Okay, one more

Irn-bru isn’t exactly an energy drink, although some countries sell a version called Irn-bru 32 which contains taurine and extra caffeine. I can only presume that 32 refers to the number of bulls they get to piddle into the vat during manufacturing. Or maybe the previous 31 versions made people go blind. It probably says on the website somewhere*.

For some reason the cans you get at New World have been imported from the UK, although it’s also brewed in Australia. There must be a good economic reason for this, although it’s a comfort to the sort of person who insists it’s not real Guinness unless you drink it in Ireland. Actually, we should encourage that kind of behaviour as a way of getting boring purist aesthetes to emigrate.

Irn-bru’s gimmick is that it contains 0.002% ammonium ferric citrate, which is also used as a contrast medium for medical imaging. Yum! It tastes quite pleasant and citrus-y. The online advertising is appreciably daft, like Tui with more than one joke. It’s probably the nicest Scottish thing you can buy from a supermarket apart from shortbread.

*I checked. It contains 32 flavours, all of them citrus-y. Imagine being the sommelier they hired to count ‘em.

The Independent Herald

I hardly like to criticise the Independent Herald – it’s like saying mean things about a brain-damaged puppy – but it seems to have jumped some sort of newsprint shark with this week’s issue.

There’s a certain demarcation amongst Wellington’s community newspapers. Capital Times focuses on the arts scene, and prints super cartoons. The Wellingtonian prints all the local news deemed worthy but too dull to appear in the Dom Post, which is of course a cosmopolitan national paper read by jet-setters, and unwilling to sully itself by associating too closely with the city it’s actually printed in*. The Independent Herald is – well, it’s 24 pages, just over 50% ads, which is probably a similar ratio to Capital Times and The Wellingtonian, but it does a rather worse job of disguising this with actual content.

This week’s issue has a wrap-around cover of the sort the Dom Post uses to announce life-changing events like the Moon landing or something portentous to do with rugby. This wrap-around announces a Women’s Lifestyle Expo. It’s pink. There’s text at the bottom in that horrible serif font adverts use when they want to look almost, but not quite, like news. It’s very hard to say what this newspaper exists for.

*Actually I think it’s printed in Petone, but you know what I mean.

Paste-ups by Gypsy

This is the rather nice paste-up by Gypsy on Dixon St I mentioned a few weeks ago. Unfortunately it’s already been picked at, which is what quickly happens to the better street art. There’s another one around the corner:

The History of Communism

A merry little anarchist with a red spray-can has gone on a rampage through Kelburn*, spraying a classic anarchy symbol on the bus shelter (reminding me, for some reason, of how bus shelters are always drawn in British comics from the ’80s) and decorating several stretches of private property with short and pithy slogans. The recently cleaned wall on Plunket St now declares “I ♥ ART“. Deliberately creating something unpleasant to the eye seems a strange way to proclaim it.

Aha, but it is art, isn’t it? Not only is defacing private property (see above) self-expression, but if you read it properly it’s actually an installation piece about the history of Communism. First, the bright red paint. The slogans begin near the university – “LONG LIVE ART“. The people revolt against the tyranny of their masters – by spraying over a vital road sign. They become politicised with “LONG LIVE ANARCHY” and “GOVT. SUX“, culminating in a declaration of anarchy. The church’s sign is (disturbingly) defaced. The Trotskyists declare “I ♥ ART” and are promptly expelled. Then, like all revolutions, it falls apart:

“YOU’RE A CUNT” indeed.

Of course, this analogy only works if you read the trail of messages from east to west. If you read it from west to east it becomes the childish scrawlings of a utterly middle-class tossy vandal who enjoys creating ugliness for the sake of it.

*One red spray-can is all it takes.

* Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyop *

Well, obviously, that wasn’t going to happen.

This is a test

Curses!

I’m wondering if I can begin and finish a music video I’ve been planning for the past two years, in exactly a month. That’s the deadline for the music video competition Handle the Jandal. What do you think?

I’ve been trying to find a particular graphic novel at Central Library for two months now, after reading about it in The Rough Guide to Graphic Novels. Normally people take these books out for a week because, let’s face it, you can read them in five minutes. There’s something about this particular book that makes people hang on to it for as long as possible. I checked the catalogue and saw it had been returned just that day, but it wasn’t on the shelf. I walked around some of the seating areas in case it was on a table, and in a far corner of the ground floor I found an overweight male with a beard and glasses. My heart sank – he was obviously a comics fan. What was worse, he was lying on his stomach working his way through a pile of graphic novels, and as I watched he turned his attention to the very graphic novel I was after. I came back ten minutes later, hoping he’d left his pile behind, and he had – except he’d taken out my book! Curses!

French Milk by Lucy Knisley

French Milk
Lucy Knisley
Touchstone 2008

This graphic novel is a kind of visual diary of young Chicago resident Knisley’s month-long trip to Paris with her mother in 2007. Her clean brush drawings are interspersed with snapshots (mostly of her) from the trip. It’s described as a “moving, personal look at a mother-daughter relationship”, but her revelations are no more profound than those of anyone else who visits Europe. It would be fascinating to see her make the same trip after twenty (or even ten) years of life experience. I’d recommend it to any teenager about to travel overseas for the first time – personally, I’m too old and bitter to read her wide-eyed appreciation of French food and art without wanting to curse a mighty oath and dash the book upon the carpet. Published at 22? Bah!

I was ready to hate Knisley for being young and pretty and overprivileged, but then I visited her charming website. She shows how far you can get by being talented, taking advantage of the many opportunities that are available to you, and working really hard. So, fair enough.

She’s doing an MFA at the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont, which is the kind of institution that would be regarded in New Zealand as a swindle to attract education funding dollars. There’s no way non-cartoonists would even take its existence seriously, and actual cartoonists would resent the implication that you have to have some sort of formal qualification to be a cartoonist. Although we’d probably welcome the air of legitimacy this would confer. Although the only job you’d be qualified for would be teaching at the Center*.

* Self-perpetuation the raison d’être of academia? Where have I seen that before?

Talking Heads + American Psycho + Lydia Hearst = pretty funny, actually

You only have to be a fan of two of those three things to find this entertaining.