From The Morgue

The Good Brother bought us both tickets to jazz legend Herbie Hancock on Saturday night. He was performing at the very-nice Michael Fowler Centre auditorium, and Ben and I were kinda surprised to see that it was only 2/3 capacity for the show. Wellington has a thriving jazz scene, with several jazz nights around the place each week and a damn solid jazz festival each year, but somehow this didn’t translate to bums on seats for HH.
Well, it was their loss, because the show was fantastic. I wish I had more musical knowledge with which to talk about it, but that not being the case, all I can do is say that I thought it was wicked. I have no language for music, and no detailed appreciation of what the heck they were doing up there, but I dug the heck out of whatever it was.
I have a lot of love for jazz. My grandfather introduced me to Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker back in my teenage years, and I was instantly blown away. Those two artists worked well together, with the awesome and accessible Armstrong matched by the wild and careening Bird, the two of them serving as end markers for my understanding of what jazz was and what it could do.
Yet my love for jazz must be of a pretty shallow kind, because I never dove far into the jazz pond. I had a lot of love for what I’d heard, but my music buying rarely extended to jazz and my listening time was likewise dominated by other, more contemporary, sounds. Apart from a fateful introduction to Miles Davis’ ‘Kind of Blue’ not long after the Armstrong/Parker encounter, my understanding of jazz has grown only in a trickle over the years, as I’ve encountered other bits and pieces through a series of happy accidents (like being suddenly free to see Jazz on a Summer’s Day one quiet afternoon; or house-sitting with some wild Coltrane free jazz recordings).
But for a long time I’ve loved to see jazz live. Jazz is a music style that makes enormous sense in a close, intimate environment. Which is why the MFC auditorium was a strange place to see Herbie Hancock play – the grand space, set up for orchestral performance, curiously neutered some untouchable aspect of the show. For all the musical wonders we experienced, I had to wish we were down in some sweaty cellar somewhere, surrounded by whiskey and cigarettes. As I’ve said before, if you have to go down some stairs to reach it, its a good venue for jazz. If you have to climb up, it ain’t.
Thanks Ben. I had a fantastic time.

I carry on my series of cutting-edge posts of deep thought and political indignation with this review of a movie based on a comic book!
Short review: Spidey 3 is a good film. See it if you liked the last two.
Long review: On reflection, I have no time for a long review. Instead…
Medium-length review: Yeah, it does the business quite nicely thanks. There’s some genuine emotion in there, a heaping helping of melodrama, and the superhero action sequences are jaw-dropping and remind me how far our visualisation technology has come from the bad old days of Nicholas Hammond making climbing motions while a winch reeled him up. (Hmm, I bet YouTube has a clip, let me search… ah, here we go.)
Like both previous flicks, it has some serious weirdness in there – in this case a thoroughly weird dance sequence right in the middle of things – and perhaps the least convincing Stan Lee cameo yet, which is saying something. More unusual still is the structure of the thing. It is a long 2 1/2 hours, and it crams a hell of a lot into that running time. Like much of Raimi’s work, the narrative doesn’t run like a conventional Robert McKee story, and instead speeds along with lots of little peaks and troughs. In fact, it reminded me of nothing so much as sitting down to read a year’s worth of spidey comics all in a row, telling its story as lots of little micro-stories with overarching plot development and soap-opera subplots set up in one issue, paid off in the next.
The plot(s) aren’t genius and probably won’t stand up to much scrutiny – I haven’t scrutinised and don’t intend to, but my instinct is it would all collapse if I looked too hard. The behaviour of one of the villains, Sandman, really makes no sense at all. It ultimately doesn’t matter. Don’t let this spoil your fun; instead, imagine how you would retcon it when you take over the franchise in future! Hours of fun. Or, not.
Anyway, if you expect to like this film, then you will get your money’s worth. Simple as that.

Persistent spammers have been undeterred by the spam filters on comments – I’m closing them down for a while to see if I go off the radar.
Apologies if anyone wanted to contribute to any of the discussions here. Email still works. Comments will be welcome in the future!
Edited to add: I’ve opened comments on this post. In the past when I’ve been targetted I just close all past comments and the problem disappears; hopefully that will happen again.

Briefly checking in from Auckland, where stronglight and I have been the last couple nights. We’re heading back down to Welly today. It has been quite an intense time (friends of stronglight who don’t know why should click through and find out).
We tried to listen to the Flight of the Conchords radio show on the way up but couldn’t find a stereo setting that didn’t make the quiet bits too quiet to hear over the engine. Will faff around with it before heading back south, because we crave some Flight of the Conchords radio show goodness. Also, S-L purchased a new Ani deFranco from Real Groovy so we have some good listening lined up for the start of things.
Met up last night for tacos in Ponsonby with Andrew L, and much good discussion was had. Particularly, on the symbolism inherent in the Sky Tower that watches over all Auckland like the Eye of Sauron.
Right. Time to hit the road.

Over on No Right Turn, idiot/savant posted about a movement to add an elected assembly to the UN. This would, in effect, be a world parliament – a representative democratic body covering the entire world. Idiot likes the idea:

This is an interesting project, and one that deserves our support. It recognises both the need for some form of global government, and the fundamental truth that power derives from the consent of the governed, that there is no authority without democracy. At the same time, it also recognises that democracy has to grow from the bottom up,

I first heard about this idea of a world parliament in George Monbiot’s book The Age of Consent, and so I was excited to see what Monbiot would say about this initiative. He was just as encouraging, and in typically pithy style put forward a clear summary of the case for a global parliament:

Those who claim, like the British eurosceptics, that regional or global decision-making is unnecessary are living in a world of make-believe. No political issue now stops at the national border. All the most important forces – climate change, terrorism, state aggression, trade, flows of money, demographic pressures, the depletion of resources – can be addressed only at the global level. The question is not whether global decisions need to be made. The question is how to ensure that they are made democratically. Is there any valid answer other than direct representation?

Myself, I feel that a global representative government is an inevitability and something to be anticipated. The question is, how long will it take to get there and how many faltering early versions will we have to go through to get something functional? I hope that the rise of world-scale issues (like those Monbiot mentions) will serve as a driver to make this process relatively swift. It would be nice to see a functioning world parliament in my lifetime.
—
As an aside, idiot has made use of Pledgebank again, this time to pledge “I will write to Justice Minister Mark Burton urging the repeal of New Zealand’s sedition laws but only if 20 other New Zealanders will do the same.” It already has well over 20 names. You should sign up too – all the cool kids are doing it!

Briefly: a heck of a day for the narratives of war. A congressional hearing in the U.S. heard some serious mythbusting from people who should know – Jessica Lynch, she who was rescued, and Kevin Tillman, army ranger and brother of Pat, he who was killed in action.
The pathological need for the military to create Commando-comic narratives of heroism has never been shown up so bluntly as in this hearing.
Kevin Tillman: “Revealing that Pat’s death was a fratricide [shot by a fellow U.S. soldier] would have been yet another political disaster during a month already swollen with disasters. The facts needed to be suppressed. An alternative narrative had to be constructed, crucial evidence destroyed.”
Jessica Lynch: “The American people are capable of determining their own ideals for heroes, and they don’t need to be told elaborate lies. I had the good fortune to come home and to tell the truth. Many soldiers, like Pat Tillman, did not have that opportunity.”
I want to say something more about this, about the role of war in our sense of identity, about why it is so important to us and why we are so vulnerable to mythmaking in service to it. I don’t have the time, however. I will say that those who protested at the ANZAC services yesterday do have a point – the rituals and solemnity of ANZAC day may serve to legitimise militarism and so forth.
But, that said, there are ways and means to raise your concerns, and turning up the dawn parade with a bullhorn and a burning flag isn’t going to achieve anything but alienating people. As much as I have sympathy with many left-wing readings of society and culture, this kind of tone-deaf behaviour is just stupid, both tactically and strategically, and hinders the entire political left. Thanks a bunch.

Felix Rooney, my great-grandfather, served in the first world war. He saw many of the most gruelling battles of that war. ANZAC Day, today, commemorates New Zealand and Australian soldiers, particularly those who served in and never returned from the Great War.
Felix kept detailed war diaries, which I have been privileged to read (and want to read again). Although I don’t have copies, I do have with me a monograph on a Cantabrian Victoria Cross winner which quotes Felix’s diaries extensively. So, from that source, the part of Felix’s war diaries that most bears repeating:

Monday 11th: It was a great civic reception [French President] Poincare got yesterday. It was fine weather and aeroplanes overhead dropped messages into the Square. Today, just before marching out we had the news read out to us that hostilities would cease at 11 A.M. today. We left at 11 A.M. and marched 19 kilos to Quievy with full packs. Everyone is smiling now the war is over.

I have wonderful friends.
Today, in the morning, when a certain amount of stressful life stuff was crashing down, the phone rang. On the other end was the Alligator, calling from Seattle to tell me some tales of his night out with the Rat City Roller Girls, sipping Fighting Cock on a homeless man’s blanket, and doing the haka. As we traded news and even some advice, he asked if I’d received his package. What package? Well, I clearly hadn’t received it then, and the conversation moved on. But as we talked I wandered to the front window and spied a large cardboard envelope in the letterbox… could it be? Yes! So he got to listen to me tear open the package he’d sealed up not so very long ago.
There were three photo prints inside – one spectacular shot of Aoraki/Mt Cook, one shot of the two of us gurning for the camera, and the piece de resistance, a large b+w print of the Alligator in full Jewish cowboy getup. The image showed off his hat to excellent effect, and the hat is pretty much the whole costume. This hat is so good it has a scorpion on it. The scorpion hat was bequeathed to me, and has settled in New Zealand. I am privileged.
Anyway, it was really good to hear him talk. I’m terrible at picking up the phone and calling people, but thankfully some others are not so slack. There’s something almost magical about the connection of hearing someone’s voice.
All of which led to just now, when I finally got a moment to put into my laptop a CD also enclosed in the envelope. I played the MP3 entitled “Morgan listen to this first”, and there was that same voice, wishing me well and then reading me a poem. The poem chosen sent me into hysterics. Awesome.
And then within the “And then you can open this” folder, much bounty, including photos from his recent stay in NZ and also from his visit a few years back to see me and Cal in Edinburgh, most of which I’d never seen before. Also some neat-looking music that I haven’t started to listen to yet.
My only regret – never quite managing to get together a crew for the king of the D-sports, Dodgeball. But I have not forgotten that noble goal. It shall be done, sooner or later. Wellingtonians – count yourself warned.
—
There are other wonderful friends out there. This isn’t even the only nice thing I’ve received by post from overseas in the last couple weeks. This one compelled me to post, though, because I was so blown away by the poem reading on that MP3. And then I decided not to tell any of you what the poem was. Sorry. You’ll just have to beg me to play it for you when you’re near my laptop, I guess.
I hope you’re all reflecting on this post not with envy for the awesomeness of my friend the Alligator, but with empathy as you think of the great friends in your life. I’m all about sharing the love here. In fact, I’m so into sharing the love, I’m going to follow in hottieperm‘s footsteps and throw in a selfie:

Scorpion-enabled of course…

On Friday night, I was able to see two new films that are playing at the moment: First 2/3 of Sunshine, and Last 1/3 of Sunshine. While sharing some superficial similarities, they were two very different beasts.
First 2/3 of Sunshine (directed by Danny Boyle, written by Alex Garland) was an intense, considered science fiction film. It tells the story of a group of scientists travelling to the sun in order to reignite it and thereby rescue life on earth. This premise was used to explore humanity’s relationship with technology, our human limitations and our responses to the exposure of these limitations. Of particular interest were the analogies drawn between technology in the physical sense, spaceships and computers and so forth, and technology in the social sense, such as mission parameters and chains of command. A winning multicultural cast delivered excellent performances which embodied the tensions existing between what is human and what is mechanical. The sun itself was used as a multipurpose metaphor, representing enlightenment, purpose, and the integration of our multiplicity into a single new order of being. The tropes of a disaster film added excitement and tension, and the character studies were fulfilling, although the decision to avoid forcing characters to follow through on a key moral dilemma (can you suppress your humanity and become mechanical for the greater human good) was a disappointment. Nevertheless, First 2/3 of Sunshine was a solid film, limited only by a curtailed final chapter which did not show the resolution of the long mission.
Last 1/3 of Sunshine (directed by Danny Boyle, written by Alex Garland) was vastly different. Also set on a spaceship near the sun, it was mostly about a blurry murderer with a skin condition. Last 1/3 of Sunshine was a substandard imitation of Jason X, the “Friday the 13th” movie in which serial killer Jason Voorhees wandered around a spaceship dismembering people. Incoherent, visually frustrating, and completely charmless. Avoid at all possible costs.
It is worth noting that First 2/3 of Sunshine and Last 1/3 of Sunshine are playing as a double feature. Fair warning: any enjoyment you might receive from First 2/3 will be stomped into the ground and then spat on by Last 1/3, and sad as it is to say, First 2/3 just isn’t good enough to make the whole trip worthwhile.