Jun 4, 2015 etc
Where to hang out with the rich kids
• At Little Bird, drinking $12 smoothies made by pretty girls, slowly.
• At the next YaYa ball. If they have one.
• At a pop-up anything.
• At The Lane, an after-hours “speakeasy” in Fort Lane that admits you (or, most likely, doesn’t) by video intercom.
• At the Fay compound on Great Mercury Island. Only 25 minutes from Auckland! By helicopter.
• At Seafarers Club, bemoaning the freeriders with memberships courtesy of Spark.
• At a Dress for Success fundraiser. (A worthy cause, no joke.)
• At the Les Gens Sugar Club lunch, discussing black-and-white French films nobody’s actually seen.
• At the Koru Club, waiting for a flight to somewhere warm at the first whiff of winter.
• At 46 & York, a Parnell local opened in 2013 but “established” in 1924.
• At The Golden Dawn, slumming it for kicks.
• At the Key mansion while John and Bronagh are in Hawaii.
• On Instagram.
• In rehab.
Win X Factor
Go it alone. Groups don’t work in X Factor’s sci-fi stage environment, and even though One Direction is the show’s greatest hit, they didn’t actually win their season.
• Don’t bother if you’re > 25. The category looks ridiculous — like teachers trying to dance with the kids at a high-school disco.
• Obey the judges. Even if they look like lizards or appear to be sleeping with their eyes open, they can and will make or break you.
• For your audition, tired old classics make you look tired and old — and not very good. Choose a cult song with big hooks, and make it sound like a chart hit. Jackie Thomas, the winner in season one, is still performing “Skinny Love”, and the song sat in the Top 40 for months in 2013. Want to be the next Jackie Thomas? Find the next “Skinny Love”.
Mind you, if you’re planning on taking all this to heart for next time, good luck. It’s not looking like the most likely show to renew, is it?
Become famous on YouTube
Caito Potatoe has over 100,000 likes on Facebook and a YouTube channel with videos hitting over 600,000 views. She’s 16. She started with a Facebook page so her friends could see her videos, then a makeup tutorial hit NZ Vines, giving her an instant 500 followers. But it was a video reaction to a parking ticket that went viral and got her those 600,000 views.
Make the videos regular, she reckons. Every two days is good. Make them short — under three minutes — and if you’re not interesting in the first 15 seconds, people will exit. What’s interesting? “Anything crazy.”
Make friends with a celebrity
The way to befriend an unsuspecting celebrity is to see them often enough that the relationship can grow organically. Like woodland animals, they’re frightened by sudden moves. Whether at the gym, kindy pickup or helping them repair that car tyre you deflated, use your face time to subtly demonstrate you appreciate their work, while dropping in just enough industry knowledge that you don’t come across like an outsider. There’s a reason actresses marry cameramen — they’re part of the club, but used to focusing on somebody else. Be the camera in this relationship, and always carry a carjack.
Become famous
Make a sex tape with Len Brown.
More ways to make your dreams come true in Auckland:
Illustrations by Beck Wheeler.
