Brian Rogers Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz

The RR team has gone a bit nostalgic this week. It could be that we've been shuffling back through the archives of some old RR columns.

Revisiting a couple of iconic performances from decades past, such as Strassman at Baycourt and Dragon at Holy Trinity, both damn excellent, might have tripped a few memory triggers.

Or maybe with Christmas looming we've been harking back to childhood and simpler times, when the world was tip top and Rachel was barely out of a training bra.
Perhaps it's the rash of seventies and eighties comebacks that have recently fired up some nostalgia.

Georgie Pie, the Mirage, Phillip Sherry, and the latest haunting from last century: Stubbies.

That's right folks, those thigh-high scary pants, that put the ‘short' back into shorts, are striding back out of the Fashion Police dungeon and making a no-nonsense pitch to the working man.

Stubbies, for a long time the butt of many jokes, are having the last laugh with this marketing pitch: 'Founded in 1972, the Stubbies legacy lives on and they're now known as ‘the little shorts for the big jobs'. The collection is synonymous for being hard-wearing and affordable. Stubbies are made for the real Kiwi man who needs straightforward, uncomplicated and easy gear. Stubbies are about keeping it simple. No frills, bows, bells or bull. High vis, low key, washing machine-chuckable, smart and reliable. What else does a real man need?”

Ironically, the low-tech Stubbies are launched in the hi-tech medium: online.
Now you can really get into Movember: With Stubbies and stubble.
(Editor's note: Phillip Sherry never really left.)

In other news this week, the venerable Oxford Dictionaries has announced the new word of the year is ‘selfies' and thank goodness, it edged out ‘twerking'.

Selfies, (for those of you who have been under a rock eating a Georgie Pie since Phillip Sherry drove past in his Mirage wearing Stubbies), is the term given to the act of taking one's own photograph using one's own camera, or more likely smartphone, and posting said photograph onto one's own Facebook.

Note that it is entirely possible to take a selfie while twerking, but let's not go there.
The good people at Oxford are pretty excited about the development of the selfie word. They report that its 'linguistic productivity” is like, sic, man. (Not their exact words).

The new word, they say, has led to the creation of numerous related spin-off terms showcasing particular parts of the body like helfie (a picture of one's hair), and belfie (a picture of one's posterior); and particular activities – welfie (workout selfie), and drelfie (drunken selfie) – and even items of furniture: shelfie and bookshelfie.

Man, I bet they can't wait for people to start photographing themselves in their Stubbies. (Stulfie?)

So in keeping with our theme of nostalgia, here's an oldie but possibly a goodie from the anals (careful how you spell that) of history. Here's what the Rabbit was up to, a decade ago.

Excerpts from November 2003:

Jumping jumbucks

Australia is a small island off the coast of New Zealand inhabited mainly by marsupial pests, bottom feeders and the offspring of convicts who accidently survived the longboat ride ashore.

Its use today as a dumping ground for society's misfits continues, primarily for New Zealand to rid itself of dole bludgers and the odd crooked politician.

The natives there have lately been getting a bit uppity, the latest snivelling by a columnist called Martin Graham who is quite ticked off about the success New Zealand is gaining from the Lord of the Rings. He writes: 'What is it with the Kiwis and the Lord of the Rings? The way they're carrying on you'd thing (sic) they'd split the atom….” (Well I'd hate to disappoint him, but he obviously hasn't heard about a Kiwi chap called Rutherford). Anyway he goes into this tirade that NZ is so backward that filming LOTR here was easy.

'Mocking up the Middle Ages must have been a piece of cake in a country yet to discover crop rotation…Lord of the Rings would have presented no great challenge. Filming conditions are ideal. No air force to accidentally get into shot. No smog from industry to get in the way….”

This, from a country whose greatest contribution to film has been a movie about a bunch of trannies poncing around the desert singing Abba; and the TV series Kath and Kim - both a pretty dinkum representation of real life in Australia and only screened here as a stark reminder of how basic and feeble is the average trans-Tasman state of mind.

As for his comment about sheep shaggers… well, Aussies would have to be universe champions at that (their only world title). They do it by the shipload. Unable to score a sheep in its natural environment, they resort to jamming them into ships, sailing for the middle east and shagging them en masse in international waters. I expect they found the dead ones piled on deck the most accommodating.

Remember it's the country who's national anthem celebrates the jumping of a jumbuck.
Long may New Zealand remain clean, green and naturally stunning.