For the 2nd year in a row PILOT has been announced as a finalist in New Zealand’s Best Design Awards. Last year we went on to win the coveted Gold Medal for excellence in Editorial Design and we’re hoping to make it two in a row at this year’s awards in October. Either way, it is a huge thrill to make it through to the finals, we’re told that the BeST Awards received a record number of entries this year. At PILOT we work very hard on the design of the magazine and take a lot of pride in the way we present ourselves. The fact that people notice is a brilliant feeling. A big shout-out to Arch and the team at Inhouse for their ongoing design excellence. HI-5!

New Zealand Mint Jewellery introduces the new me Black Onyx collection of sterling silver jewellery. Black Onyx is a rarer cryptocrystalline form of quartz. It is said that black onyx can help you to find / focus your dharma, your ‘true path’ and help you to walk that path.  The New Zealand Mint Jewellery me Black Onyx collection designs embody ancient mythological and religious cross, circle and tear drop symbolism.

www.nzmintjewellery.com

www.newzealandmint.com

Anya Whitlock: In Hot Pursuit of a Tale
31st August- 2nd October Preview 5:30pm August 31, Pierre Peeters Gallery, Parnell, Auckland

Following whiffs of nostalgia to rediscover what she was instinctually drawn to in childhood, Anya Whitlock’s first solo painting show sees her delve into childhood fairy tales to understand the various stages and psychological traps that a woman can become damaged and broken by. “Fairytales are often cautionary tales and it is possible if attentive to avoid many booby traps and also deeply heal present hurts,” she explains. The artist works from a leafy studio north of Auckland, where she creates her arresting large-scale paintings; their Utopian and seductive depiction of the female form underlined by something darker and slightly sinister.

This new video for ‘Drugs’ by Ratatat is deliciously, fantastically, epically wrong. In the best kind of way. Too awkward. Directed by Carl Burgess.

From Rolling Stone: The idea of celibate vampires is ridiculous, True Blood creator Alan Ball says. “To me, vampires are sex,” he says. “I don’t get a vampire story about abstinence. I’m 53. I don’t care about high school students. I find them irritating and uninformed.” On his show, every available orifice is used for intercourse: gay, straight, between humans and supernatural beings, and supernatural being on supernatural being, whether he be werewolf, dog or an enormous Minotaur-looking being called a maenad. None of the sex is quite as good as vampire sex, though, which can happen at the astonishing rhythm of 120 bpm while simultaneously devouring one’s neck and making your eyes roll back into your head. Says Stephen Moyer — who plays Bill Compton, the undead Southern Civil War Veteran — “If we go from a base level, vampires create a hole in the neck where there wasn’t one before. It’s a de-virginization — breaking the hymen, creating blood and then drinking the virginal blood. And there’s something sharp, the fang, which is probing and penetrating and moving into it. So that’s pretty sexy. I think that makes vampires attractive.” He laughs a little. “Plus, Robert Pattinson is just hot, right?”

The New York Times reports that, “An iceberg four times the size of Manhattan has broken off Greenland, creating plenty of room for global warming deniers to start their own country…”