Been meaning to post this link for a while. It’s an interesting take on NZ by an associate (and sometimes fellow blogger) of Tom Tomorrow, Salon’s left-leaning political cartoonist.
I liked it. We likes hearing people talk about our country, yes we do, yes we do, gollum gollum.
~`morgue
Month: January 2004
Oscars: Criswell Predicts
I pick that the stupid Academy will do this:
ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Sean Penn – MYSTIC RIVER
(possible surprise: Johnny Depp – PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL. Yes, seriously.)
ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Benicio Del Toro – 21 GRAMS
ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
50/50 between Keisha Castle-Hughes – WHALE RIDER and
Charlize Theron – MONSTER – as a Kiwi I’m backing Keisha. The Anna Paquin factor, y’know.
ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Renee Zellweger – COLD MOUNTAIN
ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
FINDING NEMO
ART DIRECTION
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
CINEMATOGRAPHY
MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (anything with water gets bonus points)
COSTUME DESIGN
GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING
DIRECTING
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
(FINally)
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)
SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION)
Don’t know any of the nominees
FILM EDITING
CITY OF GOD (and it’d deserve it, too)
MAKEUP
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
MUSIC (SCORE)
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
MUSIC (SONG)
“Into the West” – THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
BEST PICTURE
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
SOUND
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
SOUND EDITING
MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD
VISUAL EFFECTS
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)
AMERICAN SPLENDOR
(but it should go to THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING fer chrissakes! it’s the infamous unfilmable book! it’s been made into a great film! grrrrr)
WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)
LOST IN TRANSLATION
Flashy halos of death
Back in my teens I used to get killer migraines. They’d start off by messing up my vision, just removing parts of the scene in front of me. (This never left a big hole – it was a seamless removal, like a t-shirt image being obscured in folds. Incredibly weird sensation. I vividly remember having a conversation with a classmate when I was about 14 and explaining that I knew I was going to have a migraine because I couldn’t see him, even though I was looking straight at him.)
Then you get the big spirally halos, like when you stare at a bulb and get the afterimage, only the afterimage is a thin strip of metal dipped in oil reflecting rainbows at you. And the halo would get bigger, and bigger, and bigger, until it disappeared off the edges of my vision.
And then, about half an hour after that, the migraine would kick in proper and if I wasn’t in a place where I could lie down, it was too damn late. Migraine is nasty. You get the headache mixed in with intense nausea and hypersensitive physicality. Brain is firing all kinds of nonsense, head is aching, stomach feels like it’s in the wrong way. This for about four hours, then another four of decreasing intensity, and then another 48 of gingerly moving through the world with little aftershocks making you watch your step.
Bleah. Anyway, I grew out of them when I left my teens. I had one in 2000, out of nowhere, but apart from that, none since about 94 or so.
Except I had one back at the end of August (the night of the Spearhead gig, curse it) and another one this Friday gone. Two inside of six months after only one in the previous decade… I don’t know what to make of this, exactly. It ain’t a trend I’m encouraging. Hmm.
Anyway, I was in a weird space all that day. I kept having incredibly intense deja vu and presque vu. All the vus. It had got to the point where I had started composing a blog entry beginning “I’ve been spending all day dangling just out of reach of an incredibly vivid but imperceptible other reality.” Or somesuch. That was the idea, though – that it felt like there was another me in another life and I was having crossover. I could never quite grasp the specifics, but I felt over and over again that something was *there*, just out of my mental grasp.
Anyway, then I had the migraine. You can put your cause and effect whichever way you like there.
The migraine was accompanied, when sleep eventually came, by remarkable dreams literally filled with people from my childhood and youth – I remember a group of five polynesian guys I haven’t seen since I was about 12 or 13 and having a big conversation with them. I don’t remember who they were now I’m awake, I don’t remember even if they were real, but I believe they were. One thing the brain is remarkably good at, after all, is remembering faces. Anyway, those five and dozens and dozens more. If you were at my primary school there was an even chance you would have turned up. The only other moment I remember with great clarity was when I dreamed Nikki Schollum (“smile and say hi” type-acquaintance since primary school, some readers I’m sure will know her) being completely unable to remember the name of the big country next to New Zealand. (It’s Australia, honey. You’re welcome.) (Actually, I don’t think I was in the dream at that stage. But if I had been there, I’m pretty sure I coulda told her.)
Anyway. Out of it all now. But migraines are weird things and they mess up your head something wild. Neurons firing all over the show. Wild. And, lest it not be clear, not fun at all.
(Oh – It’s going around, it seems.)
—-
The delightful Craig Duncan was in town this past weekend, not long after his New Years Day nuptials to longtime boyfriend Marcel Hodel – longtime receivers of my morgueatlarge travel emails will remember the photo of those two from back in December, no doubt. I thought it was a great photo. Wonderful to see the old boy.
—-
I’ve realised I’ve got more to say about Lost In Translation, but I’m not going to say it now. Time to go home.
Oh, yeah, my new shoes are T-Mac 3 (since the demise of my beloved Converse to Nike, I’m investigating the exciting land of Adidas). To all (Jon Ball) of y’all (Jon Ball) who are interested (Jon Ball), they are the cool ones with my usual black-with-blue preferred coloration. And you can watch a movie about them over here.
Peace. I windmill whenever I want, apparently.
New Shoes
(which is a Twin Peaks reference, if anyone’s keeping track.)
I rushed out and bought new shoes last night, shoes fer exercisin’ in. I’ve had none since I left New Zealand, which should give you an idea of my current level of fitness – still the same skinny, only now I get tired easily instead of having pretty decent stamina.
Anyway, I’d let myself fall into that trap of not getting the kit because not involved in anything, and not involved in anything because not got the kit. Silly. My sport of choice, basketball, is pretty hidden up here, and I just haven’t seen much else to get enthused about.
Then my boss said ‘come play basketball tomorrow lunchtime’ and i said ‘woohoo’ and now I have new shoes on my feet and a pleasant exercised-tingle in my legs. Lets hope I keep finding avenues in which to play. I’ve got the shoes now, anyway.
—
The shoes are Adidas. I’ve been a Converse boy for years and years, but Converse were bought out by Nike I believe, anyway their shoes are nowhere to be found. So I went with Adidas. They work. I did buy some extra foam inners at the salesguy’s suggestion, and can’t work out how much the decision was mine and how much it was me being suggestive-sold – definitely a combination, but I don’t know the proportions at all. Six quid for foam inners? Crikey! They are extra comfy though, and I rationalise to myself that they’ll make injuries less likely, which is important when coming off a period of no exercise, and… I think I got suggestive-sold. Damn. Am I too lazy to go for the no-questions-asked money-back guarantee? Probably. We’ll find out!!!
—
A bulletin board I frequent was recently attacked by internet trolls, who (I discovered today) were mocking us on their own bulletin board elsewhere. I had the dubious distinction of being quoted and called a schmuck and a dope. Hmm, I haven’t been called names behind my back since primary school, which is about the level on which the trolls are acting.
The experience is kind of meh really. I’m not even remotely angry, but I’m certainly not amused either. It is indisputable that the people involved were being dicks, of course – deliberately trolling a foreign bulletin board for cheap laughs is one of the cardinal sins on the net. Still, I can’t quite seem to laugh it off. Instead I find myself wondering what is going through these peoples’ heads, and whether this kind of behaviour will always be present in the new realm of the ‘net, where concealed identity and the limitation of communication to text only are the default situation and human tribalism rears it head the same ways as usual.
Hey, wow – I just realised that I haven’t forgiven them! Stupid trolls. Do they deserve forgiveness? Hmm.
(For the less net-literate, trolls are folk who post contentious/stupid comments in order to heat up an argument. They win their game when people respond. Yes, it isn’t a very complicated game.)
~`morgue
Lost In Translation
I have a new phone. It is small and therefore finicky. When I use it I feel like my hands are too big for the job, like I’m King Kong trying to undo the clasps on Fay Wray’s brassiere, only sorta less dirty and hairy. Hmm, maybe that’s a bad metaphor.
—
Cal and I saw Lost in Translation last week. One thing I’m kinda struck by, on reading the coverage and reviews, is how no-one seems to be talking about what’s abundantly obvious to me – Sofia Coppola has based the entire movie on one of her early-teen fantasies. The whole setup is straight out of an intimacy fantasy typical of a daydreaming twelve-year-old girl: the young, pure girl-woman given the opportunity by contrived circumstances to interact with an older, famous movie star who is himself looking for a deep emotional connection, and they spend lots of time together, clearly fall for each other, but do not act on their feelings because they cannot escape their respective cages (and also so the fantasy remains, essentially, pure). It’s the kind of chaste romance a 12 year old girl would imagine for herself.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to read the limbo of jetlag Tokyo as symbolic of the cusp between childhood and adult, where one becomes aware of a new kind of intimate connection between self and other and imagines what it must be like without including sexuality.
After all, Sofia Coppola spent her whole life on film sets, staying in hotels and meeting famous actors. Her films have revealed her to be exactly the kind of imaginative and sensitive person who would write long diary entries filled with yearning for something not entirely understood. I think it’s extremely unlikely she never had the kind of fantasy this film is a development of.
Of course, she’s smart enough as an adult to ground the film without destroying the character of its fantasy. Bill Murray’s character sleeping with the chanteuse is a perfect example – an awareness that the fantasy character is not fully real, and in reality such a person would have a surplus of energy that had to go *somewhere*.
The final stroke of genius, of course, was the final interaction between the two. Sofia Coppola has put a private (if not unusual or uncommon) fantasy into the public domain, but kept the keystone to herself.
I really liked this movie, by the way.
The Little Old Man
Sometimes I would catch the bus to work. There was a little old man who would catch it too. He would be on the bus, upstairs, without fail.
Recently Cal and I moved. On a completely different bus route, I catch the bus to work.
The little old man is on these buses too. It is the same man.
What is he up to? I am afraid to speak to him.
NOTE: he walks very quickly, for a little old man.
My Grandmother on LOTR
Exiting Return of the King:
“And after all that, they lost the ring!”
She is teh coolest grandmother. Yay Felice!
It Pleases Me
The Following Please Me:
* keeping up with the fate of the NZ entry in the Australian Basketball League by way of http://www.kiwihoops.co.nz – particularly the rise and rise of Dillon Boucher, whose story should, by rights, be repeated in every NZ school and playground (cue usual rant about New Zealand identity)
* hearing that some of my friends are friends with others of my friends
* watching people make risky but right decisions
* patience, humility, compassion
* Freddy vs Jason
* chai tea (current hot drink of choice)
* Tongan Ninja, the closest thing NZ has to a Flight of the Conchords movie, being on sale in the local Blockbuster
* Tongan Ninja actually being quite entertaining
* seeing people I know in Tongan Ninja and, indeed, in any film (credits included – they also serve who don’t appear onscreen)
* hearing from people I haven’t heard from in a while
* not feeling overly busy
Note: Other Things Also Please Me.
[morgueatlarge] The Hogmanay That Wasn’t!
[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent January 2004]
Edinburgh’s big street party to see in the new year has become somewhat infamous over the last decade, and is now reputedly the biggest in Europe. It’s certainly a folded page-corner in the Lonely Planet of many a traveller. The Hogmanay celebrations run for days, with events both ‘afore and after.
I was newly arrived in Edinburgh for last year’s Hogmanay and the ever-prepared Blair managed to produce a ticket to the street party for me. The party is free but ticketed, and once the free ones go the black market starts up – it’s typically up to £20 for a ticket, depending on how lucky you are and how late you leave it. Anyway, we got in, jumped around, looked at the fireworks and had a right old good time!
This year, after some plans to be in Belgium for the holiday season fell through, Cal and I agreed to open our home to antipodean orphans, and so we had a strong compliment of good Kiwi folk for the big day, including Alastair Galloway who materialised out of the rain at about 5pm on New Years Eve. The rain was heavy and it was cold and windy. Reminded me of home, to be honest – wind and rain always do. With his pack safely stowed at Broomhouse, we went to a favourite eatery for an Eve dinner, filling up the central table with Cal and myself, Alastair, Julian, Yuuki, Sibs, Trimmy and suspiciously non-Kiwi Kathleen. Guid fuid, induid, followed by leisurely chatting until the arrival of Jess with her own band of Kiwi travellers. And we set off.
The rain was coming down with some enthusiasm now, but spirits were high. Even the wind didn’t feel too bad. We passed through the gate, our wristbands checked, and descended the slope of the mound towards the massed throng in Princes St. Thousands of people filled up the road. We dove straight in.
The strange absence of music was soon explained as we wandered near enough to a speaker to hear the PA announcement – the street party was cancelled. Nasty weather. Everyone had to bugger off home. Thank you very much for your co-operation.
Miserable outcome! We wandered through the crowds for a while, soon finding that even the midnight fireworks on the city’s seven hills were cancelled. The largest rendition of Auld Lang Syne ever was right out.
By the time the minutes of 2003 were running out, we had found ourselves near one of the entrances to the street party, on the outside as it happened, where a large number of people had just decided to stand around and wait. This we did. One game punter scrambled up a lamppost and stripped off his clothing piece by piece, tossing it out to the crowd. It was unclear whether he gave up when down to his trousers due to modesty or because of he understood the lethal difficulty of trying to strip them off in the wind and rain atop a streetlamp.
Soon the ragged cheering of midnight’s arrival began, as everyone’s watch and cellphone separately decided the time had come. Everyone snogged everyone else and smiled happily, because that’s all they wanted to do anyway, street party cancellation or no. Members of our little circle proved instrumental in beginning a rather large circle singing Auld Lang Syne, not to mention lots of more general jumping around hugging people and an astonishingly successful and seasonally inappropriate conga line. It
were cool fun.
In the steadily improving weather we wandered around to the Grassmarket beneath the castle, and were eventually let into The White Hart, a lovely wee historic pub, reputedly haunted (not exceptional in Edinburgh), in this case by the ghosts of the victims of Burke and Hare, the bodysnatchers who once worked the area. I saw no ghosts that night, except perhaps the face of one of our number who proved rather the worse for wear come four in the morning. The rest of us had a lovely big yarn to all and sundry in a nice warm pub. And then finally home to bed as the clock swung past five.
A happy night. Condolences are not necessary, at least to me. Those poor geezers who flew up from London and paid quids for worthless tickets – they’re the ones to console.
And then, by the way, it was 2004. And so it still is.
———
This year the night afore had giant metal elephants instead of big pink giraffes. For what it’s worth.
———
And we’ve moved at last. In Belmont Gardens now. Step out the front door to a view over the tops of houses to the distant Pentland Hills to the south. Sweet. (Not to mention a housely guest book that reads like a greatest hits of my university friends.)
———
Hello to everyone! Those off to Kapcon this weekend – my best and fondest regards.
Cheers
Morgan
Some New Costs
So, should we broadband?
Rent is a given, albeit a new one.
Should I put my phone on contract instead of pay as go?
Could be an expensive year, all these costs.
Mostly, though, I want to whinge about the crap tech that is my old Nokia 3310 phone and, by extension, most cellphones, for having internal singular batteries that don’t cope well with continual top-up charging and even when taken care of eventually end up with a battery life of 3 days even when not used.
Bleah. Stupid phone. I’m sick of having my phone beep in my ear and hang up all my calls for me.
~`morgue (contract gives me new phone, at least… hmmm.)