Cat Wearing a Scarf playing a Cello

I Got A Fresh Ass Ho!
Thundercats!

All I'm Trying to Do is Get Back to You

After all my time in New Zealand (over two years now), I've come to discover some super sweet-as music over here. In May of every year for the last 10 years, they put on what is known as "NZ Music Month", and put out some cool swag like t-shirts and compilation cds to help spread the word of NZ Music (duh!). One of my favourite bands from Kiwi-Land is called Shapeshifter. They are sort of a live drum and bass band, which I know sounds kinda sketchy, but follow me on this one. They don't use any buttons or prerecorded bleeps and bloops on their albums or live. I usually don't even really listen to this kind of music, but I heard a live recording of this band in Real Groovy (the best records store in this country) once and I fell in love with them. I had the opportunity to go see them at the Mangawhai Tavern about an hour outside of Auckland at Christmas time. The Tavern is in the middle of nowhere on a beach, which makes for fantastic times. The front of the tavern looks like an old-timey hotel, but to get to the venue you walk through to the other side to an open area and is basically an old shed with one wall missing for the stage, and a field sort of enclosed by old wooden fences. It was an incredible place to see the live band, with the stars out on a cloudless night. Will never forget that show and it is definitly one of the many great memories I will keep with this country with me for a long time.

This is one of my favourite songs by Shapeshifter, as it features both one of my favourite local Auckland artists Ladi 6 (who I am sure will be featured on a future post) and an appearance by the most magical of magical instruments, the FLUTE!!! Mayu, you know this one goes out to you and your flute playing skills of 2006! "It was working last night" hahahah an absolute classic line by the big german hahaha I am laughing myself to sleep thinking about you trying to play "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on Sarah's flute, and then Johnno trying to play the recorder after like it was a jazz flute! "

Check out Shapeshifter - In The Rain (Featuring Ladi 6)

Like a Rolling Stoner

Alright, so two weeks ago I went to Melbourne to visit my sister Shelley at her house there. See, Shelley moved to Australia in October of 2009 to 'get away from it all', and to have a sort of extended vacation. She came to visit Auckland first and then we both went together to tackle Melbourne for the first few days. After that she's taken it upon herself to start a new life and to just have fun without having any second thoughts. Now that's how Shelley always lives her life, but imagine the idea of going to a foreign country where no one knows you, you can be anyone you want to be and no one knows your past. You pretty much get to make your own identity. Sounds pretty gnarly if you ask me. So anyways I was in Melbourne visiting and we had tons of fun, smoked some weed and went to see Kelly Clarkson at the Rod Laver Arena (not the same night). The visit was looking to be perfect and then I got the WORST PAIN OF MY LIFE! At first I thought it was gas, so I went for a little walk around her apartment, but then it got quite intense and I could hardly breathe. I thought it might be a good idea to go to the emergency room in Melbourne.

Shelley took me to the hospital which is quite nice as it was 5 in the morning, and she was working on an afternoon shift...so I pretty much interrupted her sleep halfway in. We went and the doctors gave me a tag with my name on it and told me I had kidney stones symptoms. I was pretty disappointed. My dad has them, and both my older and younger sisters have them, but I thought I had gotten away without them! No such luck. They put me in that big CAT scan circle machine that they usually use to scan people's brains and scanned me back and forth a few times. It was fun and weird all at the same time. After all the shenanigans and hanging out in the hospital for 5 hours watching NOFX's backstage passport on my iPod, I was given some codeine pills and told to drink lots of water. A week had passed and I still felt odd so I went to the walk in clinic here in Auckland, and they told me to look my symptoms up on google! Those dicks! I finally went to a specialist today, and they made me take all these x-rays and tests again... the X-Ray shows a tiny little dot which the doctor said was the stone, so its still traveling around inside of me. He said drink enough water to make 2 litres of pee a day and after a month if it still hurts then contact him again! Damn! I thought they might laser it out or something, but apparently I am just being a pussy about it. The doctor also said the best way to measure my pee is to use the family juice jug for 24 hours. Is that weird?

Alright so from pain to awesomeness, a buddy of mine Saurab (who likes to go by the name of Sean for some reason) lets me know that he has an extra Russel Peters ticket to the sold out Auckland Show! Sweet! I will definitely be laughing all the way to the racist bank. Check out some of his stuff here, its pretty awesome to say the least!

Be right back, gotta drink about 300 litres of water at the moment.

PS watch this shit! it's scary as but is the sweeeeeetest song!