Monthly Archives: August 2005

Cracc ho

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Just to add to the list of cool people I know and all the cool things they do, young Ryan has just been voted editor of Craccum, the Auckland University student magazine.

It was a landslide with the other two contenders being crushed by a mountain of votes. It possibly helped that Ryan put up posters of himself with his shirt off being all hot n stuff, but as it happens, he has this ability to seek out people with talent and bring them together, which is a very useful skill for a magazine editor.

He also is a keen editor and skilled apostropher wrangler, another skill that is good in the magazine editing world.

He’s also threatening to give me a column, which may or may not be titled Auckland Represent, but that’s a fair few months away.

One is awfully proud of him.

Ryan's effective campaign poster

Couching

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I cancelled my gym membership yesterday. The sales guy acted like Hal in 2001 when Dave was trying to unplug him, trying all these little tricks to attempt to get me to reconsider. “If you rejoined, you’d be paying $30 a month more.” Fortunately I was tired and in a somewhat crappy mood, and I just wanted to get the damn thing cancelled. I focussed on his goal, acknowledging but not reacting to his tricks. Finally a piece of paper was signed and I walked away knowing that I had one more excuse to sit on the couch.

Another excuse to never leave the house is the BBC’s newly launched alternate reality game, Jamie Kane. Jamie Kane is a recently deceased pop star, but a small group of his fans suspect something suspicious is behind his death. You, or I, or anyone can join in an help figure out what’s going on in 14 daily instalments.

It’s a very impressive set up. As well as a bunch of websites covering all aspects of his career (embarrassing boy band past, serious solo artiste, “Top of the Pops” coverage, magazine covers, and so on) they’ve actually gone to the effort of producing three albums worth of songs, which are all available to listen to online.

The embarrassing boy band album actually sounds like boy bands did three years ago, the first solo album is complete with an opening track about how horrible his boy band life was, and his second, darker solo album has that melancholic Britpop sound. Some of the songs are really good, much better than a lot of the stuff that many pop artists release. Go, the BBC.

Gangsta dwarf rock

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A few times an elderly man has caught my bus. He gets off at a special stop outside a retirement village. The last time he was getting off the bus, two teenage girls started giggling. I looked up and saw why – on his top he was wearing an ordinary old man sort of jacket and shirt; on his bottom he was wearing a pair of trackpants with PLAYA emblazoned in gangsta script.

After work today I was walking to the bus stop. I saw a man walking towards me. I glanced at him, just as I glanced at many other people along the way. I quickly registered that he was a dwarf. Then he winked at me.

Fans of quality Waikato rock will be interested know that Prime Devastation have recently issued a press release regarding some things that have been bugging them.

Mountain climbing

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I went to the Food Show yesterday. It was rubbish and I did not get my money’s worth in entertainment value for the $18 entrance fee. There were only two things that stood out.

A company that sold chopped onions in plastic bags displayed their goods on a dinner table, set up with cutlery, plates, glasses. Yet, in a surreal twist, upon each plate was a bag of the chopped onions. I imagined some parallel-universe dinner party, where people sit down and enjoy a bag of onions (and if they’re lucky, there will be a fat-free, sugar-free bag of onions for dessert).

The Guinness stand has giving little-cup samples. It seemed to attracted all the old codgers (and me, ok, shut up). One old codger asked if he could buy a pint, but the barmaid said they weren’t allowed to sell it, but snuck him a bottle. She was also attempting to pimp Guinness as a “dessert beer”, complete with handing out little chocolate squares so that we might see how well Guinness goes with it. Unsurprisingly, all the old codgers (and me) rejected the chocolate.

After the Food Show, I headed into Newmarket, but went via Market Road instead of Manukau Road. I realised that right along side me was Mount St John, and I’d never been up there before.

I found an entrance off Mt St John Ave and headed up the steep path that went straight up the side of the hill for much of the journey. Having made it to the summit, I located what appeared to be the only park bench up there and concluded that Mt St John is much like its neighbour Mt Eden in that:

  • it has a big ol’ crater, but with a swampy puddle of water at the bottom and a couple of big trees growing in it.
  • there are the holes in the ground from old kumara pits, but without damage from mountain bikers or the need for signs and barriers to prevent subsequent damage.
  • there is a footpath up to the summit, but no road full of tour buses.
  • the old terraces from Maori fortifications are still visible, but there aren’t any tourists posing on them.
  • at the summit there is a path going around the crater, but there isn’t a car park with tour buses and cars fighting for parking spaces.

Yeah, Mt St John has much in common with Mt Eden.

Wonkatania

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“The famous English scientist, Professor Foulbody, invented a machine which would tell you at once, without opening the wrapper of a bar of chocolate, whether or not there was a Golden Ticket hidden underneath it. The machine had a mechanical arm that shot out with tremendous force and grabbed hold of anything that had the slightest bit of gold inside it, and for a moment, it looked like the answer to everything. But unfortunately, while the Professor was showing off the machine to the public at the sweet counter of a large department store, the mechanical arm shot out and made a grab for the gold filling in the back tooth of a duchess who was standing near by. There was an ugly scene, and the machine was smashed by the crowd.”

I bought and read “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” today.

I haven’t read it since, oh, probably over 20 years ago (Eek!). The first time I read it (I was probably about seven or eight) I ploughed through it so fast that my mother accused me of not having read it properly and quizzed me on it. It was my favourite Roald Dahl book until I discovered his “Tales of the Unexpected” series, but those are for grown-ups.

Compared to the original film, which I can’t help but do, the book is superbly paced, especially compared to the pre-chocolate factory scenes in the films that take far too long to set up.

I was a little alarmed to be reminded that in the book, Charlie is starving and malnourished when he gets his lucky break. There are descriptive passages about boniness and constant hunger, but not to worry – Willy Wonka gives him a cup of chocolate river on the riverboat.

I think the original film had a better ending. Wonka was more of a bastard who had his faith in human nature restored by the good deeds of the boy. In the book he’s a nutty old man who picks Charlie as his heir because he’s the last one standing. There’s no evil Slugworth to tempt Charlie with the dark side.

I’m looking forward to the remake. It’s released here sometime in early September. I hear it’s better paced and – yes! – Willy Wonka has daddy issues. Excellent.