note:

if anyone still comes on this blog, please go to my new blog which is a tumblr.

i will be blogging ALL THE TIME.

http://josephernestharper.tumblr.com/

Thanks for reading my blogs.

Joseph

adrian mole 5

saturday 29th september

i don't want to talk about the basketball game. it was an embarrassing shambles. also i got pushed over by a kid and hurt my knee. then i missed the free throws.

it was the last day of term so most of my students stayed in their regular class and i spent the day giving everything a vigorous dettol rub-down. i also achieved the following:

- scored over 600,000 points on subway surfer.
- read 12 pages of the hunger games to the girl i teacher aide for during ssr, but got told to "stop doing the voices".
- submitted my application to study teaching next year at auckland university.
- dominated a cup of beer, a piece of pizza, and a round of articulate at the after-work drinks.
- tried to stretch out one of my t-shirts but ended up mainly stretching the back, so now the back kind of flails out awkwardly.

i'm certain i'm balding faster than i was 6 months again. i guess my body (follicles) is(are) starting to betray me. will probably blow out my knees soon.

i'm flying down to christchurch this afternoon for spend the holidays with my family.

top 5 current black caps

1. rob nicol
2. martin guptil
3. daniel vettori
4. maybe kane williamson

(james franklin just misses out via severe evilness).

adrian mole 4

friday 28th september

the staff vs students basketball game was postponed till tomorrow because the students' best player was at some rugby league tournament and they weren't man enough to challenge us without him.

adrian mole 3

thursday 27th september

after writing about chinese food yesterday, i decided i was going to get chinese food again for lunch. i finish early on wednesdays, so i was biking home at about 1:30 when i saw one of my students walking into the kfc on ponsonby rd. i went in and asked him what he was doing and he told me that he was getting a feed because the "tuck shop is dumb". i walked him back to school and he told me about how he got in a fight last week with a tongan kid because he made eye contact with him. he seemed to be implying that that kind of thing is pretty normal, which i found kind of frightening. i'm already a bit skittish when i think about that 'part' of auckland since i got mugged last year, and i find whenever i think about people bigger than me and with larger t-shirts i get a bit anxious. we kept talking as we walked back to school and i kind of planned out a future inspirational talk with him where i say, "hey, i wanna tell you about the toughest cookie i know. mohandas k gandhi. the 'k' is for 'kool' (and karamchand)." i also had this thought: if i make friends/ become a cool mentor type guy for enough of the o.g. 11 and 12 year olds at my school, then in 8~10 years i'll be lightly revered as some kind of untouchable figure and i'll be able to stroll through auckland's ghettos without fear.

after that i went to wok wok and got mostly chips with some of those thick noodles.

when i got home i took out my tennis racket and worked on my serve action in my room for ~1.5 hours. i'm pretty sure i gave myself tennis elbow, because when i woke up shoulder was really sore. can you get tennis elbow in your shoulder?

today there's a staff vs students basketball game. i wore my hoodie especially. i'm hoping to score a triple-double.

top 5 oasis songs to listen to while biking to work

1. go let it out
2. little by little
3. supersonic
4. stand by me
5. live forever
6. d'you know what i mean?
7. actually every song on the oasis greatest hits compilation, time flies... 1994-2009. the album makes for some really emotional hill climbs.

Adrian Mole 2

wednesday 26th september

my pub quiz team, 'c.z. harris', won our pub quiz last night. it's the first time we've beaten 'the conquiztadors' and 'the quizmanauts'. we won a $100 bar tab. i also ate a couple of chippies and had a nice cup of beer.

the rest of the day was pretty normal. just work, which was actually sort of trying. the girl i look after was being really argumentative and also someone dropped a coffee bean in the hot chocolate powder part of the hot drink machine in the staff room. so i couldn't have a hot chocolate.

after work i went to the mall and got a new strap for my watch. the old one had taken on a fairly sickly aroma due to mould build up. it wasn't very nice, though to be honest, something about the pungence was appealing and i did find myself pushing my wrist up my nose to suck it in every now and then. it was like an aromatic ulcer. the new strap is black and is made of rubber. i'm told it was made in italy. so that's something. i also got some chinese food from wok wok (mostly chips but also a sampling of rice and noodles (nothing fancy)).

i watched three episodes of the office.

yesterday i had three cans of coke zero.


top 5 pen colours

1. black
2. blue
3. red

adrian mole 1

tuesday 25th september

i've been enjoying my job even though the whole school is kind of riddled with scabies at the moment and so i spend a lot of time just rubbing myself down with dettol. i like the smell though so that's okay.

i wouldn't be surprised if i come down with a bad case of scabies one of these days, because i've been working pretty closely with the boy who's sort of the epicentre of the outbreak. that in itself has been problematic, because he is super lazy and won't do any work most of the time. often he doesn't even show up to school, which i find confusing, because intermediate school these days is mostly just kori (fitness) and playing on ipads. they even have a tuck shop where they sell luke warm spring rolls for .30c a piece. so i dunno what's keeping him away. it's really frustrating but also really sad, because he's going to high school next year and i'm pretty sure he's on a pretty negative 'road'. i mean, if he could work his way of the poverty cycle by being a really great rugby league player there'd be some hope, but at present things look fairly bleak. he also chews hubba-bubba even though it's a red card offense.

i've been thinking a lot about whether i should do a year of training to become a proper teacher. i probably should. i mean, there's not a lot of money in the teacher aide game, and i get the feeling that writing and performing 'isn't working out'.

i've been drinking a lot of water, which is good. also have been trying hard to cut down the amount of coke zero that i drink. i've only had two cans so far today.

i've drafted some pretty great tattoo concepts (below) but as yet am struggling to work up the necessary courage and/or funding. i went into the tattoo shop the other day to ask about logistics and found the whole experience very intimidating.

maybe i should get a cat?

sick merch

It's no secret that tiny spectacle/shitty lyricism is set to be a great show next week.

To celebrate this massive event, we've produced some exclusive merchandise that you can buy at the shows. We have t-shirts and mugs in various designs. I think the t-shirts will be $10 ono and the mugs will be $5 ono. 

Honestly, you don't want to miss out. 

Great show. Great merch. Great life. Infinite greatness.

#InfiniteGreatness 

#swag

#mugs

Tiny Spectacle/Shitty Lyricism

Hello. 

These are two short shows (~45mins each) that I have made over the last couple of years and am running together as a kind of ‘deluxe combo package’.

I decided to put them together for this because they’re both attempts to express what it feels like to be a person who is alive and alone and surrounded by other people and maybe feeling trepidation but is alive nonetheless. They’re shows about contact and isolation; with people and one’s self and one’s astral plane.

The shows are Honey and The Boy and The Bicycle. There's more information about the shows below.

The shows have been made with Virginia Frankovich, Chris Stratton, Darian Woods, Tom Harper, and Ruby Reihana-Wilson. 

The shows are playing at The Basement Theatre in September 
from the 11th - 15th at 7pm.

Entry is by koha, so just come along. Email me if you feel a strong need to book a ticket. otherwise just show up. Please. Here's the listing on the basement website.

The shows are pretty good I think. Here are two reviews from our season at bats.

I really hope you can find the time to come and see one or both. I put a lot of work into these two works and I'd like to present them to as many people as I can.

Thanks for reading. 

Joseph Harper  

Honey

I wrote this play between October 2010 and January 2012. It was performed in the 2012 New Zealand fringe festival and was something of a success (by my standards). Our little venue was always full and at times over-full (our last night had people standing at the back atop rubbish bins, which was great for my self-esteem). The show was performed by myself and Virginia Frankovich and was made with Chris Stratton and had Darian Woods playing music (which is bloody good). Superficially, it’s a play about love (the central question is whether or not love can be sustained indefinitely), but under that is a nagging undercurrent of existential angst and essential questions on being and being within a universe. It won us the best newcomer award and earned us nominations for best theatre and outstanding performance. The show runs on three strands of abstractions which act as metaphors which were rigorously wrought and stretched so that I could work out exactly how I felt about what the play was about, and it turned out kind of nice and heartening. The three strands were: a couple who decide to turn into honey in order to maintain love forever, a mouse waxing lyrical about cheese and traps, and me talking about the wonders of the cosmos in a dad-lecture type way. It’s all very whimsical and funny and charming. I think.

Here is a review

The Boy and the Bicycle

I wrote this play as my graduation piece while studying playwrighting at Unitec, under Gary Henderson. The play was the inaugral winner of Playmarket New Zealand’s Playwrights b4 25 Competition. The show is about my mental illness. A set of abstractions and parables trying to Express what my depression is and why it is and what has been and is to be done. That sounds really narcissistic and self-indulgent, but I don't think it's that kind of show. I think a lot of people feel like This, even if they only feel it a little bit. And it's a confusing thing and sometimes it goes away, but it Was there and they know it. And knowing that this thing is, can make you feel pretty uneasy. And i Think it's good to talk about this stuff or to think about it because maybe it changes how you see this Thing in yourself or in other people. And that doing that (looking at this bit of us) is hard sometimes. But it's also helpful and can make you feel good, or like you’re a part of everything. Or at least not Alone, y'know. This show features: big black dogs, adolescent misanthropy, outsider cello soundscapes, sir Edmund Hillary, post-spectacle ‘lighting’, and a talking bicycle. It's a pretty subjective kind of thing, but Intentionally so. Expressionist or something. It's a black comedy. Or a philosophical tragi-comedy or Something.

Here are two reviews

my nose and other portals

  and i was biking up one of the little hills they have in mount albert and it was kind of tough going because of how cold it was and how that had made my joints age a bit. but it was nice.

  and then all of a sudden, the whole world reeked of steak and kidney, which made my tongue and my tummy more alert. it was strong and it was definitely everywhere and i had these two feelings gushing around. one was all about my mother and how she used to make steak and kidney and how it was always the brownest food she'd make and i imagined her wearing a couple of oven mits and maybe touching my face while they were warm and my brother having short hair and fat little cheeks. the other was how much i hated steak and kidney and how i can still feel the way that chalky offal would decay in my mouth in chubby slices.

  so i was biking and was wedged between these two conflicting but equally mawkish feelings. caught in this sensory dissonance and held up and floating above the world in mount albert in auckland, where i was jostled about and cuddled by the air and didn't know how i felt about that immediate state of things.

basically i've just been really enjoying the nba finals. and lionel richie. his song, hello (is it me yr looking for) seems like it is my favourite song at the moment. it's pretty weird. i like the way it seems kind of like lionel richie was aiming for a ballad that would simultaneously break hearts and leave people bloody confused. that's how i feel after i listen to it at least. one time i was playing all these lionel richie songs and mouthing the words to virginia and making this kind of bread face. and she smiled and said, "what's going on?" which i think is the appropriate response. it's this kind of warm and amusing discomfort. like when you piss in a pool.

other major influences on my life at the moment are:

• the impending ponsonby intermediate '12 minute fun run'. i'm hoping to dominate the competition. i feel like i should. i'm wondering if it's against the spirit of the whole affair to run while listening to my ipod. kind of seems like half the point is to get heckled by students and partake in puffy banter with other staff members. i dunno. hoping to run ~3kms in the allotted 12 mins. not sure if that's over-ambitious or a bit pansy. seems achievable. 
• i'm coming to chch in a few weeks and i'm kind of worried about the fact that i wear a beanie all the time now. because my friend matt started wearing beanies to the extent that people started calling him 'hat' instead of 'matt' and i'm pretty sure i'll be judged as a poser. 
• thinking about becoming one of those guys who wears shorts all the time. all year round i mean. 
• sort of toughing out the nuances of 'flatting' after having not really been in a traditional 'flat' for quite a while. confused about a couple of things. want to leave my towel in the bathroom because it smells sort of onionish most of the time and if i leave it in my bedroom it brings down the whole vibe of the place. so i want to keep it in the bathroom, but i'm worried people will use it to dry their hands after using the toilet. also my flatmate adam has a ps2 and i don't know if it's okay for me to buy games for it. sure, he's got spyro the dragon. but crash bandicoot is better than that. and spyro can't do sick dunks or drain three pointers. also not sure if i'm allowed to take my flatmates clothes off the clothes horse when they're dry, so i can use it. it just seems like a big mistake. i mean, their must be ethical ramifications to touching my flatmate's lacy underwear. even if it's done in the spirit of purest pragmatism.
• really funny when middle-aged professionals are crossing the road and they see a car and have to scoot. 
• reading richard brautigan's short story collection, revenge of the lawn. i don't like it that much. it's definitely my least favourite of his books that i've read. the best was in watermelon sugar. just because he sort of hobbles along and smiles at everything.
• as usual i'm pretty much at the mercy of my leafy emotions. just walking around and feeling really wistful and aroused by life. for example i just about welled up in a bakers delight the other day when the woman behind the counter was telling me how when she can't get to sleep, she thinks about winning the lotto and imagines giving money to all these people. it was just so nice and sad. and then these boys from st. pauls walked past me and one turned around and said, "nice bike." in this sarcastic little voice. then he walked right into a sushi cart and his friends all laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed as he rearranged all the $5.00 teriyaki packs. i'm just a blade of grass and everything seems really good and interesting and most of all funny.

everything you need to know about my new show (and more)

I made this new zine about my new show:

I hope that you like it. If not, I hope at least you feel sorry enough for me and come to the show anyway.


This is the forth show I’ve made. The other two have mostly been about bikes. In this one I will try to negotiate and subvert ‘Death’, so that I no longer feel so darn sad when I think about people dying. Hopefully some of it will be funny. Sorry if it’s not.

Wellington show: 3rd and 4th of May at the Tararua Tramping Club

Auckland show: 10th and 11th of May at the Wine Cellar

All shows start at 8:30 

Entry is by koha as usual. And as usual, the locales will be bloody serene.

All are welcome.

Email me at jeharper0088@gmail.com or txt/call on 0273924447 to book a place.

Feel free to contact me if you want to know anything.



From Joseph

p.s. last night i was trying to figure out ways to better maintain my blog and thought it might be good to do some more regular features? like maybe a zine like this every month? or do a podcast every month? something like that so that at least every two weeks there'd be something interesting on here. do you think that's a good idea?

Billy Pilgrim

here's a poster for my comedy festival show. more information really soon (maybe tonight).

honey

our show honey opens tonight.

i think it's a bloody good show.

you should come to it if you are in wellington.

bring koha.

starts at 8:30.

we are extremely lucky to have been provided some real real nice tshirts by 'tshirt geniuses', AS COLOUR.

they look great on stage. like real tshirts.

please come. it will be incredibly embarrassing if no-one comes.

please come. we took an 11 hour busride to get here.

please come. there are lights and music and everything.

please come. bring koha.

8:30 at freds on frederick street (off taranaki street).

top 5 things (grandfather tribute list)

1. euphonium
2. golf
3. beethoven
4. 10% management fees
5. cream
6. potatoes w/butter
7. the same jokes
8. the west coast