Wogistan Greets Kim

Robin Williams

A lot has been written and will continue to be written about the death of Robin Williams. We greet the deaths of our funny men with particular poignancy; primarily for the pleasure they gave us. Sadly, that poignancy is heightened for us in Mr Williams’s case by the method of his death and his sincere love and respect for New Zealand. He was from all accounts a special person and the messages from his family and fellow celebrities document that with great eloquence. Much greater than I could offer. So rather than attempt that I must rather use this Fryday to pass on a gift that Mr Williams himself gave us—some of the pithy saying and axioms he has left us over the years. For these I am indebted to a resilient and always supportive friend, Ed, who has been of even greater help to me of late. Here in is own words are the observations of an immensely talented man—Robin Williams:

·      Do you think God gets stoned? I think so … look at the platypus.

·      In England, if you commit a crime, the police do not have a gun and you do not have a gun. If you commit a crime, the police will say: 'Stop, or I will say stop again.

·      If it is the Psychic Network, why do they need a phone number?

·      People say satire is dead. It is not dead; it is alive and living in the White House.

·      Cocaine is God's way of saying that you are making too much money.

·      I want to thank my father … the man who, when I said I wanted to be an actor, he said: 'Wonderful, just have a backup profession like welding.' Thank you.

·      We had gay burglars the other night. They broke in and rearranged the furniture.

·      I suffer from severe dyslexia – I was the only kid on my block at Halloween to go trick or trout.

·      Cricket is basically baseball on Valium.

·      Politics: Poli, a Latin word meaning many; and tics meaning, bloodsucking creatures.

·      What is right is what is left if you do everything else wrong.

·      I wonder what chairs think about all day: 'oh, here comes another asshole.

·      They call it freebasing. It is not free; it costs you your house! It should be called homebasing!

·      I walked into my son's room the other day, and he has four screens going at the same time. He's watching a movie on one screen, playing a game on another, downloading something on this one, texting on that one, people say: 'He's got ADD.' Fuck that, he's multitasking.

And my favourite…

You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.

A Bob Each Way

In my teens I became aware that the inevitable hierarchical structure of youth culture was driven largely by music—in particular which artist(s) you followed. If you were of what these days is called the nerd persuasion you enjoyed The Beatles; the more rebellious were into The Rolling Stones, and if you were a “beat freak” Bob Dylan was your thang. The truly out there—and there were few enough of these—grooved to Bob Dylan’s backing band The Band. The Band was and is my favourite band of all time. However, I never saw them live and I never will; The Band exists only on record, video and memory, and three of its original five members are dead.

But Bob Dylan is very much alive and I have seen him live. Once. I would not go again. The concert of his I attended at Mt Smart lasted barely 70 minutes, he played most of it with his back to the audience, didn’t even try to structure a rapport or acknowledgement with that audience, and he gifted us only one of his more well-known songs—All Along the Watchtower. He, his concert and his forgettable backing band were worth neither the time nor the money.

So, Hamilton will probably get what it deserves. Bob Dylan plays two shows at Hamilton’s Claudelands Arena in early August. They are the first of a month-long Australasian tour for the aging artist. He may have changed, of course. As he himself wrote, of himself, Times Have Changed (Wonder Boys Soundtrack). However, to me, based on my experience and on the necessity of going to Hamilton of all places to see him, I do not think he is worth the risk.

I was mildly amused, however, by Ticketek’s showcasing of the Hamilton concerts. I received an email from them extolling the virtues of booking early. The subject line of the email is Knocking on Hamilton’s Door. That is either clever of clumsy. I think the latter. Yes, it is a play on words and homage to the Dylan hit Knocking on Heaven’s Door. But is Ticketek not aware that the only thing Heaven and Hamilton have in common is that they both start with H? In all other respects, Hamilton is more akin to Hell than Heaven—at least for those who have committed a career-limiting offence and been sent by their bosses to manage the Hamilton office.

Bob may well be going there of his own volition (and maybe the fact that it is the first of his concerts is significant because Rusty-Rob can’t do any harm in Hamilton) but none of the rest of us do. You hear that knocking on Hamilton’s door, Bob?  Mate, it is people trying to get out, not in.

Things I'll never get to see...

One night last week I heard what I thought to be at least a couple of kiwi on my front lawn. By the time I got out of bed to see them my dogs had chased them off. I hope I get another opportunity and if I continue to live in the Far North with its surprisingly healthy population of kiwis then I no doubt will. But upon pondering the perspicacity of my Kiwi I thought of things I doubt I will ever see—not in my lifetime and perhaps not in yours. Here is my list:
1.     A movie sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey. The trailer for the first movie in the excruciating trilogy is bad enough and they want to make two more?
2.     Auckland councillors forgoing their business-class perks or declining invitations to visit some other world’s most liveable cites such as in Nepal and Finland.
3.     Len Brown serving a third term.
4.     A fourth term for John Key.
5.     A David Cunliffe led government.
6.     Any international traction of credibility for Eastern Ukrainian’s self-styled freedom fighters.
7.     Ditto Vladimir Putin.
8.     An end to Treaty settlements.
9.     A world without Mike Hosking—not that we are trying hard.
10. A world without Paul Henry—and we are trying hard.
11. More convenient folding of the otherwise stunning Kleenex Flushable Cleansing Cloths.
12. A funnier programme than QI.
13. An end to the high-rotate run of the once funny Cigna Funeral Cover commercial.
14. An end to the high-rotate run of the once funny Kim Dotcom.
15. An end to the high-rotate run of the never funny John Banks—sorry, we have already seen that.
16. A ministerial resignation between now and the election
17. Anyone still reading Mills and Boon.
18. An admission by Hone Harawira that, in the end, he is just “funning us.”
19. Kiwi sheep placenta anywhere near my face.
20.  Gerry Brownlee hopping over any more fences.

Stranded in Paradise (with apologies to John Dix)

Charles Dickens, novelist, social commentator and lecturer, also owned and edited a weekly publication called All the Year Round. I have three annual anthologies of that periodical, including the seventh volume, which is for the year 1862.
In that volume is a story of special interest to me, given that I now live in the Bay of Islands.
It is apparently a true story, written by a clergyman who in 1859 was swept out to sea in the bay and stranded on one of its islands for seven months.
He was then found by local Maori (Ngapuhi) whom, our clergyman recounts, he initially faced with some trepidation, not knowing whether they were to rescue him or eat him. They did neither, electing rather to leave him on his island prison—their boat being already overloaded with “wives, slaves and children”. They did however promise to send back a larger rescue boat on their return to the mainland. And that duly happened.
The story, whilst interesting, is of no great significance in New Zealand’s history; the country’s maritime antiquity is replete with such strandings and larger and more tragic shipwrecks. But that very anonymity is perhaps where the most intrinsic interest lays—nobody else as far as I know except me, and now you, know of the story of the marooned, lonely and despairing clergyman and “his” island. Yet the account, if true, is so full of direction and description that it may be possible for someone with a greater knowledge of the Bay of Islands than mine to be able to pinpoint and identify the island.
Such identification will add little to the sum store of our communal knowledge. But, who cares? In these days of incessancy rather than interest—Kim Dotcom, Len Brown, budget blowouts, et al—can the location of New Zealand’s very own Robinson Crusoe’s island home be any less interest?
I won’t bore you with those descriptions here, but I am happy to extract and send them to anyone interested, and particularly anyone with the interest and knowledge to identify the island.

Tanks a lot

I woke this morning to some good news. First, that I was indeed safely back in Kerikeri after one of the most gruelling road trips I have ever made. The second, and more serious, was that police, with the public’s help, had identified the four perpetrators of the horrific and cowardly attack on a young shop attendant working in a Pakuranga liquor store. The four, believed to be aged from 14 to 16, are being hunted down now.

Violence is commonplace. But that doesn’t mean to say that it doesn’t have the capacity to horrify us, particularly when carried out to the length and viciousness of this particular attack. Fortunately the victim has, as far as is known, suffered no permanent injuries and has bravely returned to work. Yet it could so easily be different and perhaps the true horror is that these four men/boys, seemed totally oblivious to that fact—they could have killed this man, given the ferocity of the punches, the kicks and the smashing of a bottle over a head. Did they care? From the video, it seems not. Let them rot.

Yet there have been other recorded cases of violence this week. And most of us have taken a different view of those.  There was the case of Brian Lake’s choking of Drew Petrie during an AFL match last Friday. I suggested that most of us who saw it did so with mild amusement, and it has gone viral (over a million views) on You Tube. Then there is the so-called violence of the World Cup. So called because in reality much of it is either extravagated in an attempt to secure a penalty or didn’t exist at all. It is a blight on the game and years of calls to have “Hollywoods” penalised have gone largely unheard. We look upon this affected violence with benign indifference or mild annoyance.

Our approach to big picture violence is different again. We all see the pictures of the carnage in the Middle East. But mercifully we are detached from that. It is happening “over there”, to “them”. And it is not new. Probably deep down and if we were honest it even makes us feel superior.

But overseas events do give us a perspective and we should be thankful for that. Despite the storm now lashing the Far North and the Pakuranga attack—despite all—we live in a great country. A glorious country.  If my greatest worry this morning is the Far North District Council’s storm-suggestion that I should go out in the rain to check my septic tank I have much to be thankful for.

When Money Talks, Money Walks

I must say that the Internet component of the Internet-Mana Party has put up some good-looking candidates with impressive credentials. Compensation for the other component, I guess.
Nevertheless, that may still not be enough for them to win any seats unless they can get in on the coattails of a Hone “What me Opportunist?” Harawira win in Tai Tokerau—and from what I am hearing in the north that is far from a foregone conclusion.
Without Hone, I don’t think Kim and his cronies can win at all—so any success in September will be well and truly a case of money talking. Kim Dotcom will have bought Hone, bought Mana and bought whatever seats those stained coattails will gift him. 
As for Hone, what has he bought? A lot of trouble? Perhaps. But he is no stranger to Trouble and if Trouble earned frequent flyer points Hone Harawira would not have to have so many taxpayer funded trips.
I think the greater question is what has he sold? Mana press officer Pam Corkery says the party and its principles will remain “unsullied” by the purported $3 million inject. I agree with her.  Hone and his party have not sold out, certainly not on a matter of principles, in that area they have nothing to sell. No, I think Hone and his party—or maybe just Hone—may have entered into this agreement for more prosaic purposes, based perhaps on precedent rather than principle.
Kim, some times money talks, some times it just walks.

Look back in anger

I can imagine a world without John Minto. It is inevitable, of course. I can also imagine a world without me—also inevitable.
The difference is that, if given the time to dwell on such matters, I shall look back at my life with a mix of regret and thanks, while he shall look back at his in anger…and thanks.
Mr Minto has much to thank anger for. Anger found him, nurtured him and eventually made him a minor celebrity. He took a well-trodden path led by anger and following the footsteps of Tim Shadbolt and before him John A. Lee.
Like them Minto realised that in those pre-Shortland Street days the quickest way to become a New Zealand celebrity was to become an All Black or become a protestor/activist. Either could get your head knocked in—but the latter offered more causes and opportunities; you were more well rounded somehow.
So, that is the path Minto took. He knew what he was doing. It got him on television quickly. It allowed him to bask in the adulation of his acolytes and, because he was physically more aesthetic than the harder working Tom Newnham, Minto soon took the crown and mantle of New Zealand’s chief trouble-maker—aided by the 1981 Springbok Tour.
He never lost that status. Trouble was—and this is where Minto has cause for real rather than contrived anger—the Springboks had the discourtesy to leave and the effrontery not to return until after the demise of apartheid.
Minto was left in their wake a rebel with few causes. Pack ‘n’ Save causes. He became a scrounger, looking for anything that could keep him in his the self-appointed role as the social conscience of the nation… and on television. Inevitability, familiarity bred, if not quite contempt, well, familiarity… and boredom. Mr Minto became a bore, and, to use the grocery analogy one more time, a product now past its use-by-date.
Which is why there is something of an irony in the escalating fracas between Minto and property tycoon Bob Jones, fought in their respective columns in the Herald. Whilst it is entertaining enough, one is left with the unsettling thought that the deeply entrenched dogmas of both men—left and right—are of another time, a past time. They trade insults of a sort largely confined to that other relic of the past and equally irrelevant place Parliament’s debating chamber.  They cannot now summon up credible anger; they even compliment each other on the quality of their writing.
In the old days, no such “give” would be given. Such public spats would have majesty—Kirk versus Muldoon, Muldoon V. Lange.
These days, it is just two old men slapping at each other with wet towels, trying to make traction, but failing and flailing against the might of Masterchef and Britain’s got Talent.
Anger is just not what it was.

Whetu Calls: The Political Party

-->From time to time one reaches a watershed in one’s life. Each day is different, but some contain events so momentous they change your life and set it off in a new direction. Such a watershed happened to me recently and as a result I see new vistas opening before me and much that is fading into darkness and memory behind me. Of the latter there will be few regrets. There is much I wish to consign to the darkness from whence it came. Whetu may well be one of those. However, it is not to be…

ME: My god! How did you find me?

HE:  Kia ora bro.

ME: You are the last person I expected to see up here. How did you know I was here?

HE: I got cuzzies up here. They told me youse arrived. Choice place youse got here. Cost you a lot?

ME: What do you want Whetu?

HE: I is on the campaign trail.

ME: Campaign? What campaign?

HE: Political campaign, bro. Me an a few cuzzies joined a new party and we’s putting up some can…candy…canner…peoples in the next election.

ME: You? What on earth could you offer the country?

HE: Wells, as that Kennedy fella said ask not what you can do for your country, instead ask what your country can do for you.

ME: Other way around.

HE: Not for us bro.

ME: So, I suppose you want a campaign contribution? Is that what you are here for?

HE: Youse mean money?

ME: I’s…I mean money.

HE: Nah: we got all the money we’s need.

ME: How on earth did you get that?

HE: Cusin Hone got us to join the Kim Dotcom party. Said he was rich bro and we could fleece—borrow—alls we like from him. Sweet bro.

ME: You have joined the Internet Party?

HE: Yus bro. The in-to-the-net party. That’s us. All the moneys and all the fishing we wants. Sweet as.

A Messy Affair

Election 2014 is shaping up to be a messy affair. I personally don’t believe it will be as close a result as some say, but if the events of the last fortnight are anything to go by it will certainly be a knockdown drag-out election and as such one of the most interesting of recent times.
I worked on a number of general elections through the 70s and 80s. The first was in 1972, which saw Norman Kirk sweep into power and the last (to date) was 1984 and the advent of David Lange. Lange and Kirk were both larger than life characters full of charisma—but their similarities beyond that were a little less than you may think. What they did have in common was the diminutive and malevolent spectre of Muldoon. And it was Muldoon who added the fire and the interest to those and all the intervening elections. I worked for him on 1975’s “Dancing Cossacks” campaign and whilst I am thankful to be involved with one of the most pioneering if polarising political campaigns in New Zealand history, my memories of Muldoon are less than savoury.
I have little memory of Palmer, Bolger, Shipley and even Clark. There was a blandness there that was reflected in most of their elections. John Key is not much different in that regard although I think I am right in thinking he is the most popular of those listed. Bland could also describe Cunliffe.
Key v Cunliffe? Hardly riveting stuff.
So, why do I think this may be one of the most interesting elections since the Muldoon era? Well, it is not because of what we know (or are told), it is because of what we may not know. The events of recent weeks—the relentless pursuit of Judith Collins, the (strangely less relentless) revelations regarding Maurice Williamson and the peculiar and as yet unexplained shift by Labour from Williamson to Woodhouse all hint that there is a lot in the background that is not being revealed and may well be being held in reserve. Further gist to that particular mill came yesterday with John Key’s rather less than veiled threat of “Don’t Go There” to Labour over the cash for access issue. Maybe that issue, too, will die a hurried death.
Nevertheless one is left with the impression that there is no shortage of replacement revelations to be rolled out in the weeks and months ahead. There seems to be some formidable strategies in play here—from both parties. The danger for both however is that they overplay the dirty politics card. From what I am hearing many of us have had a gutsful of it already.
But then again politicians can’t help themselves, can they? It’s their world.

Memories and Medals

A photomontage is next to me as I write this. It comprises photos of my eldest son, my father, my grandfather and myself. My father compiled it to show the first-born (male) of four generations. For that reason alone, it is an important keepsake. But it is also treasured as the only known photo of my grandfather. He is pictured staring sternly at the camera at some racecourse somewhere—probably in Christchurch where he lived. He enjoyed the races, an enjoyment my father inherited but I did not. What I did inherit however is much more important. They are memories and medals.
My memories of my grandfather are of an imposing figure often sitting on a high-back chair, which of course we christened the throne.  That was in the house he and my grandmother owned in Godley Avenue Papanui (in point of fact one of the most ungodly avenues in town and long-since renamed). Nobody else was allowed to sit on that throne. Nobody else, but me. Why me, I don’t know. I wouldn’t say I was his favourite, but it was me who went out with him trudging through the ditches of those long Canterbury roads picking wild mint that we later sold by the sack-load to Boss Sauce. It was me he taught to hunt and trap rabbits. And it was me he always found a “special” book for. And it would be me, me alone, who would have treasured memories of all of that.
As for the medals? I have his medals from both world wars for he had served in both. I have those, and a shell case he purloined from World War I’s Western Front. I also have his discharge papers from that first world war that tell me my grandfather was 5’9” (slightly shorter than me), and that he served as a private in the Canterbury Infantry Regiment for a period of 2 years and 191 days, 2 years and 41 days of which he served overseas on the Western European Front during 1917/18. He was awarded the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. He was discharged 25th April 1919 at the ripe old age of 25. In the Second World War he served for 3 years and 99 days with the Royal New Zealand Airforce, and discharged 5th July with the rank of lance corporal. His occupation is given as rabitter.
It is information such as this, and those memories, that keep my grandfather close to me. Yet they are not needed. Like those many many thousands of New Zealanders and Australians who this morning honoured their forebears I need no tangible aid or physical item to remember. Those men and women who served are justly and always remembered on this day and every day, not because of what they accomplished, but because of who they were, what they did, and what they left us all…Pride.
Lest we forget? Not a chance.