My gadget life - Rhys Darby

My Gadget Life – Rhys Darby

Robots are my favourite
My favourite gadget has to be Asimo, the Honda robot – who I've met at Disneyland. I love robots and the fact that he looks like a space man as well. I just like the look of it – like a shiny little man.

I had an imaginary jetpack
I grew up watching the James Bond films with all their gadgetry, and obviously jet packs were involved in that. So I coupled my love of it with my imagination, so when I was a kid I just used to pretend I had all that sort of stuff... and then I took that into adulthood.

I do a mean robot impression
I'm not technically-minded myself, but I like the idea of gadgets. I like science fiction and love robots, and I've got this ability to make noises – very realistic, mechanical noises. I didn't practise it, I just started doing it as a kid. I thought everyone could do it, but it turns out that not many people even want to do it.

So there I was doing all these robot noises at home – "
Look mum! I'm a robot! Bvmmm, ksshhhh!"
/"
That's lovely, dear."
People enjoyed it, and I guess that was the basis for some of my act.

I'm back on the tech bandwagon
When the iPods came out, I totally missed the boat. I thought, "
I won't be able to cope with that"
, then five years down the track I was given one. So now I'm back on the bandwagon. I feel with technology, if you drop the ball or take a week off, you've missed out on something – it moves so fast now.

An iPod could be the death of me
I'm not one of these guys who wears an iPod and everywhere they go – I like to know what's going on around me, particularly so that I can cross the road without getting hit. I live in a dream world as it is, so if I had music on as well, I wouldn't survive.

I like games with bullets-bullets-bullets
I like first person shooter games, where you get dropped in behind enemy lines on D-Day and stuff like that – the realistic ones. I was in the army for a while so I like running around shooting with guns.

In the New Zealand army we used to do a lot of exercises in the forest, running around. But we had a limited budget so we didn't actually fire any of the guns – we had to say the word 'bullets'. So it was like being kids – we'd go around shouting "
Bullets-bullets-bullets!"
. And the other guys who were playing the enemy would have to go, "
I'm hit!"
. It was ridiculous.

thedistantfuture wrote:

I do a mean robot impression