31 days of nerd heaven #10: Ultimate surround sound with the Wild Bunch

It was a cold, cold night in Dunedin, and I was up to the bit in The Wild Bunch where they blow up the bridge to foil the posse chasing them down, and at the instant the explosion went off, there was an almighty crash right outside the window.

It turned out it was so cold that a council truck that was laying down grit on the frozen road outside had lost its grip and was pin-balling down the steep street, bouncing off the cars at the side of the road, including the one right outside the window.

I felt bad for the neighbour whose car was demolished, but I gotta say - that was one hell of a sound effect. Beats any sub-woofer in the world.

31 days of nerd heaven #9: Drunk as fuck at From Dusk Till Dawn

I used to make a habit of going to the movies while completely shitfaced, which never really worked out as well as I planned.

But I was stone cold sober when the funniest drunken moment I ever saw in a cinema happened. It was a late night screening of From Dusk Till Dawn, on the first weekend it was out, and the dude who slumped in his seat two rows in front of us was obviously off his tits. He seemed to fall asleep pretty quickly, and you could hear him quietly snoring during the tense hostage drama of the first half.

And then the vampires showed up, and that woke Drunkey McDrunk the hell up, because just as situation in the Titty Twister devolved into bloody carnage, he sat bolt upright in his seat and screamed out ‘WHAT THE FUCK?!?’

Nobody had told him about the vampires, and he obviously thought it was just another crime drama, like all the other Tarantino knock-offs at the time. Until it suddenly wasn't.

31 days of nerd heaven #8: The days 2000ad (future) shocked me

I’ve been reading 2000ad on the street for nearly 40 years now, and whether it was spinning out over the Zenith revelation, or the double hit of Necropolis-era Judge Dredd, I always, always remember where I am when 2000ad hits me with a twist so full of thrillpower it stops me in the tracks.

31 days of nerd heaven #7: Back of the bookstore

I was buying an issue of John Wagner and Cam Kennedy's Outcasts comic from the second hand bookstore on Sydenham Road in Christchurch, when the owner told me that if I was interested in comics, I should check out what he had in the back.

That usually meant a pile of worthless Eagle or New Universe comics, but it turned out the dude used to own a comic store in town, and all of his back issue stock, mainly from the late eighties, was still piled high on the shelves in the room out back, all for sale for a buck fifty each.

I went a bit crazy that first day, finally finishing off painfully incomplete runs of the slightly esoteric comics from that period, and taking a stab at all sorts of series I’d never even read before.

That craziness didn’t die down for a while. It was hot as hell that whole summer, but after cooling off at the beach, I would spend hours in that cramped, stuffy room, dropping sand everywhere. The shop is long gone now, the building another victim of the city’s devastating 2011 earthquake, but that moment of walking into a room full of weird, almost unsellable comics was the best moment of the summer.

31 days of dork heaven #6: Off to Rohan with the Virgin Suicides and Wonder Boys

I wasted far too much of my 20s getting stoned with my mates and going for vast, rambling road trips all over the South Island. Sunday drives to the West Coast might be a 10-hour round trip, but they made good ice creams in Westport, and it was something to do.

One of the best was one Saturday afternoon, where we decided to bash around the countryside and find some sets for Lord of the Rings, which was shooting in our back country at the time. It took ages to get up there, and find what we were looking for, although getting stuck in a crowd of horseman brandishing big fuck-off swords was a good sign we were on the right rack. We ended up parking up surprisingly close to the Halls of Rohan, and got fucking munted on some sweet oil that Spook had scored.

That was fun, but one of the best parts of that particular trip was the reading material I'd taken along. I always took a book on these drives, to get through the long stretches of familiar landscape, and on this particular trip, I blazed through The Virgin Suicides on the drive up, and got through almost all of The Wonder Boys on the way down.

Neither of the books had been turned into movies yet (although they were both on the way), and for one brief, golden afternoon, I went to Middle Earth while high on cannabis and the crippling ennui of growing up in 20th century America. It was a surprisingly good mix.

31 days of nerd heaven #5: The night I saw Captain Marvel in the street

I really did see Captain Marvel out in the real world one time. He might not have been there, but I saw him.

31 days of nerd heaven #4: A double dose of Pulp

If my young man movie obsession ever peaked at one particular point, it was probably the day me and Anthony drove up to Christchurch on a Sunday to watch Pulp Fiction twice.

Antz was just as much a movie freak as I was at that age - at its worst, we would later compete to see who could see Escape From LA at the cinema the most - and we were both definitely on Team Tarantino after Dogs had blown our minds. When it opened, it wasn’t playing in our home town, so we had to drive 200kms to see it, and we didn't hesitate.

We saw Pulp Fiction for the first time at 10am on a Sunday morning, and since we had made the effort, went to four other films throughout the day. I honestly can’t remember what the other films were, (although I have a sneaky suspicion one of them was Linklater’s Slacker), but when we were about to head on the long drive back home, Antz suggested going back and seeing Pulp for a second time late in the day, and I couldn’t argue with his plan.

In the end, we didn’t get home until well after midnight, and it was hell getting up for work the next morning, but it was totally worth it. I’d never seen the same film twice in a theatre in the same day, and haven’t done it again since, but Pulp was always worth it.

31 days of nerd heaven #3: Driving with the lights off

I was so fucking excited to get my full driver's license, after a lifetime of being chained to semi-rural South Canterbury, so the first thing on the day I got it was borrow Dad's car and drive right across town to buy the latest issue of Justice League America.

I felt so mature, and so free, and so on top of the world, right up until the moment I realised I'd been driving around town at night without my headlights on.

I don't read the Justice League anymore, but I always, always check my headlights are on.

31 days of nerd heaven #2: On a mountain in Mongolia, reading Love and Rockets

We were travelling through the lower part of Mongolia when I got some awful food poisoning. It was bad and nasty and at one point I was sure Dani Moonstar was coming to take me away to Valhalla. But I also got over it surprisingly quickly, thanks to lemon tea, the bracing Mongolian air, and the local tendency to treat any illness with 'drink more vodka'.

So two days after I was puking my fucking guts out, while the lovely wife and the rest of the tour were off on a horse trek, I scrambled up the side of the nearest small mountain with some dry cheese, a bottle of apple vodka and my battered copy of Duck Feet: volume six of the Complete Love and Rockets, and read about Carmen and Doyle and Israel and Tony. It was a beautiful spot up there, with one of the country's few clear and empty lakes below, and I was so far away from the rest of the planet, and I had to stop reading to take in the whole thing, because I was getting a bit emotional up there.

When I saw them coming back from the trek, far below, I packed away the Love, and tumbled down the mountain with the last of the vodka swirling around in my cup, and I didn't spill a fucking drop.