Odd Man Out

When I was a teenager I bought a book called Three British Screenplays. The film scripts in it were Brief Encounter, Scott of the Antarctic, and Odd Man Out. I’d never managed to catch up with any of the movies themselves until I recently came across a DVD of Odd Man Out. It’s extraordinary what odd films turn up on DVD. This is a wonderfully clear copy of the film, no problems with the visual or audio side of it as there often is in these lesser known movies. It’s exactly as Carol Reed intended, with those marvellous light and shadow shots, rainy streets reflecting the street lamps, the snow showing up pure white towards the end. And then there are the faces, a mixture of Dickensian eccentrics, like Robert Newton, Cyril Cusack, F J McCormick (one of the Abbey Theatres great stars) and Joseph Tomelty, and the soon-to-be Hollywood stars: James Mason, Robert Beatty – and Dan O’Herlihy. Fay Compton makes a brief but strong appearance, and hidden amongst the uncredited actors are Wilfred Brambell, a very young Dora Bryan, Eddie Byrne, Geoffrey Keen and Noel Purcell.
It’s an odd story: Mason is the leader of a group of Irish nationalists who gets wounded in a robbery and spends the rest of the day and night on the streets, sometimes protected by those who care, sometimes neglected and sometimes about to be sold for the £1000 pound reward. He’s in danger of discovery from the police, and is nearly left for dead more than once. Two women take him in, briefly, and attend to him, a cabbie inadvertently takes him through the police patrols, and after being discovered by a conniving vagabond, he winds up escaping into a pub, being protected by the publican for a time, caught up by an alcoholic artist who wants to ‘paint his dying eyes’ and then finally is rescued by his girlfriend – for a last moment or two.
The atmosphere throughout is of a world that’s gone: children playing out on the streets until all hours and a gang of rough uneducated boys begging for a penny; cabbies driving horse carriages; a double decker bus crammed with people so that the bus breaks down; people living in derelict conditions and police on every corner; a middle-aged wealthy woman running some gambling house and betraying two of the nationalists to the police; a pub so full that there are half a dozen barmen.
It’s a film packed with detail: as much is going on in the background of some shots as in the foreground, and every shot is a delight to the eye. It’s almost surrealist visually; a lot of the lighting isn’t natural, and isn’t intended to be. As the night creeps on things get more and more strange, so that the nighttime outside scenes are obviously shot in the studio (even to the pretend trains rushing past in the background of one set, signified only by the smoke trail and the hoot of the engine) and the house where the vagabond, the doctor who’s missed his calling and the artist live is a great ramshackle place that’s once been the home of someone wealthy. The streets are no longer filmed on location as they were in the day time scenes, but have an increasingly Caligari feel about them.
The acting is on a consistently high level, and the direction of the actors is another area in which there’s attention to detail. Mason has a difficult role to play as someone who’s only half with it most of the time; Beatty makes what he can of a loyal partner in the group but vanishes part way through the story; Cusack is as full of beans as always; Elwyn Brook-Jones makes the most of his enormous eyes and screwed up face; W G Fay plays an apparently dull-witted priest who turns out to be sharper than anyone around him, and so the list goes on. Only Kathleen Ryan, as the girlfriend, disappoints. It’s possible that she was supposed to play her namesake Kathleen as a rather downhearted girl, disappointed that the rebellion is taking so long and is about to take her man down with it. But she sticks to this one note throughout, and isn’t really believable when she claims she would shoot her boyfriend rather than let him be taken to prison – and shoot herself too.
Well worth waiting for after all these years.

Local Hero

Local Hero is one of those quirky Bill Forsyth movies that never go where you expect, and keep leading you up paths that turn out to be red herrings. No character in it can be said to be straightforward, even the main character, Mac, played by Peter Riegert. He’s supposed to be a tough wheeler and dealer for a big oil-company, but he proves just as soft as all the rest. Burt Lancaster has an odd role as the chief of the company, who spends most of his time on his own, or with his therapist, a man whose absurd agenda doesn’t quite seem to match that of his client. The rest of the cast are typical Forsyth characters, people who seem unwilling to go quite in the direction a typical story would take, which consequently often leaves the audience shaking their head at the weirdness of it all.
There are daft scenes at every point. Half a dozen fishermen stand around talking to Mac, with a toddler in a pram amongst them. Mac asks who’s child is it. The men look to one another in turn. Are they indicating that it could be anyone’s child, or that they don’t know, or that they’re not even sure what the child is doing there? We never find out, because the scene cuts and moves to something else. The publican turns out not to be the publican, even though he runs the hotel, and cooks the meals, and acts as barman. He’s also the local accountant, and a bit of a wheeler-dealer himself. The priest is black, with a Scots name, a man who doesn’t quite seem to know what he’s doing in this out of the way place. A young girl dressed in ragged jeans, with her hair spiked up, and a painted face, wanders in and out without remark by anyone else – except when she starts to chase the Scotsman who works for the oil company in Aberdeen. Then it turns out she already has a boyfriend – in the local band. The main female character spends most of her time in the water, like some nymph, or silkie. An unidentified person buzzes past on a motor scooter almost every time someone steps into the street. The publican and Mac agree to exchange their lives in a tipsy moment and then carry on as normal the next day. An old guy does impressions of famous film stars for another old man – all the impressions look the same – and the other old man gets them wrong every time. And the ending is a slap in the face for the audience, with Lancaster swapping places with Mac, and Mac arriving back home in Texas with two pockets of sea shells. Suddenly the film stops.
The film is well known – there are plenty of reviews on IMDB – but isn’t much seen. As someone notes, the film score is better known than the film.

20th century advertising jingle

An advertising rhyme my wife remembers from her childhood:

That cough does upset her,
What can Mother get her?
Why, Mother says Venos,
The best mixture she knows;
That cough quickly goes,
When she takes Venos.

To my surprise, Beecham's Venos is still available. I'd assumed it was long gone. For a fun story relating to Venos, check out this site - about half way down.

The following note comes from an interesting site on old bottles, called Ask Digger.
hi there i was looking round a market one day when i cam across one old venos cough mixture bottle it has still got the sticker of it one front and came with it original box , it is called venos brand lightning cough cure and was prepared by veno drug co Ltd , Manchester eng. the box is quite old and the bottle as well it even has some medicine in the bottom of the bottle , can you please email me and let me know about this bottle only date i can find on it is 1910 can you tell me if it is worth anything as well thank you very much for your help

Studdert Kennedy

There had been but two rectors in seventy-five years [in Leeds], John Moultre and John Murray. Both were men of character, and the former something of a saint, after the quiet Anglican style, which means he was intensely venerated in his immediate locality and virtually unknown anywhere else. This was the man who died of smallpox, after a ministry of fifty years, while visiting a child parishioner in the epidemic of 1874. He was very greatly beloved, though he could be sharp when he wished, as when, an earnest evangelical lady saying she had sat under his ministry for many years and gained no good from it, he looked at her quietly for an appreciable time before saying, ‘I believe it, Madam.’ His successor, Murray, a stern Tractarian high-churchman, much feared in the town, with an untidy beard and a habit of drinking cold tea throughout the day, used in the latter days of his ministry to astonish visitors already impressed by his own antiquity by taking them along to see his mother, still briskly surviving.

From pg 57 of Woodbine Willie, a biography of G K Studdert Kennedy, by William Purcell, published 1962

Tin-Tin. Spielberg. Jackson.

You don’t seem to see Peter Jackson looking happy these days. My suspicion is that in losing weight he’s lost some of the jolliness that used to go with him. Be that as it may, it hasn’t stopped him moving forward and making more movies.
(Years ago when I was in London I knew a young opera singer who made it to Covent Garden very quickly after coming to the UK as a student. She was quite heavy, but she had a lovely, large creamy voice. Someone decided that she should lose weight, and drastically, the voice lost a good deal of its warm timbre.)
Tin-Tin. Spielberg. Jackson.
Plainly Tin-Tin held more appeal for Jackson than Harry Potter, which is a pity, because I could see Jackson dealing to the last couple of Potter movies with their increasing gloom and fantasticism. Tin-Tin is okay, but he’s a relatively mild character in terms of adventure, if my memory serves me right. Still, he’s a challenge, especially if he’s going to be created in CGI, like Kong and that other little feller from those three movies about some Ring…

Changing Faces

In New Zealand, there’s some thought that over the next thirty years we may mostly be a Maori nation. I beg to differ: I think we will mostly be an Asian nation, with European and Maori minorities. Already there are far more Asians living and working in New Zealand than there have ever been in the past, and they’re wealthy and intelligent people, who bring an enormous heritage with them. Yes, many fish and chip and takeaways are still run by Asians, and many restaurants, but that doesn’t seem to stop them filling up professional jobs as well. The last two mayors in our city of Dunedin have been Asian, one Indian and now a Chinese (though I think he was NZ born). The times have changed enormously from my childhood, when the only Chinese you ever saw ran fish and chip shops, or were fruiterers. Now half the doctors and dentists are Asian, and intend to stay in the country.
I haven’t noticed such a large influx of Asians into the IT market here, as yet, but apparently in China there are some 2 million IT professionals in the workforce, and over a 100,000 more of them graduate from universities every year. Not only this, most of them are English-proficient, since this is now a requirement for anyone in top professions. I suspect that that may mean proficient at English but not necessarily proficient in the subtleties of the language. Still, it’s a start.
And now the trends of the last few decades are reversing further. I’ve just read of a top Chinese IT company called Hundsun Electronics Co. that has a subsidiary in the States called Hundsun Global Services, Inc. What a turnaround! This means that they can offer software outsourcing in China, and of course the price is considerably lower than what it would be for the same job in the US. Apropos of this, it’s not long since I was told by the owner of a chain of shops here in NZ that they could have a shop outfitted now for a fraction of the price by giving all the details to a company in China and having the whole thing shipped to NZ ready to go.
I think those of us who live through the next thirty years will be astonished by the changes in the world focus. And the interesting thing is that English may still survive as a major language!

Being an in-law

In-laws start married life at a disadvantage with their new family: they're lacking in all the family history that's gone before. I can remember one young man sitting with various members of our family and desperately trying to keep up with all that was going on, a great grin on his face to show he was involved, and the occasional comment to show he understood. But the reality was, for the most part he had no idea what it was all about, because after a while, families talk to each other in a kind of shorthand.

I've been in that boat myself, as no doubt all people have who've married into a family. And there's nothing you can do about it. You just have to pick it all up as you go along, and you may still be finding out things about your other family years after you've married into it. Some families are adept at hiding things almost forever, which doesn't help the 'out-laws,' as one of my fellow out-laws calls us. And then, when brothers and sisters get together, there's still a sense of exclusion for those who weren't born into the family.

Unfortunately it takes quite some effort on the part of a family to learn to include an in-law, and some families never make the effort. We've had to learn how to do it in our family and hopefully have made some progress.

Keeping in touch

As we prepare to go the UK for six months, we’ve been looking at all sorts of options for dealing with calling home and using email. There are plenty of options, but a lot of them are expensive, with a capital E. We’re probably going to use Skype in part, though so far it’s debateable how well it’ll work for us. But we’ve done some testing here at home and things are starting to come together.
Skype, of course, is only of use if you’re close to the laptop. Another option I wouldn’t have normally considered is a calling card, but Pingo’s cards seem to be very economic to use - and they allegedly don’t have any of those awful charges that eat up the money on the card before you’ve even started talking. I’ve just had a look at the FAQ, and it seems it’s only when you call from public phones that you have additional charges. Well, that’s normal, I guess.
Usually when I come across these sorts of cards on the Net, they’re limited to one country, but Pingo actually lists NEW ZEALAND. I had to use capitals to show that for once the great US of A has acknowledged that there’s a little country down the bottom of the world. We’re not the only country they acknowledge and act as a prepaid calling card provider for. In fact, the list goes on and on, and their site quotes all sorts of rates for calling from hither and yon and back again. Yes, even for NZ. Ain’t that amazing?
Their rates are very good too, though there seemed to be a bit of a discrepancy between their quote in English pounds compared to the same quote in New Zealand dollars. One is 2.7P per minute, and the other is a phenomenal .072 per minute. I don’t think those two quite equate. Nevertheless, that’s a pretty good rate. But what I did like the idea of is having a pin connected to the card. Gone are those awful days when you had to press umpteen buttons to get to the person you wanted to call. And if you made a mistake - you started all over again!
Pingo calling cards are available in NZ, but I can’t find a direct link. So I’m going to give you one for the International prepaid filipino calling cards, since I can find that link much more easily!

The strange uses of language

I don’t normally put stuff on here that might regarded by anyone as bawdy, but occasionally something cries out to be mentioned. In fact there are two things. One is a link to an absolutely hilarious list: 20 Ways To Tell A Man His Fly Is Unzipped, which also has a picture that has to be seen to be believed. How does Mr George Bush get himself into such situations?
The second thing is something I came across at work, and which has intrigued me for several days. It’s apparently a tool which is used in the engineering shop, and it’s called a maiden threading and screwing tool, as far as I can make out. The only connection I can find with maidens and tools is a maiden bar, which is something used on a spinning wheel. But I’m not even sure what it is in that context. I quote from the NZ's Ashford Company's ad: Larger 24"/61cm drive wheel mounted on ball bearings makes for smooth effortless spinning. Horizontal adjustment of maiden bar allows perfect adjustment with all 3 whorls. Maiden bar clamps to base to eliminate vibration. Double drive with scotch tension.
Maybe an engineer or a spinner can help me.

Platinga on Dawkins

The God Delusion is an extended diatribe against religion in general and belief in God in particular; Dawkins and Daniel Dennett (whose recent Breaking the Spell is his contribution to this genre) are the touchdown twins of current academic atheism.
Dawkins has written his book, he says, partly to encourage timorous atheists to come out of the closet. He and Dennett both appear to think it requires considerable courage to attack religion these days; says Dennett, "I risk a fist to the face or worse. Yet I persist." Apparently atheism has its own heroes of the faith—at any rate its own self-styled heroes. Here it's not easy to take them seriously; religion-bashing in the current Western academy is about as dangerous as endorsing the party's candidate at a Republican rally.
The God Delusion is full of bluster and bombast, but it really doesn't give even the slightest reason for thinking belief in God mistaken, let alone a "delusion." The naturalism that Dawkins embraces, furthermore, in addition to its intrinsic unloveliness and its dispiriting conclusions about human beings and their place in the universe, is in deep self-referential trouble. There is no reason to believe it; and there is excellent reason to reject it.

This comes from an article by Alvin Plantinga, published in Books and Culture, March/April 2007. You can find Plantinga's homepage here.

I miss out again

The problem with not living in the States is that you miss out on some outstanding contests. However, I don’t think I’ll become a US citizen just so I can enter; at present I’m quite happy with my status as an Aussie who lives in NZ.
But it would be fun to go in for the lowest bid contest, which is a kind of inside-out auction. The person opening the bids starts at 1c, and so might several other people – no one knows what anyone else bids. The person who dares to go up to 2c or more, and is the only one to do so, becomes the ‘lowest’ unique bidder. And so it goes on until bidding stops. A further tricky aspect to this is that in spite of bidding in monetary amounts, you don’t actually have to pay anything at the end of the auction, if you’re the winner. And the prizes are real and substantial, from BMWs down to Motorola Razor cellphones. I’ve checked out the prizes a couple of times, and find it hard to choose what I’d most like to win.
There’s a charming young lady called Karen (if I caught her name right) who goes through the whole deal with you on a little video. Worth checking it out. If you live in the States (and the District of Columbia).

Not quite so celebratory

From the sublime reaches of theology to the elasticity of Spiderman – Spiderman 3, no less.
My wife and I went to see it last night – even made the effort to see it on the big screen, along with twenty other people. The spiritual underpinning continues, with forgiveness well to the fore at the end of the movie, and with lust for evil well-expressed (one character even ‘praying’ for Spiderman’s death). There’s also a lovely visual moment when Spiderman is seen as a gargoyle on the outside of a church steeple.
But beyond the spirituality? It’s an odd film: three villains coming and going, Spiderman having to find out who he is and how dark his dark side is - and still not getting the girl…quite. The fight scenes are even more comic book than before, and stretch credibility to its limits - though they’re extraordinarily well staged. But a number of shots of someone being hammered into something much harder than they are, and of people dropping from heights and getting up after a quick shake of the head, and people surviving explosions. Well, it’s all just a bit much. I don’t think it quite matches number two, and number two didn’t quite have something that number one had. What I think that was, was celebration! Spiderman the first was so celebratory that I went and saw it twice, evangelistically taking someone else with me. Toby Maguire was so boyish in the role then and Kirsten Dunst was just so lovely. But this third movie requires them to trade on those qualities again and again, without any real development. Maguire is now 32 and even though he still looks boyish, there must be a limit to how much longer he wants to go on playing a child/man. You get the feeling he wants to break out in this movie, and yes, he does break out, but it’s only to go back to the Spiderman/Toby that he was at first. There isn’t any real forward movement.
Sam Raimi is a great director of this kind of movie, and deserves plenty of credit. But I just didn’t feel moved by the film, in the way I was moved at the first in the series.

Theology

I’m continuing to read the History of Christian Thought, and am now into the 20th century, amongst Barth and Bultmann and Bonhoeffer. Light springs out occasionally into the theological darkness, and then the gloom takes over again. The 20th century has not been the great century of theological forward-thinking, even though Christology and the Trinity have made theological headlines again. Theology in the 20th century (and even the 21st) is more likely to make you lose your faith than find it, though that’s not to say that Barth and Bonhoeffer weren’t men of faith; they were. Certainly I’d be happier in their company than in that of some of the late 19th century theologians, who seem to have lost their way almost completely.
I can understand that theology must always be finding its own voice in the midst of each new age, but it must never, to my way of thinking, lose sight of where it all sprang from: the revelation of God through Jesus Christ. Without that, we’re lost. There’s no two ways about it.

How Do I Love Thee?

I have had a love/hate relationship with PayPerPost, which readers of this blog will no doubt have noticed. It turns out that part of the problem was my own, caused by my not being aware of the need to categorise my blog and thus assist PPP to categorise me for advertisers. So it goes (to use Kurt Vonnegut’s catchphrase – I was sorry to hear that he’d died the other day).
I started out doing a couple of posts a day with PPP, back in the days when blog marketing was simpler and they hadn’t made their system so complicated. Then I went off them for a while because I just couldn’t seem to make anything out of their revised approach. Now I’m back on track with them, and though I still need to make a bit of adjustment to my status within their categories, in general we’re friends again. And they certainly have the widest range of opportunities available at present – some other smaller paid-post organisations seem to be struggling to get enough advertisers to work with them.
So do I love PPP? Not sure that ‘love’ is the word. Am I loyal to them? Well, yes, I think I am. After all, friends stick to each other even in times when they’re not relating straightforwardly, and I never quite forgot them…

Blog Resurrection

I had a birthday yesterday. It's such a boring number that I won't even bother to tell you what it is, but suffice to say, I won't be looking forward to twice 31 again.
As a kind of celebration of the occasion, I've resurrected another blog, one that I started back in the early part of the century, and seem to have let go. Can't quite understand why it was neglected, but that's the way things are.
Anyway, it's going to focus on our imminent trip to the UK, and anything else that happens to relate to that. Expect the usual mix of random comments, paid posts, nonsense, and some stuff about travelling.
It goes by the exciting name of Mike Crowl's Travel Diary, because I was in a hurry to get it up and running again, and didn't have time to think of anything better, such as An Optimist Goes Abroad, or A Broad Optimist Goes, and so on.
I've sometimes wondered, apropos of that, whether I'm an optimistic pessimist, or a pessimistic optimist. Can't quite decide where the difference lies.

A bit of belated blogtipping

Like me, one of my sons has written stuff since he was a kid. He and one of his great mates wrote, drew and acted throughout their childhood/teenage/youth. They're still writing, I've just discovered, and now it's blogs. Worse, they've even inveigled their old friend Doogle Sherlock to start up a blog.

I quote from my son's blog: The doctor I got was really kudos and she prescribed me with a drug which was apparently one of the ingredients used to make P. I tried not to act suspicious.

I quote from his friend's blog, Procrastination Opportunist: I have spent the last four months procrastinating (true to form). Actually, scratch that; it was three months procrastinating, the rest was procrastination recuperation.

I quote from Doogle's Blog - appropriately called My Blog Log: butt this tym i rote a book! it waz in my hand and syned doogl! i kno i wud hav syned it 'doogel' if i waz awake but slepe doogl probly dusnt kno this. i showd shirlee and she rolld her i's so i went to sebastyans plce (in tha sekure lokdown wing of tha prizzon, hez doing grand larsinny tym for diak at tha momint) and he thort it wus the koolest book eva! 'tha grate butt piratikal bumbustificayshin' is just wat id call a book too - slepe doogl has sum gr8 ideas!

Doogle has a considerable history, and it's interesting to see he's still alive and kicking. He's got rather crude over the years, which makes me wonder about his creator. Can it really be the person I think it is?

Eugene Peterson

"For Christians, whose largest investment is in the invisible, the imagination is indispensable, for it is only by means of the imagination that we can see reality whole, in context… . If my imagination is stunted or inactive, I will only see what I can use, or something that gets in my way… . It is the invisibles that determine how you will view the world, whether as a homeland or as a prison or place of battle. Nobody lives in the 'objective' world, only in a world filtered through the imagination... . Right now, one of the essential Christian ministries in and to our ruined world is the recovery and exercise of the imagination."

(Eugene Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant , 170-171)

But......Why?

You have to wonder if some people have too little to do in life. Ashrita Furman recently attempted the world record for using a metal hula hoop under water. He lasted all of 2 minutes 20 seconds while standing completely under water, with curious dolphins from the Island Dolphin Care facility swimming close by – and no doubt wondering what the heck the guy was up to. As I do.
Furman has apparently set 144 official Guinness records and is still the holder of 59 current records. He has set records in all 7 continents and in more than 30 different countries.
Why? Is this a way to achieve lasting fame? Apparently not, if someone is going to come along and beat your record at the drop of a hat. And what’s the value of such records as standing under water using a hula hoop? Why would you want to create such a record? It seems to me to have a lot in common with those art works known as ‘happenings’ where the point of the thing is barely discernible, or ‘installations’ where things like several crates of oranges are flung around the floor randomly – and that’s it.
Are we so short of records to achieve in the world that we have to stand under water with a hula hoop? Maybe we are.

God the Silversmith

One of those things that gets sent round by email. I like it, but I've removed a couple of paragraphs from the end which only served to explain what was already obvious.

Malachi 3:3 says: "He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver."

This verse puzzled some women in a Bible study and they wondered what this statement meant about the character and nature of God. One of the women offered to find out the process of refining silver and get back to the group at their next Bible Study.

That week, the woman called a silversmith and made an appointment to watch him at work. She didn't mention anything about the reason for her interest beyond her curiosity about the process of refining silver. As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities.

The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot; then she thought again about the verse that says: "He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver." She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined.

The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver was left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed.

The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, "How do you know when the silver is fully refined?" He smiled at her and answered, "Oh, that's easy -- when I see my image in it"

Hitch-ier

A quote from the film, Hitch. Okay, it might seem sappy out of context, but in the movie it fits perfectly.

Never lie, steal, cheat, or drink.
But if you must lie, lie in the arms of the one you love.
If you must steal, steal away from bad company.
If you must cheat, cheat death.
And if you must drink, drink in the moments that take your breath away.

Script by Kevin Bisch.

Kevin Bisch

One thing missing

We have very sombre ads here on tv by an actor who used to appear in Shortland St, (probably the most successful tv soap in NZ’s history). In one ad he shows how a family survives in an emergency by being really prepared. They look like a singularly unexcitable family to me, but that’s okay. In other ads, all the services that are usually available, such as fire, ambulance and so on, gradually disappear off the screen behind him, until he’s left in a vast landscape of nothing. The point being that these services may not be available when we need them. In another ad, cars disappear from a motorway he’s standing near, and then a passing train simply vanishes. Very effective ads, as you can see, except that they still haven’t made us do anything about getting an emergency kit together.
We actually brought the beginnings of one at a garage sale one day, and then used up the bits and pieces in it instead of waiting for an emergency. Oh, dear, we’re not very foresighted. We’ll probably be the sorts of people you’ll find begging for food and water in an emergency, while we bleed from copious wounds. Or else, my wife, resilient and resourceful person that she is, will have made do with what’s to hand and we’ll cope.
All this by way of a lead-in to Disaster Kits I saw advertised on the Net. These ones come ready-made in five (!) carry-bags – rather like the bags you use here to take your gear to rugby or swimming. I checked through the ‘over 100 items included’ and do you know what I couldn’t find? Toilet rolls! A slight oversight on the part of the makers, no doubt.

Hitch

I watched Hitch again last night, on DVD. I hadn’t seen it since it came out at the movies a couple of years ago. It has be the comedy with the most charm about it that I’ve seen in years. In spite of being all about falling in love, almost none of the characters leap into bed at the drop of a hat (the only couple seen in bed are just snuggling), and it’s more about relationships than sex. Which makes a great change.
Will Smith is lots of fun, sending himself up enormously (particularly in the gross scene where he has a food allergy) and Keven James is superb. Check out the incredible splits he does at the end, which I remember had the cinema audience in hysterics.
The idea is original – a kind of male matchmaker who works only with men who lack the self-confidence to woo the woman they’ve fallen in love with (usually at a distance). The matchmaker then falls in love himself, and all his ‘art’ goes out the window as real life takes over. (Though his ‘art’ works for the blokes he coaches, as it happens!)
It’s celebratory, and lots of fun, and has dialogue almost reminiscent of those great romantic comedies of the past, where people actually did more talking than leaping about bedrooms in the altogether.

A footnote - or should that be an above note?

The picture in the previous post originally appeared on the Alberta Shaken Baby Syndrome Prevention site. Last weekend we had two of my grandchildren staying with us – and their mother. Boy, is she patient with them! The older of the two, who’s around 15 months, got diarrhoea while he was here, and cried loudly every time he was changed – which was often. And then his baby sister would join in. My wife and I can get small children to stop crying by a variety of (positive) methods – all of them learned through handling our own children over the years - but even we were struggling to keep them calm for long. Their mother, bless her heart, never got angry, never got mad, even though she was very tired. Good on yer, daughter!

We don't Get!

Awww, I can’t join the whogets.com contests! And neither can people in Florida, Rhode Island or New York. What has the world got against us? Or rather, what do the residents of Florida, Rhode Island and New York have in common with each other – and me? Let me think: F, RI and NY all have an O in their names. They all have an R in their names. But New Zealand doesn’t have either of these. So what’s the catch, WhoGets? Are ya just prejudiced against us? Boo, hoo!

They say on their Official Rules that they’ll hopefully open to F, RI and NY in the future. But do they mention NZ? Nope, they do not. Boo, hoo, again!

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Seek and you'll probably find

The Internet is a great place to get lost finding things. It can be overwhelming trying to track down just one name or business, let alone a group of them. A new kid on the block called Masterseek is aiming to be the global business-finding web search engine. It’s encouraging companies around the world to join up and be part of its data base. I’ve just had a look at the site, and though the colour’s a bit bland for my taste, the site works very well. Some types of companies (listed under categories) are already in abundance. They’re the sort of companies that don’t miss an opportunity to advertise: construction, maintenance, household appliances and so on. The arts scene is unrepresented almost entirely at this stage, but then again, so is health and fitness, to my surprise. Seems to be easy to join up – though I didn’t try, as I’m already registered with enough sites to sink a ship. But even without registering you can garner a good deal of info. One of the most useful parts of the site is the way it joins together different companies from different countries that have a commonality (always wanted to use that word) of interest.

The dog bone component of the bucket crowd section

The dialect of different groups within the business world can sometimes be rather puzzling. I’m currently working in an office attached to a large construction/landfill/landscaping/drainage company. On one of the reports relating to an accident that occurred was this phrase:
The dog bone component of the bucket crowd section.
Apparently that’s English and makes sense to a large number of people.

Trying to makes sense of bucket crowd on Google provides the following helpful sentences (I gave up on dog bone):
For enabling a boom to be smoothly raised during the triple combined operation of boom-up, arm-crowd and bucket-crowd in a hydraulic circuit system...
The bucket crowd ram 20 comprises a ram housing 202 and a piston rod 203...
the bucket crowd motion was specifically. controlled to draw it through the radar curtain...
And lastly one that I think is a little off-topic:
Nosebleeds were posted for $75 for the beer-bucket crowd

Prince Harry

In yesterday’s Otago Daily Times (Dunedin’s only major daily newspaper), there was a very neat letter to the editor, written by one Keith Clifford.
It went as follows:

If Prince Harry goes to Iraq and becomes the Mother of all Targets, it will at least give him some respite from being the Target of all Mothers back in the UK.

I’d love to write something as nifty as that!

Another paid for posting site

The paid post opportunities are coming thick and fast these days. Via another blogger, I’ve just come across yet another company that’s offering bloggers the chance to get paid for their posts, by linking to advertisers. This one is called Bloggerwave, and it seems to have its act together. You can find out more by clicking on their name.
There’s a great deal of hype on the Net about whether this is an ethical thing for bloggers to be doing or not – paid posts, I mean. Once again, I have to say that I have no problem with doing it. How many people read magazines or newspapers and wade through advertisement after advertisement and never blink an eye? Is there any reason for blogs to be different? The detractors say that bloggers are making the paid posts look like ordinary posts. Well, I say that’s still fine by me. No one forces a reader to click on a link, and if they don’t like the post about the topic being advertised, they don’t have to read it, just as they don’t have to read an ad in the paper.
My aim is make these posts as interesting as anything else I write, and if you click on the link, all the better for the advertiser; if you don’t, that’s a risk he/she’s prepared to take.

Do computers remember?

I’ve talked about memory and memory tricks on this blog before. Put the word ‘memory’ in the search box at the top of this page and a very random number of posts will turn up. But I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned the joys of computer memory.
As an aside, I have this theory that computers don’t really back up anything at all. They pretend to. After all, the only time we try and get back what we’ve lost is when we’ve lost it, and then we find that for some inexplicable reason the computer can’t find it either – even on its backup. And it always has excuses: like we backed it up to the wrong drive, etc.
This used to happen not infrequently to us in the shop, before we went over to a zip drive. You’d back everything up like a good boy, and then come to use a file the next day – and it would be unaccountably empty. You’d go to the back up disk – and guess what? It either wouldn’t restore – or couldn’t. My suspicion is that it couldn’t, because it never really backed anything up in the first place. I could have proved it by checking the other files that we still had copies of, but of course no one checks the ones they don’t want, only the one they want. See what I mean? It’s a conspiracy.
Anyway, all that aside. I started to talk about memory, not backing up.
Computers and memory. There’s never enough. It’s another conspiracy, because just when you think you’ve bought or added all the memory any computer person in the entire world would ever need, along comes a program that warns you: your computer may not have enough memory to run all the features of this program.
That’s why a place like memorystore.com is helpful. Although it asks a rather existential question when you go to its home page. “Know your memory?” it inquires. (This is something we older people probably need to make sure we do know – though can one ever know one’s memory?)

This is not an ad

I’m always pleased to get a comment on this site (hint!), so eagerly checked out the latest one that came with my recent post on log cabins. It began: “Hello I want to congratulate to you. This site is fantastic, looks like entertained and very good to me it elaborated.” Okay, a bit garbled, but I got the message. And then it went on: “I invite them to that they explore a little on my site of the Web.” What follows is a reasonably well-written piece of prose expounds the benefits of buying a piece of real estate in Costa Rica!
Well, the writer intrigued me and I went and had a look at the site of the Web. Unfortunately, before I could get past the first page I had to register, and I don’t think I’m going to have much opportunity to buy anything in Costa Rica – at least not within the foreseeable future. This is the second piggybacking comment I’ve had in recent weeks. At least they’re better than earlier comments that cut straight to the chase after a quick, ‘Your site’s great and we love you.’

Dorothy White

Little Black Sambo is an adventure, not a nightmare. In an adventure the principal character goes forth from security to insecurity and back to port; a nightmare is an adventure without a port.

[The Whites were] solemn as parents are inclined to be over a firstborn. [Ibid]

Minds, like elastic, don’t thrive on eternal stretching. [Ibid]

Three quotes from Books Before Five, by Dorothy White (all quoted in an article in the Otago Daily Times, page 29, 21st May, 1985).

Dorothy Neal White was internationally known for her work on developing reading with children as early as possible, and a major library in New Zealand is named after her.

Gearing up for it

I went to Kmart today to get some underpants (my brand was going at buy one, get one at 50% off, which isn’t bad), and some socks. I bought five pairs of sox recently at another superstore that likes to use red, and they had the days of the week listed on them – Monday to Friday, one day on one pair. (Still not sure if that’s making sense.) Anyway, each of these socks has developed holes in the toes very quickly. Very annoying. In fact, the annoyance level of having a big toe out in the cold while the rest of the toes are warm is up there with coming to the cookie jar and finding it empty, when you’d got all emotionally prepared to have one.
My wife had been earlier in the day – which is how I knew they had a sale on (I never pay attention to the fact that clothing shops have sales on). She’d bought a couple of blouses and some pyjamas for me – lightweight ones, since these days I can’t stand being in bed in the old style pyjamas. She’d also bought some sandals in preparation for arriving in England in the middle of summer.
If I’d looked on Coupon Chief first, I could have found coupon codes for Kmart for 75% off some items. Of course, unless those items were socks, sandals, pyjamas and underpants, the coupon might not have been much use to me. Seems at the moment, that Kmart in the US is offering things like jewellery at 70% off, and maternity gear, and Mom’s favourite movie on DVD. Lots of Martha Stewart stuff if going cheap too!
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On flies

A fly can always find its way through a window into a room, but seems to lack the instinct to find its way out again.

Anon.

The New Log Cabin

When I was a kid, people went on holidays in cribs (or baches in the North Island). These were often rough and ready places, often built by the not-necessarily proficient owners, and were usually near a beach or a river. There would invariably be bunks, and more people than room, but we’d all squash in together and have a great time. When we left, the floor would be covered in sand from endless trips to the beach, and the tattered paperbacks that lived in the crib all year round would have been read over again.
Cribs/baches these days have gone to the other extreme. Many of them are purpose-built at great expense and some of them rival the owners’ houses in town. When you have people on tv talking about the way they planned out their ‘crib’ with an architect (an architect?!) and ensured it faced the sun and was open to the view and each child had his own room (which comes fully-equipped with everything we didn’t have on our holidays) you have to wonder what sort of vacation takes place in these buildings. To make them cost-effective, you’d need to live in them half the year round.
The same thing is obviously taking place in the States. The old log cabin of yore, which was put together as best the builder knew how, is now replaced by extravaganza luxury log cabins. Here’s what the people on the Pigeon Forge cabin rental site tell us is available in their cabins: floor to ceiling stone stacked fireplace and a fully equipped kitchen. In the master bedroom there's not only a king-sized bed, but a bedside fireplace, a Jacuzzi in the corner, and a separate bathroom with a walk-in shower. A separate bathroom! We used to wash in a tub – or outside under the tank. And the toilet was way down the back of the section in a little hut that housed the famous – and smelly - long-drop. Ah, them were the days!

Pre-Budget Announcement

Yesterday, two of my daughters and their respective (five) children gathered together with my wife and I to celebrate a pre-budget announcement from the Minister of Health, Pete Hodgson. He was in Dunedin for a regional (and small) Labour Party conference, and brought his press secretary with him – a delightful lady who took to our grandchildren with enthusiasm.
TVNZ was there, and TV3, and the ODT reporter came along too. As well as these, there was a woman from the Ministry of Health, and Fiona Colbert, the general manager of the Meningitis Trust. I’ve forgotten some of these people’s names, since it was quite distracting having to hold my latest granddaughter some of the time, or play with other grandchildren at other times.
Why were we involved? Because last year, one of my grandchildren got pneumococcal meningitis, and went through a terrible time of fits, and some weeks in hospital. He gave us all an awful fright, since at one point we thought we were going to lose him. We’re one of the very few blessed families in this respect, not only because we didn’t lose him, but because he didn’t get any of the possible after-effects of the disease, such as deafness, blindness, or the loss of limbs.
And what was Pete Hodgson’s announcement? That after considerable politicking on the Trust’s side, the Government had decided to fund Prevenar inoculations to try and prevent this disease from damaging other lives. They’re spending $68 million on the job from 2008 in order to offer free immunisation to all new-borns.
My daughter appeared on the National News last night, on two channels, and some of the other members of the family were also visible, including the grandchild himself, of course. TVNZ came up to the house and did some filming here, but only a fragment of it made it onto the news – as you’d expect.

Is this world our home?

At church on Sunday the person preaching talked about the book of Lamentations and its relevance for us as Christians today. That is, the sense of exile that the writer of Lamentations feels is one Christians share in this world, where things are plainly not right, and where evil abounds.
But to think of this world only as a place where we are refugees is to make it a place to hate. And whatever else it may be, it’s also the world God created, spinning in an enormous Universe, and decked out in such a fashion that there’s no end to its wonders.
This world fits us like a glove. There is no other known planet where we could survive. We match the nature of this world intimately. To see ourselves as exiles within it is to see it as a place to fight against, to be at cross-purposes with. But it’s not the world’s fault that things are at cross-purposes. St Paul writes in Romans about the whole of creation groaning as it waits its release from whatever it is that holds it at present.
To say, as the hymnwriter does (if I’m correct) that ‘this world is not our home’ is only partly true. This world is our home, but it’s only our temporary home. We’re expecting eventually to go to a place that’s even more our home than this one. That’s the difference.

Getting the Tickets in Advance

As my wife and I plan our trip to England, we’ve spent a lot of time on the Net checking out prices. Boy, is it confusing!
Take rail tickets for starters. You can’t believe how complex these are. It depends on what day you go, when you go on the day, whether the day is a holiday or not, what time of the year it is, whether they provide caviar and champagne (just kidding!). We could get a trip from London to Norwich (which is what we wanted to do) for £6.00 on the Sunday we wanted to go. If we’d gone the following week it would have cost £37.00! But then we discovered Rail Cards – until we have the right Rail Card in hand, we can’t book anything anyway! Good grief.
We checked out Ryanair for flights, because we were told they were the cheapest all round. And they are, but figuring out when to go is a bit of a nightmare. That’s something we’ll have to do when we get there, I think.
We’re not going to the UK via America this time, so we won’t be dropping in on places like Disney World. But if I wanted to get Disney World Tickets the place to go online is Orlandofuntickets.com. They do discount tickets for Disney World, all the Orlando theme parks, dinner shows and attractions. They know that figuring out all the factors involved in planning a trip to these sorts of place is intimidating – to use their word. So they’ve done all the work for you, and you only have to log onto them and get planning!
Would that it was as easy figuring out British Rail!

Christian Thought

For some time I’ve been reading a book called The History of Christian Thought, by Jonathan Hill. To get the negatives out of the way first: sometimes the tone is just a bit too facetious for the subject matter, and the humour occasionally undermines the seriousness. And it uses two type-faces. There’s a reason for this: when it’s talking about the person, or their thought, it uses one type-face. When it’s talking about general history surrounding that person, it uses another, smaller type-face. The smaller one is just a bit too small for my taste.
But besides these quibbles (I always have quibbles about non-fiction books) the breadth of understanding of the various theologians and philosophers – and the history about them – is enormous, and it’s given me a much better view of the Church’s history than any of the more widely regarded books, such as Chadwick on The Early Church, which was dull, dull, dull.
You have to wonder, as you read about all the arguments, the heresies that weren’t always heresies, the battles, the murders and assassinations, the plain stupidity and the huge range of characters, just where the Holy Spirit fits into it all. Didn’t Jesus promise that He would lead us into all truth? Man, He leads us on very circuitous routes, if that’s the case!
Can anyone really state clearly why Jesus died on the cross? ‘For our sins,’ you might say, but how did His death deal with our sins? There’s a large number of views on this subject alone, several of which I’ve encountered and several of which I’ve thought were the last word on the issue.
I just talked about the Holy Spirit, but the views on Him and the Trinity are again very diverse. Of course we can’t have any full understanding as finite humans of such a complexity, something that’s more complex than our minds can grasp, but the attempts to do so have ranged over vast plains and distant mountains.
And how come, as Christians, we can’t seem to agree on enough of the basics to stand together? The Church is still greatly split between Eastern Orthodoxy (in its various guises) and Protestants and Catholics – and all their guises. Does God like diversity so much? Is this His Church that stands as One? You wouldn’t think so, looking at it from our point of view.

The anti-smacking brigade

You have to wonder what it will take for Parliamentarians to listen to the people. They’ve almost listened on the anti-smacking bill. That is, the public feeling against the bill has been so considerable that some politicians actually doubted the value of the thing and have let their consciences guide them rather than their party leaders. I was dismayed to see a large crowd of Christian ministers and company praying for the bill, but then I saw a photo of the people who were amongst the crowd, and was no longer surprised. They were the same group of Christians who are strong in support of anything homosexual, and other ‘rights’ issues. People, in other words, who think in the same way as many in the Labour party do, ie, that ‘rights’ are more important than family, just to give one instance.
Ideology comes before anything else with many politicians, and also with many of these Christians. They even put ideology before Scripture and God’s commands, and consequently make people who put God first feel second rate.

Have a look at this site, and do a search for Church against church for a different Christian viewpoint.

Who's the largest?

What’s the biggest convention centre in the world? I haven’t been able to find this out, though apparently the biggest in the States is McCormick Place in Chicago. However, the second largest in the world is the Convention Centre in Orlando – so the people in Orlando inform us. Which presumably ought to make McCormick Place the largest, but Wikipedia (which has been known to be wrong) says McCormick Place is the third largest in the world. Confused?
Be that as it may, Orlando’s Convention Centre is large. (I don’t know which Convention Centre in Orlando is the one in question, but found this wonderful testimonial on one hotel/convention centre site: I DID NOT DISLIKE NOTHING AT ALL ABOUT MY STAY THERE.)
Orlando is, of course, the home of Disney World, besides which, for most kids, convention centres, however large, would rate a considerable second best. (Now there’s a sentence almost as dysfunctional as my quote.) But if Disney World didn’t chew up all your dollars, a trip to Universal Studios and Sea World on top would certainly make a dent in them.
Seems that one of the best ways you can make your money go further is through Orlando vacation rentals. Check them out – and check out their blog, particularly the article on Hotel Condo Conversion Boom, which contains a fair few idiosyncrasies of its own.

Hoodia Gordonii

I’d never heard of Hoodia Gordonii until today. Maybe it hasn’t made as much impact in this part of the world as it has in the States, where, of course, the need for diet control is even greater than in NZ. By all accounts, real Hoodia Gordonii is hard to find, and is consequently expensive. As you might expect, there are quite a few cheap ‘versions’ of Hoodia on the market - so beware.
It’s a cactus-like plant that people in South Africa have known about for centuries. The plant takes up to seven years to grow to maturity, at which point it’s used by locals as a way of feeling full even though you haven’t eaten anything. This idea would naturally appeal to the Western world where there are enormous problems with overeating and weight control.
Because there is now such a demand for it in the West, the South African government has had to limit the export of it, and the plant has received protected status. Furthermore, genuine Hoodia Gordonii comes with a C.I.T.E.S certificate. (C.I.T.E.S stands for Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). This is only issued by the office of Western Cape Nature. Without this Hoodia cannot be legally exported abroad from Africa.

The anonymous Navy Man

A couple of blogs I didn’t find via Link and Blog come from a guy who’s a retired US Navy man. Don’t know what rank, because he doesn’t give much information away about himself. All I know is that he likes golf, and the Star Wars movies, doesn’t read a lot, but likes country music. He now works in a convenience store chain.
He turned up on myLot asking for people to do reviews of his two blogs, one of which focuses on Net tech stuff, and the other on ways to make money on the Net. Both worthy topics.
I felt he just didn’t give enough of himself away on the blogs. Maybe I’m a person who lets ‘me’ appear a lot when I’m writing; this guy is a bit reticent for my taste, but maybe that’s an okay thing. Not everyone of us has to hang it all out. (Actually, I don’t really do that. If you think the blog is personal, you should see my journals. You won’t!)
Anyway, click here for the Tecchie site, and here for the Moneymaking one. Both are worth a look.

Plagiarism and Fraud

Somewhere on the Web I’ve come across a site that won’t publish anything of yours until it’s checked that the same words can’t be found elsewhere on the Net. How it does this in the blink – or a couple of blinks – of an eye, I have no idea. Maybe it doesn’t really do it, but just sets out to frighten us a little.
Of course I don’t hold any truck with plagiarism. It niggles me enough to find someone using an article I’ve written somewhere else, without any acknowledgement. And this has happened on a number of occasions. You can see the point if it’s a school taking something you’ve written and using it for a class lesson. I don’t have any problem with that, but for someone to publish something you’ve written in another place is verging on the fraudulent.
Plagiarism is another thing altogether, of course. Pretending you’ve written something and including it in a larger work of your own is just not the done thing. Pretending it’s yours and avoiding telling the reader that it’s really a quotation from someone else is fraud.
Unfortunately, we’ve had something akin to this happening in the art world here in New Zealand in the last few years. Our very own Prime Minister, who ought to know a good deal better, has signed a number of art works (perhaps half a dozen, it’s thought) and they’ve then been passed off to buyers as being by the PM – who hasn’t got an artistic talent that anyone has so far discovered. On the first occasion that it came to public attention, there was a considerable hoo-ha about it, but because she was the PM she basically got away with it. It takes a police force with nerves of steel to bring the PM to court. But the other day a scribbled picture of the Beehive turned up in an auction with her name written on it, and the fuss began all over. What on earth was she thinking? Okay, it’s not plagiarism in the usual sense, but it’s a close brother to it.

Blogging till the cows come home

Technorati used to quote a saying on its page (which I can’t see anymore): So many million blogs; some of them must be good. You’ll have to excuse my paraphrase as I can’t remember how it went exactly.
There’s a bit of a tendency to think: there are so many blogs out there; how can I compete? Well, firstly you can’t, and secondly, maybe there aren’t as many blogs out there as you think.
Take a walk from blog to blog on Blogger.com – or mySpace or one of those other large blogging sites. My guess is that you’ll find 75% of the blogs have either been started in the last month, or have stopped functioning. An enormous number of bloggers just run out of steam. It takes a kind of commitment – and madness – to keep on writing blogs, especially when you find that probably nobody comes to read the darn thing anyway. If you’re the sort of person who will write whether people read you or not, then you’ll cope. If you’re the sort of blogger who wants instant – or semi-instant – gratification, then you’ll quickly find that blogging isn’t for you.
The best bloggers have a focus and can write. Good bloggers often want to sell something, even if it’s only themselves, or to discuss and research a topic, and do it in minute detail. I’m not a blogger in any of these senses, and my main reason for blogging is because when I’m sitting in front of the computer typing away, I’m happy. I like writing. Words are my good friends. So you won’t find me promoting any one thing on this blog, or offering you umpteen amounts of research. I’m a gadabout blogger, and that’s fine.

Moving photo frames

Since my mother’s death, we’ve gone through a number of her old albums and loose photos, identifying different relatives and friends, and trying to work out some people who are total strangers. Some of her albums are in good order, but others have been ransacked at some point and there are a number of photos missing. Probably irretrievably.

On the other side of the coin, in this age of digital photos, we have a different problem. Because we take so many photos (probably in excess of those we used to take on ‘real’ cameras) and load them onto the computer, we often forget where they are, lose the best ones, and have difficulty trying to put them into any sort of digital album.

I came across something today which might be considered a bit of fiddle-dee-dee in some people’s terms, or might be thought to be something that only a person with a bit of cash would consider buying. But the idea is great. It’s called a digital photo frame, and what it does is accept the memory card out of your digital camera. Once installed, you can do something similar to the slide show on your computer. In fact, you can change the transitions between pictures.

It’s just like an ordinary picture frame, except that it’s digitized. A digital picture frame, in other words (!) It’s a bit like those moving pictures in the Harry Potter movies – wouldn’t you like one of those? They look great fun, although I always how long the picture lasts: is it like a short repeating sequence? Or does it show the real life of the other person?

Anyway, moving around the house and finding that the picture you saw last time in a particular frame has changed to something else really appeals to the child in me. Might have to wait until they come down in price a bit!

Some more David Chilton

Another piece from the article I quoted from the other day.

Perhaps the most ridiculous economic fallacy of the feminist vision is the doctrine of 'comparable worth' in which various demagogues take it upon themselves to declare the absolute, fixed monetary value of certain occupations. Someone in 'industry x' works just as hard as someone in 'industry y', yet is paid less. This monstrous injustice must be righted and avenged immediately, the political aspirants intone solemnly, affecting a piously concerned expression for the tv cameras. That this utter fraud is taken seriously by anyone over the age of twelve is positively mind-boggling; that apparently all the representatives of the media wholeheartedly embrace it is convincing evidence that the inmates are running the asylum.

Lining up

I’ve never been one for lining up for hours for a concert or a sporting event. If I can’t get in the door quick smart, I’m not particularly interested. That may be because I live in a smallish city that’s notorious (so we’re led to believe) for people booking tickets at the last minute.
When I see people spending all night out on the street to be the first in line for tickets for something I just have to go ho hum. Better things to do. I’m sure at some period of my life (maybe in my youth) I’ve lined up for something, but whatever it was, the memory has long gone.
That’s why I’d use a broker if I was going for something like Red Sox tickets. Not that I’m likely to be, since I live in a different part of the world, but if I was, I’d try out the Great Seats brokers. They don’t just sell Red Sox tickets, they sell tickets for Jerry Seinfield, Police and a host of other concerts. Come in out of the cold and go online for your front row seats…!

Blasted daylight saving!!

We’ve just had the joyous news that daylight saving has been extended for yet another three weeks. Why don’t they just go the whole hog and make the whole year daylight saved? Before they brought in the longer period of daylight saving there used to be a time when you could get up in the mornings and walk around in the daylight before breakfast. This period has been so reduced now that for someone like me who has to go to work at eight am, there’s virtually no daylight in the mornings, except in high summer.
I’ve always loathed the changeover time with daylight saving. I always feel it takes me a fortnight to catch up, though this year, for some reason, it didn’t affect me as much. My wife sails through it and treats me in the same way as she does when I have a cold: get over it!

Michael Hill: Golfer

So Michael Hill Jeweller has become Michael Hill Golfer, building a top-notch golf course in his backyard - literally. His recently completed Hills Golf Course is already rated to be one of the best golf courses in the world.
Hill is making a new kind of name for himself. Not content to offer just an international violin competition each year, he’s now succeeded in getting the NZ Golf Open held at his new course for the next three years. This is a substantial coup, especially since the NZ Open hasn’t been held in the South Island since 1985.
Queenstown, which is just up the road from Arrowtown, where the Golf Course is situated, is increasingly become the playground of the rich and famous. Already it has to be regarded as the number one tourist town – in the South Island at least – and international cricket games have taken place there for the last few years. On top of that, an enormous amount of building development is taking place, increasing the population of what was little more than a village a few years ago substantially.
But back to the subject of golf. No doubt some of the players at this new course will be using Ping golf equipment, Ping accessories and Ping apparel. Ping – which I must admit, seems an odd name for golfing equipment, has been creating exceptional signature merchandise for more than 40 years.
I’ll probably be sticking with ping-pong.

Robert Craft

I mentioned Robert Craft in the last post, but of course his name may not mean much to many people. Robert Craft was a musician of no particular fame who somehow inveigled himself into the American household of Igor Stravinsky, and made himself so dispensable that he remained with the Stravinskys until not only Igor had died, but Mrs Igor as well. There is a great deal of concern as to the influence Craft actually had over the Stravinskys; but not only that, there’s a great deal of concern as to how much of what Craft puts into Stravinsky’s mouth, in his books, is actually Craft rather than Stravinsky.

There’s a very good review of Craft’s books, Memories and Commentaries, and An Improbable Life: Memoirs, by Joseph Epstein, entitled Music's Greatest Ventriloquist: Robert Craft and his Stravinsky. Fortunately someone preserved the online version of it (click here) because the original Weekly Standard version has long gone.

Lilburn and McGann

You can say ‘hypocrite’ if you like, but I have to admit that I’m listening to Lilburn on streaming radio at the moment. It’s his first symphony. Now let’s be clear; I haven’t changed my view that Lilburn at best is a master of movement without melody, as in this symphony, and even in this piece there are stretches where nothing is happening except rhythmic phrases. Time and again he seems about to break out into a real surge, a soaring, and time and again he breaks off. Given that, however, this piece is certainly more attractive than his later works, where he got into ‘modernism’ (of some sort) to such a degree that music flew out the window almost completely. And don’t even let’s go down the track of his electronic music. That stuff is akin to Stravinsky’s serial music, which he produced in his last years; music which is now almost never heard. I have some records somewhere of some of it, with Robert Craft (almost wrote Crafty) writing the notes in esoteric fashion. It’s all baloney, I’m afraid, as far as I can hear.

I’ve just noted too, while I was finding the streaming music on Radio NZ, that Brad McGann, the NZ film director, has died at the age of 43. For those who know more about him than I do, his other films will no doubt be remembered, but the only movie of his I ever saw was the brilliant In My Father’s Den, which came out only two or three years ago. A very strange movie, which could have easily gone so far into the ‘arty’ (as The Piano did) that it would have lost its audience, yet it somehow managed to keep the story in focus, and to offer excellent characters, and not a few surprises. It has to be regarded as a classic in the Crash Palace (with Bruno Lawrence) genre.