Bi-winning

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This morning, for some reason, I kept thinking about Charlie Sheen’s crazy 2011 interview. This became the subject of the lone tweet I made:


It’s the typical Twitter motivation – something is annoying me, so I will tell you about it and maybe you will be annoyed too. I didn’t give the tweet or the subject much thought after that.

Twitter NZ Herald

@martynpepperell also comes highly recommended

Then later in the day, I discovered I was part of the New Zealand Herald’s “Top tweeters’ top tweets” list. The Herald had asked New Zealand’s top tweeters for their recommendations and Peter McLennan had kindly listed me for my efforts with 5000 Ways. This put me in the company of such esteemed tooters as Caitlin Moran, Hamish Keith and the Radio New Zealand time pips.

It also left me feeling a bit inadequate. 5000 Ways is on summer holiday and so I wondered if people had checked out my Twitter feed, seen the lame-arse Charlie Sheen toot and decided to instead take triathlete Bevan Docherty’s recommendation of following Ricky Gervais. But as it happened, I gained a few new followers and 5000 Ways had a noticeable bump in traffic – which is pretty major, considering how dead this time of the year is for regular web traffic. (Last year the site had two visitors on Boxing Day, both from Greg Johnson fans.)

So, an increase in Twitter followers and a boost in web traffic. The Charlie Sheen tweet hadn’t put everyone off. And like Mr Sheen, who declares “I win here and I win there”, I suppose this double success also makes me bi-winning. Um, yeah.

All I want for Christmas is [_______]

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All I want for Christmas is [_____]

All I want for Christmas is a giant bedazzled green triangle

Five days before Christmas (and one day before the end of the world) I went to The Base, the mega mall on the outskirts of Hamilton that’s played a significant part in sucking the life out of downtown Hamilton, which is such a mid-20th-century thing to do. So retro.

Anyway, it was right in the middle of the pre-Christmas crazy period, when the stress starts with finding a car park and ends with wondering what sort of consolation present makes up for not being able to buy an iPad Mini as they’re all sold out. Not that such issues plagued me, but I like to empathise with the middle-classes, etc.

My issue was the music. As to be expected, Christmas songs were on high rotate. But here’s the thing – I heard four different versions of “All I Want For Christmas Is You”. At one point, I could position myself near the bath bomb selection of Lush and simultaneously hear the Michael Buble version in the store and the original Mariah version in the main mall. It even followed me outside, with a third version playing on the PA in the car park, and another one aurally ruffling me as I passed by a shop.

“All I Want For Christmas Is You” is a great song. As a gift of the ’90s, it’s a far better contribution to Christmas pop than anything the ’60s or ’70s managed. But when it’s coming at me as a quadrophonic retail extravaganza, this does not lead to a pleasing experience.

But here’s the thing. I wasn’t at the mall to buy Christmas presents, but yet I found myself getting a $2 bag of candy canes because it felt like the correct seasonal thing to do. Ach, Mariah – you’ve sucked me into your vortex of glad tidings and good pop.

The passing of time and all of its crimes

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A few months ago I learned a new term – heritage rock. It’s the business of old bands who still tour and sell their back catalogue and make a decent sum decades after their initial burst of youthful creativity and success. (I also discovered that heritage rock sounds like a diss, possibly to people who still think Pavement are young, cutting-edge dudes and don’t like the memento mori implications that things have changed.)

So I’ve been thinking about old Morrissey. He’s playing in Auckland tonight. I thought about going because, you know, I really like Morrissey, particularly for the Smiths years. I was thrilled to see Johnny Marr perform as part of Neil Finn’s Seven Worlds rockstravaganza back in ’01, but somehow that enthusiasm hasn’t transferred to 2012. You know what’s changed? I’m older; I’m tireder.

I noticed this in others. The last-minute ticket-for-sale tweets from people who’d excitedly bought Morrissey tickets months ago, but then along comes the week before the concert. It’s December. Work is wrapping up. There are Christmas parties to attend. There’s Christmas stuff to organise. Holidays to plan. Oh God, there’s so much stuff. And then a tweet would appear offering two Morrissey tickets, at face value, because we would love to go but we are so very very tired.

And that’s the terrible thing. When you’re older, you can easily afford the concert tickets, but suddenly going out becomes this ordeal. Tiredness kicks in and even after half an hour, the most uplifting of pop concerts starts to feel like an epic three-hour prog rock torture fest. It’s a lot easier listening to Moz at home, where it’s ok if you doze off mid-miserable.

From the comfort and privacy of my couch, I was looking for some video clips of last night’s Wellington concert. I found a couple, but they had pretty crunchy sound – not what I’ve come to expect from the modern world of concert vids. But instead here’s a rather good quality vid from Moz’s previous New Zealand concert 21 years ago, back in the time where there was youthful energy.

Nick Cave dolls

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I was in Wellington, my first time back since I left in April, and I was furiously catching up on things. I got the bus out to the Hutt and visited the Dowse Art Museum.

It was choice, but as I left the gallery, I spied something much more intriguing across the square. Over at the Horticultural Hall, a banner advertised a show of the Wellington Porcelain Dollmakers Club. A doll show!

I’ve always wanted to go to a doll show, that secret world of ladies and fake babies, so I excitedly went inside. The lady at the door looked at me like she knew I was an outsider, a person without dolls. But my money was still good. She took my $5 and I entered the world of dolls.

I was expecting one specific thing – uncanny valley baby dolls. The show did not let me down. There’d been a competition so the best baby dolls of the region were on display. Some looked impressively real, though with an eerie stillness; others looked a bit odd. I mean, if an infant doll looks more like the Dowager Countess of Grantham, something hasn’t quite gone right.

There were also people selling old dolls, the sort of dreadlocked orphans that normally languish in the 50c bin of an op shop. But unlike the op shop dolls, these ones won’t end up part of an art student’s subversive recontexualising of women’s roles in society. The doll show is an irony-free zone. Dolls are just dolls and if one has chipped face paint, you skilfully repaint it. If the hair is matted, you replaced it with silken locks.

But there was a strangely gothic feeling to it all. I came to realise this when found an actual goth doll, “Rose Red: a gothic ballerina”. Somehow this dramatic pale-skinned, eyeliner-wearing young lady seemed more ordinary and lively than the corpse-like baby dolls.

This is a subculture that specialises in taking arms and legs and scalps and eyeballs and putting them all together to make a baby, a girl or a woman. It’s way more goth than anything a black-clad suburban teen could come up with for their art portfolio.

Back in the city, I stopped by Deluxe cafe. Deluxe is a cute little cafe that has been around since the late ’80s. It hasn’t changed much and is oddly starting to feel like a ’90s theme cafe.

As I sat with my lunch, I realised that a Nick Cave CD was playing (I googled it – it was the 1998 best-of.) And I sat there thinking that in the ’90s, this would have been a very cool experience. Sitting in a cafe, listening to Nick Cave, drinking spirulina smoothies or mochaccinos, feeling cool.

But things are different now. I’ve been to the doll show. I’ve seen the dark side. I’ve seen the scalps, the arms, the torsos. I have seen the baby with scraggly orange fluffy hair pulled into two pigtails, in an attempt to make the hair look cute and not like a Scotsman’s pubes.

Maybe the goth pop of Nick Cave has to exist to have something that’s obviously dark and alternative. Something that exists so that the ladies painting eyeballs in their spare rooms don’t feel like weirdos. Something that makes a lady in her 30s sitting in a coffee bar feel edgy and cool.

X marks the spot

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The X Factor New Zealand has a FAQ. One question asks…

How will The X Factor winner be distinguished from other talent contest winners?

The music industry has changed since the days of shows such as NZ Idol.

Winners of The X Factor have long-running international careers – think Reece Mastin, Stan Walker, One Direction, Guy Sebastian and Chris Rene etc.

Simon Cowell has been developing this talent show format for years; The X Factor is the result of everything he’s learned from earlier formats.

So X Factor NZ is getting it straight: if you win the X Factor, you won’t end up like Michael Murphy, working in road gang, wearing a high-viz vest.

But let’s take a closer look at their hall of fame. Yes, Reece Mastin won his year in Australian X Factor, but One Direction only came third in the UK X Factor. Chris Rene also came third on the US X Factor, but has only enjoyed major chart success in New Zealand (weird, huh?) Guy Sebastian wasn’t even an X Factor contestant – he won the first series of Australian Idol (so ’00s) and was only on the X Factor as a judge. Ditto for Stan Walker – he won the final series of Australian Idol but is on the X Factor NZ as a judge.

For every one of these high-profile success stories, there are the winners who don’t do so well – like Matt Cardle, Random, Leon Jackson, Altiyan Childs and ol’ misery guts Steve Brookstein.

Then there are the ones who don’t win the X Factor still but manage to forge a decent showbiz career from (or in spite of) their X Factor experience, like Olly Murs, Cher Lloyd or my beloved Jedward. And I’m keeping an eye on the extravagant Rylan from the latest UK series.

That’s what makes a series of X Factor work – it’s not just the brilliant singers who deliver every week, it’s also the battlers and the weirdos, the ones who can’t cruise through on talent alone. And that’s why they call it the X Factor.

The mallification of Hamilton

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The city centre of Hamilton, my sweet home town, is dying. Since the 1980s, businesses have progressively moved to the edges of town and two massive malls on the northern fringe have sucked all the retail life out of the city centre.

There’s been a lot of talk about how to revitalise the downtown area. The current solution seems to be fighting the lure of the malls with another mall. The Centre Place mini-malls (part of my life since 1985) is being expanded with another two-storey wing. Farmers is moving in as a key tenant and Ward Street is closing to be part of the outdoor mall experience.

Centre Place 1

But, ugh, I think the focus is all wrong. Instead of replicating the suburban mall experience – which will never quite work because the central city can never offer free parking – the central city should focus on the cool things it has that the malls could never match. Namely the river, cool old buildings, the atmosphere of places like Ward Street, Alexander Street, a few laneways that are yet to be created, and Garden-sodding-Place. In other words, give people a reason to exit the giant Centre Place megamall. Give them a reason to go outside and walk the city streets and feel elated, not a bit glum.

Above are two artists’ impressions of the mega mall. There aren’t many people, especially compared with the usual bustle of a busy mall. This might seem like a deliberate move, not wanting the ghost people to obscure the buildings, but that’s what Hamilton looks like. There aren’t many people around the city centre any more. It’s all a bit like a ghost town and I’m not sure if the best intentions of a property investment firm can undo that.

Centre Place 2

London streets are paved with gold

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I was really into the Olympics this year. The last time I did that was in 1984 when I made a commemorative cushion to celebrate New Zealand’s Olympics successes. And not just medals – I even included non-medallists like Anthony Mosse coming fifth in the Men’s 200m Butterfly, and so I eventually ran out of room and aborted the project.

My experience with subsequent Olympics was less enthusiastic. It was always a thing happening and maybe I’d pay attention to it. The last three Games coincided with me having media jobs involving a telly in the office, so at certain times work would stop and the office would crowd around the TV to cheer on various athletes either doing New Zealand proud and/or oh well, at least they tried.

But this year was different. I really got into the Games. The opening ceremony lured me in, as it’s essentially entertainment and not sport, but I soon found myself getting really obsessed with the competitions. How obsessed? Wikipedia-updating obsessed.

I knew things weren’t going well for the New Zealand swim team when I started to hear “gutted” used frequently in the poolside interviews. And yeah, only one swimmer made it to the finals in her heats. Surely someone in charge is going to have to explain why all the funding only produced a lingering sense of rool-guttedness.

I started to pay close attention to the uniforms of the athletes. There was a continuum of neatness, with the judo players’ floppy ponytails and loose robes at one end, and the tightly ponytailed gymnasts all wearing perfectly fitted leotards at the other end. But I’m not sure where Eric Murray’s comedy facial hair fits onto this scale. Probably off in the “don’t give a damn cos I got a gold medal” space.

My favourite moment – at the medal ceremony for the women’s 200m kayak, the European recipients of the silver and bronze medals did the double cheek kiss with the medal presenter. But gold medalist Lisa Carrington just shook his hand. Why? Because she is a New Zealander and we don’t do that sort of carry on.

Outside the stadium, there were reports of Kiwi House, a venue run by the New Zealand Olympic Committee, which seemed to be a holding pen for homesick expats. It was a bit weird, going heavy on a kind of exaggerated New Zealandness that only really exists in the imagination of expats. But Kiwi House did manage to explode some barbecue gas bottles, which is a pretty authentic slice of kiwiana.

But after about a week of putting scores in boxes, I started to get all existentialist. Like, why is winning medals such a big deal? I can see the benefit to an individual athlete (improved game, raised profile, better sponsorship), but what’s the benefit to New Zealand? The government pours millions of dollars into supporting high-performance sport, but why? Does the Olympics exist to unite countries of the world, only to send them home feeling better than everyone else?

As awesome as it feels to throw a parade for New Zealand’s returning athletes, there are similar parades happening in countries all over the world. Ireland is going mad for its five medallists (matched only by 1956′s lot), and Trinidad and Tobago rewarded its second ever gold medallist with a lighthouse.

New Zealand’s tally of 13 medals puts it at a very respectable number 15 on the medal table, which is high enough to avoid having to drag out the medals-per-capita table in order to prove that somehow New Zealand is better at the Olympics than the raw data would suggest. The notion that “New Zealand punches above its weight” only works if you don’t consider sports that involve actual punching in weight classes. The last New Zealand boxing medal was heavyweight David Tua’s bronze 20 years ago.

But yet the Olympics seem like fun – there are plenty of athletes saying “What happens in the Village, stays in the Village” (which I always translate as meaning “I got real pissed and pashed a lady who is not my wife”). The whole experience seems like a giant party (apart from the intense training and competing parts of it). So I was trying to figure out if there was some sort of Olympic sport I could partake in. Sadly I’m too old for most, leaving just things like equestrian events or shooting and archery. Or perhaps I could set my sights on the Commonwealth Games. They have lawn bowls.