Tiki Talk A song by a kiwi artist, currently popular, that I rather like. There's waay too much skankin goes on in kiwi music by half but when it's with a tune and not fifteen fuckin minutes long, I can forgive it. Heavily tattooed at the best of times, the album cover features Tiki Taane here with a full (non-permanent) 'moko' facial tattoo done by Inia Taylor, a friend of TSO, whose shop I walk past every morning. He's widely held as the best trad 'tatatau' artist in NZ and also did the facial tattoos for "Once Were Warriors" which is where TSO and he know each other from. The streets of Grey Lynn where I live here, are currently dotted with lifesize moko stencils in spray white with "Tikidub" written underneath. It's such a small place, New Zealand. I'm coming to like that about it. (And yes, Robbie, I am thinking about getting some more ink...)

John Cougar
Man, I just listened to a one hour retrospective on the wireless (National Radio NZ) of John Mellencamp (nee Cougar) and, you know - that stuff is nice. My eldest brother Ian was a huge fan and then my second brother Brian got into him too so he was, like Lynrd Skynrd, The Undertones, Springsteen, Lone Justice with Maria McKee and a few mis-matched others, omnipresent in my formative years. So I've tended to write him off as something from a generation before but, that early stuff he made in collaboration with Mick Ronson - Jack & Diane etc - there's gold among that stuff. You don't hear it for years then it comes on the radio and you realize how well formed a tune it is you're listening to.

He's coming here later in the year and the posters are all over the place already. I'm not that into him that I'll be going, you understand, but fair play to him for being around still - I think he had a heart attack a few years back - clinging to the wreckage just like the rest of us...

Babydreams
I've wondered, since about day two of this little chap's existence, what is it he dreams about? He's definitely dreaming about something in particular for his little sleeping face goes through a maelstrom of emotions at times. Seriously - what do babies dream about? It's possibly a good argument for the notion of reincarnation and past lives - are their little subconscious minds soaked with memories of past lives? Are our dreams not informed almost entirely by experiences in our waking lives? Sure they are. How could you imagine a house or a person or a street or a car, if you'd never seen one or socially and emotionally understood it in some kind of context? He was smiling in his sleep long before he ever smiled awake - for example.

So I've got this sneaking suspicion that sometimes he's dreaming about, say, a past love affair, the loss of a loved one, a memorable party - grownup things like that. Perhaps, as I once did, he imagines he's happily out on a rowboat with John Lennon only to end up in a canal-side hotel, chasing the white-suited and hirsute former Beatles lead singer and guitarist through a melee of toppled chairs and tables with a machine gun, intent upon mortal malice? This was well after someone beat me to it, I hasten to add.

Ultimately, I know I would poo-poo anyone's explanation if they started to give me one. I mean - it's a light-off-fridge-door situation isn't it? I reckon this is just one of those things that you need to accept in life.

Somers Town
Auckland Film Festival is off and running as of yesterday. I've heaps of plans to see as much as possible from the stellar lineup of features but yesteerday, to celebrate the kickoff, I watched Shane Meadows' "Somers Town". Regular readers will know we are bullish on the topic of Shane Meadows' body of work and he's had our strongest endorsement on every film so far. So we are perhaps the choir awaiting the message from the pulpit but once again we walked out of one of his films feeling good and thinking about things slightly differently which is really all we ask from a visit to the pictures. I'd also like to draw attention to the soundtrack by sure to be new hit, Gavin Clark. (Check out "Low Are The Punches" on that site)

Somers Town is an hilarious sketch of the nature of loneliness in the big city. Thomo - a restless kid from Notts who may have been wide at home but whom is lost in London, played frighteningly realistically by Thomas Turgoose from "This Is England". There he meets Marek - the disenfranchised, sensitive, shy son of a Polish labourer working on the St Pancras European rail link development. The unlikely pairing throws up some hilarious moments, aided and abetted by a select few supporting characters, one hilarious neighbour memorably played by Perry Benson who - really - the sight of him just cracks me up in anything I've seen. Great slideshow from the film with a clip off the soundtrack here.

There's a creeping feeling in me that Meadows is in danger of being accused of making the same film over and over with his sketches of restless youth against the backdrop of the murky macro corners of working class Britain. Me? I'll pay to watch that as many times as he wants to make it because I am utterly transfixed by the accuracy and tenderness with which he paints young British characters. Film making with a good yarn, realism and social commentary wins over fatly-funded grandiloquence, heavy-handed overdrama and, generally, overdone cinema with me every time.

Loach has a new flick in the festival as well - can't wait.

Things I Could Live In A World Without, A Series

For despoiling that tiny juicy oral explosion. For bringing negative to mind during an overwhelmingly positive moment of fruitery. For taking something so perfect and sweet and innocent and injecting inconvenience and damnable real life - damn you to hell, grape seeds. I hate you and all you stand for.
Apple seeds know their place - they stay close to the center where no man goes. Same with the Melon family - and there are thousands of them per piece! A peach stone is huge but it stays stanchly in the wings til the end of the experience but you? You're only in a small piece of fruit - there's nowhere for you to go and I understand that but by Zeus, there is nothing I hate more than biting into a grape and finding one of you bastards. I had a big bunch of Chilean red grapes last night and - la uva era deliciosa! It was one of the best things to happen this week - I was enraptured by the whole experience. And not one of you in sight - take a hint - you're not needed - time for you to pull the ole 23 Skidoo.

A Dirty Lowdown Ripoff
I had hopes. The firs time around I never even entertained the idea of an iPhone - that was just too much money for a phone. It was too much money for a phone AND an iPod actually. Well, I kind of tried to justify it to myself for a while even so, but nah, I'm not fit for that kind of price ticket.
Imagine, then, my delight and boyish exuberance when the new iPhone was announced and at a helluvah reduced price tag. I'm in, says I, at last I am in. I registered with Vodafone a month ago to get updates on this most closely guarded secret in Vodafone history. They were unable to tell me how much it might cost etc. I only signed up for a contract with Vodafone a month ago, actually - had been on their extortionate pay-as-you-go rates for long enough to find myself with several new holes in back.

Yesterday, then, the big email came out, the big rollout will happen at only three stores countrywide here in Aotearoa, the first country in the world to sell this worldwide-simul-release product. In the US, this phone is to retail at $199 US which works out about $270 NZD. I would go 3 hund, I decided, to allow for bad exchange rates and for to have myself an iPhone.

The pricing schedules? For the $199 US model - Here we go;
On the 250 monthly plan the phone is $549 and you commit to 24 months at $80.
Total: $2469 NZD ($1859US)
On the 500 Plan the phone is $449 and you commit to 24 months at$130.
Total: $3569 NZD ($2757 US)
On the 1GB plan the phone is only $199 but you again commit to 24 months at $250.
Total: $6199 NZD ($4670 US)

At least you never need to worry about your phone bill for two years after putting up this kinda poppy.

Excuse me but who the flying FUCK pays $250 a month for cellphone usage?!! And secondly, doesn't Apple price fix their products? How can someone so drastically over price their kit and get away with it?!! It's gouging in the worst way - blatant small-country-small-minded filleting of the consumer. I think what they're saying with these prices is that they only want a certain kind of customer having an iPhone. My plan, which has way more time and texts than I'll ever use, costs $35 a month, to give you an idea of how expensive this base plan is.

Why can't a person just pay the retail price of the phone and use it on any Vodafone plan? How would that be a burden on anyone? Me? I'm now calculating how to buy one from the US and unlock it - actually a guy at Avondale market here can do it for 40 bills. I predict a lot of cracked iPhones all over the world.

Testing this is a test post to check out the new Blogger widget in Dashboard. Awesome

Karaoke If nothing else, history will show eventually that I'm a huge fan of two things in this world - Gene Pitney and karaoke. I was browsing the latest clips of Gene (we fans, we call him "Gene") on Youtube the other day, then, and I came upon this charming little performance of "A Town Without Pity". Choice. I'm now on a kick to discover as many great karaoke performances as possible on Youtube - if anyone knows any, fire them in.

My Little Muscle Man

I realized it'd been a long time and that I'm dishonouring my former pledge of a weekly photo. It's not that there aren't digital reams of them being taken, you understand.