Category: Things I’ve Seen

Sometimes the comments on Amazon are brutally hilarious, as in the comments on a Playmobil Security Check Point.
And sometimes they become something entirely impossible to describe, such as these comments, essays, poems, and analyses for Tuscan Whole Milk (1 gallon).

Cool. A visually stunning clip from Where the Wild Things Are. This adaptation of the greatest ever children’s book is by Dave Eggers.

I just don’t care this year, actually.
But for form’s sake: Coens, No Country, Day-Lewis, Christie, Wilkinson, Dee, Transformers for the techie awards, Atonement for the style awards, writing to Juno and No Country, doco to anyone but Moore, etc etc.
Please let Once get best song.

Steve Gerber 1947-2008
Announcement on Gerber’s Blog

Of the many crimes committed against the state of Israel by their Islamic neighbours, perhaps the least-well remembered are the Orange Raids of 1970.
Thankfully, with the declassification of certain secret files that are now available on the internet, you can finally learn the truth.

Man, I only watched the second half of the Superbowl this year, but it was probably the most exciting bit of sports-spectating I’ve enjoyed since the Tall Blacks came 4th at the ’02 basketball worlds. If I’d been a partisan of either team it would probably have topped that experience. What an incredible game it was.
I think I first watched the Superbowl in ’91? Or ’92? Can’t remember for sure. Somewhere in that early-90s run when Buffalo lost four Superbowls in a row. It’s always been a fun diversion, particularly with some buddies who are really into it, but today was just a hell of a good contest between two great teams.
Awesome.
See also disappointed Jarratt.

All through the day, the main stages were accompanied by a giant screen showing closeups of the band on stage. Above the screen was one of those scrolling text banners. People in the crowd could text messages to the screen and they’d show up on the banner.
Some of this was predictable: teenage girls saying “Liam is sexy lolz” and random maroons saying “Raaaaaaaage” and so on. What took me by surprise was the full-on uprising of the geeks. Serious geek chatter dominated the banner. There were countless references to Chuck Norris, to WoW, to LOLCats, to NomNomNom, etc. Above all else, there was Trogdor the Burninator. Trogdor’s name appeared on the banner literally hundreds of times throughout the day.
My question, then: was this geek hijack of the text banner (at a huge rock gig) unusual? Or am I just so old and crusty that I don’t realise this is what such banners are like everywhere?

Saw Cloverfield last week, on its first day of release. Waited to post this until a bunch of other people have seen it too. I enjoyed it a lot, but I had lots of issues with it too. There’s actually another post in me on the subject, if I get around to it.
This post, though, is full of spoilers. Don’t read if you haven’t seen (unless you don’t care).
This is how I would have done Cloverfield.

Continue reading Cloverfield – How I Would Have Done It

Over Christmas I was up in Hawkes Bay with Cal and her family. This visit I made sure to organise a visit to Whare Ra, the house-temple of the Golden Dawn offshoot that settled in Havelock North a century back. I wrote at length about it here, an entry that gets a lot of google traffic (perhaps unsurprisingly).
We didn’t get to go in, but I took a look from the outside. The house itself is recessed from the street so I had to creep up the driveway and peer over the ridge to see it. It is instantly recognisable as an interesting old house; most buildings in the neighbourhood (heck, in the *country*) are 70s/80s creations but this one looked like a handsome stone cottage of a type rarely seen in NZ. A brass plate on the house frontage bore a simple mark that I wish I’d copied down; it looked like a meaningful symbol rather than a decorative design.
In any case, it was neat to see the building. Apparently it is opened up for public view each year as part of the garden tour, when you can visit gardens throughout Havelock North. I might be curious enough to take advantage of that opportunity some day.
The curious might like to examine these scanned images of a Whare Ra pentagram ritual document. Found via google. Fascinating.

Heh. A nice wee ditty about Sir Edmund Hillary by the good-hearted Trillion hipsters. You’d never believe a track with the chorus “You may be gone but you live on in my wallet” could be so respectful.