The Book of Ashes

Ashes 30th... 7:58PM

Every story has its begining, a middle and an end. This story begins at Blondini's, the upstairs bar at the Embassy Theatre in Wellington from 6:30pm to 7:30pm on Saturday the 15th of July.

It is a cold and rainy night. The party is poorly organised. The invite wasn't entirely obvious as to what I meant and Blondini's had wanted $1000 to hire the place out. So I comprised. I came in half way between a movie when few people were there (Pirates of the Caribbean II was playing) and got the place for free (with no cordened off bit). Of course with the weather everyone was late. I had planned to split everyone into groups, each group with a digital camera and then to film the credits, each person in the group introducing themselves and who they were playing on film. However since everyone was late we had to settle for a few drinks at Blondinis.

Come 8pm and people are still turning up. The costumes are excellent. Theres Mr & Mrs Smith, Neo from the Matrix and many other dodgy characters lurking around upstairs at the Embassy. We brave the cold and head across the road to The Welsh Dragon. I'd only secured this as a venue the night before. But I'm glad I did. It was the minimal possible distance we could have walked from The Embassy and in that weather I think everyone was thankful.

We arrived there to find Happy 30th Ashley on a chalk board and a few late comers had come straight there. The owner, a most vibrant Welshman who reminded me of Billy Connolly but with a lot less swearing, proceeded to inform all in that bar that that was Ashley and that he was 30. He then stopped the music and played a loud happy birthday song through the sound system.

That done I divided people randomly into groups around those who had digital cameras. They were then given the task of filming the credits, a simple film of each person that showed them saying who they were and who they were playing that night. After that they got the set script to read through. This ranged from various scenes to random things to film. After having done that we got onto the 30 shots of beer in 30 minutes. I'd organised with the bar to sell 3 bottles for $10 (subsidsed) for those who wanted to participate. Although this was cutting it a little close to getting people intoxicated they were good about it. By this stage we were a little behind schedule. I'd had a few beers (and a shot of tequila for my credits scene) and the 30 shots got me pretty happy. They went by quickly. The owner brought out a whole lot of food to sober us up. It went pretty quickly. I think Joel ate the last sandwhich (I have movie proof).

By now the owner was getting a little worried. We had people going into the mens loo's (2 guys, 2 girls) for filming purposes, a dude out the back with a flashing smily face and a bottle of pills he was selling off, there was people slipping stuff in peoples drinks, a game of poker going on somewhere and who knows what else? (I have yet to review all the evidence).

People started disappearing towards midnight, this was partially due to my blurred vision and partially people heading home. We headed off to Ponderossa which was pretty packed. We must have looked an interesting bunch. There was Stephano Webio with his pointing up hair, dragon tattoo on his neck, big sunnies and drawn on moustache, next to him was Neo clad in full leather jacket with rompa stompa boots, dark sunnies and a couple of guns hidden deep within the jacket. I think though descriptions don't do the images justice and so I must stop this writing and prepare a disturbance. It shall come soon.