Dave Gee: Life from Right Field

What I did on my Summer Holidays
By David Benson-Pope

DAY 14: Was at the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne. Got tickets for the quarter-final match between Ivan Ljubicic and Marcos Baghdatis.

Had money on Ivan...

TV legend Andrew Gourdie - aka "The Voice of Tony Veitch!" - works on his Cricket story in the Chch office... ;-)

Friday night drinks at the Christchurch office... The editors see how many people can squeeze onto one couch (Simon, Bob, Bex, & Mike K).

Haven't done Karaoke for so long, but went along to Brimstone last night with a few friends from the Operatic to have a big of a laugh and a bit of a sing ;-) It was a pretty quiet night there, so between us and Chris (who was working there last night), we pretty much hogged the mic all nite...

Jade, Julie, and her 2 friends from the Navy who didn't like cameras ;-)

Jade and Julie belt out a couple of numbers from "Chicago"...

Jade and Chris belt out (with feeling?), the old Grease the Musical classic, "Summer Loving"...

A few new friends join Julie onstage for her Britney Spears impression...

Chris puts down the mic and gets back to doing some real work ;-)

I spent a few days over Christmas working up at the 3 office in Christchurch... A very uneventful time news-wise, but we had fun in the office anyway...

Juanita and Hannah busy researching their next big scoops!...

Bob hard at work on "The TV3 Christchurch Christmas Tape - Director's Cut Special Extended Edition" ;-)

I hope everybody had a very Merry Christmas, Oy! Hannuka, and a Merry Kwanzaa season...

I had a good time, despite working over Christmas... we made our own fun in the office, and still managed to scoff a huge Chrissy lunch.

The only disappointment is that Santa managed to leave two presents out of my Christmas delivery ;-) ...

It seems Joss Whedon's Sci-Fi movie Serenity (a continuation of the prematurely cancelled Fox TV series Firefly) could be released on DVD in the USA just before Christmas.

The film's been out in the US/UK/Australia/etc for a few weeks, but still hasn't made it onto general release in New Zealand. (I've managed to watch the first nine minutes of Serenity, when Universal posted a preview online for a limited period following the film's US release).

DVD website Digital Bits reports Universal will announce the DVD release of Joss Whedon's Serenity for 12/20. Early word indicates that the disc may include Whedon audio commentary, along with at least 4 behind-the-scenes featurettes (Future History, We'll Have a Fruity Oaty Good Time, Re-Lighting the Firefly and What's in a Firefly), a video introduction to the film by Whedon and 6 minutes worth of outtakes.

* Serenity the Movie - Official site
* Serenity Movie Trailers @ Apple

What's with this whole Sudoku craze??! I just don't get it!

I first encountered the things when I was visiting friends in England around the middle of this year. They started appearing in New Zealand a few months later, and even our old-fashioned local paper now prints the bloody things!...

Here's an article from the London Times about how Sudoku puzzles are now popular the world over. Includes an interview with the owner of http://www.number-logic.com/

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Things have been flat-out lately, mainly with rehearsals for the Theatre Restaurant I'm directing/co-MDing, Life as we know it.

Melinda and Kate organised a cast Singstar & BBQ Party on Saturday, before we had two full-on day and night rehearsals over Labour Weekend Sunday and Monday.

We learnt the last full company song this evening, so now we've got around 3 weeks to finish all the blocking, and commit everything to memory!...

Sure!... We know exactly what we're doing!

The girls give an impromptu street performance (while the lads play silly buggers in the background ;-)

The cast practice "Come Look at the Freaks" (almost too convincely! ;-)