, you need meat (rotten is fine), a hook and some line. Almost comically, plop goes the bait and out comes a writhing, angry eel.

The hard part is getting them off the hook, they are incredibly slippery and strong, they curl around your hand like a lubed up snake. After battling to get the hook out of their mouth my friend Bene recommends sticking a knife through their skull to crush their tiny brain, but be aware that they don't stop moving. THAT is the stuff of nightmares. The next morning, after a night in the fridge in a plastic bag their headless bodies were still quivering. Again, badass Bene took up the grunt work and gutted and filleted them for us.

So, if you dare, I recommend either smoking the eels or frying them up in butter then baking them in garlic, lemon and butter until their skins are crispy. The result is an exquisite flaky, tender fish-like meat with no lingering fishy aftertaste.

South Island Shenanigans

On a clear day you can actually see the South Island from Wellington but the ferry has to navigate through fiords so the journey takes nearly three hours. The day we left the ocean was calm and sparkly as we slowly passed through its massive blue green waters, its sea fresh mist left salty promises on my smiling lips. Jagged kelly green mountains speckled with prickly pines and bright yellow bushes waved us toward them with massive slate arms. Oh to be away from that dreary city of gusts and drizzle!

Once off the ferry we raced through the snakelike overpass pulling over at each lookout, our cameras in hand eager to snap up everything like rabid Japanese tourists. The air smelled alive; bitter and sweet and lingering, dizzying and lovely.

We drove the Queen Charlotte Drive from Picton to Nelson and made our first night in a hostel that smelled strangely like my grandma's house. The weathered, friendly-eyed owner gave us a twin for the cheaper dorm price because he didn't want us to have to stay with a “bunch of blokes”. That night, as I watched the stars from my bed my mind ran rampant with verdant imagination. It feels like the start of an entirely new journey.

Chronicles of Wellington

We bid adieu to you, fair city by the sea and if you ever find yourself in Wellington, here is what I recommend you do and do not do.


Top 10+ Free/Nearly Free Things to Do

1.Wednesday BBQ at Cambridge Hotel on Cambridge Tce.- Come by six, buy a beer and receive a voucher for free BBQ.
2.BATS Theatre on Cambridge Tce.- Email staff saying that you would like to volunteer to sell concessions and in exchange see the play that night for free.

3.Te Papa & Museum of Wellington- Be sure to check out their special events/temporary exhibits.
4.Free Sausages- Every Friday from 10pm to Midnight near Vivian and Cuba (by school of Architecture & Design) sometimes you have to listen to the god spiel but usually it's bearable.
5.J.J Murphy's on Cuba St.- Rocks $5 Breakfast until noon on the weekends.
6.City Park flying fox swings- Up the hill on Brooklyn Rd. Free + dangerous = good fun.
7.Sunday Markets- Excellent, fresh, produce for wicked cheap. One market is alongside Te Papa on the waterfront, the other market is in a parking lot at the corner of Vivian & Victoria
8.Botanic Gardens- Flowers alongside the historic cemetery. Free
9.All-u-can-eat pizza- Mondays from six at Hell on Bond St. $12.
10.Free internet with the purchase of any beverage at Mon Ami on Bond St.
11.Spend the day reading magazines/books or napping in the spacious and awesome public library.
12.Grab a beer at Southern Cross and enjoy the garden patio for free.
13.Get a free newspaper at Te Papa.

Top 10 Most Overrated in Wellington

1.The zoo. It's cute and small and not worth $18.
2.Drinking on Courteney Place- Wellington's weekend meat market.
3.The Cable Car off Lambton Quay- You spend the majority of the ride under the highway's overpass or in a tunnel, “scenic” it is not.
4.Reading Cinemas on Courteney Pl.- Don't bother when you can go to the historical Embassy or Paramount theatres.
5.Pizza King on Taranaki St.- I feel fairly certain that they just warm up frozen pizza.
6.Matterhorn- It's pricey and pretentious.
7.The weather- It's rainy, it's windy, it's cold and after a few months it's depressing.
8.The Kumara- By far, the worst bar in Wellington, unless you like sticky floors and tweens.
9.Shopping on Lambton Quay- The most expensive rent in all of New Zealand leads to the most expensive shopping in all of New Zealand.
10.The Bungee swing on Taranaki- Lame and verifiably unsafe.

Top 10 Strange & Lovely Things in Wellington

1.Carlucci's Land at 64 Owhiro Bay Pde, Island Bay, - A bizarre, abstract metal sculpture garden located just outside the city.
2.Cuba St. on a weekend night. Grab a coffee at Midnight Espresso and watch the kids let their freak flags fly.
3.Check out the ominous metal tri-pod sculpture on Kent Tce & Courteney Place.
4.Alice's Bar on Forresters Lane- take a trip down the rabbit hole and definitely try the Lobster's Quadrille.
5.Karaoke Night at The Fringe on Cuba St.- dirty, grungy, completely absurd and awesome.
6.Lodge in the City at corner of Vivian & Taranaki come by and meet the craziest in Wellington.
7.Welcome Takeaways on Vivian- Literally a hole in the wall that's open arbitrarily. Greasy, cheap and delicious.
8.New & Used Bookstores all over the city- Find heaps of beautifully strange books.
9.Take a drive around the eerie abandoned army barracks that are now part of Weta Studios.
10.Do the Lord of the Rings Tour of Hobittown- If you are into that sort of thing.


Top 10 Must Do in Wellington


1.Te Papa on Wellington's waterfront.

2.Sweet Mother's Kitchen near corner of Kent Tce, & Courteney Pl.- Two words: Breakfast Burritos.
3.Cuba St. Coffee Shops- Cute, independent, quirky and cool. (Midnight Espresso, Espressoholic and Offbeat Cafe are my personal favorites).

4.Parliament Tour on Molesworth then drinking at Backbencher's afterwards- Your chance to rub shoulder's with government officials, or at least their scary busts bolted to the bar's walls.
5.Civic Square Art Gallery in Civic Square near the library.
6.Grab a $10 jug at the Kiwi Pub.
7.See a play.
8.Take a drive up the hills around Wellington and take in the lovely little seaside city.
9.Red Rocks- Seals!
10.World of Wearable Art- An absolutely spectacular fusion of art, performance and magic.

Fun Location Fact Friday

Take a deep breath...

And say this three times fast

Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu

which means

“The Brow of a Hill Where Tamatea, the Man with the Big Knees, Who Slid, Climbed, and Swallowed Mountains, Known as Land Eater, Played his Flute to His Brother.”

Got a nice ring, doesn't it?

Fun Fauna Fact Friday

Squid and octopi are some of the coolest animals on earth, so today's Fun Fauna Fact Friday is a special one. The reasons that I find squid so fascinating is that they are incredibly smart and curious, often mirroring the observation habits of the divers that study them. They are incredibly adaptable to their environments- Humboldt squid nearer to the shore (quite a precarious place for a squid) have been found to be extremely violent but when seen further out to sea they are calm and playful. They are mysterious and elusive which adds to their allure. They can eat whales and sharks which is, admit it, completely badass for a “mere mollusk”. They are beautiful and strange.

Wellington's Te Papa museum is home to the only colossal squid display in existence and she is a pretty incredible lady. They caught the wee colossal squid somewhere in the Ross Sea in February of 2007. Because they are rare and hard to preserve, we don’t really know how big they get, but, keep in mind that squid’s lower rostral beaks as long as 49 millimetres have been found in sperm whale stomachs. The female squid on display at the museum only measures 42.5, so they can be significantly larger in size.

Now the fun facts:

-Their eyeballs are the size of soccer balls (which is the largest of any known animal) these allow them to see at amazingly deep depths in the ocean.

-Primarily, they shoot out their two largest tentacles to catch prey. Each tentacle is equipped with razor sharp hooks that rotate 360 degrees. The more the prey struggles to get away the further in the hooks get.

-Squid are very dainty eaters, politeness aside; they must take small mouthfuls since their narrow throats pass right through their brain, so too big of a bite would cause brain damage (you can't make this stuff up)

On this particular colossal squid, the large round body (mantle) is so enormous that were you to fry her up you would have calamari rings the size of truck tires and keep in mind she is just a baby.

WOW

What is so endlessly intriguing about the beauty of the human body is its versatility. From lithe, graceful dancers bathed in shadow and light to larger-than-life Boteroesque balls laboriously waddling down the street, the body comes in a myriad of shapes and sizes yet they are all considered the human body. Furthermore, they can be twisted and bended and molded into fantastic shapes until nothing vaguely human remains. Our bodies are chameleonic works of art. Couture and costumery adorn our already artful forms in order to exploit the flexibility of the human body and expand the boundaries between human and non, between anthropomorphism and shape shifting, in essence, it plays on our bodies natural metamorphic abilities and propels it even further.

Nowhere have I seen this better showcased than at Montana's annual World of Wearableart. Every year artists from all around the world create absolutely stunning pieces using any and every material you can imagine to fully transform the models into something that redefines the corporeal and marries it to the realm of the imaginary. If I sound melodramatic, it's because the show is incredible and deserves its due amount of sappy praise. WOW (yes, apparently to make the anagram WOW they made wearableart one word, although I find nothing wrong with WOWA. Better yet, World of Wearable Zany Art, WOWZA. Zany is probably too low-brow for the people that make fancy wine, but the non-word wearableart annoys me.)


Upon walking into the event you are sucked into a Hensonesque carnival of friendly, technicolor monsters, effeminate, silver living statues, masked carnival ladies hunched over, head askew, pecking around like birds, acrobats and dancers sporadically turning each other upside down in front of thousands of other wild-eyed spectators like yourself. You watch as elderly folks with twinkles in their eyes, enthusiastically embrace each other as they timidly ask the purple and green monster to have a picture with him, there is nothing more endearing. The stage is empty save for a small four piece band all in top hats with red ribbons playing that classic French circus music I do not know the name of. The seats are mostly empty this early but a few well dressed young couples have already taken their seats. Then, as if prompted by remote, they flip over the seats, doing handstands and pirouettes on chairs, only to uniformly sit down again as though nothing happened.

Then the music slows to silence the lights dim to darkness and the show begins. A boy is running through a forest that comes to life. Sunflower girls skip around the stage, bushes in suits manifest from the ground like soldiers in battle. Praying mantis' and caterpillars slink around the white, sinewy dandelion seed pods ambling in the foreground. You remember the dump lady with the house on her back from labyrinth? Yeah, she's there too. From there the costumes get increasingly more elaborate, the categories more hazily defined until each costume seems to exist solidly in its own universe amidst the others twirling around in theirs. There are Geigeresque aliens outfitted in cold, sleek white fabrics. There are southern belles dressed entirely in spindled copper wires, one in meticulously carved wood. There are warriors, cars, emotions, furniture and those that do not resemble anything.

The stage is constantly in flux. There are the costumes themselves parading in large, loosely defined bands and there are the performers, men dressed in black ball gowns spinning on ropes hung from the ceiling, superheroines battling Superman's dopplegangers, enormous wooden puppets slowly traipsing around the stage, singers, comedians, dragqueens and bodybuilders. At one point everything is illuminated by black light and disembodied faces dance with jellyfish while blinking eyes curiously zig-zag around the stage, rainbows flutter in the wind and join together to form a butterfly.

It's hard to describe what I saw and felt and it's hard to convey the scope of the show without rambling on, I felt like a kid, like the universe of all my strange childhood imaginings bubbled back up to the surface of me and brimmed over in excitement. I guess, for the sake of brevity at the expense of inaccurate comparisons, if Fashion Week knocked up Cirque du Soleil, their baby could only hope to be this spectacular.

*I would be absolutely remiss if I didn't thank Mark and Allison who made this possible for Katie and I. Thank you. *

Fun Fauna Fact Friday

I must say I never much cared for pelicans because I thought they were nothing but massive sea birds that harass you at the beach (think psycho seagulls on steroids) but I must admit that they are pretty spectacular. I will now attempt to prove this by throwing numbers at you, dear reader. The one pictured above is an Australian pelican and fossil records dates that they have been around for over 40 million years. Their wing span can be as long as 2.5 metres (8.2 Feet). Their crazy huge bills can carry 13 litres (3.4 gallons) of water and they have been known to fly at an altitude of 3000 metres (1.86 miles). So yeah, they are impressive, in spite of the fact that they steal your sandwiches.

Ka Mate Ka Mate! Ka Ora Ka Ora!

The culmination of great exaggerations, creative additions and a cool, confident interview landed me a sweet gig bartending at Wellington's Westpac Stadium. My first night was the All Black's rugby match. The arena was entirely sold out, the alcohol induced enthusiasm had the city abuzz all morning, Lambton Quay looked like the Queen's funeral procession. The All Blacks had switched on the breakers and set the city alight. I was a sloppy combination of anxiety and fear. No one has ever paid me to pour them a beer. I have no idea how to make a Manhattan. I couldn't begin to tell you the difference between a Syrah and a Shiraz. Dressed in All Black I bravely faced the onslaught.

Before the match begins, the entire team takes the field to perform the Maori war dance Haka. Ka mate, ka mate! Their eyes widen in anger and their faces twist and distort into frightening masks. In unison, their enormous legs crash down to the earth. They prepare for the imminent battle. Tongues flare amidst bellows. Ā, upane, ka upane, whiti te ra! Hands fiercely descend upon mammoth thighs and chests obliterating the space in between.

I was told to hold the wine with the label facing outwards but it wouldn't have been read anyway since the weight of the bottle did nothing to lessen the shaking of my hands. The crowd impatiently flashed V.I.P. Cards to accompany their sixteen drink orders. Nostrils flared and eyes bulged as they leaned in closer, speaking loudly and methodically. Hordes of angry faces staring me down.

The Maori are a warrior tribe. The All Black's are corporate-sponsored warriors. They fight their battles in evenly split halves under stadium lights. Their weapons are hands and arms and legs and torsos. It's war played for an audience but the carnage is real. The fans are desperate for blood. I am armed with nothing but a smile against the encroaching, ravenous masses. The war is on. Ka ora! Ka ora!