Gregory Cooper's Blog

Lands For Flags Of Course

2015-09-28T18:10:00.001+13:00

I was fourteen when I flirted with politics for the first and last time. I can't remember why I wanted to be Chairman of the Casebrook Intermediate School Council but I did and won and wondered why I did. There were three students standing against me and we all got the chance to speak to the school for five minutes max because back in the 1980s we all had a short little span of attention and called each other Al. The others had lofty aims to make the pies warmer and the school pool warmer and the Winter warmer but my only policy was to build a wall around the school to keep Mexicans out. What swung it for me was my happy ending. If you were alive in 80s New Zealand you'll undoubtedly remember a TVC featuring the Kiwi Elvis, or Kwelvis, John Rowles. Here's a link to watch him belt his big hit 'If I Only Had Time' in France in 1969 and it's worth a watch because he's bloody good and only 22. Nearly two decades later things weren't going quite so well for John and as everyone in the entertainment game knows, sometimes you have to take a shitty gig to pay the rent. John's shitty gi, gi, gi, gi, gi, gi, gi gi, gig was an advertisement for Gerard Roofs that pretty much gu, gu, gu, gu, gu, gu, gu, gu, guaranteed a whole ge, ge, ge, ge, ge, ge, ge, ge, generation of Kiwi's were stuttering their G, G, G, G, G, G, G, G, G's for fuckin' age, ge, ge, ge, ge, ge, ge, ge, ge, ges.

I'm going to post John's Gerard Roofing advertisement below. Just a warning, once you've watched this the phone will ring and the little girl John's holding will try and sell you a roof.

In 80s NZ it was compulsory to watch a TV show on Sunday night called A Dog's Show where men whistled at dogs all called Blue and Gyp and the dogs made sheep go over bridges and sometimes John's ad would play halfway through and for 30 seconds every Kiwi was connected by some deeply spiritual happy hive mind and no one spoke. All you could hear was John g, g, g, g, g, g, g, g, g'ing from every house in the land and afterwards people couldn't quite remember what had happened but felt a bit better about the Muldoon g, g, g, g, g, g, g, g, government.

This is a round about way of telling you I got the power by finishing my five with, "Go for G, G, G, G, G, G, G, G, Gregory, go for Gregory and your Chairman's looking good."

And by power I meant the power to give up one lunch time every week to sit in the library listening to class representatives blathering about how the Four Square outlines were too small, or the GutterBoards were too angular or the K-Bars were too hard. After six months some of these student reps started to grumble that nothing had been done about their concerns so I decided to distract them with first a school disco and second a school mascot competition.

The disco didn't go well, mainly because we couldn't afford a DJ so I did the job myself with the shitty stereo from the music room and my brother's cassette of Disco by The Pet Shop Boys. It's a bloody fantastic album but there's only so many times you can play the 12" version of 'Paninaro' before people get toey. So I needed the mascot competition to go off like distraction dynamite and it did. Over 30 mediocre designs poured in and the council spent weeks deciding on the five best to be presented to the school for a vote. This never happened because I lost all the entries but it didn't matter because by then everyone else had lost all interest.

I've confessed to this before and I'm thinking about it again as the National Government of New Zealand wraps up spending $26 million changing a flag 70% of New Zealander's can't be arsed changing. There's no good reason to change it. NZ hasn't become a recent republic and John Key and the Windsor's are thick as thieves. So I'm guessing Key's flag competition, like my mascot competition was a distraction and now it's time for John to lose all the entries quick smart and pretend it never happened. There'll probably be a few annoying people on Twitter asking annoying questions but in a few weeks the All Blacks will be in the World Cup finals and Lorde's new album might drop and then we'll all say goodbye to Dan Carter and watch the Melbourne Cup and shit, then it's Christmas isn't it and before you know it John Key's won a 4th term and we're all feeling g, g, g, g, g, g, g, g, great!

Ice cream of Hosky

2015-04-17T17:33:00.000+12:00

On 9 April I wrote a post about a man called Mike, tweeted I'd done so and that was that. By April 10 that post had received about 40 views, and at least five of those were mine as I corrected a few typos and checked to see if anyone had checked the 'daschund' box at the bottom....why's that red line underneath daschund? Oh shitballs. I've spelt it wrong. My blog's been in sporadic operation since 23 June 2009 so that means I've had the same spelling mistake on my blog for 2123 bloody days. And it's not just a little typo either, the 's' is in completely the wrong place and there's one whole 'h' missing in action. 'Daschund' doesn't even sound like dachshund. I've just found out 'schund' is German for 'trash' and 'da' is German for 'as', so for 2123 days I've been unwittingly inviting readers to mark my posts as German trash instead of a German short-legged long bodied dog. The difference is massive and mortifying.

Daschund

Dachshund

This is almost as embarrassing as finding out after a million performances of my show Heroic Faun No. One to ten people, a faun was half human-half goat and not half human-half deer. I'd based my whole damn performance in 'The Lion...yada yada Wardrobe' on a deer which probably explains why I was hardly ever in shot. Andrew Adamson seems like a nice guy, but I bet he was there watching the dailies at nightlies screaming, "Why is that fucking faun acting like a fucking deer?!" They didn't ask me back for 'Whoops I've Lost My Lion!' or 'Banarniarama 3' and now I know why. I did one final performance of Heroic Faun as a goat and got big laughs. Afterwards I went home, had big cries, set fire to my green tights and bent my rubber sword in two. I was not an actor. I was a faun fraud. A fraund.

None of this is what I wanted to write about today though. On 11 April I wrote another post that hardly anyone read and then on 14 April I noticed my post about Mike had been viewed 1100 times. And every time I refreshed it was going up, fast, even faster than the value of a Hosking-house. In a few hours it had overtaken by previous most popular post about Trey Songz and I had no idea why. My tweet had been retweeted by some lovely people which was lovely, but it still didn't explain why my little blog was going a little viral for a little while. An old friend who's worked in advertising since before Mad Men told me how marketing executives would crash into meetings all bursting and bug-eyed yelling, 'I need a viral! Just one viral man! C'mon, don't hold out on me, I know you got a viral there somewhere, I'll give you anything you want....gotta....go...VIRAL!', before collapsing to the carpet to furiously tap their inner elbow with an iPhone. Going viral for the wrong reasons is easy, all you have to do is be racist on public transport or Woolworths, but going viral in a good way is like herding haystacks into a bottle of lightning with a cat, it's very tricky. Luckily the primary cause of my viralness was eventually revealed to me by another old friend Susan who sent me this screen grab.

Thanks Susan!

This is the Facebook page of Taiki Waititi and he's got a lot of followers thanks to acting, writing and directing hit TV shows and films like Flight of the Conchords, Boy and What We Do In The Shadows. 'Remtentacles' seemed to strike a major chord with Taika which is nice. Unfortunately it struck a minor chord with one Andrew James who decided I was a "tiresome old bolshevik" who should be put against a wall and shot like the Romanian despot Nicolae Ceausescu. Crikey! Andrew sums up my post with the phrase, "It's not fair he's got a bigger ice cream than me it's not fair." And I think we all know by 'ice-cream' Andrew really means 'penis', and yes he's spot on, my whole rant was actually about being insanely jealous of the huge Paddlepop in Hosky's pants right-wing New Zealand can't wait to wrap their laughing gear round.

But all good viruses must come to an end, unless you don't vaccinate, and my little Hoskovirus is no exception. Now all I have left to remember it by are 45 comments and thank you to those who took the time to do so, especially this anonymous contributor who put me in my place and gave my noggin a good boppin' for poppin' my head out of my hole...

You summed it pretty well. You do not own a house.
So either you are just starting out (and know nothing) or you are spending your money on today's pleasures and not going without like all the house owners have done. That puts you into the hole you want to put all others into.

Of course! It's all black and white and blue all over. Young people don't know anything. All house owners have gone without and if you don't own a house it's your own fault because you've frittered all your money on today's pleasures like food and rent and shit like that. But not any more. Google tells me I've creamed $8.54AU ($8.67NZ...PARITY!) thanks to Mike Hosking and every cent of this will go towards buying a house. The average house price in Auckland is about $711 000, so watch out Hosky, I'll be popping over to ask for an ice cream before you know it.

Mostly Harmless

2015-04-11T16:21:00.001+12:00

I had a moment yesterday dashing across Smith Street to avoid a chugger and realised if I was hit by the 86 tram while avoiding a smiling Englishman with a clipboard, my last blog post would be about Mike Hosking. That made me feel sad. There was another chugger on the other side of Smith Street so my dash of death was a pointless one and that made me feel sad. The chugger outside Woolies felt sad as I avoided his gaze and dashed inside to buy something I didn't need. That was too much sadness for me to bear so I decided to write a post about something that made me happy. And here it is.

Squeeeeeeee!

This is a computer. But not just any computer. This is a BBC Model B computer. Back before the BBC was a puppet with Jeremy Clarkson's hand up its bum, they made educational programmes like this one, and for one programme about computers called by someone very clever 'The Computer Programme', they hired a company called Acorn Computers, no relation to Apple, to build a computer for the presenters to pretend they knew how to program. Thus the greatest computer the world has ever seen was born. I just read the BBC Model B also featured in a show in Catalonia called, 'Connecta el micro, pica l'start!' (exclamation mark and italics added by me to enhance Spanishness), and surely this is the greatest computer programme show title the world has ever seen.

I never owned a BBC Model B but my brother did...I think I've sort of written about this before...one moment...yes I have, here. Anyway, my brother used the BBC to learn how to code and now travels the globe fighting crime with a big 'W' on his chest. I used the BBC to play games and spent the next 20 years dressing up as animals for children. The BBC had lots of great games, but one was greater than the sum of all the others, and it's name was Elite. OMG. Even typing the name makes me feel all wobbly and my fingers involuntary settle on the keys A, S, X, <, > and ? I'd better calm down and find a picture for you so you can see what I'm all juiced up about.

Squeeeeee!

OMG! OMG! Look at that. That's a Cobra MkIII, and maybe a Cobra MkI, and I think two Mambas all looking to dock in a Coriolis space station. All the ships were named after snakes. How cool is that? Now, if you think this game looks pretty damn awesome from the cover of the the box, wait until you see a screenshot of the real thing.

Squeeeeee!

That's what it looks like when you're about to dock in a Coriolis. Look at the beautiful white lines. Elite was all white lines. In fact I suspect Grandmaster Flash wrote his hit 'White Lines' while playing Elite. I'll see if I can find a picture of the opening screen to really blow your mind.

Squeeeee!

I know, I know. It's amazing. That's a Cobra MkIII and it rotated forever unless you pressed 'Y' or 'N'. Sometimes when Dean was out playing soccer or something, (I played for one season but was shit and I think even the Nomads 13F's were pleased to see the back of me), I could watch the Cobra spin for hours, almost crying with the majestic pallid beauty of it. What made it even more special was this was the ship you flew and no matter if you pressed 'Y' or 'N' you got to fly it...for a fucking long time, or at least until Dean came home and kicked me out of his room. The colourful box at the bottom is your flight control screen and I can still tell you what it all means without cheating by using Phone-A-Google and I know you don't care but I'm going to right now!

FS - Forward Shield
AS - Aft Shield
FU - Fuel
CT - Cabin Temperature
LT - Laser Temperature
AL - What you can call me
SP - Suppressive Person
RL - Rod Latham
DD - Smash
1,2,3 - Testing Testing

It's amazing how it all comes back. Elite was a LONG game. It was the test match cricket of the gaming world and you could play for five days solid and still come away with no result. But what a journey to nothingness it was. The gameplay went like this. I'll post another screenshot to help out.

Squeeeee!

Those blobs are all planets and their names are embedded in my subconscious like stones in a sock. At each of these planets you could buy exciting things like, 'Food', 'Alloys' and 'Textiles'. You would then travel to another planet, not Riedquat though as from memory that was an Anarchy planet and a West African Brown Spitter was sure to take you out, and then sell your 'Food', 'Alloys' and 'Textiles'. But here's the thing, if you were lucky you could sell them for a SMALL PROFIT! And after months of diligent trading you could buy a 'Fuel Scoop' or a 'Large Cargo Bay' or if you were very lazy a 'Docking Computer'.

While supplying the universe with textiles you could also advance your combat ranking from 'Harmless' to 'Elite'. The first few ranks were easy peasy, all you had to do was nobble an Oxacan Smallheaded Rattler and boom, you were 'Mostly Harmless' before you knew it. But it got harder. Much harder. The final step from 'Deadly' to 'Elite' took forever. You had to kill something like 20,000 Namib Dwarf Sanders and after every thousand or so this is what happened.

This is a C64 screenshot so no Squeeee!

After playing non-stop for days those three little words were your only reward. Even when you finally became Elite that was all you got. Sometimes, if I played for long enough without sleep the words could look like 'REDRUM ON COMMANDER!', or 'RIGHT ON MARIJUNA!' or 'I LOVE YOU GREG!', but that was the beauty of Elite, it taught you about life. You give up months or years to focus on one objective and when you finally reach it there's absolutely no reward. Nobody gives a shit. Just like life. No cut-screens, no secret revelations, not even a Stephen Hawking voice to congratulate you, and I knew the BBC could do that because the game Citadel started with Stephen Hawking saying, "Citadel! Citadel! Citadel! Citadel! Superior Software presents....Citadel." Not a reward sausage. Just a 'RIGHT ON COMMANDER!' I've heard tragic tales of players who became Elite and went on playing for years before they checked their status to realise they were Elite.

And guess what?

Squeeeeee!

It is happening again.

A Rant About Mike Hosking

2015-04-09T18:34:00.000+12:00

Some people move to Australia for work, some move for the sunshine and some move because they like to be near creatures that can poison or eat them, however my sole reason for moving to Australia was to get away from this man.

Hai ladies!

His name is Mike Hosking. If you're not from New Zealand you'll have no idea who he is and should consider yourself bloody lucky. He's one of those middle-aged, boorish, self-righteous, right-wing blow-hards you find blowing themselves hard on multiple media platforms in most Western countries, think a pinch of Jeremy Clarkson, with a smattering of Sean Hannity and a prick of Piers Morgan. Mike is everywhere in NZ. And I mean EVERYWHERE. Most outsiders think New Zealand is nothing but sheep and Hobbits but it's not, it's nothing but sheep and Hosking, although now most of the sheep have fucked off to be replaced by gaseous cows busy shitting in rivers, so New Zealand is nothing but cows and Hosking, Hosking and cows, farting and shitting as far as the ear can hear and the eye can see. You know in the movie of the book by Orwell starring Hurt and Hurt only has one tele that he can't turn off and every time he looks at it there's this big face telling him what to think and do... in NZ that face is Mike Hosking. Mike knows everything about everything and he's not afraid to tell you all about it all the time on television, radio, newspaper, Twitter and there is no escape, there is only submission and subservience to the Hosking juggernaut. I was terrified he'll suddenly turn up on TV over here but after the one million dollar Paul Henry Channel 10 fiasco I foolishly believed I could remain unexposed to his radioactive right-wing field of crap.

But the internet put an end to that. This morning I clicked on the NZ Herald app and for some reason the first headline that appeared was 'House Prices Represent Success In Life'. That sounds like the headline to a witty piece of satire I thought and being game for an early morning chuckle I clicked on it and Mike won. Mike found me, he knows where I am and I haven't got the energy to run anymore. His Remtentacles ('Rem is Mike-speak for Remuera where Mike lives and tentacles are what Mike has instead of arms), reached out through my smartphone screen and coated my eyes with a smeary smarmy army of Hoskingisms.

"What the house prices represent is not dissimilar to what the dollar represents: success."

"Success is the outworking of demand."

"The dollar is on a roll, housing is on a roll, we're on a roll. These are golden days."

So in Mike's world, a housing bubble making it virtually impossible for first home buyers to buy and a high exchange rate to discourage NZ exporters, foreign tourists and contribute to a trade deficit means golden days, probably because Mike is pissing all over us as he delivers another sermon on the mount. Only yesterday a principal economist from the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research declared the Auckland housing bubble to be the equivalent of a ponzi scheme, but he's only got an Honours degree in Economics so what the hell does he know. Mike left school when he was 16 and lives in the real world and the economist is renting! Renting! What a loser!

As well as being excited about a housing bubble and the Kiwi dollar nearing parity with the Oz dollar, (one can imagine Mike ringing random Australian phone numbers late at night with his designer jeans round his ankles to gleefully scream "Parity!" at the poor unfortunate who answers before hanging up to finish Hosking himself off), Mike is exploding with the belief that NZ has Australia by the, "short and curlies". 'It's over!" screams Mike. Pick any indicator, left, right, hazard lights, Australia are rooted! Australia is over a barrel and Mike is right behind ready to give it a bloody good seeing-to with his mighty currency.

But, here's the thing. I live in Australia, and the truth is Australia couldn't give a shit about NZ's currency. The NZ dollar doesn't even make it on screen during the financial bit of the news over here. Bluntly, we need them a hell of a lot more than they need us. I'm no fan of Don Brash, but he knows a thing or two about economics and here's what he said in 2007...

"There would be nothing remotely attractive about having closed the gap to Australia [by its economy declining] - as our largest trading partner and largest source of inward foreign investment, Australia's success matters greatly to us."

Yes, the Aussie economy is going through a downturn, but that's largely due to an oversupply of iron ore and an oversupply of Tony Abbott, but both of these will come to an end, hopefully one much sooner than the other. Melbourne is growing by around 250 people every day. There are eight apartment buildings going up within a few blocks of where I live. One is probably large enough to accommodate Ashburton. New Zealand is an amazing place, full of incredible people and businesses doing incredible things, but to say we've, "nailed it" because we almost reached parity makes no sense no matter how many cents our dollar is worth.

Boo! Hiss! What a party pooper Cooper! Let's hear some more from the Hosker...

"This little nation of four and a half million produces a dollar that is at least as appealing as that monstrous land to our left. "

Ah, the old per-capita/small population gambit, used since the dawn of time to make us feel better about only winning one gold, two silver and seven bronze medals. Yes, the NZ economy is doing well, but I suspect its official cash rate of 3.5% compared to Australia's rate of 2.25% and dropping may have something to do with our sexy come hither dollar being so irresistible. I got a C+ in first year economics and 88% in my audio engineering diploma so I know about these things.

But I don't own a house. Mike owns a house. Maybe two. Maybe more. And now it's cheaper for him to pop over to Melbourne to buy his Ksubi jeans so we're all good and golden bro. Who gives a toss that the level of child poverty in Godzone has doubled since 1983 with around 280,000 kids going to school hungry and who cares that the top 1% of adults own three time's as much of the country's wealth as the entire lower half put together, success is measured by the value of your house and the value of your dollar.

And if you haven't got your hands on either, tough luck.

Every Which Way But Puce

2015-01-03T17:11:00.000+13:00

Bloody Bono. He flies off his bike in Central Park, breaking numerous ~~bonos~~ bones in his body and face and still has the work ethic to write a 6000 word 'Little Book of A Big Year: Bono's A to Z of 2014'. Most people would be satisfied with feeling sorry for yourself while scoffing morphine jelly but not Bono, he writes a little book, plus a few songs and probably most of a Spiderman II musical.

I've just finished reading Bono's little book and it's quite good. He says at the start, "you shouldn't have time to read this," but unlike Bono I am a high level procrastinator who can always find time to fit 6000 words of delay into my day. After I finished I felt guilty. Twice. First because I'd spent half an hour reading Bono's 6000 words when I should have been typing six of my own and second, even though Bono had every excuse in the world not to write, he wrote. He wrote lots. And if Bono can write a little book while the blood of Irish virgins is being pumped into him, the least I can do is write a blog post.

Bono's little book is a bit like those group letters people used to send around Christmas 30 years ago when Bono was screaming, "Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you!" They usually had a hand-written salutation and maybe a wee written message at the bottom like 'Hope you have a great year but not as great as mine,' and in-between there were two pages of photocopied text telling people they hardly knew about all the amazing bloody things they achieved over the year and all the amazing bloody places they visited and how bloody clever their kids were and how bloody proud they were of all the amazing bloody things their bloody kids bloody achieved over the year and how bloody much they love bloody Apple and Jimmy Kimmel and Kanye West. Chain-letters were essentially a periodic analogue version of Facebook, which I'm not on anymore, just in case any of you have the hump with me thinking I've de-friended you. I haven't de-friended you, I've de-friended the world.

The cat is meowing at me. One moment...

Poor thing. It's 36 degrees at the moment (96.8 for North American readers), and she's all hot and bothered. Possibly. It could also be a subtle ruse to get early tuna and if that's the case she's played me like a fishy fiddle. She's got her own evaporative cooler in her room so I suspect she's just trying it on. Her evaporative cooler is cool and looks a bit like a 70's Dr. Who villain.

Evaporate! Evaporate!

Anyway, I gave Facebook the old heave-ho a few months ago and haven't missed it a jot. Except on my birthday when Facebook didn't tell people it was my birthday and nobody knew it was my birthday and nobody sent me a message on Facebook to wish me happy birthday. If Facebook had a function where it could remain dormant like a volcano and suddenly come to life for one day every year to spew hot molten messages of birthday love at my face before going to sleep again I may still be on it. If anyone reading knows Mark Zuckerberg they should have a word to him. Not that anybody will be reading as now I can't promote my blog on Facebook.

I don't do new year's resolutions but if I did I'd resolve to write two blog posts a week for all of 2015. I'd also resolve to get my legs tanned by natural means. I went swimming in Chiltern on Xmas day in nothing but boxers, borrowed shorts and water, and two days later my milky white skin woke up like a volcano and spewed hot molten messages of itchy red rash everywhere. Polymorphous Light Eruption or PMLE possibly. They've settled down now to a delicate shade of puce. It will mean the end of the official 'Greg Cooper Comedy Legs (c) 1973' and God knows, those legs saved me during many hell mingles and gigs, but I'm ready to move on. I am more than my white legs. I am a puce man. I am a puce man. I am the walrus.

My Long Racist Penis Show

2014-08-06T10:59:00.000+12:00

It's bad form to review reviews about your own show but fuck it, here goes.

A show I've written and directed opened in Auckland last week called MAMIL. MAMIL stands for Middle Aged Man In Lycra and is a one-man show starring the very fine actor Mark Hadlow. I've been working on the script for over two years and it's become a show I'm very proud of. Still not perfect by any stretch, but it's funny, and moving and deals with issues I haven't seen dealt with on stage before.

It opened on Friday August 25th. The opening went really well. People were laughing all through and Mark got a standing ovation at the end. I was pretty happy. Before I go any further I shall type some words in capitals...I'm not yelling at you dear reader...I'm yelling at the world...

I KNOW IT'S TOO LONG.

I've known it forever. I knew it after the first draft, that's why the three subsequent drafts got shorter. I know it needs another trim but like pubic hair it needs time in front of audience to discover which bits need trimming so it doesn't end up looking like a creepy childlike penis...which apparently the play already contains and makes everyone watching extremely uncomfortable.

So, after the euphoria of champagne and sausage rolls on Friday night, the first review hit the webosphere on Saturday morning and you can read it here.

This review appeared on a NZ site called Theatreview. They've been going through a bit of internal self-analysis recently due to the perception you could book the Basement, flick on a parcan, eat a sausage roll and get a rave review, but after a hui and an epic forum discussion they've changed their ways. So, in many ways, this "Pearl, Peccadillo or just too Pervy?" notice is pretty progressive.

The first half's all good. I disagree with some of it but that's fine. Then we come to this:

I'm not easily shocked, but the conversations between Bryan and (Hadlow playing) his desperate, needy penis as a character are, for me, a step too far. This repulses many in the audience.

I was at this show. I was a bit pissed, but I cannot recall anyone standing up, stopping the show and asking everyone who felt repulsed by Mark talking to his own penis to raise their hand...or their penis. I cannot recall anyone afterwards doing a survey where audience members got to mark their 'Penis Repulsion' levels with penis pens on penis paper on a scale of 1-5 where 1 is 'Not at all repulsed' and 5 is 'I vomited a bit on my penis'. From where I was sitting most of the audience were pissing themselves. They bloody loved Bryan's Penis.

Call me old-fashioned, but when an urgent, child-like, worried penis appears on stage, empathy suddenly leaves the building.

Starting any sentence with, "Call me old-fashioned, but..." or, "I'm not easily shocked, but..." is a bit like hearing someone start a sentence with, "I'm not racist, but...". You sort of know they're about to blether out something that instantly identifies them as an old-fashioned, easily shocked racist. (The play is also a bit racist...but more on that soon!) My question is how does one know when empathy has left the building? Is empathy like Elvis and a velvety voiced announcer tells the audience that, "Empathy has left the building" to make them all go away to seek their empathy elsewhere? Buggered if I know. The review obviously knew though. And the penis sounds more like Smeagol to me. Or perhaps that should be Smegol. I'm sorry if that was a step too far.

The review continues to say I've written two plays in one, which surely means double the bang for your buck so that's got to be good, before wrapping things up with:

I want it to be less like your pervy uncle, and more like your nice brother where the boundaries are clear, everything is open, and distress is absent.

WTFDTM? I think the review is saying my play is too Uncle Bully and not enough Boogie. Maybe. Anyway, let's move on to review number two before I become distressed and absent.

This one appeared in the NZ Herald on Monday and is a bit more important because some people who buy tickets to theatre read the NZ Herald. This review starts well by saying the show is only 85 minutes long as opposed to nearly two hours in the previous review, but at 85 minutes it's still, "just too long". I'm not sure what TARDIS this reviewer was watching MAMIL from, but I'd give my left nut to have it running at 85 minutes. This reviewer agrees with me that the nation-dividing character of 'Bryan's Penis' sounds more like Gollum and compliments me on my, "number of amusing puns and rhymes". The local references are also "welcome", but not alas for this NonAuckland (NonDorkland) audience member...

Show for Dorklanders Only

Herald Theatre, Aotea Centre

- Auckland

- Sat 26 Jul 2014

Posted 29/07/2014

by NonAucklander

This Fan's Reviews

Too many Auckland-related jokes known only to Aucklanders (Dorklanders). Not for people who live outside urban Auckland.
Too rude and embarrassing at times to even look at what was going on on the stage. These scenes did not need to be in the show.
Interesting in content and Mark Hadlow shows how talented he is in portraying 10 characters!

The rest of the comments are very nice though.

"But at 85 minutes, it's too long for a solo show - a common mistake for writers directing their own work."

How long is too long for a solo show? If a solo show falls in a a forest, and no-one is around to hear it, is it too long? I remember seeing Pete Postlethwaite in a solo show called Scaramouche Jones and it was definitely longer than 85 minutes, but I bet nobody was asking Pete if he could bang it through a bit faster. It's a common mistake though which is reassuring.

(The play is also a bit racist...but more on that soon!)

Jane Hakaraia's lights get a good mention which is fab, because Jane is awesome and her lighting design was bloody brilliant.

This review finishes by reprimanding Mark for giving the operator a hard time and then reprimanding him again for 'fluffing' his lines and corpsing. Big sigh. Deep breath. We've got a fantastic operator called Stephen, also known as 'Stretch' because he's rather tall. Mark and Stretch get on very well. A lot of the sound cues are visual cues from Mark and when they aren't in sync it's very funny. Mark will comment, he may even act like he's outraged. It's very funny. Sometimes he'll ask for the cue again. It's very funny. Sometimes Mark will fluff a line and comment on it. It's very funny. Sometimes he will corpse. It's very funny.This all happened on opening night and it was very funny. Most of the audience were fully aware of what was going on and laughed like drains.

It concludes by dissing our "clunky"set, which the previous review thought was "strong" and sums the show up with this wee closing zinger:

"Half-baked with occasional laughs. Possibly cynical; or maybe that's just me."

I'm possibly cynical, but this review is half-baked; or maybe that's just me.

Only one to go dear reader, stick with me. This one appeared in a blog just like mine called The Pantographic Punch. Actually, it's a much prettier blog than mine. I'd love for my blog to look as pristine and minimalist as The Pantographic Punch but I don't know how. This one starts with a brief plot summary before correctly deducing my intention is humour. It then points out my play is made up of, "a slew of tired stereotypes". The previous review commented on my "tired old fashioned" racial stereotypes. So, it's finally time to address the white elephant in the room.

I am a tired, old fashioned racist.

People who know me already know this. They all whisper, "Ah, there's Greg, he's such a tired, old fashioned racist", after I go to bed at 8:30pm in my flannelette KKK jim-jams. It's not my fault though. I'm from Christchurch. I live in Melbourne now, and that blank look the locals give you when you tell them you don't support an AFL team is exactly the look you get in Christchurch when you tell a local you're not a racist. They just can't comprehend it. You are alien to them. When I look back on those halcyon days of performing racist improv at The Court Theatre before going into town to eat some racist KFC and getting into a friendly racist fight with other racists on Colombo Street, I'm not surprised some of my stereotypical racism has leaked into my never-ending solo show. Luckily for me there are some fans of tired racist stereotypes in the audience the night this review was done...

"There are laughs the night I go. The laughs are the most disturbing part of the show."

God only knows how disturbed this reviewer would have been with the standing ovation on opening night. Other people laughing at a comedy show you don't find amusing is very disturbing though and this review has every right to be disturbed. At least the most disturbing thing wasn't the talking penis...

"He’s frank about his impotence, too, but it’s made a little creepy by him playing the character of his penis with a child’s voice (“why don’t you touch me anymore?” it inquires innocently at one point)."

...or maybe not.

I think I'd better stop now before I turn into Morrissey. There have been some positive reviews, you can read them here and here. I know I should probably take a line from the show I've written and, "harden up you little prick", but call me old fashioned, I don't think it's too much to ask for a reviewer to at least acknowledge that although a show isn't for them, the majority of the audience are laughing and enjoying themselves. Maybe a standing ovation is worth a mention too.

The show is selling well though, and we've received terrific feedback from people in the industry we hugely respect and audience members we've never met before.

That'll do. I'm tired and I need to go talk to my racist penis.

http://www.ticketmaster.co.nz/MAMIL-tickets/artist/1995733

Lorde Save Us

2013-11-08T15:00:00.000+13:00

Dear Lorde

Firstly, I would like to apologise for sending you an open letter. I realise open letters are very popular at present, with Sufjan sending one to Miley and Miley sending one to Liam and BlackBerry sending one to ~~its customers~~ no one, but I'm not jumping on the open wagon just to be as hip and down with the kids as BlackBerry. I would have sent you a closed letter but I doubt 'Lorde, Somewhere in Devonport, Auckland, New Zealand', would have reached you. I'm guessing being as busy as you are you're not at home much anyway. I also read NZ Post are only delivering letters on the second equinox of every fourth leap year so I decided to play it safe and rely on the extensive readership of my blog to get this important communiqué to you. As a token of its importance I just spent five minutes working out how to put the accent aigu over the 'e' but gave up and copied and pasted it from the internet. Michael Bublé has an accent aigu too. Have you met him? He seems nice but I don't like his music much. Don't tell him that if you meet him, as like I said he seems nice. Perhaps one day you could add an accent aigu to your name. This is how it would look.

Lordé.

Not bad. If you ever do a French album it could be a shrewd move as the French seem to appreciate it when you make an effort to speak French. You would have to say your name differently though, a bit like Debbie Dorday. Do you remember Debbie Dorday? She used to have a TV ad in NZ where she would breathlessly exclaim, "See you at Burgandys!", but this was probably a bit before your time. There is also the chance you could be confused with Eurovision Song Contest winning monster mask wearing Finnish hard rock band Lordi, so don't rush into it.

I'm really enjoying your music. You've got a great set of pipes and it's very refreshing you seem happy singing not half naked. I imagine life must be bit of a blur right now. Zipping round the world on Works Deluxe fares, being able to get into the Koru Lounge whenever you like and meeting glamorous people at glamorous gatherings in glamorous places. I see you just sang at MoMA in NYC in front of people like Anna Wintour, Karl Lagerfield and David Bowie to help celebrate the career of Tilda Swinton. That must have been awesome. According to the MoMA website Tilda has "multihyphenate talents" and who can argue with a word like that. David Bowie most certainly has multihyphenate talents and there you are right between them, another multihyphenate talent hypenating their multihyphenate talents.

But, there is someone else in this photo. No, don't turn around, he's still there. Just keep looking at the camera. His head is right to your right. Smaller than yours, perfectly framed and monstrously in focus. A tanned medium sized beardy head gazing into Tilda's ear and grinning...that grin...that only he can grin. That all-knowing knowing-all grin of someone who knows he's made it to the perfect position to make it in shot. I have seen this grin before. It has many faces and many names, but I know it only as...

Sandrooooooooooooooo.....(whisper)......ooooooooooo....(hardly audible)....ooooooooo......(out of breath)

How does he do it? How does he find these background bonanzas with such consummate beardy ease? I don't know. I've spent the last eight years of my life trying to find out and it's left me a bankrupt, broken, itchy, rubby shell of a man. I even wrote a play about it and spent a small fortune on flyers and stuff but nobody came. Why?

Sandrooooooooooooooo.....(whisper)......ooooooooooo....(hardly audible)....ooooooooo......(out of breath)

His power is as deep and immense as his beard. I have tried in vain to warn the world and failed but I hope this open letter will succeed in warning you. Like me my warning is short. Five short words.

DON'T. LET. HIM. SKETCH. YOU.

He will ask. He may have already. But if not, he will. Maybe on Twitter. Maybe via email. Maybe he will get Tilda to ask for him. But he will ask. He always asks. He didn't ask me, but he will ask you. And once he's sketched you before you can say...

Sandrooooooooooooooo.....(whisper)......ooooooooooo....(hardly audible)....ooooooooo......(out of breath)

...you will be forever in his power and he will be travel the world with you and photobomb your photos. Forever.

I know this sounds like the ramblings of a crazy man. From what I've read you've got your head screwed on, but you must understand, his is a power like no other. Tilda fought valiantly but lost. And she was Jadis, the White Witch! Even by writing this I'm putting myself at risk. Everytime I did my one-man show I expected it to be my last, and based on how much money I lost at the Melbourne Fringe I'm a bit miffed it wasn't.

Please dear Lorde, I beg of you. Think of him as a dog thinks of a power pole, or that Chinese guy thinks of his garden path. Just spray and walk away. You don't need to be sketched by him. There are plenty more sketchers in the sea. Rolf Harris would love to sketch you and he even painted the Queen.

Now I'm going to go check the door is locked and stroke the cat

Your fan

Greg

P.S. Happy birthday.

Mercurious.

2013-11-02T17:15:00.003+13:00

I don't remember how my brother got into Queen but he really got into Queen in a big way. He owned all their CD's. He even had Brian May's 1992 solo album 'Back to the Light' but the less typed about that the better. So from a reasonably impressionable age my ear holes were filled with Freddie belting out songs about fairy queens and great king rats, Brian belting out songs about time travel and badgers, Roger belting out songs about how much he loves his car and John belting his bass guitar.

The only two things I can clearly remember about Live Aid in 1985 was Status Quo kicking things off with this song, I think the message was cheaper food makes poverty history, (and what is the man in the control booth doing with his big finger at 1.36?), and Freddie doing this fantastic stint of audience call and response. In fact if you've got a spare 25 minutes you could watch their whole set which I'm going to do right now and live blog it...

0:13 Someone holds up a banner saying 'Queen Works', either referring to the health of the Queen in 1985 or Queen's 1984 album 'The Works'
1:19 Freddie likes a lot of Pepsi. And one lager.
2:28 Freddie has some serious product in his hair.
2:36 Brian rips out a lovely guitar solo but nobody gives him a close up. He's probably a bit miffed.
2:43 Cancel that! Brian gets his close up. Bit late though.
2:53 Rolf Harris plays his wobble board in the wings to kick off Radio Lady Gaga.
2:59 Roger wakes up and starts drumming...whew.
3:45 Notice how all the camera crew are all in white. This was because Bob Geldof got a good deal on white pants and those 'Choose Life' shirts from George Michael. True fact.
3:53 Notice how Freddie has what looks like a dog collar around his right bicep. It's actually the collar for Brian's favourite badger 'Sir Patrick Moore' who passed away a few days before the concert.
4:23 Roger wakes up again and starts singing some BV's. Whew. Roger has a fantastic voice for a drummer, second only to Phil Collins, who was the only artist to play both the London and Philadelphia Live Aid concerts thanks to a flight on the conchords. Apparently he sang 'I Can Feel Me Coming In The Air Tonight' the whole way. True fact.
4:36 A-ha! The famous Radio Ga Ga clap. Which is cheekily just the YMCA, without the M and C with an extra A. They were sued by The Village People but settled out of Court for two of Brian's badgers and one of Freddie's cats. True fact.
5:57 The first sighting of John Deacon! And what a sighting. Phil Spector modelled his hair on John's for his recent murder trial. True fact.
7:00 If you listen closely you can hear every band and singer who's already performed whisper, "We were a bit shit", and every band and artist due to perform whisper, "Oh shit."
7:05 Let's see Chris Martin do this.
7:55 'Hammer To Fall' was written after Freddie saw the marching hammers in the video for 'Another Brick In The Wall' while off his gourd on snuff. True fact.
8:32 Look how high John's jeans are! True fact.
9:38 Brian launches into his second big solo and the camera stays on Freddie. Brian is a bit miffed.
9:44 Cancel that! Brian made his own guitar out of the wood from an old police phone box he found. If he plays 'The Power of Love' by Huey Lewis and The News he can time travel. True fact.
11:54 The man with the grey hair giving Freddie a pat is actually Andrew Ridgely from Wham without makeup and hair dye.
12:01 Look how short those jeans are! And I thought my legs were white and skinny.
12:35 I can play this! It's just a baby D chord and then you put your little finger somewhere.
12:50 For the longest time I thought the words were 'This thing, cola, I just can't handle it.' But after seeing how much Freddie loves his Pepsi that would just be dumb.
15:50 Freddie was about to go all Pete Townshend on his guitar but then realised that guitar belonged to Pete Townshend and pulled out at the last second. True fact.
16:41 For the longest time I thought the words were, 'Mud on your face, big disgrace, kicking your cat all over the place.' But Freddie LOVED his cats, he even wrote a song about one of them called Delilah, so that would just be dumb.
17:03 I can't play this!
18:11 Everybody!
18:12 'We Are The Champions' is one of the favourite songs of lazy half-arsed TV producers on election day, second only to 'The Final Countdown'.
19:50 See that big tent in the middle of the crowd? Do you know who's in there? Aslan. True fact.
21:41 We don't see it but Brian accidently played 'The Power of Love'. That's why it's dark and they're wearing different outfits.
24:44 The end.

How good was that. I wasn't planning on watching or writing about that at all but I'm jolly pleased I did. What I was planning on sharing is this...

'Under Pressure' is a fantastic song. If you click on the wee triangle hopefully you'll get to hear Freddie and David Bowie's vocal track all by itself. Their voices have been processed a bit with some echo and maybe a bit of flanging. Flanging is about the only technical term I can remember from my nine month audio engineering diploma at SAE in Auckland, but I can't remember what it actually does, although it sounds a bit rude doesn't it. If you can wack on some headphones, or 'cans' for those with an audio engineering diploma, it will be even better. Buds will be okay but cans will be way better. You could even flange your cans for added aural pleasure. It's quite moving to hear two of the greatest pop singers ever in full flight without any audio distraction. Near the end Roger Taylor even joins in and if a wee tear falls down your face don't be ashamed. What's even better is that Queen and Bowie wrote this incredible song over 24 hours deep within a Swiss studio nourished by nothing but chardonnay and coke.

Or maybe Pepsi

True fact.

Big Tony

2013-09-06T13:42:00.002+12:00

The following is a transcript of Tony Abbott's interview with Big Brother on Wednesday Sept 4th.

BB: Hello Tony, this is Big Brother.
TA: Hello Big Brother, this is Tony Abbott. I've got two B's in my name, just like you! Heh heh heh.
BB: Yes you do Tony.
TA: I've also got two daughters. They're tall and not bad looking.
BB: Yes Tony, your daughters look lovely.
TA: They have sex appeal.
BB: If you say so.
TA I just did.
BB: Why should our contestants vote for you Tony?
TA: I will stop the boats.
BB: Anything else?
TA: My daughters are not bad looking.
BB: You've already said that.
TA: I will stop the boats.
BB: You've already said that too.
TA: Fair dinkum.
BB: What's fair dinkum?
TA: Fair dinkum.
BB: You've already said fair dinkum.
TA: Fair dinkum.
BB: How will you stop the boats?
TA: By cutting 4.5 billion of foreign aid.
BB: How will that stop the boats?
TA: All the foreigners will die of aids.
BB: Please explain.
TA: Labour wants to waste 4.5 billion on helping foreigners with aids. By cutting this foreign aid all foreigners will die of aids and won't get on boats.
BB: That's not how...
TA: I like Foreigner, but I like Nickelback more. So does Joe Hockey.
BB: Mr Abbott...
TA: (Singing) This is how you remind me of what I really am...
BB: What about global warming?
TA: I will stop the global warming
BB: How?
TA: By keeping my hot daughters in the kitchen. Heh heh heh.
BB: Anything else?
TA: Fair dinkum.
BB: What about internet porn?
TA: I will stop the internet porn.
BB: How?
TA: By not building the National Broadband Network.
BB: That won't work.
TA: I will invest in fair dinkum dial-up so fair dinkum Australians cannot downloaddiddily dinkum anything. My daughters are porn enough for Australia. They have sexy appeal.
BB: Public transport?
TA: I will stop the public transport.
BB: Roads?
TA: I will not stop the roads.
BB: Anything else?
TA: I will stop everything else.
BB: Including gay marriage?
TA: Gay people will be put on the boats I buy from Indonesian fishermen and sent to New Zealand.
BB: Why New Zealand?
TA: New Zealand is gay.
BB: Didn't you marry a New Zealander?
TA: Are you calling me gay?
BB: No, but...
TA: I'll punch you mate, and your wall. I'm a boxer, I'm a cyclist, I'm a jogger...I worked out with the army last week!
BB: Calm down Tony.
TA: Are you a baddie?
BB: No.
TA: Are you a goodie?
BB: Yes.
TA: Fair dinkum.
BB: Thank you Tony.
TA: Heh heh heh.

Little Boy Blue

2013-07-23T13:37:00.000+12:00

Yesterday a woman had a baby and now it looks as though he's here to stay on the front page of every newspaper and magazine for the rest of my life. Women have babies all the time, in fact as I type this sentence babies are popping out all over the world like this:

Pop, pop, POP! ~~Music.~~

Everyone is very excited about this particular baby because one day he, he will be King, and you, you will be Queen, and nothing, will drive them away, because in the future we will be able to teleport and turn into flies. Big things around the world have been lit up blue to celebrate the arrival of the babe...

What babe?
The babe with the power to cut ribbons, wave and shake hands with shit loads of people in 54 independent sovereign states.

In my hometown they are lighting up their relatively new flight control tower blue to celebrate the fact the baby boy is a boy with blue blood and he's blue da ba dee da ba di x7. The last time the Christchurch control tower was blue was in September in an effort to make men flying to Hamilton face up to the prospect of prostate cancer. "Go Blue! Face up to prostate cancer". I'm not sure how blue relates to prostate cancer aside from the fact that blue screams BOY and most boys grow up to become MEN and MEN scream when other MEN put their finger up their bums to palpate their prostate.

The high point of New Zealand's celebration though, even higher than the Sky Tower, will be when the blue lights are switched on the giant corrugated iron sheep dog tonight in Tirau. This dog is the dogs bollocks. The only times I ever passed through Tirau were on the way to Rotorua to perform murder mysteries, and this giant dog with his sad giant corrugated eyes felt my pain and made me feel slightly better about spending all night dressed as a woman fending off the unwelcome attentions of drunk business men trying to palpate my prostate. Never been to Tirau? Never fear. Gaze upon this in awe and wonder.

Tonight, this giant dog and 36 other landmarks will be blue. In the background you may just be able to make out another giant corrugated iron figure. It is a sheep. But, I'm not going to post a photo of that because then you'll never have a reason to drive through Tirau, and you must.

Wouldn't it be amazing if Willkat called their blue baby Kong? Then to celebrate his coronation after a 106 year old ~~Charles~~ William (thanks Mum), collapses to death under the weight of the crown, he could put on a gorilla suit and scale The Shard while clutching Pippa Middleton.

Unfortunately what's unfortunate about this blue Monday is other immensely important news events have fallen under the royal radar. New Zealand is busy shaking itself into the ocean and nobody outside of New Zealand gives a rats pyjamas. Dennis Farina just died and nobody knows except Wikipedia. And this!

This is 16093 people from 43 countries breaking the world record for people in a line doing Riverdance! The old record was 652 in Nashville, Tennessee which:
a) Isn't very many.
and
b) Isn't in Ireland.
Look at them all dancing from the groin down. It's incredible. I can't be bothered finding out why dancing like this is called Riverdancing, however on closer inspection all they're really doing is treading water with no water, so I'd say it's how the Irish stopped drowning when they fell pissed in the River Liffey and then Bono said let's put lots of people on stage in a line pretending to tread water quickly and 25 million people will pay to watch.

Oh alright, but don't tell anyone.

A Post On Posters

2012-10-05T16:58:00.000+13:00

You'd think having spent three years at the University of Canterbury not doing a double degree in law and economics and doing a degree in business administration, with a good dollop of marketing and sociology, I'd have some of idea of how to sell a theatre show, but I don't.

I know you're meant to make up some posters and flyers. The previous AD of a theatre I worked at insisted all posters, "must be able to be read from a bus." I'm still not certain if he meant the poster must be able to be read from a moving bus, or if the poster itself was on a moving bus and must be able to be read by someone not on the bus, or if the poster should be able to be read by someone on the bus with the poster, but Melbourne has trams so it doesn't matter anyway.

Flyers though are crucial. I've had previous experience with flyers. Flyers are horrible. I dislike them intently. The only thing worse than giving a flyer is being given one. Nobody wants a flyer. They are little bits of paper laminated in lies. The flyer giver is pretending to like you, the flyer is riddled with cobbled corrupt quotes from fictitious publications about a completely different show to the one on the flyer, and the flyer recipient says they will definitely come to your show when they have no intention of attending. Sometimes the flyer recipient will reciprocate and perpetuate the lie cycle by giving you a flyer to their show, 'I Had A Nervous Breakdown But I'm Feeling Better About It Now I Can Sing And Smoke And Argue with My Mother And Eleven Other Family Members: **** The Scottish Age Herald Sun Tribune Time Out Someone's Blog Fringe Review', and then you have to gush a fountain of lies about how you'll definitely come along and tell all your friends and tweet and post and vote for them in the online audience Best of the Fringe Award.

I blew all my advertising budget, or what happened to be in my bank account at the time, on 50 posters and 500 flyers for Heroic Faun No. One. 50 posters isn't a lot, but I'm terrified of them after the traumatic experience of watching nine of my A3 posters get wiped out by one giant AFUCKOFF U2 Zooropa poster in Christchurch, minutes after I'd stuck them up with sticky tape, two toilet rolls, one pipe cleaner and a pair of snips. The entire poster run for my show, 'Whoops I've Lost My Pukeko In A Moist Place **** The Christchurch Bugler', was eviscerated by this monstrosity.


BoNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

New Zooland. Hilarious. And Bono's got a fag in his mouth, which is hardly setting a good example for the youth is it. The Edge actually looks like he's celebrating the fact he ruined my season and Adam looks like he's been human centepeded onto the edge of The Edge. The only one who seems the slightest bit remorseful is Larry, and he's always been my favourite B52U2er. Thank you Larry.

I've given five of my posters to the Fringe and they've put them up somewhere. I'm using another 15 of them during the season for Sandro to sketch a picture of a lucky audience member on the back. A few have been given away and the cat chewed up one, so that leaves about 20. Now, in real time, I shall go and conquer my U2 fear, by putting up 8% of my poster run on a bollard on the corner of Stanley Street and Smith Street, and take photos to prove it...talk amongst yourselves, I may be gone for some time.

I'm back. It all went off without a hitch. Here I am buying the naughty tools of my trade at Woolworths. I'm wearing my official 'The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe' cap to hide my identity, and for its symbolic symbolism. I'm a bit blotchy in the face due to nervousness and being allergic to everything.


Elmer's School Glue was on special at $2.49

Here is a photo of the bollard before my heroic assault.

It was a tough choice as to the posters I would have to envelop, but after seconds of deep contemplation I decided Turbonegro and Spiritualized could cope with the marketing hit. I've hyperlinked to their shows as a small token of my remorse, and I think Spiritualized may have already sold out. Now it was time to break out the Elmers and get marketing!

Generations of school children have grown up with this #1 brand of school glue. Elmer’s washable no-run school glue is easy to use and stays where you put it. It is safe, non-toxic and washable, so accidental messes mean easy clean-up!

You may notice I'm wearing sunglasses now as well as my cap. That's because I'm very famous in Melbourne and didn't want anyone to see me pasting up my own posters. A police car drove past slowly...


Bad Greg, bad Greg, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do with your Elmer's Glue?

...but I just kept on gluing. Soon, the first posters were in place.

I kept expecting Bono to turn up with a big poster, but he must have been too busy evading tax. I pressed on pressing on posters and before you could say, "Over me and over you, stuck together with God's glue, it's going to get stickier too', I was done!

Great stuff!

And finally, here's the completed bollard in action, busy generating thousands of dollars worth of ticket sales.

Ooooh, I must get tickets to that!

Wow. I've overcome a phobia that's crippled me emotionally and professionally for 20 years, and I've still got 16 posters and 200 flyers left. What a day! Tickets must be flying out of the internet by now, so go here quick and don't miss out.

One Man. One Goal. One Fringe Season.

2012-09-27T15:23:00.001+12:00

Regular readers of this sporadic blog might know that from time to time I like to do a bit of acting. I'm not a trained actor per se, in that I didn't attend such esteemed institutions as RADA, LAMBA, LADA or BADABING, however that hasn't stopped me from tackling such meaty roles as, 'The Big Bad Wolf', 'Gerry Brownlee', 'All three of the three bears in Goldilocks & The Three Bears at once', and 'Godzilla'. Godzilla was particularly tricky as I couldn't see out of his big green foamy head and had to negotiate my way by lifting my green flippers high while feeling for set/actors/children with my green rubber gloves. I only fell over once, but that was due more to a two hour session at the Dux before the final show.

Regular readers will also know that I've done a show called 'Heroic Faun No. One' a couple of times. It's a one-man show about my time as a featured extra on the Disney film, 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe.' One-man shows are done for two reasons. The first is so an established and famous actor can show off without fear of being upstaged by some young go-getter just out of LABIA. Jean-Luc Picard handled 43 parts in his one-man adaptation of 'A Christmas Carol', and the baddie from Beverly Hills Cop has done heaps of one-man shows, probably because everyone is too scared to share the stage with him.

"Go on...say your line punk."

A friend of mine, who was a centaur in 'The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe', waited at stage door to get this man's autograph after his one-man version of 'The Metamorphosis', and he metamorphosised my friend into a blubbering wreck when he couldn't get the cap off his Sharpie fast enough. My friend is 6' 2" and bald, and this Beverly Hills baddie crushed him like the dung beetle he'd just been pretending to be. Scary stuff.

The second reason one-man shows are done is because the actor is not well known, and has no money to pay for things like other actors, set, props, costumes, producers, publicists, designers and a director, but still craves the opportunity to wake up in the middle of the night soaking in stress induced sweat, wondering if they will get 30% for the season to make enough to cover the venue and projector hire, indemnity insurance, festival registration fee, 500 flyers, 50 posters, bottle of spirit gum, crepe hair, wig, green and red fabric and back up rubber sword.

Thankfully I have managed to surround myself with a small group of tremendously talented and generous people who seem happy to give up their time and expertise to help me run around on stage in green tights for 55 minutes playing 12 different people, none of whom are Godzilla. If you happen to be in Melbourne anytime from this Friday until October 13th, you might want to come along by going here first.

If you're not you can still like the Heroic Faun Facebook Page.

I will do my best to post regular updates on how the season is progressing, unless I have to flee the country to Tasmania.

Finally, if like me you like cats, then watch this. Thanks to Gareth for putting it on his FB page

Wham Bam Thank You George Michael

2012-08-13T16:11:00.001+12:00

I was still very sleepy while watching the London Olympics Closing Ceremony this morning, but here's a review of the bits I can remember. I turned on the tele a few minutes after it started and saw a woman singing who I thought was Adele, but it wasn't. Then the guy from Auf Wiedersehen Pet popped out of something pretending to be Winston Churchill, while Stomp stomped and banged rubbish bins. It was only then that I noticed that the stage was in the shape of the Union Jack and everything was covered in big newspapers before the kettle whistled, so I missed most of Madness. They were singing 'Our House'. I wished they were doing 'Baggy Trousers', because I quite like that song, but everybody in the Olympics wore incredibly tight trousers so it probably wasn't appropriate. Then the Pet Shop boys came on dressed as black cones and Neil Tennant sang 'West End Girls' while Andrew Ridgely played the keyboard because George Michael didn't want anything to do with him. Actually before that there were some young boys on the back of a truck who I think were a Harry Potter themed boy-band called Wand Erection, although I was waiting for my toast to pop and not concentrating so they may have been the Spice Girls.

Then the Olympics DJ played a bit of a Beatles song because Paul McCartney was disqualified from singing it after fluffing the start to 'Hey Jude' at the Opening Ceremony. Ray Davies sang 'Waterloo Sunset' while everybody else was dressed as ABBA and dancing to 'Waterloo'. Adele sang again but it wasn't Adele. I smeared some of Dick Smith's Magnificent Australian Grown Honey, a "specially prepared premium blend by Dick Smith", on my toast and it was indeed magnificent. I thought Dick Smith only made do-it-yourself crystal sets and flew around the world in his helicopter, but trust me, his honey is to die for.

All the athletes came in with their iPhones and iPads as the official Olympic Worldwide partner Samsung sang the blues. Elbow sang two lovely songs while Eddie McGuire and some woman spouted incessant crap all over them. I really don't like Eddie McGuire. I've never met him but I know if I did I wouldn't take to him at all. He's like a cross between Paul Henry, Mike Hosking and a pooh, and I don't like any of them. For high performance athletes they were all moving very slowly, so the Olympics DJ had to play all the songs we'd already heard and ruined the magic by revealing lots of Milli Vanilli lipsynching had been going on behind our backs.

That's right, a brass beefeater band banged out Blur's 'Parklife' at some point, but Blur were too busy banging out 'Parklife' in Hyde Park to be there. This remined me a lot of hearing Andrew Causer play 'Funky Town' on a clarinet during fourth form music class. Some songs should never be played on wind instruments. 'Parklife' is one of them.

I'd heard a rumour that Kate Bush was going to sing, but alas, it turned out to be just that. The Olympics DJ did play 'Running Up That Hill' and for a second I was terrified the whiny nasal lead singer of Placebo was going to sing it, but thankfully he didn't. Lots of people built a tower out of boxes. Eddie McGuire said each box represented an Olympic event but I didn't believe him. He also kept blethering on about how, 'just one year ago London was on fire from race riots and the race riots were setting London on fire and the Olympics have solved the race riots and put the fire out because there were race riots a year ago and isn't it amazing how just one year later there's no race riots and everyone who could afford the thousand pound ticket to be here was having a fabulous time, no matter what race they were and nobody was rioting and there were no fires, except the Olympic flame, but that's meant to be there and...oooh look, there's an Australian athlete texting.'

Yoko remastered 'Imagine' and let us see some footage of John she'd kept in her closet for years as lots of people made John's face. Then George Michael turned up. Now, I love George Michael. I've got Wham's greatest hits on vinyl and follow him on Twitter and everything. I've even blogged about him. He nearly died in Austria so full credit to him for putting in the hard yards and making a good fist of 'Freedom '90'. The Olympics Audiovisual monitor even projected the word 'FREEDOM' onto the audience so everyone could sing along. I think because George hadn't been on stage for a while the occasion got the better of him and instead of going for a lie down he let rip with his new single 'White Light'. George wrote and sang 'Careless Whisper', one of the best songs ever with one of the best lyrics ever, 'guilty feet have got no rhythm'. Unfortunately 'White Light' is no 'Careless Whisper', and half way through George was obviously feeling guilty and started dancing unrhythmically. Like this.

Then he got all 'Walk Like An Egyptian' on it.

Then I couldn't take anymore and went to the loo.

When I came out there was a young man singing an old song on a Vespa. I was scared Sting might appear 'cos he was in Quadrophenia, but he was too busy making sure his orchestra was bigger than George's. Then the Olympics DJ played some David Bowie, but Bowie was a no-goey, so they got Kate Moss in as a last minute replacement. Kate appears in George's 'White Light' video, but after seeing George's dance moves wisely left him to his own devices. Annie Lennox or Bjork sang a song on a pirate ship and then Prince Harry sang 'Wish You Were Here' while George Michael tried to slip unnoticed out of the stadium on a tight-rope.

By now I was losing interest and stroking the cat. Russell Brand did something odd while some odd old guy pretended to play a Gemini CD Mixer in a big octopus. A woman sang, "It's not about the money money money", while being driven round and round in a Rolls Royce, and The Spice Girls sang, "La La La La La La La La La, La La La La La La La, La La La La La La La La La, La La La La La La La", on the top of some Priscillaed up black cabs. The guy with the really nasal voice from Placebo finally appeared and did a passable Liam Gallagher impersonation, before Eric Idle got everyone singing 'Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life'. This was so far the musical highlight of the evening, although it was quickly topped by the genius idea of projecting Freddie Mercury having an 80's Wembley sing-star battle with the crowd. This bit was genuinely moving, and proved beyond doubt that even though he's been dead for 20 years, nobody can work a stadium like Farrokh Bulsara. They even slipped in the 'fuck you' at the end I think. Here's the full video if you're interested.

Great stuff! On the home stretch now. I think I've forgotten Muse but who cares. Brian May had gone very Grey and wore a jacket with badgers and corgis on it. There were some speeches, Boris waved a flag, some guy who looked like a vampire said 'well done', the Brazilians danced and swept and then a Robbie-less Take That sang the Olympic flame into submission. The Real Who sang 'My Generation' and 'Baba O'Riley', which was great. I wished they'd done this one though. What a tune.

And then, with a billion quids worth of fireworks it was all over. Well done London. Well done Dick Smith. Well done everyone.

I Flu Jetstar

2012-08-03T15:37:00.002+12:00

My body is ~~a wonderland~~ the harborer of a governmentally approved chronic illness, so I'm entitled to a complimentary flu vaccination every year. I always feel a little smug when I go to get my steroids to inhale, snort and smear, and end up getting injected with a nearly dead pathogen for free. It's not as good as being a member of the Koru Club, but pretty close. The doctor always tells me to wait for 15 minutes just in case I turn into a fly, however I usually loiter longer to parade my free wee white plaster on my shoulder to those poor unfortunates who aren't blessed with a chronic illness.

My free flu jab has kept me flu free for as long as I can remember. Until this year. This year I may as well have been injected with the tears of a honeybee for all the good it did. I didn't help myself by flying Jetstar return to Sydney either. Jetstar didn't help me, or the honeybee, by cancelling the flight and rescheduling me onto an international flight...to Sydney...from Melbourne, without telling me that I'd have to go through customs and would require a passport. To go from Melbourne. To Sydney. The orange Jetstar lady in the orange Jetstar uniform laughed at my New Zealand drivers license, and in desperation I began yanking out any Australian card I had in my wallet; my Commonwealth Bank Debit Card, my Myki, my Yarra Libraries Your Library Membership card, my Woolworths Everyday Rewards card, my Ikea Family card entitling me to free coffee and meatballs without needing to make a purchase, and finally my Medicare card. The orange lady stopped cackling, snatched my Medicare card, and scuttled off for what seemed like an eternity. A Jetstar eternity equals seven human eternities so it was a really long eternity. She returned and said, "Yeah, well, ya might make it thru love, I dunno really, give it a crack, it works for kids sometimes." The man at passport control looked very dubious about the whole sordid affair. His hand hovered over his stamp while I pretended to be a seven year old boy and wet myself. "Fair enough," he finally said, and stamped me through. I celebrated by doing a Jetstar jump when I got to Sydney in my Australian bikini.

What a palava. New Zealand invented the pavlova. I couldn't even buy any duty free. The plane was like one of those scenes near the end of a contagion film like Contagion, where everyone is miserable and coughing and wishing they were dead and not flying Jetstar. The coughs of a million budget airline passengers recirculated through the fetid air into my chronically ill lungs, and within days my free vaccination waved a white blood cell and gave up the fight.

My big mistake was getting the jab in New Zealand. This protected me from the NZ flu, but in hindsight didn't stand a chance against the infinitely more confident, aggressive and larakinish Australian strain. The NZ flu is an understated, self-deprecatory one that has a good crack at you, but doesn't want to cause too much puss. The Aussie strain screams 'Oi, Oi Oi!', smashes you in the head, drinks all your fluids and shits itself in your lungs. Its speed and tenacity were terrifying. I was in bed for a day and a half and spent the rest of the week trying to evacuate snot and phlegm on the minute every minute. I've been coughing like a Jetstar passenger for weeks, although I can now scull a whole bottle of Robitussen while suppositing Neurofen Zavance, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

It also gave me a good excuse to watch some Olympics. None of my opening ceremony predictions were correct, however I was very pleased to see some Chinese, Korean and Indonesian women had a good crack at BADminton before they all got kicked out. It's been interesting living in a different country while the games are on to monitor the mood of the populous as their athletes get second. This picture sums up the difference between here and the homeland rather well.

Created by clever Jonathan Louis Fox.

I'm just hoping New Zealand wins a second gold before Australia does to put us ahead on the medals table. It will probably mean they shut their borders and deport us all, but it'll be worth it.

Rings Can Only Get Better

2012-07-17T17:39:00.000+12:00

The Five Rings of the Apocalypse are almost upon us and London is in a frenzy of painting rings on ring roads and installing missiles to shoot down anyone eating fries that haven't passed through the happy anus of Ronald McDonald. The ring road rings designate Olympic Lanes, allowing athletes to get to their places of running, tossing and leaping faster by forcing locals to drive their cars on two wheels like the Dukes of Hazzard. On the footpath.

Picture nicked from @theJeremyVine

I love the Olympics. Once when I was young and the Earth was 1984, I drew a beautiful poster for the Los Angeles Olympics instead of a poster about Jesus. It was during Scripture Class at Northcote Primary School, and the religious man who turned up once a week to fill us with red wine and the body of Christ thought it was quite good, although he was very old and may have thought my picture of the guy who flew into the opening ceremony on a jet pack was actually Jesus.


Not Jesus.

Jesus.

A guy on a Jet Pack! London will have a tough time topping that. Danny Boyle's directing it so hopefully it will be lots of Scottish people pretending to inject heroin, and lots of British people pretending to die of a mysterious virus, and lots of Indians pretending to become millionaires, and lots of Americans pretending to cut their own arms off, and then they all work together to re-ignite a giant dying sun disguised as the Olympic flame. Then Gary Barlow shoots the tax money he's avoided paying out of a huge cannon, and the Spice Girls shoot Posh Spice out of a cannon, and Daniel Craig catches her unless a gust of wind blows her away. Finally Underworld play their hit 'Born Slippy', cunningly changed to 'Born Zippy', and Zippy from Rainbow flies in on a Jet Pack and joins Sir Paul McCartney in a rousing sing-a-long of Mull of Kintyre, with every audience member playing complementary McDonalds bagpipes for the final chorus. I can't wait.

I'd love to compete in the Olympics, but unfortunately I'm rubbish at all the things you need to be really good at to compete in the Olympics. This is obviously discriminatory and I'm surprised nothing has been done about it. It's all running and rowing and cycling and swimming and jumping and throwing and lifting and shooting and beach volleyball. The only remotely athletic things I've ever done are punching myself in the face with a hand-weight during a boxing class, and nearly shitting myself during a yoga class.

So, I have made a list of five new events I think I'd be quite good at that should be included in the 2016 Olympics in...somewhere

Synchronised Sinking. I'm an OK swimmer, a terrible diver but I'm great at sinking. After bombing off a high board, both competitors must sink in perfect unison, ideally hitting the bottom at exactly the same time. Extra points for a big splash and if your togs fall off on impact.

Horse Whispering. I've ridden a horse once in my life and that is enough. I am very good at flapping my lips like a horse and dressing up like one though. This event involves two people dressed as a pantomime horse. Real Equestrian athletes are blindfolded and competitors must try to fool them into thinking they are a real horse by making horse noises and eating sugarcubes. The most realistic horse wins gold and the chance to compete in the Dressage.

Gymnastics: The Rommel Horse. Scheduled after the previous event to put the rear half of the horse through their paces. Two competitors dressed as an equine version of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel must perform an interpretative dance encapsulating his achievements in the North African campaign, while male gymnasts perform circles, scissors and kehrswings on their back.

BADminton. The winners of this event are the most inept at playing badminton. I'm guaranteed a medal.

100m Walk. I'm good at walking but I'm buggered if I'm going to do it for 50 km.

Other possibles include the MC Hammer Throw, where competitors hurl a copy of 'Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em' at MC Hammer until someone hurts him, and the Pole Vault, where competitors must use a very stiff Polish person to propel themselves high into the air.

I hope you all enjoy the Olympics as much as I will. It sounds like the competitors will be having a fantastic time as well, with unlimited free McDonalds, and 100,000 free flavoured condoms that taste exactly like a Quarter Pounder with extra cheese.

50 Shades of Chicken

2012-07-10T14:16:00.003+12:00

I've blogged about KFC before and now it's happening again. A lot has changed since my last KFC inspired post in July 2009. Michael Jackson died, TomKat divorced and a bunch of people discovered a particle of God hiding inside a giant ring underneath Switzerland. I tried to feel clever by watching the live announcement of this discovery but ended up feeling annoyed by the lackluster state of their PowerPoint slides.

Some pedantic font-Nazis pooh poohed the physicists for using the Collingwood of fonts Comic Sans, but people who get foamy and fisty about a typeface need to take a good hard look at themselves in a glasshouse with a black kettle. The font isn't the issue, it's the text. The physicist reads the text aloud so it doesn't need to be in the slide. The slide should have an exciting image to support what is being read. I'll whip something up now.

But back to the chicken. Today I came across this article detailing the details of KFC's intention to introduce self-service kiosks to their house of chicken emporiums. Here's a picture of some lucky French people ordering their deux poulets pièce et paquet trimestre puces using nothing but pokey digits and a greasy screen.

I'm no French speaker but those words above their heads look suspiciously like speed and attitude and ici. By using Google Translate I can tell you they translate to speed and attitude and here. Having ordered a metric-tonne of KFC in my lifetime, I can honestly say the last thing I want when ordering my guilt-gobble is attitude, and the first thing I want is speed. Here. Ordering KFC is like buying condoms, the less human interaction the better. They also taste quite similar...apparently. The French have had these Automatic Poulet Machines (APM) for years, lucky bâtards. I've studied this picture for a while and the slots don't look big enough for a breast or thigh, possibly a wing might make it through, chips should be fine although they'd have to come out all nicely lined up.

Restaurant Brands CEO Russell Creedy is a big fan. 'Yes indeedy', said Russell Creedy, 'there's a real needy for speedy feedy for the greedy and the weedy...oooh, there's Shahid Afridi!"

Mr Creedy also explains how the APM enhances customer's in-store experience by, "allowing people to spend more time considering what food items they wanted to buy." I'm sorry Mr Creedy, but surely this defeats the purpose of the speedy? I know what I want. I want a two piece quarter pack if I want to loathe myself for an afternoon, or a three piece quarter pack if I want to hate myself for a day. What I don't want is some arse standing ahead of me pondering the merits of a Giant Feast versus a Super Variety Bucket.

Mr Creedy goes on to say, "They can browse instead of being at a counter face-to-face with somebody who's looking at them saying, 'What would you like?'" I know where you're coming from there Mr Creedy. I fucking hate having to look at someone who's looking at me and rudely asking what I would like. Who do they think they are? Don't look at me. Don't look at me! Don't talk to me! I would like a two piece quarter pack please. DON'T LOOK AT ME! Do you sell condoms?

KFC have spent $2.7 billion dollars with Itchy & Saatchi to come up with the name 'Project Fusion' for this little escapade. Nuclear fusion is the process by which two or more atomic nuclei join together to form a single heavier nucleus, Project Fusion is the process by which you get your fried chicken faster. Auckland's North Shore will be the first lucky suburb to get this incredible technology and then it will be rolled out to other stores once they figure out how to fuse the kiosks with four wheels. Heaven knows when they will reach Australia. Still, in Australia KFC give you those dinky wee moist wipey finger sanitary napkins that are but a distant memory back in NZ. So there.

Exciting times. God particles. Self service chicken dispensers. Fifty shades of grey. What will they come up with next?

Make Sure You're Connected

2012-06-02T22:38:00.001+12:00

There comes a point in crime shows made up of acronyms, place names and 80's rappers where the lead investigator looks at a picture of the crime scene, a picture of the victim, a mug on their desk commemorating the 1937 Hindenburg disaster and a poodle brought in for questioning in relation to a suspicious fire at a grouting factory, and finally make the connections necessary to solve the crime.

'Of course. The victim didn't die of lead poisoning, all those pencils shoved up his nose were a clue he left us in the seconds before he died. His mouth in the shape of a 'NO' and his body in the shape of an 'A' are telling us to remove the A from the lead giving Led, as in Zeppelin. Zeppelin's used hydrogen, a colourless highly flammable gas contained in farts. Unbeknownst to the victim, the murderer had been flooding his home with farts for years and grouting up all his windows. When the murderer realised hydrogen wasn't poisonous he flew into a rage and chewed through a cable. Later that night when the victim switched on his lava lamp it blew his house up. Arrest that poodle.'

I'm temping again at the moment so have a lot of time on my hands to make connections. My hands are dripping with time and my brain with connections in between taking orders for Semi Sculpting Freeze and Shine High Lift Self Styling Peroxide Paste. The connections I've made are terrifying. By continuing to read this you may be putting your own life and ten of your Facebook friends at risk, so I'd advise to stop reading now and go gander at a safe site like this.

Still with me? OK, let's begin.

It is common knowledge that every week a million people move from New Zealand to Australia. This means in a few years there will be nobody left in New Zealand. We all know it's happening and most pundits argue it's due to the increasing Trans-Tasman income gap, warmer weather and the prospect of a reality show about Sally and Jamie Ridge. What nobody is asking is why these things are being allowed to happen. The weather issue is tricky to remedy, but surely it's not that hard to pay people more and take all the funding for 'A Ridge To Nowhere' and make something more entertaining like 'Celebrity Target', where ex-Shortland Street stars sneak into carpet cleaners homes to sniff their undies. The scary truth is these calamities are part of a coordinated attack designed to drive the entire New Zealand population across the ditch as quickly as possible. It is breathtaking in its scope and effectiveness and funded by three immensely powerful people with one hand in their pocket and the other up John Key's bum.

The first and most powerful of the triumvirate is this man.

I'm the king of ~~the world~~ New Zealand!

This man is called James Cameron. He has kept a very low profile and many of you are probably not even aware he exists. Not only is he a deep sea diver and film maker, he is also Canadian. His most recent film was about a giant ship that hit a giant tree and sunk to the bottom of a giant ocean into a land of blue people who live in mushrooms and battle a wizard and his cat. It was called Avatitanicar and made more money than the world had available resulting in the Global Financial Crisis. JC is buying up New Zealand land at an astonishing rate and based on some quick conspiracy extrapolation, will own half of New Zealand by my next birthday.

The second member is this man.

I'm the king of ~~the world~~ Wellington!

His name is Peter Jackson and he is not a deep sea diver, but is a film maker and possibly Canadian. He currently owns all of Wellington and is good friends with John Key and JC. What is most disturbing is that right behind PJ in this photo you can clearly see a gold Terminator waiting to kill any New Zealand actor asking for minimum terms and conditions. Who invented the Terminator? James Cameron did! The connections begin.

The third and most terrifying of the triumvirate is...

I'm the Queen of ~~the world~~ Wanaka!

Shania Twain. She is not a deep sea diver or a film maker but is definitely Canadian. She currently owns 24, 731 hectares of Wanaka paid for by idiots who loved 'Man! I Feel Like A Woman'.

So, we have a puppet Prime Minister being manipulated by at least two Canadians into implementing policies to free up land for them to build giant fortress like lairs filled with mysterious mists. The yellow peril dairy farm buy-up is a red herring planted by fat cats. We have been misled and obfuscated. The final question to ask is...

Why?

The answer came to me while I was keying an order for Moisture Boosting Baby Detangler, and it was so shocking I think I dispatched three 300ml bottles instead of two. JC, PJ and ST are planning to annihilate the human race. Not content with make believe, they intend to make the mother of all ~~snuff~~ end-of-the-world films and Shania will sing as the planet burns. PJ's Weta supercomputer may have already unleashed JC's diabolical Skynet system to render mankind out of existence. Soon they will launch an army of unstoppable James Cameron patented gold O-800 Terminators, or Oscars, armed with Red Digital Cameras to mop up the rest of humanity. JC and PJ will edit the footage in their nuclear bunker editing suites deep under the only place in the world safe from residuals and residual fallout.

I realise this all sounds farfetched but I'm temping so cut me some slack. I'm only meant to be there for two more weeks so it won't last. Next week I shall attempt to make the connection between the moon landing, the Loch Ness Monster and Seal...only if one of James Cameron's Oscars doesn't get me first.

Prince and the Pauper

2012-04-17T19:41:00.001+12:00

I'm going to see Prince. I doubt he'll see me but I'll see him looking like a spangly speck through my specs at the opposite end of Rod Laver arena on May 30th. It nearly didn't happen. Tickets to this major event went on sale at 9am yesterday and Ticketek confirmed this by telling me tickets were being sold to a major event while refusing to let me buy tickets to their major event every 20 seconds. At 9:20am Ticketek let me in very slowly, and I bounded in at dial-up speed to find the only tickets left were in the Purple Circle and cost $450 each. Admittedly that included a ride on his purple motorbike and a free copy of The Watchtower, but I just couldn't bring myself to love Prince that much. My love for Prince is closer to the colour of Silver Reserve, and those tickets had long gone...or so I thought. Because just as I was about to give up partying like it's 1999 for $99 + booking fee, Prince's diary suddenly freed up and he announced another gig the next night. I wonder who has the audacity to cancel on Prince at such late notice. Maybe he was meant to go door knocking and somebody lost the squiggle badge? Either way it was a miracle for me, and I leapt back into the Ticketek fray naively believing two silver seats would soon be mine. But no, too slow. Much too slow. It was Purple Zone or Purple Reserve Floor or nothing. No Prince for Greg.

I abandoned my computer and cheered myself up by making a cup of Dilmah with lactose and gluten free Almond milk and roughaged it down with some wheat and gluten free muesli and lactose and gluten free Almond milk. Then I stroked the cat and washed my hands afterwards just in case I stroked myself. Feeling much better about everything I returned to my computer and saw I wasn't the only one having to resort to gluten free gluttony and pussy stroking to get over the disappointment of missing out on The Squiggles. I hadn't been that sad since Robyn pulled out of Stereosonic and The Feelers pulled out of a parking space without getting crushed by a double decker bus or ten ton truck.

And then it happened. It was truly miraculous. Not quite as truly miraculous as Prince knocking on my door wanting to talk about Jesus and show me his purple circle, but pretty damn close. For some unfathomable reason I returned to pick the Ticketek scab and there it was, Prince had found himself at a loose end on Wednesday May 30th and booked another gig. I raced through the screens and before I could say in France a skinny man died of a big disease with a little name, I was the proud owner of two seats in Area UPP, Section S32-A, Row OO...Price Category: Silver Reserve! They could be the shittiest seats in a 14,820 capacity arena. How cool is that?

And now while you're doing things like stroking your cat while watching Seal on The Voice on May 30th, I'll be squinting at Prince from a distance and jiggling to hits like Little Red Corvette, Raspberry Beret, and the one about how difficult it is to put the top on a bottle of cream. Jealous much?


Prince's latest 12"

Painting in the Streets

2012-04-10T17:20:00.001+12:00

One of the great things about living in Melbourne is being surrounded by amazing street art. A few weeks ago I went on a street art tour operated by the appropriately named Melbourne Street Art Tours, and some of the stuff we saw was pretty awe-inspiring...none more so than this.

It was created over a couple of days by a group of French graffiti artists called Da Mental Vaporz. It's very big and very awesome and gets even better close-up.

I especially love this section featuring two moles tumbling from the dinosaur's turf hamstring.

What I don't love is dealing with Google's horrid system for loading pictures onto my blog, so let's see if embedding a video of the graffosaurs creation will be easier. It's not too long, well worth a watch and has a bit of tilt-shift technique, where by tilting your shifter you magically make things look all miniature and model railway like. It's very bloody clever and if you haven't seen any before go here and have a fresh pair of undies handy. Actually no, don't do that, click on the video below first and then go there.

DMV Melbourne Australia from Matt Harding on Vimeo.

OK, hopefully Google will let me load one more picture to finish. This delightful hippo is lurking down an alleyway off Gertrude Street in Fitzroy. I have named her Gertrude.

Turds and Music

2012-03-30T16:10:00.000+13:00

I'm in the middle of trying to write a musical. I'm not writing the music bit of the musical, just the 'al' bit, which in the musical world is called 'the book'. I'm writing all the stuff people say between the songs and some of the words of the songs, and then someone else who has trained in musical theatre in New York and can actually read music is writing the music. My co-writer is more than happy to listen to my musical suggestions, although so far my only contribution has been to suggest a melody that later turned out to be 'The Gambler' by Kenny Rogers. I blame my parents. They loved a bit of Kenny Rogers and thrashed the phonograph with him, John Denver, Nana Mouskouri, James Last, and Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass all through my formative years, so it's no surprise Kenny's been incubating inside me like a silver beardy alien just waiting to burst out and embarrass me in front of my collaborator.

I used to love a good musical. Some of the first shows I was involved in were musicals put on by the St Joseph's Light Operatic Society. I'm not sure who St Joseph was but he obviously loved his light opera. Here's a picture of him in The Sound of Music.

The resemblance to Julie Andrews is uncanny, although he could have shaved. Here he is with a pipe wrench in West Side Story.

Bit of a dodgy prop but you work with what you've got. Finally here he is in the role he's best known for, Joseph, with his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat was the first musical that started to really get on my tits. I think Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote it as a high school musical before High School Musical and boy did he nail it. There's only so many years a young man can be forced to sing, 'I closed my eyes, drew back the curtain, AH UH AHHH, to see for certain....AH AHHHHHH, what I thought I knew', before his thoughts turn to self harm and Silver Dollar Vodka brewed in Kaiapoi. And the line makes no sense. So, this young man thinks Andrew Lloyd Webber is outside his window furiously masturbating, but to make sure of it he draws back his curtains to have a look...with his eyes closed. You can't blame him, but he still won't see for certain what he thought he knew. Not content with inflicting horror on high school students the globe over, ALW decided to prolong the agony by letting rip with this little gem in 2007.

Holy Hannah. It was called 'Any Dream Will Do' and kept viewers gripped for 9 weeks to see which boy Andrew would choose to handle his big part. ALW was looking for a young man, "who's a bit of a Justin Timberlake, tiny touch of the Michael Jacksons and a bit of the Jude Laws", and in the only disturbing episode I saw was sweating like a sea bass on heat as young men descended into his ~~dungeon~~ studio in nothing but loincloths for a bit of one on one mentoring.


Andrew Lloyd Webber waiting for his next Joseph

But before Joseph I was really into musicals. I sang 'Dites-Moi' in South Pacific and 'This Was A Real Nice Clambake' in Carousel, even though I didn't and still don't have any idea what a clambake is. I was the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz in Form One, and the lead in some bizarre Form Two show called Hunter's Gold that was set in Central Otago and ripped off all the songs from Paint Your Wagon. I may have been the first and last person to ever sing 'Wand'rin Star' in the register of a choir boy. I was Oliver on alternate nights in Oliver! for The North Canterbury Musical Society, Bugsy Malone in Bugsy Malone, and the retarded boy who got killed at the end of the first half in The Doctor and The Devils, which wasn't a musical but probably should have been.

I went and saw Cats! in Sydney with my mother when I was about 13 and loved it. I even wrote a puff piece gushing about it for the school rag. I saw Le Mis and loved it as well. All the musicals I'd been in I loved. And then we started singing Every bloody Dream Will bloody Do every bloody year and I decided musicals were a bit shit. It didn't help I went and saw some touring production of Chess and got sick as a dog half-way through while the Arbiter forgot his lines. Even just watching this makes me sweat and shake and go all foetal. By the time an international musical makes it to New Zealand all the good people have long since scarpered, and we end up witnessing a bunch of bored understudies dance around Ray Woolf. I finally saw Phantom, thankfully with free tickets, and the best part was the dry ice.

The final nail in my musical coffin came while I was living in London. My parents were coming to visit and wanted to see a musical. They'd seen all the usual West End suspects, so I booked three tickets to see a show that had been getting rave reviews called Passion, by Stephen Sondheim. It had Tonys coming out of its arse and Sondheim had written the lyrics for West Side Story which has lots of finger clicking in it, so it was bound to be good. The curtain went up and my parents and I were greeted with two people shagging and singing a song that sounded nothing like 'Something's Coming'. It was all highly uncomfortable and I couldn't make any sense of it and there was no finger clicking. My parents bravely stuck with it to the very end and we made a pact never to speak of it again. I'm sure it will cost me some of my inheritance.

And now I'm helping write a musical of my own. I can't tell you what it's about, but it's going to have lots of dry ice and finger clicking.

What did I do last Summer?

2012-03-20T22:26:00.000+13:00

Many years ago I was walking past a strip of bars in Christchurch known collectively as The Strip. Every time I went back to Christchurch the names of these bars had changed. Celsius had become Fahrenheit, Liquidity, Solidity and Coyotes, Coyotes Bar and Restaurant. The one constant was their horribleness. They were horrible places filled with horrible men trying to put their horrible penises into horribly drunk young girls.

If they were unsuccessful they would stagger en mass, like a tribe of chambrayed Neanderthals to Cashel Mall, to put their horrible fists into the faces of anybody who dared challenge their manlihood by glancing in their general direction. I hardly ever ventured near The Strip on Friday and Saturday nights, however when I did inadvertently stumble into the land of chambray and spew, I felt relatively safe due to the white flag perched on my nose. I have no idea what goes on in the minds of men who like to hit other men just in case other men hit on them and they kind of like it, but I'm pretty sure they are hard wired with two conditions that must be met before the angriness is meted out.

1. The man must not be woman.
2. The man must not be wearing glasses.

You'd hope there would be more, like 'The man must not be lying on the ground', or 'The man must not be over 80', or 'The man must not be already having the shit kicked out of him by three other men', but unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case. Glasses unmaketh the man. I don't know what we spec-wearers become in the drunken eyes of Mr Fisty, but it's something infuriatingly unpunchable. They may push us out of the way as they travel along their vector of violence, but as long as your glasses don't fall off when you hit the ground, you'll live to not fight another day.

Which is why, many years ago while walking past The Strip, a chambrayed chap pulled his hazy gaze away from the rump of some 16 year old lamb dressed as mutton, to glower at me in my 508's, purple Mossimo top, terrible bowl cut and glasses, and not punch me. I could see he wanted to. He was slowly expanding, rising and falling from his seat as if his angry anus was letting off a staccatoish series of furious farts, but the two pieces of prescription plastic over my eyes were an invisible force field that kept him at bay. I smiled, smug in my short-sightedness. He squinted and shook and slathered and slurred, "The library's that way mate", before returning to perv and his pint.

Which is where I am now. Not the Christchurch library. That's still in the Red Zone and The Strip is long gone, except for Coyote's which managed to stay erect thanks to a two inch coating of spew and jizz. I'm in the Melbourne City Library, which for a city of four million people is surprisingly small, although it does have a piano that you can tinkle on as long as you're Grade 5 or above and the person playing it is into that sort of thing. I love the library. It's full of books and stuff. There's also lots of computers, and yesterday I booked a computer with a scanner to scan something at home on my computer because I don't have a scanner at home. Here in the silent reading room they even have little desks with power points so not only can you read a book, you can plug your computer in. It's a bit of a hassle lugging my old desktop PC here on the tram, and sometimes it takes two trips because the monitor's quite heavy, but it's worth it. To top it all off they have wireless internet, so I can book the scanner with my computer and then watch all the angry people who want to use the scanner but can't because it's booked, even though I'm not using it.

Not having a library has been hard for the people of Christchurch who wear glasses. Not having The Strip has been hard for the people of Christchurch who wear chambray. No books. No booze. No biffo. The things that made the city of my birth great were suddenly no more. Sure, there were suburban libraries and bars and brawls but it wasn't the same. In Cashel Mall on a Friday night, people knew your name as they glassed you; 'Ian!' they'd cry as they clouted you with their bottle of Steiny Pure, and if the bottle didn't break they'd offer you a suck on their stubbie as they put the boot in. The Christchurch Central Library was huge, much bigger than Melbourne's, and it had escalators and scanners and a special area for Margaret Mahy to wear her freaky wig. You don't get that in Bishopdale or Shirley.

In January I went back to Christchurch and along with some very talented friends, put together a show called 'The Complete History of Christchurch Abridged'. We did it in Hagley Park and about 25,000 people saw it. They turned up with food, and rugs and booze and dogs, and they all laughed and cried about their city and all the shit they'd gone through, surrounded by other people who loved the city and had gone through the same shit as them. We were all proud of the show but what made this one special was that in some small way, I think we made a difference. One woman, who had been trapped in a collapsed building for three hours told us this was the first time she had laughed since Feb 22nd 2011. One old fella with tears in his eyes gripped both my hands and just said thank you over and over again. We took the piss out of those in power, we said the things everyone wanted to say, and it was immediate, affecting and alive.

And it was free. So I hope some chambray clad chap suffering from Strip withdrawal came along and had a laugh. And I hope he remembers it in ten years time when I'm walking down Cashel Mall on a Friday night wearing contact lenses.

Can't get you out of my Radiohead

2012-03-03T15:36:00.000+13:00

It must do your head in being in Radiohead and not being Thom Yorke. Not only does Thom get to be greedy with extra letters in both of his names, he's also the only one anybody recognises as being in Radiohead, except perhaps for the tall skinny one called Jonny I think, who leaps in super slow-motion like a girl into a carvan in the video for Street Spirit (Fade Out). Stuttery, squinty, winky Thom IS Radiohead, and with one doleful squinty wink of his sad glad-eye, all doors open and impediments evaporate. Imagine being Jonny Whats-his-name leaping all slow-motioniny through the doors of The Ivy and being told before you hit the ground that you can't come in because you don't have a booking and nobody knows who you are. Jonny would press his slow-mo-nose up to the glass and inside Thom would be scoffing and squinting with Damon Albarn, Richard Ashcroft, Debbie Harry, Chris Martin, Chrissy Hynde, Mark Knopfler, Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker, Tom Petty, Trent Reznor, Sting, Gwen Stefani, Michael Stipe, Jon Bon Jovi, Florence Welch and Huey Lewis. Michael Hutchence would be hanging around somewhere as well. Jonny would plead with the maitre d and perhaps play the 'rain down' bit of Paranoid Android that he wrote on an ondes martenot but to no avail. He would be tossed in slow-motion back onto the street in winter with an empty tummy and nothing to do but breath on the glass and write rude messages to his lead singer, like 'Thom Dorke!, or 'At least I can read music!', or 'Ronan Keating thinks you're a muppet!'. The rest of Blur, The Verve, Blondie, Coldplay, The Pretenders, Dire Straits, The Badseeds, Pulp, The Heartbreakers, Nine Inch Nails, The Police, No Doubt, REM, Bon Jovi, The Machine and The News, INXS and JD Fortune would all be doing the same and the window would look like an angry version of the wall outside Abbey Road studios, except be on glass and written with angry fingers in angry breath and nothing to do with The Beatles except for the fact that Radiohead like The Beatles can sell out Shea Stadium in less time than it takes Jonny to leap into a caravan...much less time.

That would do your head in as well. I've done a few shows and one of the absolute joys is waiting for that email everyday to reveal you've sold no tickets. The emails usually come though at around 5pm and I'd be circling and wagging like a laptop dog, salivating and slobbering and ready to tear the email open with my teeth to reveal the rows of '0's for all four shows in a 30 seat venue with no airconditioning and a much bigger poster for the show after yours above the urinals. The disappointment never lasted long and only led to an dance exponential increase in expectation, hoping against hope the next one would contain a mystical '1'. 0,0,0,0,0,0.....1! Never has binary been so erotic and exciting. Someone somewhere has spent $16 on a concession ticket to my site-specific one man show featuring an ear-splitting burst of pop music, defecation and aggressive masturbation.

Radiohead don't get to experience any of that. Thom just gets on Facebook and sends a message to his friends like, 'Hey guys, doing a world tour. Come to my show!!!! We'll have a drink after', or 'Creep has had over 23 million views, that's almost viral (I reckon). Come to the show and see stuff in for reals life yo!', or 'Hey World - Looking for some late night madness? Come along to the biggest stadium nearest to you. They'll be performances by heaps of artists. Probably quite a bit of drinking and it's only a gold coin/koha for entry.', and before Thom can poke Jonny they've sold 1.9 trillion tickets and 2.8 million FB groups have been set up asking for extra shows or whether they can possibly make it down to Invercargill 'cos there's heaps of Radiohead fans down there and they'd be sure to show Thom and the other guys a good time.

Social networking. My old flatmate Michael Legge tweeted about the death of someone he made up and then The Guardian did a story about it because it was trendy. I was there in the 90's when Michael put his knob in the mouth of his girlfriend's dog to cheer her up...his girlfriend, not the dog, but that happened before Twitter so nothing appeared in The Guardian about it. In the library where I'm writing this, I saw Amanda Palmer and her hubby Neil Gaiman perform and read to over 400 people and the only advertising they did was a couple of tweets. Just amazing. Here's a pic of the concert.

Can you see me? Just treat it like a game of Where's Greggy? Given up yet? OK, I'll put you out of your misery. I'm the one on the right checking my emails on my phone to see if anybody has purchased a ticket to my one-man show that I wasn't even doing. What an arse. Who goes to a ninja gig and checks their emails on their phone? If I had been tweeting about being at a gig I heard about via a tweet that might have been cooly ironic, but no, I was...bloody hell, the guy next to me in the supposedly silent room of the library has put on headphones and is listening to The Party Rock Anthem at an eardrum piercingly loud volume while he sends his emails. Who does that? The whole bloody library has free Wifi, why can't he FRO and go and blast his LMFAO SOFP? Oooooh...maybe's he's been reading over my shoulder as he's just petulantly slammed his laptop shut and stalked out of the room. He's left his Macbook here. If it was a PC I could change his screensaver to read something hilarious like, 'You're a dork', or 'I can hear your shitty music', or 'Greggy thinks you're a muppet', but Apples are Greek to me.

Where was I? I don't know. This whole post is rambling. Oh hell, he's come back so I'm going to finish here without checking for typos and spelling eras. I didn't even get to talk about what I've been doing for the last few months instead of writing insightful crap like this. Have you missed me?

The Birthday Girl

2011-12-17T15:13:00.001+13:00

Today is my birthday. Happy birthday to me. To celebrate I shall give you all a gift to treasure, laminate and stick above your bed or bog...a photo of me dressed up as Supergirl.

I'm at the stage in my career where I don't get out of bed for less than five bottles of pinot, $100 cash and a pound of grapes, and luckily that was exactly what this gig was paying. So I got out of bed. I even did my own makeup. I'm so beautiful. So very very beautiful. Women must hate me when I become more beautiful than them by simply donning a blond wig, green eye shadow and some lipstick for my lips and cheeks. I was part of a 'meet and greet' duo which required me to say, 'Hi, you look SUPER!, I'm SUPERgirl, welcome to our SUPER Christmas party, I hope you have a SUPER time!' I didn't have to say that, but I find it's easier to relentlessly repeat one line so you can stop thinking and go to your happy place to kill yourself.

Actually it wasn't that bad. At least I wasn't alone. I was meeting and greeting with Superman!

We make a lovely couple. Regular readers might recognise Superman as Lucius Malfoy to my Severus Snape or as Randy to my Candy. I've sort of already posted this next photo, but it's my birthday so I can do it again to further reinforce how pretty am.

I'd be very surprised if any women reading this are not seething with jealousy and making sure their boyfriends and husbands don't catch a glimpse of me looking so pretty and provocative. In this one I think I look a bit like an emaciated Susan Boyle on crack. I'd love to tell you how old I've turned today but instead I'll let you guess from these photos. Some people might say I'm too old to dress up as women for wine and grapes but to be honest, there's not much else I'm qualified to do...except maybe become a high school drama teacher. And now these photos have been released onto the interweb that career bridge has probably been burnt as well. Just as well.

New On-Bored

2011-12-11T13:39:00.001+13:00

I never learn. Blogging about something you despise, in this case a Canadian band that rhymes with Bickelnack, will inevitably lead to advertisements appearing on ones blog for the very thing you have been raging against. The machine that is Google Adsense cannot distinguish between pro or NO! And the only winners are Chad Kroeger and Brother.


Thank you Greg for promoting my new album. Love Chad.

I was going to be horrendously clever and pay 1000 monkeys to click on Bickelnacks's ad without buying their album, and not stop until the band was bankrupt so I could call them Nickelbankrupt, or one of the monkeys took lots of drugs and typed the complete works of William Burroughs. Then I noticed the advertisement was from Marbecks Music, and as much as I'm disgusted at 'New Zealand's leading music specialist' peddling such filth, I cannot bring myself to go all rogue-clicker and destroy an institution that's been operating since 1934. Also I suspect some of the monkeys may not be able to resist buying Bickelnack's album to throw their own shit at.

On the subject of monkeys, I watched 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' on an Air New Zealand flight last month and thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the bit where Bright Eyes started burning like fire and killed Draco Malfoy. If all the monkeys had escaped to march on Alberta to throw shit at Chad Kroeger it would have been even better, but you can't have everything.

I returned to Christchurch again a few weeks ago and was excited to see what new filmic offerings Air New Zealand had ready for my viewing pleasure while I harassed harassed flight attendants for yet another plastic bottle of Brancott Estate Reserve Merlot. I went straight to the 'New On-Board' screen and to my horror saw this...

Not much to choose from is there. I'd forked out an extra $30 and all I was getting was a gluten free salmon meal, four bottles of merlot, a gin and tonic and a whole lot of bloody Harry Potter films. Why do I need to see Harry Potter films? Everyone knows that Draco Malfoy gets killed by an ape and Voldemort turns out to be Harry's father and gets his end away in a Qantas toilet while flying to Mumbai. Boring! How can a whole lot of Harry Potter films be considered suitable viewing for a 'New On-Board' classification? If the section was called, 'Films That Feature Lots of Plummy British Actors Except Hugh Grant That You've Probably Seen a Million Bloody Times on the Tele', I would understand, but honestly Air New Zealand, this is a misleading and shameful act for a national carrier. Still, there was another whole page of 'New On-Board' films to go, so surely I'd find a recently released cracker there to get me through the next three hours...

Look Greg, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.

WTF! So, out of 12 'new' films, eight were Harry Potters, one I'd already seen, one was released in 2007, one in 2009 and Horrible Bosses, which admittedly was released in 2011, but has Jennifer Aniston in it who I cannot face since searing my eyeballs on 'Love Happens'.

I'm flying back to Melbourne on Friday and if there isn't a serious shake-up in the movie selection there will be serious trouble. I may pretend I didn't order a gluten free meal when really I did. I may order 20 Brancott Estate Merlots and hand them out for free to grateful Seat+Bag passengers. I may even express my anger by playing Words With Friends up-to, during and after take-off, and if challenged by an power-hungry tyrannical trolley dolly, sprint down the aisle, lock myself in the toilet and continue playing Words With Friends with Ralph Fiennes and Alec Baldwin until one of us comes out on top.

Nationalback

2011-11-25T15:24:00.000+13:00

Bad things are happening again.

The first bad thing happening again is this.

If you know me you know Nickelback makes me spit with rage. Just as I was about to spit with rage I saw this right next to it.

It seems even the Nickelback poster-putter-uppers know any sane person wouldn't be able to resist spitting on Chad Kroeger's latest assault on everything good in the world. Chad Kroeger is a total total utter utter dick dick of immense proportions who probably has a tiny tiny dick dick. I know my posts of late have consisted of calling people dicks and crudely paint-shopping human heads onto dogs and mythical creatures, but I'm sure it's just a phase. If you're looking for a sophisticated and sagacious musically political statement go here. If you're happy to see a photo of me dressed up as Chad Kroeger, lead singer of Nickelback... read on.

This is one hell of a skeleton to drag out of the closet, but my hypocrisy threatens to eat away at me until I become a skeleton who is too weak to open the closet and let the other skeleton out. Here is a picture of Chad Kroeger.

And here is a picture of me in my Chad Kroeger costume, distributing free copies of Nickelback's third album 'Silver Side Up' to poor unsuspecting children at Auckland Zoo in 2002.

The costume captures with uncanny accuracy Chad's long flowing locks, facial hair and enormous head, and as you can see by the photo, the children couldn't resist him. I was mobbed and hugged and generally treated like a nine foot furry Jesus with a box of free CDs and the occasional free ice-cream. I did this many times and the shame lingers still. I sold out in the worst possible way. I would have felt better if I'd handed out bags of fags, crack and copies of Mein Kampf. I inflicted Nickelback on the untainted susceptible ears of young children who should have been listening to beautiful music like 'If You Come Back' by Blue, instead of 'How You Remind Me.' Wow. I've just listened to If You Come Back and if he hasn't already Gary Barlow should be calling his lawyers, because it's a complete rip off of Gary's opus 'Back For Good'. Why couldn't I have been dressed as a nine foot Gary or Robbie handing out free copies of Take That's third album 'Nobody Else'? Why!

Right, now that's out of my system I'll move onto the other bad thing that's happening again. I'm flying to New Zealand on Sunday for a few weeks work and barring a political miracle, I shall arrive on the first day of the second term of the fifth National Government. They may even garner enough votes to govern alone. The previous national government introduced major cuts in social welfare spending, introduced market rents for state houses, retained a tax on pensions despite promising to abolish it, sold the BNZ, NZ Rail, The Ministry of Works, the commercial arm of Radio NZ, Contact Energy and its 51.6% share of Auckland International Airport. Auckland International Airport is very profitable and it looks like its profits are only going to increase. They divided the Electricity Corporation of NZ into Meridian Energy, Mighty River Power and Genesis Power with the intention of selling them off. They introduced the Employment Contracts Act to abolish collective bargaining and weaken the power of unions. Government standards in building were relaxed in the belief that market forces and competition would lead to high quality construction, but market forces and competition decided to build a whole lot of leaky homes instead. The really scary thing is that a lot of these decisions were just a continuation of what the previous Labour Government had been up to.

And now it's happening again. John Key wants to sell more of NZ's profit making assets and even financial analysts say it's a stupid short-term solution to avoid borrowing money. If it goes ahead the only winners will be the Australian investment banks advising John on the best way to do it, one of which will reportedly receive more than $100 million for their 'services'. The fifth National Government will hit the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society and increase the disparity between rich and poor. The New Zealand rich/poor gap is ninth worst in the world, so at least we don't have far to fall to hit rock bottom. As shown by his handling of The Hobbit episode, John is happy to trample over the rights of workers and will change employment law retrospectively to keep the men with the money happy. Especially if he can nab photos like this during an election campaign.

It's all getting a bit serious so I'll finish with my one and only encounter with a National Party MP. Years ago I was on an Air New Zealand flight from somewhere to somewhere, and walked down the aisle to find Ruth Richardson sitting in my seat on the aisle. She was busy scribbling down the best way to use high unemployment levels to pull labour costs down, so I politely 'ahemed'. She said without looking up, "I need this seat, I've got work to do." I was slightly taken aback and said, "I think you're sitting in my seat." She replied, without looking up, "I need this seat to work, you can sit in the middle." I hate sitting in the middle. Ruth Richardson hates sitting in the middle. Everyone hates sitting in the middle. Her seat was in the middle but Ruth felt she was entitled to sit on the aisle because everyone knows it's much easier to find ways to shaft the underprivileged on the aisle than in the middle. She could have asked if she could swap seats, she could have looked at me, she could have smiled, she could have even said a solitary please or a solitary thank you as I squashed past her to sit in the middle. She could have stood up to let me sit in her seat but no, she was too busy working. Her sense of entitlement to my seat was overpowering and I sat in the middle and said nothing. I wish I'd had the intestinal fortitude to say no, but I didn't. I cast my vote today and said no. I also made sure I had an aisle seat for my flight on Sunday.