As some of you know, I was at Cape Kidnappers last week, visiting the Napier area for the first time. (I tried getting there last October, but this was as far as I got.)
It was for the Audi A8 launch, and we at the office had a good laugh at this lovely and kind message that the company sent after the event:
The venue found some clothes in one of the rooms so if you are missing a pair of trousers and a jacket, we have them here.
Maybe itâs my warped sense of humour at this place, but the first thing I said to the team was, âIâm pretty sure I was wearing trousers when I got back on the plane, so it wasnât me.â
The conversation descended from there.
This weekâs humour spot: âSince Blogger/Google is USA based, they support the principles of âfree speechâ and of âinnocence until proven guiltyâ. Even genuine spammers are permitted to speak here, until they cross the line and become disruptive.â
As someone who has had legitimate comments deleted from the Google forums, and experienced that the actual stance is âguilty until proven innocence (sic)â, then this was another good laugh via the internet.
Almost any New Zealander will recognize this image: a cast photograph from the long-running TV series Outrageous Fortune.
When I first heard of this show from Antonia Prebble, before she started filming, I have to admit I didnât think the premise would see it last five years (and counting). But for New Zealand television and the folks this show employs, I am glad it has.
Like all good shows (Life on Mars, State of Play, Cracker)âand a few bad ones (Pop Idol)âit was eyed up for a remake.
The British, who have never been that great at remaking shows usually (remember the Russ Abbot sitcom Married for Life, based on Married with Children? Or the remake of Whoâs the Boss?, called The Upper Hand?), decided it would see how well West Auckland transplanted to London. Cue Amanda Redman instead of Robyn Malcolm, and a rebrand to Honest for ITV:
No, it didnât work. According to some expat Kiwis whose comments I read, the pilot was virtually a shot-by-shot remake that added nothing to the original. I do not know about the remainder of the series, but the fact that it was not renewed by ITV says something.
The Americans, who have never been that great at remaking shows usually (Sanford & Son, Life on Mars, Coupling, Cosby, Ugly Betty, Threeâs a Crowd, Eleventh Hour, Too Close for Comfort, The Office, Viva Laughlin, Kath & Kim, Payne, Amandaâs, The Prisoner, In Treatment, Worst Week, All in the Family, State of Play, etc.; Shameless and Gavin & Stacey are on the cards), decided to give this a shot. Getting in the chap who made Veronica Mars and Catherine OâHara (the Home Alone Mum, after Rene Russo turned it down), Cheryl West became Jackie West and the show was renamed Good Behavior.
The publicity touts this as an âoriginalâ ABC series (yeah, right), but I actually hope it goes well for them. Why? Because the Kiwis who created Outrageous Fortune, I believe, will earn royalties on each episode. We might pooh-pooh it because we are purists, but Iâd rather the money flowed inwards. While we havenât exactly exported Kiwi culture in a Flight of the Conchords wayâbecause the show has been AmericanizedâIâd still rather a decent Kiwi concept got there and, in its small way, reverse the tide of the reality TV junk that so often comes westward across the Pacific.
Like Scorseseâs The Departed, a remake that sparked interest in the original Infernal Affairs (çĄéé), we might see Americans track down the original Outrageous Fortune on DVD. That, too, can only be a good thing.
There have been a few times in the history of this blog where I stepped away from writing regularly. At the end of 2006, I had a pretty good excuse: I was in France. This time, my reasons for stepping away for a few weeks do not include: (a) I was spending too much time with the Miss Universe New Zealand contestants; (b) laziness; (c) being trapped in 1983 and discovering that DCI Gene Hunt controls the Lost island.
I was, however, chatting to a few more of the parties that we needed to realize some of my election promises. And doing a few media interviews. And looking at more ways Wellington could get nearer balancing its budget, as our deficit has ballooned over the last decade.
On May 15, I joined my opponent, Councillor Celia Wade-Brown, on Access Radioâs Espace Français, in what was my first political interview in French. I expected a nice-natured chat till our hosts said they wanted a political debate. So the Councillor and I gave the audience one, coming from very different angles. I believe we are the only two Francophone candidates. And I donât think Access does a Cantonese programme.
You can listen to the interview here, though they only store the programmes for six weeks. You can also download from this link.
I kept Leauna Zheng waiting for weeks while I prepared my emailed responses to her interview for Skykiwi, the leading Chinese expatsâ site in New Zealand. Despite her wait, she wrote a marvellous article (in Chinese, here), and for those of you relying on Google Translate, please note that the term Chinese expatriate is not translated correctly. (I believe this is the first Chinese-language interview to include my name in Chinese ideographs.)
And, finally, my interview with Bharat Jamnadas on Asia Down Under aired last Sunday. Heâs very kindly put it on YouTube, though the aspect ratio is a tad off and I look thinner than usual. There are very nice comments from two members of the Wellington business community, Laurie Foon of Starfish and Brent Wong of Soi, to whom I am extremely grateful.
The conversation at the end about Wellington v. Auckland was a good laugh, but there were some serious bits.
And this Tuesday just gone, it was a pleasure to play a âdragonâ in a Dragonâs Den-style setting analysing some of New Zealandâs entrepreneurs for New Zealand Trade & Enterprise.
My thanks to Bharat, Leauna, Kenneth Leong, Laura Daly at Access Radio, Jean-Louis Durand and Arlette Bilounga, and Maria Gray and David Powell.
Anyone notice just how quickly Air New Zealand planes are these days? It takes the grand total of â1:00 mins.â to get from Auckland to Wellington, which equates to travelling at 18,360 mph or 29,520 km/h. I am not quite prepared to do that in case the G-forces squash me into a pulp. And if itâs an early version of the Star Trek transporter, I fear having my hind end put on backwards.
Semir and Ben are chilling out / driving / at a roadside shop / getting petrol / getting food
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Semir and Ben witness a murder / are overtaken by crooks / receive an emergency call / see something unusual
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Semir and Ben give chase
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Crooks kill someone / destroy an innocent partyâs car
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Semir and Ben have to stop due to crashed cars / crashing their own car / rendering assistance to motorists / someone having been injured or killed
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Crooks get away
Opening titles: Ihr Revier ist die Autobahn, etc.
Squad investigates clue left behind / murder victim / number plate
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Kim briefs Semir and Ben / Susanne perves at Ben (or, in earlier episodes, Andrea is concerned about Semir)
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Semir and Ben follow the clue / get a call and get to the crooksâ first hideout / location of registered car / murder victimâs home
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Crooks are there, covering up / hiding / stealing stuff
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Semir and Ben / Dieter and Hotte give chase in town / on the Autobahn
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Semir and Ben / Dieter and Hotte lose the crooks in a funny way / in a serious way / in a way that involves someone flipping the bird
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At the scene, Semir and Ben / Dieter and Hotte find more clues from the crooks / from the victim
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Hartmut analyses the clues
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At the station, Kim, Semir and Ben figure out what the crooks / the victim were / was planning
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Susanne figures out where the crooks / the victim were / was planning their / his / her robbery / conspiracy / releasing a bomb / releasing chemicals / kidnapping / other crime
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Crooks are carrying out their plan
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Semir and Ben rush there
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Crooks get in to their vehicle(s) and head to the Autobahn / country lane / forest
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Semir and Ben give chase by car together / are separated and one takes a car and the other takes a helicopter / motorcycle / jeep / truck / horse / jumps on to the crooksâ remaining vehicle to have a fight
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Semir and Ben catch the crooks
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Kim / Dieter and Hotte are / are not there and Ben gets / does not get a snog
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Semir and Ben make some funny comments regardless of who is there
End credits
To those friends in Germany who have seen more episodes than I have, is this about right?
I seem to be on a lot of social networks (Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, Vkontakte), so I thought Iâd look in to Sonico. I can see why itâs not as big as the others.
For a start, there seems to be insufficient globalization of its features. Try entering a Chinese film in to the favourite movies, and itâs a no-go:
And while you select New Zealand as your country, itâs too bad if youâre from Wellington:
Maybe these jokers hate the Wellywood sign as much as we do?
Due to othersâ appointments, the Vista Group meeting today was a mere duo: myself and Jim Donovan, Esq., who will give up blogging in 10 days. It meant it was the second-least well attended meeting in our history. Jim has never let us forget the least well attended one.
I have always said that one should blog when one wants to. If one feels pressured to do so, then stop. Blogging should be a fun activity and, for me, itâs cathartic. With a new venture on the horizon for Jim (from where he will likely blog again), time is at a premium, and I can fully appreciate that he needs to take a step back.
Of course we will not bid farewell to Jim just because he stops blogging, principally, as Natalie wrote in our emails arranging todayâs meeting, we are too incompetent to organize the monthly meetings without him. And he got us in to the Wellington Club for the end-of-2009 edition where we took over the Deputy Mayorâs table. (Albeit on a day that the Deputy Mayor was not there, which made for a less comical time.)
The Club (the luncheon at which should have been chronicled at the time) has its own gym. Apparently, Club members often talked about how our gymâll fix it. That is, however, another story.
There were some in-depth discussions about my mayoral campaign and the Wellington City Council, the fact that Anouska Hempel, a.k.a. Lady Weinberg, is a Wellingtonian and how she is important to anyone who watched various Hammer Horrors, and the Y2K episode of Family Guy and its homage to Dallasâthings that we would not have digressed to had Natalie and Mark been there. (Jim had brought up âWho shot J. R.?â* on his blog a few days before.)
However, we covered the boiler-plate approach of some IP law firms, the bad customer service we received from Vodafone and Sky TV, and the lack of clarity over some WCC charges over which Jim got three different figures for the same thing. From what I could make out, the charge varied depending on the person he spoke to, the day of the week, and the flutter of a butterflyâs wings over the Shetland Islands. Need I push transparency again?
Above One of Anouska Hempelâs creations, the self-named Hempel hotel, in London. I believe they want a definite article in the official name, but I canât be brought to capitalize it in the middle of a sentence. I will only make an exception for residents of The Terrace in Wellington.
* It was, of course, Kristin, Sue Ellenâs sister. Everyone remembers the hype, no one remembers the answer. Back in those days, we found out a year later in New Zealand, and there were no internet spoilers.âJY
To be confirmed is an interview with the BBC, in my politician guise. I have not been on radio in the other hemisphere for something like seven years, and that time it went to some of the most way-out places (it was UN Radio). I have one reservation only: my accent goes all over the place. Remember how the Rt Hon Jim Bolger went funny with his when foreign dignitaries came and he sounded like he was mocking the foreigners? Or, a few years before, Michael Fay during the Americaâs Cup lawsuits and his Americanized pronunciation of water?
Yeah, I do that. And even more disturbingly, I know I do it while Iâm doing it, and cannot stop it.
Itâs going to be hell if a northerner interviews me and I start sounding like Jimmy Nail. I am told that I do a very good Lily Savage when I have the âflu. And if I get a southerner, you will think I was trying to impress Keeley Hawes (which I try to do, anyway, never mind Matthew). Not one is sufficiently âKiwiâ for Wellington voters. Though I might find that British expatriates based in Wellington might suddenly vote for me. Because in any case I will sound better than Harold Wilson.
Necessity is the mother of all invention. I never thought some of the Der Untergang (Downfall) parodies could be topped, but I think this just happened.
