Because it’s a Friday and I’m in an absurdly good mood for some reason, I thought I’d show you this, the birthday invitation to my 20th birthday party. I painstakingly recreated the front page of The Dominion, which was Wellington’s morning newspaper way back when there were two daily broadsheets covering a city of just 300,000 people.
Click the image to make it, you know, bigger.
Things of note:
- At the time, I had only ever heard the phrase “Armed Offenders Squad”, and had taken it to be “Armed Defenders Squad”. As in, these people are out to defend us. Hence the reference to the AOS in my invite was actually supposed to be a joke.
- In the bottom right you can see my brother, Jeff, standing in for Bill Clinton and brokering peace in the Middle East. I went on to repurpose that image into a campaign poster for Jeff when he ran for school council at Wellington College – the strapline was “VOTE HAIGH. You know it makes sense”. He won.
- Meena’s Dairy (under “Coca Cola Sold”) was a popular place for students at Victoria University to pick up junk food and cigarettes. As I recall it, their sign was defaced by a disgruntled customer to read “Meeny’s Dairy” – a move that I heartily endorsed at the time.
- I printed these out at my workplace (The Bromide Express), carefully cut them out with a scalpel, and hand delivered them all on my scooter. My scooter ran on an electric toothbrush motor, so it took hours. Evidently a couple of people just thought this was a clipping from the newspaper, such was the quality of my forgery, and didn’t actually come to my birthday party.