From The Morgue

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent August 2003]

LONDON

Sun in blue sky, a lonely admiral. Isle of Dogs, dead hot. Sitting on grass in a park watching the Thames, top arc of the eye of London imperceptibly shifting in the distance, Caroline appears before my eyes for the first time in ten months. It really does feel like no time was lost.

On Tottenham Court Road is snappy hotel the Grafton, Edwardian apparently, forced windows open to fight back the heat. Walkable to everywhere. Two days walking London, no buses, no tube, sewing streets and sights together as we go. Nothing sorts out your geography of a city like walking it, not even buses. (Of course, bus and tube everywhere on the last two days – we’re not stupid.)

Hard bustle of Oxford Street. That beautiful curve of Regent St, my personal symbol of London. Eros and McDonald’s billboards in Piccadilly Circus.   Settled moments in Leicester Square. Cleopatra’s Needle beside a mucky, thrilling Thames. Covent Garden bursting with music and shade. Westminster, St Pauls, Fleet Street, Soho, Trafalgar Square.

The Brit Museum, my second time, still didn’t manage more than a fraction of it. A show – The Madness of George Dubya, Kubrick’s Strangelove reworked into musical contemporary satire. Ride the Eye, surprised to find it underwhelming, an uncommon sentiment it seems but there you go. Drinking in a London pub, 11pm closing time and homeward stagger, traditional.

Catch up with many wonderful Londonites. Big party out at Frank and Sam’s, backyard barbecue no less. Regent’s Park, James Park, Russell Square, Embankment Gardens, other greens. The Diana hubcap. Tower Hill and the shortest Jack the Ripper tour ever. Dinner in Brick Lane, new heartthrob locale for the BritLit scene, where eager and sincere young men fiercely pimp their eating establishment, throwing in free drinks and discounts to tempt you inside.

Wander the shoulders-back grid of Bloomsbury, absorbing the scene, randomly stumble into an enormous book traders fair full of squinting hobbyists evaluating first editions.   Later trip to Spitalfield’s market, the market is empty except for a rather good organic café. The Tate Modern, as full of stunning work as the last time I was there, enormous black Pinocchio riff outside.

London. Absolute magic.

(I bored all the Londoners with my muttering on about it, not to mention Cal who heard it about eight thousand times, but I’m going to say it again – the congestion charge in central London has reduced traffic on the streets to about a third of what it was. It’s amazing the change – it’s like a totally different city. It’s easy to cross the road, the buses rattle along at a healthy pace instead of being just the sitting-down version of walking, noise is down to a healthy shout, the air is cleaner, and the pressure isn’t so intense. It’s a happier place. Give that man what done this a Knighthood already.)

———

JUDITH

I don’t exactly know what to say about this but it’d feel false to leave it out. This was never really a travel journal so much as a bunch of rants about what is on my mind. I’m just going to type and see what comes out.

My friend Judith O’Sullivan died on Wednesday of cancer. She was at home in Upper Hutt with family.

On my third day in London, back in September, I spent a wonderful day wandering Greenwich with Elizabeth and Roland (who were, you will recall, my exceedingly kind and generous hosts). As we walked I received a phone call from Judith, to make contact, welcome me to London, and invite me to a party that very evening. I was pleased she rang, because it gave me a chance to tell Elizabeth and Roland one of my favourite stories.

In New Zealand there’s a film festival each year devoted to showing unusual, non-mainstream cinema from around the globe. One year on the bill was the infamous live-action manga ‘The Story of Ricky’, a martial arts flick so stupid, ridiculous and disgustingly extreme that it attained instant classic status among odd-movie aficionados around the world. I went with a small group of people including my friend Billy, who brought along his old friend Judith who I’d never met before. Not only did Judith enjoy the film, but at its conclusion, she ran out into the street and stood there in the rain, stopping traffic, doing kung-fu kicks.

Naturally, we all fell instantly in love with her. (Except Billy, who was used to it.)

I love that story. (That’s the short version, but the longer one just has more description in it.)   It’s just so… random and cool. It’s actually important to me, I’ve told it so many times it’s become something of a symbol to me. Symbolic of what exactly I’m not sure. I’m not even sure any more how much of it is true. Not that that matters, because the spirit of it is absolutely right, as all who knew Judith would agree. She was mad in the best possible sense.

She ended up in Auckland and we didn’t see each other often (although she did turn up at one of those infamous Todman Street parties) but we did stay in sporadic touch, even after she moved to London. Really, I was only a minor figure in her life, and she was only a minor figure in mine, but she was a friend. More importantly, she was an incredibly good friend to Billy, who is still pretty much the other me. It’s deeply strange that she is gone.

I didn’t go to the party that day in September. Can’t even remember why not, some lame excuse whose details I’ve forgotten. I figured I’d drop in on her at the Bodyworks exhibition before I left to Rome. Didn’t manage that either – disorganised and short of time. And by the time I got back to London the cancer had been diagnosed and she’d gone back to New Zealand.

Billy, and everyone else close to Judith, I don’t really know what to say. All the usual sentiments I guess, sincerely meant. Peace, and love.

(Don’t get too gloomy, all you readers, that’s the last thing she’d want. Just think how cool it would be to see a girl stopping traffic doing kung fu in the middle of the road in the rain. And however cool you think it’d be – trust me, it was way, way cooler than that.)

———

Take care out there everyone.

~`morgan

What I’m reading:
The Northern Lights by Philip Pullman

Just finished:
The Atrocity Exhibition by JG Ballard
Amaryllis Night and Day by Russell Hoban

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent July 2003]

BARBIE

I went out to Peebles for a barbecue with Stephen Ellis and some other friends I’ve made through the roleplaying network here. It was lovely and sunny and we stood around in a perfectly manly sort of way, looking at the charcoal and nodding. I even ate some meat. I can honestly admit that I never expected to enjoy a wonderful sunny barbecue in Scotland, except as some kind of sick antipodean prank, but it turned out fine.

Peebles is the kind of small town that you’d invent as a parody of small towns in the UK. Small and scenic, old locals in their Sunday best clustering out of old stone churches, a winding main street with a narrow
footpath, folding green parks and bright, tended gardens. Steve lives in Haystoun Cottage. The river running through is called the Tweed. Only a besuited badger playing cricket with a monocled fox could have made it more charming.

JODHPURS

Speaking of foxes, the kind without monocles are fairly common sights in the cities here, skulking guiltily along under cover of night. It wouldn’t be hard to put an alternative reading on the fox-hunting debate that continuously rages throughout the UK, with the hungry, bedraggled fox representing the lowly working class drudge, and the spiffing, horn-blowing hunters representing, well, representing themselves actually. I have no time for the practice of hunting and killing animals for sport, but I also think there are bigger fish to fry in the world of politics. The hunting debate is a convenient venue to continue the battles of class that have underlined UK social history for the last century, and the fierceness with which both sides put their case, and the sheer amount of energy spent on both sides, disturbs me for all kinds of reasons. The Countryside Alliance (a beautifully spin-doctored name) has mustered massive pro-hunting rallies up and down the country.  This issue is threatening to cause a rift between the Commons (voted for a ban) and the Lords (who will not pass the ban) with no forseeable constitutional benefit, nor any real progress on the underlying issues of residual classism. Good lord, people, why can’t you get so energetic about causes that actually *matter*?

Then again, given the massive bias in the Countryside Alliance for a conservative political stance, it’s probably better for my liberal ideals if they stay distracted.

In any case, the pro-hunting crowd have turned on some pleasingly barmy interventions to push their cause. My two favourites: choosing one of the (quite ancient) giant white horses that have been cut from chalk into hillsides around the country and placing a giant rider atop it; and sending two young women to parliament wearing nothing but painted jodhpurs and riding jacket. (The iconography and pageantry of the hunt is clearly very important – maybe a better way to get hunting banned is to enforce safety regulations insisting hunters wear giant pink reflective flourescent outfits and keep their horses under a speed limit.)

MAOW

Another oddity that has recently emerged into my consciousness – big cat sightings in the UK, and particularly in Scotland.   Every now and then it comes to light that someone or other has seen a big cat wandering in the wilderness, or even in the city or suburbs. A few recent letters to commuter rag Metro were of the ‘I saw this big cat and no-one believes me!’ type, most from Glasgow. When I asked about it, a friend of mine here named Simon told me his father had seen a big cat a few years ago, and that the popular theory is wealthy people abandon or lose their exotic pets. Classic urban legends stuff, which sent me to the indispensable urban legends reference guide www.snopes.com. Snopes, however, didn’t have much to offer on the big cats. Next stop was http://www.britishbigcats.org, a society of people who Believe. The photos they have are a sight more convincing than the last Bigfoot images I saw. Not to mention the fact that (according to this site, and the photos and reports therein) there have been a few
documented captures of big cats in the UK.

So colour me that shade that means I think the UK becomes a much more interesting place with big cats sneaking through its hinterlands.

EPHELANT

Alastair and I sat in the Elephant House, the best of Edinburgh’s café’s, and talked about his latest miss adventures. That Best NZ songs CD came on, Loyal and Counting the Beat and the others. Luckily I had placed Alastair with a view of the castle out the window, because otherwise it could have been anywhere in New Zealand – something I relish as a long-term Kiwi in Edinburgh, but something a visitor to the place really should try to avoid. Visitors should all be down the road drinking whisky and chomping haggis in
a dark Scots pub. Regardless, it reminded me of the history underfoot and in the neighbourhood, of the famous occurrences in. Greyfriars Kirkyard in one direction and up in Edinburgh Castle in the other. There’s a banality to living here, making some of the romance of history unsustainable – and I think, on balance, that’s a good thing. Romantic notions of the importance and significance of the past are all well and good, but it should be remembered that the past was the present too, once. There’s a kind of beauty in that.

The other draw of the Elephant House is its claim to fame as (one of) the cafés where J.K.Rowling penned the first Potter. I can see why – warm, friendly, relaxed, great big writery tables and a view of an enormous castle out the window. I’m doing my writing here too.

I haven’t read the new Potter. Everyone else is, everywhere. On the midnight release JK turned up in a bookstore on Princes Street here and chatted to kids for an hour or two, which puts her in my ‘very classy’ list. And it should be noted what an achievement it is to create one the of the most anticipated creative works of all time and have it, by and large, live up to expectations.

EDGE

I’m slowly working my way around the NZ Edge website at http://www.nzedge.com/ and from what I see, it is good. Some interesting ideas about the way forward for New Zealand. Worth plugging here, check it out if you have a minute.

Also, people who don’t sign up to any of those ‘reuniting people’ websites make baby Jesus cry. Pick of the bunch for my money is http://www.oldfriends.co.nz/, which if it stays free will be the only one standing in a year or two. I just loved finding this:
http://www.oldfriends.co.nz/oldfriends/institution_photos/institution_photo.asp?id=500
a few people on this mailing list might recognise a few faces… hell, anyone who wants to know what Leon “have you seen my little dog” Verrall used to look like will probably enjoy checking this one out…

OE

Cal arrives in London tonight. Tomorrow morning I go down to meet her. Londoners! Text or call me! 0781 7772635! We will be in town until Sunday evening! It would be nice to see you!

PEACE

love
morgue

(I’m on leave from work for the next two weeks, so anyone who uses my work
address to reach me – don’t expect a reply.)

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent June 2003]

This is necessarily bitsy. But I’m sending it anyway.

——-

I didn’t make it to Michael Franti and Spearhead’s gig in Glasgow. It was sold out before I found out. I am considering Ice T in August, however. In consolation I bought the new album, and after one listen I’m not sure how much I like it. Hmm. Live he still goes wild though. So. Interesting.

In 1997 the three people in the world I most wanted to meet were Joss Whedon, Michael Franti and John Ralston Saul. I don’t know who they’d be now, but I still would be up for dinner with those three. At least I’ve hugged Franti.

——–

Lucy’s sister Miranda came to stay the weekend before last, for, like, virtually no hours. But even so briefly it was nice to have someone else in my living space again, first time in months. If anyone wants to come stay, you’re most welcome. (Although I still don’t know where I’m living when and at the moment there’s not much but hard carpet to sleep on but what the hey.)

The other cool thing was it reminded me how nice a town to show off this is. Edinburgh with the cool skyline and all. wellington, I must admit, is also a nice town to show off, I’ve just never had the opportunity.

So come visit. (Although I’m starting to get booked out for the festival time…)

——

I have finished writing the film script I’ve been messing around with (Blair – yes, that one) and my new novel’s edging towards 70,000 words, which is slightly worrying considering the absence of plot. Productivity is still good anyway, rattling along at a fine clip. Other things are on the burner as well. Feels good. All in longhand. Who’d have thought? Harlan Ellison would be proud.

——

I’ve been getting my taste of home each weekend on Channel 5 with ‘The Tribe’ and, once, the dire ‘Revelations’. It pleases me more than ever to see a smoking metal barrel outside Central City Plaza in the Hutt as a representation of Earth’s Dark Future. Plus most weeks I see someone I know.

(foreigners – the tribe is a fairly successful youth tv show made by a UK company in my home town, so all the locations look very familiar. see www.tribeworld.com for more. ‘revelations’ is the same without the
successful part. the tribe is occasionally quite good and I have an irrational love for it anyway.)

—-

What I am reading:
Jose Saramago’s ‘The Cave’
Chris Ware’s ‘Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid in the World’

What is in my bag but hasn’t been read any yet but hey, it makes me look all intellectual and stuff:
Michel Foucault’s ‘The Archaeology of Knowledge’

—-

I was introduced to ‘Kin’ last Wednesday. ‘Kin’ is a poetry/prose/music open mic night and it’s very laid back and filled with great people and I’m going again. good to be in the hum of creative interaction and be reminded of the power of words and the energy of attention, of how life is made up of moments and everything that means, how that means everything. definitely going back.

—-

roleplayers in wellington – check out http://central.rpg.net.nz/ and the growing Wellington rpg community. it has a lot of potential.

—-

still worried about world events. still convinced there’s a way forward.

—-

peace to you

morgue

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent June 2003]

I know, it’s been a while, yadda yadda.

———-

After returning from my familial European adventure, and a day in London catching up with All They Folk There, I returned to work for an almost-week. Public Enemy played in Glasgow and I didn’t go, on account of not being able to go, but it still rankles.

Family reconvened midweek in sunny Edinburgh. This was the glorious Scottish Easter. Lovely. Fated, I’m told, not to last, but we’ll refrain from talking about it in case of any jinxwards movement. We wandered Edinburgh and in particular my personal stomping grounds. We dined in a Genuine Scottish Pub TM and haggis & neeps was et in combination. The Meadows was a lovely place for a night-time stroll but the trees were bare; less than a week later it was an impenetrable fog of pink petals. I busied myself in my office as family saw Edinburgh Castle and the other usuals, and we sorted ourselves out for Next Phase: the Easter road trip.

We had arranged specifically to go on a road trip over Easter, on account of me not having certainty that I’d be off work. Unfortunately, it was Easter, and it was glorious, and everyone else had the same idea. Not the best planning. Nevertheless we claimed a hired car and hit the road (with only a minor backtrack when I realised the car had a CD player and thus I could listen to CDs, something I hadn’t been able to do for two months). Good sounds. Sunshine. Glasgow. Traffic. Crawl

and crawl

and crawl

and crawl

until

we

were

THROUGH

and then it was free and clear and we hit the road into the fabled highlands. As we drove I wondered whether we had taken the high road or the low road to Scotland. On the ‘high road’ side, we were all of the most impeccable character. On the ‘low road’ side, we were a family from the uncouth depths of the Hutt with Shihad up loud on the stereo. I decided we came down on the high road, but only because the stompy music wasn’t up *that* loud.

[aside – Pacifier aka Shihad charted on MTV2’s top 20 in the US! Kiwi music oi! www.pacifierband.com]

And, as the song says, we reached the bonnie bonnie backs of Loch Lomond. And they were indeed Bonnie. The place is stunning, hence the song, hence the tourists circling through, hence my fond memories, hence the filming of ‘Take the High Road’ on location there.

[aside – ‘Take the High Road’ was a long-running Scottish soap, and it had a lot of personal talismanic importance. You see, I watched five minutes of it when I was about thirteen and all that happened in that eternal five minutes was two women lamenting the fact that the cat was under the bed and wouldn’t come out. Those of you who knew me in my teenage years may remember me making bewildered, awestruck, appalled reference to this fabled zen-meditativisual experience.]

Didn’t explain the traditional tearooms, which were a much more vivid trip into the distant past than any castle tour I’ve been on so far. The shudders I felt were genuine. Still – Shandy in a can, it can’t all be bad!

Onwards. We drove past Loch Ness (no monster) and through skifields (no snow) and I can confirm that, yes, the Highlands really are as beautiful as they say. I guess I am officially joining the they on this. (Don’t worry, Leon, I’m still one of the ‘us’-es apart from this.) A long drive, but it was actually a great way to experience the countryside, and appreciate how different it was and how quickly the changes came.

Inverness, to a B&B; and a pleasant wee wander. Nice town. Very pretty.

Onwards the next day. We made our way to Culloden, site of the infamous battle that was the final death of the Scottish struggle for independence, and a horrific war crime to boot – the English slaughtered the surrendered Scots and hunted down those who escaped, killing them and those who sheltered them, and all because of falsified documents indicating the Scots intended to slaughter the English the same way. This was only in the middle of the 17th century, the fairly recent past by northern hemisphere standards.

As it happened, we arrived at Culloden, utterly by co-incidence, half an hour before the anniversary service marking the battle. It was a moving gathering of men and women, some from a great distance (including a Kiwi who, inevitably, was connected to someone we know). A professor in Scots culture from Edinburgh University spoke, and it was a good speech, recognising that the wounds of the past cannot be wished out of existence, yet finding some positive meaning in the occasion.

It’s a nice place. The information centre is well-realised, the site itself is simply and honestly marked, four flags marking the corners of the battlefield. I wandered alone over the stumpy ground for a few minutes,
after the pipers had finished and the memorial ceremony had turned to talking. And it got to me, to be quite honest. My family tree would have branches that lead here, to this field. One of the many reasons for coming here was to connect with my ancestral heritage, and here it was beneath my feet, buried in a mire of misled hopes and butchery. And overhead the sun was shining and the sky a brilliant blue.

There was more to the trip, of course. Aberdeen, showing up my scepticism about it’s ‘sparkling granite’ by living up to its claims of beauty. Finding the neighbourhood, if not the street, where my grandmother was born. Watching the RSC’s production of Rushdie’s sprawling ‘Midnight’s Children’. Balmoral Castle. The tiny village of Geddes, which is my mother’s maiden name, my middle name, undoubtedly a corner that gave rise to part of us. Chaos in the roads of Dundee. And feeling every moment.

And then it was time to say goodbye. My parents first, disappearing behind the closing door of their hotel room. Then my brother, off on his own round of adventures (that would eventually take him to scenic Auch with its cathedral and its statue of d’Artagnan). And the family was done and gone, and me in Edinburgh still, making it homely even if it isn’t my home.

I love this town.

—–

And as one time falls, another rises. July 9 my girlfriend Caroline arrives in the UK. We tried being single and on different sides of the world, and it just didn’t seem to work.

—–

I meant to write here about the trip I made to Loch Earn where Naomi, last seen as my travel buddy in Greece & Rome way back in September, is working at a Four Seasons. I’ll just say it was cool, and I met some great people, and the scenery was great. Yay!

And also I wanted to write about the wonderful bonfire I was at a few nights ago, held in the lush Salisbury Centre garden to farewell Willie on his onward path towards Ireland. Most importantly, the spontaneous lecture covering 2500 years of Greek history delivered by an enthusiastic Greek, making full use of whiteboard and whiteboard marker. An odd party to be sure, but glorious in its attention to simple pleasures.

But instead I’m going to go and buy some food and go home and eat it.

—-

Shouts to Judith,

and to the defuncting flat of JustinSamFishKirstenRichie, scene of many good times

and to Sophie, because.

—-

Find out what I thought of Matrix Reloaded here (click on ‘comments’ for may 23): http://www.additiverich.com/

—-

Love and Peace
morgue

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent April 2003]

In San Sebastian there was a woman. She was cute. She wasn’t wearing much clothing. She was four stories tall.

She was advertising a fantasy film fest, one of the more notable ones in the world according to later investigations. There is no point to me mentioning this except as a dubious lead-in to the real story, and because that giant cardboard chick was pretty memorable and deserves a reappearance in the morgueatlarge story. And because in theory this email list is for my travel adventures and, well, that was one. Whereas this… this isn’t.

The connection? One of the sibling festivals of the San Sebastian one is the equally highly-regarded Dead By Dawn, right here in Edinburgh. And I went along to the part of it that mattered.

They’d sold out the weekend passes but they were selling tickets for unclaimed seats ten minutes before sessions started. I figured I had a good shot of getting into the film I wanted because the film I wanted to see was closing the festival – at midnight on Sunday night. Surely someone would rather sleep than see yet another scare movie??

(Sleep, I spit on your grave!)

So at ten to twelve I rock up to the counter at the very styley Filmhouse and give the girl a winsome smile and I am rewarded with a ticket to the UK premiere of Don Coscarelli’s new one: BUBBA HO-TEP. (Three actually, I’d accumulated two Irish girls in the Filmhouse bar while waiting. Huzzah!)

And there were speeches and thank yous and prizes and finally the lights dimmed and the projector came on, showing the only existing print of Bubba Ho-Tep. Friends, let me tell you this – this is one HECK of a movie.

Starring Evil Dead’s Bruce Campbell as the King, Elvis himself, old and tired and stuck in a rest home with a growth on his pecker and no-one believing he is who he says he is. Bruce Campbell! The man with a chin full of shovels! The Western master of physical comedy! Infamous in NZ for co-starring in the Jack of All Trades TV series with Shorty alumni Angie Dotchin! The cult hero of all true movie geeks!

The story? Elvis teams up with (old, black) JFK to take on a soul-sucking mummy and his rubbery flesh-eating scarab beetles, all the while meditating on the arc of life and the process of aging and the way Western society treats its aged and its decrepit.

It’s *emotionally moving*. It’s *brilliantly performed*. It’s *about something serious*. And it has *Elvis fighting monsters with a zimmer frame*. Folks, this may be the perfect movie.

Director Don Coscarelli is, like Bruce, a name that raises smiles on the faces of the initiated, for his was the Phantasm horror trilogy, three outstandingly inventive low-budget frightfests that defy description. If
the Evil Dead trilogy is the Star Wars of the horror world, Phantasm must surely be its Indiana Jones.

[ASIDE FOR GEEK INDULGENCE]

(from ‘Fear Itself’. Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 4)

Xander: Okay, and on that happy note, I’ve got a treat for tomorrow night’s second annual Halloween screening. People, prepare to have your spines tingled, your gooses bumped by the terrifying (Pulls out a video and reads the title) Fantasia. Fantasia?
Oz: Maybe it’s because of all the horrific things we’ve seen, but hippos wearing tutus just don’t unnerve me the way they used to.
Xander: Phantasm. It was supposed to be Phantasm! Stupid video store!

[ASIDE ENDS]

See? Xander knows. Coscarelli! Phantasm! Reggie Bannister!

Bubba Ho-Tep!

BUT! THIS ISN’T EVEN THE POINT OF THE STORY!

The point of the story is this: on the way out I TOUCHED ELBOWS with Robert Englund!

Robert Englund is an actor. He played ‘Willie’ in the American Sci-Fi mini-series ‘V’ that was all over the airwaves in the 80s, the one with the alien reptiles disguised as humans eating rats and being all fascistic and stuff.

And he also played Freddy Krueger in all the Nightmare on Elm Street films.

Freddy Krueger! Elm St! He’s horror ROYALTY, man! He’s personally caused more nightmares than anyone since early Michael Jackson! (very obscure family in-joke there)

I TOUCHED FREDDY. I didn’t make it to his talk but I touched his elbow with my elbow and no-one can ever take that away from me.

When I was thirteen I had a poster on my wall. Freddy was there. Funnily enough, it was a modern monster group shot like those ones you find of the Universal Studios posse, Dracula-Wolfman-BlackLagoonCreature- FrankensteinMonster – it also featured Michael Myers, the William-Shatner-masked killer of the Halloween films, and Leatherface, the grunting terror from primo date flick Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, along with the other member of the modern pre-Scream scare pantheon, Jason from the Friday the 13th series. Which is relevant, because the long rumoured Freddy vs Jason is in the can and up for release soon, helmed by Bride of Chucky mad genius Ronny Yu! Chucky was voiced by Brad Dourif who was Grima Wormtongue in The Two Towers! Grima was part of the entourage of King Theoden of Rohan, alongside Hama played by John Leigh!   John Leigh was in Shortland Street as Lionel Skeggins the beloved doofus husband of Kirsty Knight played by Angie Dotchin! ANGIE DOTCHIN WHO WAS IN JACK OF ALL TRADES WITH BRUCE CAMPBELL WHO WAS IN BUBBA HO-TEP!

EVERYTHING CONNECTS!

I just thought it was cool.

————–

Relevant links:

Dead by Dawn:
http://www.deadbydawn.co.uk

San Sebastian Fantasy and Horror Film Fest, which has a (different) pic of the giant woman on the front page http://www.donostiakultura.com/terror/

Morgue in San Sebastian – the November 9, 2002 entry at
http://www.topica.com/lists/morgueatlarge/read/
Featuring special guest star Ella!

Robert Englund’s IMDB:
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Englund,+Robert

Bubba HoTep’s IMDB:
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0281686

Freddy vs Jason’s IMDB:
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0329101

Angie Dotchin’s IMDB:
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Dotchin,+Angela+Marie

My mate Norman’s IMDB just because he has one:
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Cates,+Norman

Charlie Bleakley’s IMDB because I said g’day to him on the streets of Edinburgh without explaining who I was or how I knew him, undoubtedly screwing him up for the rest of the day:
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Bleakley,+Charlie

Nat Torkington’s classic review of the first Shortland St magazine, published way way back in the early days, and featuring on the cover Angie Dotchin (ta da!) and Hollywood’s b-movie hunk du jour, Martin Henderson (most recently and bigly the doomed hubbie in The Ring)
http://prometheus.frii.com/~gnat/frii/shorters/

———-

All is right with the world.

Anyone who emails me will get a reply telling them in amusing fashion exactly how happy I am. I will attempt to incorporate any one word of your choosing in the first sentence of my reply!

Love and peace to all.

morgue (missing the ol’ BBS… *sigh*)

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent April 2003]

This morning Ben my brother took a bus. Off to London. (He just arrived where he’s staying there – tip o’ the hat to Jon Ball for that – and to the wonders of the internet for giving me instant news of his arrival.) A few nights ago I said goodbye to mater and pater in likewise fashion. My family reunion, incomplete as it was, is now over. It was good to see them.

—–

It’s been too long since the last one of these – particularly since so much has happened. But I’m gonna pick up where I left off, in Vienna.

Vienna! (It’s in Austria, doncha know.) Wide streets and efficiency. We’d been in the railway station a matter of minutes, getting our bearings in the bright, clean working-ness of it all, and an oldish gent stops as he passes to ask if we’re all right. ‘We only speak English,’ my mother says apologetically and he nods, ‘English, ah,’ and beats a polite retreat. Except it’s only a temporary departure. A minute later he’s returned, having summoned his English to mind – he asks us what we are looking for, how he can help. We’re just looking for the information desk and he happily points the way, and bids us a good day, his good deed done.

Every new place should start like that. Makes you feel at home.

—

Our hotel in Vienna was a bit out of the main part of town, near to the amusement park with the big ol’ wheel featured so prominently and memorably in Graham Greene’s Vienna post-war drama, The Third Man. As luck would have it, I had watched the Third Man for the first time just a few weeks before – working at a video shop did have its advantages – and furthermore, Welles’ immortal self-penned line about peace, prosperity and cuckoo clocks was fresh in my mind from visiting Craig and Massey in Luzern – in my mind I can hear the Swiss bristling at the mere suggestion… Ben and I rode the wheel at night, which was sort of fun, but, well, Vienna ain’t a city to gaze at by night from on high. It’s a city you want to be right in the middle of.

Also notable was the fact that the number of girls-unclothed bars outnumbered normal bars by a factor of about five to one throughout the city, and particularly on the streets around our hotel. But even this just built on that positive first impression – as I’d walk back to the hotel late at night, a variety of young women would appear at the doors to these bars and invite me in. So welcoming, Vienna, so welcoming!

—

Vienna is a town where you can be a tourist without guilt. In fact, if you’re not being a tourist, you’re not doing it right. The good thing about Vienna is not the atmosphere (although it’s lovely, it’s also unremarkable) but the features. The tourist attractions are genuine, comprehensive and worthwhile. There were many stops on our tourist route, but some standouts were:

* the Kunsthistorisches Museum, an astounding art collection, including a bunch of Rubens and Bruegels and Maerten van Heemskerck’s “Victory Parade of Bacchus” which I’d read about not long before and had no idea was there until I stumbled over it http://www.khm.at/homeE3.html

* the apartment where Mozart wrote ‘le nozze di figaro’, which is a piece of music I love

* the excavations of the old synagogue, site of an appalling anti-semitic atrocity and, similarly, a place to commemmorate the mind-numbing destruction of the Jewish population of Vienna under the Nazis. http://www.jmw.at/

* the kunsthaus of hundertwasser, genius artist, lover of the spiral, vienna-born and NewZealand-died, designer of exquisite public toilet in tiny Kawakawa, visionary, general font of inspiration. http://www.kunsthauswien.com/english/hundertwasser.htm

—

I also had a good night out in a smoky jazz club listening to jazz legend Red Holloway, born 1927, go mad on the sax. There were no strippers. Not that night, anyway. http://www.redholloway.com/

It’s a hell of a place. My Eastern European tour was finished with a day trip to Salzburg, where I caught my thrifty 6 euro flight back to London – there I visited Mozart’s birthplace and watched local chesshacks fight it out on a giant board in the town square. Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Salzburg. All amazing cities, each with a very distinctive atmosphere. I would love to get into the countryside in each of these countries, but as a capital city tour that has got to be hard to beat.

If I have to pick a favourite? Budapest. It was vital, it was vibrant, it made no concessions to the tourist but dared them to keep up. And yet it was also international, powerful, friendly. I want to go back.

That’s one of the problems of travelling though, isn’t it – if you do it well, you keep wanting to go back to everywhere you go to. Ticking places off a list is a nice idea, but in practice is just can’t work. There’s more world than there is lifetime, and that’s just the way it is.

Which, in my book, is a wonderful thing.

—

Shouts to the family I saw, and the family I didn’t see. Love you all.

And to all the folk who turned up at the London lunch!

And to Pearce Duncan, who sent me a lovely, thoughtful email that made me laugh and think and generally get some more perspective.

And to Jamie Norrish, back from Thailand!

And to Andrew Salmond, who should be writing a script instead of reading this.

And to Karen Wilson, who got married to some bloke recently!

And, and, and…

Peace!
morgue

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent April 2003]

Reminder – Sunday lunch in London – 1pm, All Bar One, Leicester Square.

—-

Grafitto outside UN building in Vienna- “self-deceit is common among those from the tropics”

—-

Weird – in my mind I have always associated Budapest with Turkish exotica, and Hungary with Russo-slavic ruritania. It is resoundingly neither. It is very much a typical city of Western Europe, and the abundant good historical museums make clear that this has been the case for hundreds of years. Londoners would have always felt quite at home.

It is a big, sprawling city that more than anything else seems to have been architecturally frozen for a hundred years. The buildings are amazing, and they play best against the dark skies and sprinkling rain of my first-night wanderings. It’s a haunting place, filled with a profound indifference to the vicissitudes of history, as a result of being the scene of so much of it. The city (cities, really, born only in the 19th century of neighbours Buda and Pest) has over centuries been the seat of control for numerous conquering powers, most significantly the Austrian Hapsburg line who for a time used Budapest as the seat of the Holy Roman Empire; also Turks and COmmunists, to name two other sources of influence. It is a city of foreigners, and has been since its growth as a trade centre a thousand years ago; for very little of that time has it been a spiritual centre for Hungarians. You can sense it on the streets, a curl of the lip with the locals, a curtness, a sense that they secretly know that all foreigners are fooling themselves if they think they can ever claim to know and own Hungary through Budapest.

It is a city of great beauty, whirling speed, vibrant and happy people, and it wears its history like tidal rocks wear the signs of the ocean washing over them and back again. I have a lot of love for Budapest, but I don’t really feel I’ve visited Hungary, any more than Barcelona showed me Spain. But, like Barcelona, it is a place I will strongly recommend.

————-

Now I am in Vienna. Everywhere is very cold. It snowed on us in Budapest, and we arrived in Vienna just after a snowfall. The seasons continue to become more chaotic – once, this would have been an omen of looming change.

————-

I really want to make this ten times as long but I have two minutes left on my internet time. So, obviously, I won’t. Thanks to all those who have emailed me, I love getting news and thoughts from home and elsewhere, and promise to contact all of you over the next month or so as I ratchet some free time at the work computer.

Love and peace,
morgue

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent April 2003]

I’ll try to ramble less this time.

—

Prague. It feels like a Kafka protagonist, not in control of its circumstances, locked in a curious relationship of two-way exploitation, reluctant to act out of spite or stubborness or fear, probably destined for regret. The tourists have definitely come and the city weighs heavy with them, and with its own response. There is great beauty here but an autistic failure to relate it to the world outside. As a populace, the Czechs have woken up from their long sleep under Communist rule; as a city, Prague is still disoriented. A visit here is not exactly disappointing, but somehow it lacks the power to move – if it were a tale, it would be one with a lot of incident, but no thematic power.

One crucial exception: the Charles Bridge. It is like a flexing muscle across the Moldova, utterly certain of its place and its message. I will remember it clearly.

—-

Dogs are either running free or on leads and muzzled. In the hotel restaurant a brown snout nudged past my brother’s elbow, eager for his steak. It looked like a friendly moray eel.

—-

I have met my parents and my older brother and we are travelling to Budapest tomorrow! Family is grand. They are well, since you asked.

—-

Today we visited one of the more infamous concentration camps, Terezin (thereisenstadt), the model ghetto. Sombre. The museums were full of documentation, the intricate workings of a managed atrocity, and art, the sketches and words of the Jews interned there. A jarring combination, speaking to deeply-understood themes of the dehumanising power of bureaucracy and the soul-defining power of art. I could say a lot more, but as always with such places, words will fail to convey much more than the barest understanding; I felt like I was just starting to glimpse something, something fearful and perhaps oddly beautiful, from the time I spent there. It is, if nothing else, a reminder of our shared humanity, through
remembrance of its most terrible denials.

—-

And a quartet performed Dvorak, Bach, others. Great musicians perform in lovingly restored classical venues to crowds of tourists lured by cheaply photocopied advertisements pushed on them by street hawkers. The contradictions of Prague. It will be a different place in ten years, and I sincerely hope it comes more fully into itself.

—-

Shouts to Tina C, happy birthday!

—-

morgue

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent April 2003]

Lots has happened.

I’m still in Edinburgh – tonight. Tomorrow I’m on a plane, to Prague no less. I have arranged to meet my family there.

I am meeting my family in Prague. It feels terribly, pleasingly bourgeois.

Family! Travel! Motion! The obvious fun. Stay tuned.

—–

Londoners: I am coming back through London, crashing with the Leon monster (still looking for his little dog), and would like to see people! Thus I call to order the TRIPLE ONE LUNCH WITH MORGUE!

When: Sunday April 13 at ONE pm
Where: All Bar ONE in Leicester Square (“L square” and lower case “l” looks like ONE)
Why: Because I am fresh-faced and pure of body.

I know some people don’t like awful chain bar things. Suck it up and come along.

—–

I have quit my video-store job – purpose served. An interesting experience, tending vid, watching couples split up over the man’s poor taste in movies, watching the dubious rise of DJ Qualls as leading man, watching time and again as people who shouldn’t know better choose good films over bad, and subtitles be damned. I have yet hope for humanity. And now I have evenings free, and material for the long-in-development short play about people taking forever to choose their vid! Onwards!

—–

And after Prague, Budapest! And Vienna! I am like unto a god!

—–

I attended/helped out at my ‘landlady’ Fiona Campbell’s games convention, Conpulsion. It went well. I have surprisingly little to say on the matter. A good time was had by all, and I got to use bad language an awful lot and then spend the rest of the weekend convincing people I didn’t really talk like that.

——

And I’ve been on a couple of protest marches.

——

(The following was written a week ago. I can’t be bothered editing it.)

The war. I can’t figure out how to get away without talking about this at least once.

War dominates. I think about the war all the time. I think about reasons for and against military action. I question the media coverage and the coverage of the media coverage. The edges of my life are merging with the edges of the war.

Bombs are dropping. Precision bombs – Baghdad’s infrastructure has survived. This is good. Yet when I read a sceptic say it survives so the US can have a working city when they seize it to control its oil, I have to admit that this is what will happen. Can something be both right and wrong at the same time? The very notion of right and wrong start to collapse. Realpolitik, Clausewitzian total war, politics as war by other means. B52s take off from Scotland and unload bombs on Iraq and people die. And the precision still brings death to innocents, it must do, but – so far – it is not as bad as I feared. The civilian dead number in the hundreds, not the thousands. Good. Is this a victory for the peace movement? Forcing a more conscientious form of destruction? Doesn’t it just make the case against any war even harder to make? There is a sick feeling in me still, that all this precision bombing has achieved nothing for the coalition military other than a public relations display, because the targets they are precision-bombing are dead and gone but the war in Baghdad has yet to begin. Destroying Saddam’s palaces will not destroy the regime and will not win the war. Tony Blair is on the television, reiterating his position, that there is a real and pressing danger, that the war is justified. Public opinion is shifting. I can feel it, I can see it in the polls. The momentum of the peace movement has stalled and I can’t see why, but I can feel it. The war has come and fewer people care than before. The fears of war without the UN have been realised, and yet Blair’s cause is slowly gaining in support.

The peace movement. I become frustrated with a peace movement compromised by inappropriate ‘radicalism’. I wonder if an uncompromised peace movement is even possible. I went on a march on Saturday, ten thousand people marching on the main streets of Edinburgh. It felt weakened. It felt confused. Sometimes the message came through, the slogan, not in our name, more real than ever. This war is not in our name. We do not condone.

Read this blog written by an Iraqi in Baghdad: http://dearraed.blogspot.com/

Follow links to the large number of determined bloggers who post views I disagree with so vehemently. I wonder how it can be that we both think each other is the politically naïve, the deluded, the misled. How can there be a way forward? I want to simplify, simplify, simplify. There are wrong premises at the root of all disputes. Why does the media shy away from auditing the talk of the powerful?

This is a war of liberation now? Then why should disarming have stopped the war? The ground was always shifting, is it any wonder we are cynical?

The argument goes in circles. Those for the war say the Iraqis are suffering, that Saddam is a tyrant. Those for the peace agree, because that is not the argument. And yet it is. Saddam is a tyrant so whatever we do
is justified. I feel pity for the soldiers, locked in propaganda, trying to do the right thing, as if the world was as simple as their government portrays it. A kind of ignorance, a kind of madness. I felt ill last night, physically nauseated, unable to concentrate, unable to relax, riddled with emotions. And it is hard to see a way forward.

——–

Further to the above:

Salam Pax’s blog has not been updated for a week. Internet access in the capital is cut off. I hate myself for wanting the Iraqis to fight, because I want the US and UK governments to understand the weakness of their propaganda. But I hate myself for wanting it, because the more they fight, the more they die, written off as fanatics brainwashed by a tyrant.

We must always be mindful.

——–

the road moose is going to prague. The road moose always has a good time.

——–

morgue (looking for the peace)

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent March 2003]

Blair departed Edinburgh today.

Blair Rhodes. Best known around Wellington as the name behind the regular late-90s feature ‘Ministry of Certain Things’ in student rag Salient. Not quite as cynical and pessimistic in real life as in his columns, but not far off; but just as funny in real life. We met in 1991, both young men in the prime of our lives, and vaguely suspicious of what that might mean. Nothing changed there. He’s been here in the UK for some time now. He’s been a good companion here in Edinburgh. He’s hooked me up with a place to stay, given me countless pieces of useful advice (particularly in the ongoing writing quest), he’s kept me entertained, he’s bought me coffees and beers, he’s given me a reason to eat sushi. Now his number’s up, he’s off about the country to farewell a collection of friends and then off to the Antipodes once again, back to New Zealand, back to Wellington. Blair, my friend, thanks a lot.

—–

Blair and I were sitting sharing a coffee and making the kind of random conversation that gets made over coffee, even if one of the two parties is about to go to the other side of the world on a flying chunk of metal, and the girl at the counter called out ‘hey!’ This is at Chocolate Soup, one of the places around town that does reliably good coffees (at least, the lattes are always good there), and girl is actually a Kiwi too. Not particularly surprising here. Kiwis all work in cafes and restaurants in Edinburgh, rather than pubs like they do in London. I can’t explain that.

So we look, and there’s this guy sloping towards the exit with a fixed, distracted look on his face. And the girl at the counter calls out ‘hey!’

I get my wits about me enough to call out ‘hey, mate!’ but he’s out the door. And like a whirlwind the girl goes after him, and a few moments comes back looking flustered and angry and sheepish. ‘He wasn’t getting off with my tips jar,’ she says to the room, and I see she’s clutching the tips jar, and of course that sound in her voice was the kind you get when someone’s doing you wrong. But I didn’t pick it up. I’m not a superhero, I guess.

—-

While I read a lot of comics growing up, and I still read a lot of comics, and a lot of them have featured and continue to feature superheroes, I never really identified myself as like that. It know the appeal wasn’t wish fulfillment for me. I think I was just suckered by the continuing storylines and the soap opera elements and the bug for collecting. (Yay for comics, by the way.)

But I do remember, however, thinking that even if I wasn’t a superhero, and I wouldn’t be at home being able to bash through walls or leap large buildings, at least I would be sharp. I’d be one of those sharp guys. Those guys that notice everything and don’t miss a trick. Those guys. Yeah.

Nope.

—-

Three minutes to ten, at the video store, Emma and I are just about to close when these two guys come in. They want a Playstation 2 for a birthday gift, they’ve left it to the last minute. I sell them a games machine, the guy pays by credit card. The other guy wants a game to go with it. Emma does this sale, but it doesn’t go through. The guy offers another card and Emma notices the names don’t match. He spins some story about ‘whoops’ and the first guy has a go, and when he signs for it she sees the signatures don’t match. I didn’t notice this but she did. The guys get angry and grab the card out of her hand. I duck around towards the door, going through the library area, and I hear them starting to take off. And then I stop and go back to Emma. There were two of them, and for Pete’s sake, it’s a video store I’d be defending. I’m not a superhero. No rational thought involved in any of this, of course. I just stopped. But, I can tell myself, at least I started.

So the police come, they take full statements, I don’t get home ‘til well past midnight. Unfortunately I have to go to work the next morning and I haven’t had dinner yet. It’s a tired wee day the next day.

So that’s how I know that I’m not a superhero, and I’m not the sharp guy either. They were young, they were a bit nervous and a bit pushy, and I didn’t even properly check the signature of the first guy.

Ah well. At least I started.

——–

Work is cool. It’s like my old job, only none of the stuff I didn’t like and lots of most of the stuff I did like. Yeah. The campus is nice too, and the people are grand, and I’m happy, and more importantly, financially solvent. And now I’m going to go home from work and relax.

——–

Viva!

Shoutouts to Leandro, just because.

Morgue