Posts by Robyn Gallagher
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Hard News: Growing up in public, in reply to Emma Hart,
I have many, many responses to this, but the safest is "No." In my vanilla life, one of the reasons I wear a bra is to not be in pain.
Word up. A good everyday bra - even an underwire bra - doesn't even feel like it's there. It's no more an item of bondage than a belt or shoelaces.
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Hard News: Growing up in public, in reply to Russell Brown,
I wouldn't blame the airport management. The press contingent stampeding was the problem, not the fans.
Oh dear. It seems my original comment was unclear. I did not mean to imply there was any issue with the fans. This is what I meant:
It seems that Auckland Airport was well set up to handle all the fans who’d turned up, but perhaps they [i.e. airport management] and Team Lorde [i.e. Lorde's management] hadn’t expected the media situation.
Is "Team Lorde" otherwise used to describe her fans? I don't know - I was just using it in the way that other fandoms do - to describe the management/behind-the-scenes team. My idea was that the airport hadn't expected the media reaction, so weren't fully equipped to protect Lorde's entourage from the horde.
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Major airports know how to handle arriving popstars. Last year One Direction bypassed the public and exited out a side entrance, with the airport advising fans to stay away. It seems that Auckland Airport was well set up to handle all the fans who'd turned up, but perhaps they and Team Lorde hadn't expected the media situation.
I hope this is just some post-Grammys madness, and in future the sight of Lorde arriving at Auckland Airport won't be a media circus.
BTW, isn't this a curious New Zealand situation - the triumphant Kiwi returning from overseas success, met at the airport not just by fans but by people pleased that a fellow New Zealander had done something remarkable overseas.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Starting Early, in reply to Simon Grigg,
And lest we forget Pauly Fuemana topped the US charts while he was based in Grey's Avenue.
OMG, OMC! That'll teach me to write without thinking things through properly.
My original comment stemmed from seeing a couple of discussions on Facebook where rockist friends-of-friends were kind of complaining that Lorde hadn't earned her dues. Like, it's not fair she she hasn't sweated it out doing a tour of grimy pubs like _proper_ rock bands do.
I'm trying to think of bands who've have significant international success in this route. Split Enz? But then, they got their big break via a TV talent show...
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Broods has some seriously good PR happening. The first time I heard of them was via a retweet of a BBC Radio 1 DJ enthusing over "Bridges", and with their EP release today, there's Vogue magazine raving about it (and it's very _Vogue_).
It got me thinking. In the time before Lorde, the expected path a NZ artist would take was touring NZ, then moving to Australia, then pushing to break the UK or America. But both Lorde and Broods have managed to create substantial buzz without having a reputation as a live act, and without having to take a day job working in a Melbourne bar. Yeah, they both do good live shows, but they're primarily known for their recorded work. There's something pleasingly modern about that.
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Yesterday the Herald had the headline "Colin Craig: I smack my children", which was then corrected to "child" when it was realised he has just the one.
But that made a big difference. "Children" is quite non-specific, but when there's mention of the Craig daughter, the focus is on this one little girl. The idea of Colin Craig smacking a small girl is quite unpleasant.
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Hard News: Lowering the Stakes, in reply to izogi,
Nearly all this social transit space has now been lost to highly structured motorised vehicle channels, and for decades now we’ve been designing stuff that’s widely spread ages apart from everything else, merely (and ironically) to accomodate people’s ability to drive between them.
And indeed the concept of jaywalking, which quite neatly makes it seem _wrong_ if not outright illegal for a person to be walking on a road in an unapproved place. Why should this be the case? Why should most NZ roads be designed to make things easiest for cars?
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I can't even ride a bike, so all this feels like it's from another planet, but it seems to me that cyclists running red lights are totally different from motorists. For motorists, it's people trying to bolt through at speed after the light has just changed red, for cyclists, it's a much slower take-off just before the lights are about to turn green.
But like others have said, this is surely a sign of dangerous or difficult cycle paths, rather than putting all the blame on the people riding the bikes.
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Hard News: Holiday Music: Pop TV Lives, in reply to Ross Bell,
I think they did NYE music video shows in subsequent years.
Yes! Just a countdown of the year in music videos. I was too young to stay up to midnight, but I’d record the show (on our fancy new Beta VCR) and then watch it over and over and over again, fast forwarding through the ones I didn’t like. So much videos.
Weirdly the thing that sticks in my memory the most is the ads from the show’s sponsor, Levis. They’d play these minute-long ads from Levis. Every few years I search on YouTube, but all I find is comments from other people from Australasia also looking for them.
EDIT: So of course I googled and discovered one of the epics Levis ads, uploaded earlier this year. Set to "Route 66", it's the tale of two young women hitch-hiking across America. It was filmed in 1976, the pre-lycra era, so their jeans are tight and inflexible. This is probably kept them out of any Thelma and Louise troubles. It's hard to run from the law if you can't bend at the knees.
The ad was directed by Adrian Lyne, who went on to direct Flashdance, 9 1/2 Weeks and Fatal Attraction.
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Hard News: Holiday Music: Pop TV Lives, in reply to Gareth Swain,
Phillip Schofield. I have no idea why, almost thirty years on, I remember that guy's name, but there you go...
He's a household name in the UK, the host of morning show This Morning, as well as hosting various light entertainment shows over the years. And he's quite the silver fox!