Hard News by Russell Brown

Read Post

Hard News: Grateful for 'Rain'

128 Responses

First ←Older Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 Newer→ Last

  • Peter Darlington,

    It looks to me like John Key's hat tip to wanting to have a nice time at the beach, and it looks like it would serve that purpose admirably.

    Sure, hence my comment in the previous post. "if Key doesn't give a stuff and he likes the place, all power to him, he paid for it after all."

    Doesn't make it purrty though.

    Nelson • Since Nov 2006 • 949 posts Report Reply

  • Peter Darlington,

    The sad thing is that the great modernists all received classical training and a sense of proportion and detailling was ingrained into them. Even when they rejected the overt forms of classicism, the spirit was there. This... abode... is not even modernist in any sense, it's a postmodern mish-mash of symbols of columns, cornices and so on all reduced to crass, lumpen, banal caricature. Even Donald Trump could do better - or pay for people who could do better.

    Yeh, what he said.

    Nelson • Since Nov 2006 • 949 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    Aha, I finally see the objection. It's not that it's bad modern. It's postmodern. It all becomes clear, it's an academic thing. There was me thinking it was just because John Key had it, and you don't. Oh, and John Key is the leader of the National Party. But clearly it's got nothing to do with that and everything to do with the clash of ideas at cloud 9.

    If only I could see what was postmodern about it. Unfortunately I picked up a book on postmodernism and they started the book off by saying "No one can tell you what postmodernism is". So I'm kind of lost.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Shep Cheyenne,

    Jeez RB

    You give out Camerons address then point to the fires set by D4J - smooth.

    At this point I should say I back Minto on his words and deeds to date but none of the others mentioned.

    However - $300 a day for roaming data in OZ is criminal and expect RB to pick it up as an issue next week.

    Since Oct 2007 • 927 posts Report Reply

  • Kracklite,

    "No one can tell you what postmodernism is"

    It's rather like the one about Deconstruction: Deconstruction is not what you think it is.

    If only I could see what was postmodern about it.

    Well, as I said, I don't like pomo per se. Anyway, bearing in mind varying interpretations and people telling you that people can't tell you, the middle of the big fuzzy cloud labelled pomo, there is something more or less like this:

    It's postmodern if it's not a thing-in-itself but is also self-consciously a representation of itself, a Simulation, as Baudrillard... oh bugger, sorry, I shouldn't have mentioned him, because that's another can of worms.

    Anyway, as an example, someone used this situation: a man loves a woman and says to her, 'I love you' and that is modernist, but if he were a postmodernist, he would say, 'As Barbara Cartland would have one of her characters say, "I love you".'

    Or... a postmodern banana is an expression of banananess that is incidentally edible.

    Something like that anyway.

    The Library of Babel • Since Nov 2007 • 982 posts Report Reply

  • Kracklite,

    clash of ideas at cloud 9.

    As someone said... and I can't remember who... the one thing worse than a snob is an inverted snob.

    Oh yes, it's postmodern to put quote marks around everything.

    And I can't resist this quote, from The Belly of an Architect, from which I take my nom de plume:

    Speckler Snr: "Are you a modern architect, Senor Kracklite?"

    Kracklite: "No more than I need to be."

    The Library of Babel • Since Nov 2007 • 982 posts Report Reply

  • Craig Ranapia,

    And I must say, this all reminds me not to engage with these people at all.

    If its any comfort Russell, you're much better at staying off the crazy-go-round than I am. (And I'm not talking about PAS - which is more like energetic fencing with the occasion trivial duelling scar, rather than a fairground ride in Dante's Inferno.) Despite my New Year's Irresolution not to do it, I wasted far too much time this avo trying to rebut one of DPF's more... peculiar lefty trolls. (I just hit the scroll wheel whenever D4J's name comes into view. Masochism only goes so far.)

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    Masochism only goes so far

    My eyes saw "Machismo" and it was my first double take in years.

    Kracklite, so if I get you, John Key's pad is really a simulation? I thought I saw jaggies...Is Key himself one too? A mere Avatar (note pomo capitaliSation).

    Kracklite: "No more than I need to be."

    Which could be a lot or a little. I like it. Who needs to let anyone know what you really think?

    Anyway, as an example, someone used this situation: a man loves a woman and says to her, 'I love you' and that is modernist, but...

    Classic. I thought 'I love you' was old school, and it was more modern to say 'I get you'. Postmodern would thus be 'I would have got you but there was a fuzzy cloud'.

    the one thing worse than a snob is an inverted snob

    I can think of a lot worse than both, but that doesn't make either good (or virtuous or flourishing for that matter). I seek the Unsnob, who is neither Snob nor inverted snob.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Neil Morrison,

    someone used this situation...

    Umberto Eco. Wasn't the term Pomo first used for the archetectural style of Las Vegas?

    There's also The Death of The Author stuff.

    Since Nov 2006 • 932 posts Report Reply

  • Kracklite,

    I seek the Unsnob,

    Ah, but being a snob is just so much fun if done with sufficient irony and humour (not the same thing). Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons is a snob with neither... and I've met people like that. Saint Oscar was a snob with those qualities.

    Umberto Eco.

    Good call. Travels in Hyperreality offers a good definition too. I think that that's where U2 got the idea for 'Even Better than the Real Thing'.

    Wasn't the term Pomo first used for the architectural style of Las Vegas?

    Charles Jencks gets the credit for first applying the term to architecture. One of my favourite writers on the subject. (Wiki says that he's American, but like Gwyneth Paltrow, he's almost more English than the English now).

    As for LasVegas, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown are the ones to look at. RV's Learning From Las Vegas and Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture are bibles of pomo architecture.

    From Wiki:

    He is also known for coining the maxim "Less is a bore" as antidote to Mies van der Rohe's famous modernist dictum "Less is more".

    There's also The Death of The Author stuff.

    Barthes, I think. The idea is that the reader is an active participant and not a passive consumer and they create a narrative from the words written that effectively supercedes/obscures/contradicts/whatever the writer may have intended. It lays the groundwork for deconstruction (hmmm, that's an interesting metaphor...)

    Actually, 'postmodernism' is a very broad and flexible generic label, like 'classical music': 'Do you mean music characteristic of late eighteenth century Vienna listened to by the upper stratum of the socio-economic system of the time or do you mean early, Baroque, Romantic, Modernist, Serialist, Minimalist or another style?' 'Er, I like Shostakovich.'

    The Library of Babel • Since Nov 2007 • 982 posts Report Reply

  • Neil Morrison,

    'Even Better than the Real Thing'

    the story I heard was that Bono orginally had "better than the real thing" which Eno took exception to, too earnest, and suggested adding the "even" for the irony.

    Since Nov 2006 • 932 posts Report Reply

  • Kracklite,

    John Key's pad is really a simulation?

    If only it were virtual reality, then I could turn it off and watch something just as artificial but more edifying, like a twelve-hour Andy Warhol film of astroturf (not) growing.

    There is something uncanny about it, as if it were an 80s low-rez CGI of itself.

    Well, nobody's kidnapped me and strapped me into a chair, braced my head and forced my eyelids open to force me to look at the thing like Alex in A Clockwork Orange. I shouldn't complain, but I do like to mock.

    Ahem, as Dame Edna said, 'What kind of world would it be if we couldn't laugh at each other?'

    Sorry, but the etiquette of postmodernism demands that there be quotes.

    On the lighter side, check out this and all will become unclear, it's The Postmodern Essay Generator.

    The Library of Babel • Since Nov 2007 • 982 posts Report Reply

  • Snowy,

    I take pomo to be the position that "universally, there are no universal truths" (which of course negates that very assertion) - its adherents seem to think this is pretty neat, but it also demonstrates pomo's incoherence. most of the writing by pomo proponents is extremely dense to try and disguise this incoherence.

    the pomo movement was meant to be a radical rejection of establishment values and a worthy recognition of difference, but it has since been subverted to justify the neo-con position, a la "who is the government to say what's good for people? we're all different and value different things - why should we be so arrogant as to assume what health and education standards might be, they're different for everyone. here, have these vouchers instead of social services".

    Key's bach might not be a simulation, but its owner clearly is.

    Wellington • Since Jan 2008 • 62 posts Report Reply

  • Conor Roberts,

    Forget all the weeds and tacky architecture, didn’t anyone notice from the Herald on Sunday story that Key's bach is on a road called 'Success Court'? Isn’t that an example of 'nuff said'?

    And didn’t anyone think to tell Key that he didn’t seem very prime ministerial crapping on about crab pots and sharks this week. Still I guess you could say his random thoughts formed some kind of policy. Which is a start.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 57 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    I think calling the bach pomo is over the top. It's just eclectic. I'm sure it does serve a purpose of saying the owner has wealth and lacks (or eschews) traditional tastes. I'm equally sure it's just the ticket for such a person to chill out in and feel proud of. They need not be particularly hollow for this - it would be hollower to give a shit when what you're really bitter on is the man's politics, and/or his failure to disclose them so close to an election. For that, I'm slightly bitter on Key too. But his bach is an innocent bystander. It's like hassling his kids.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • daleaway,

    To this peasant, postmodern started when critics could no longer think of anything original to say, but still wanted to hear the sound of their own voice, so began (mis)quoting others and calling it irony.

    Kracklite, pet, could I crave a boon?

    We tried for a year to buy a new house in our desired area, and dismissed a series of expensive pretentious boxes with no kitchen, just a nasty shelf at the back of the sitting room. An ironic pomo kitchen, I suppose. A kitchen in which one opens packets of deli salads and reheats microwaved meals. We eventually bought a 1960s house because it (a) had a proper kitchen in which one could make jam, and grow basil on the windowsill, and nurture people, and (b) nobody gives a stuff what you do to a 1960s house, so we're doing lots of it. Why must we all live like bachelors?

    As an earlier commentator here hinted, so many uncomfortable factors in modern architecture are introduced by unmarried males. Especially those for whom cooking family meals is a concept as foreign and as unfashionable as having a vege garden or a disability. I am not sure how you go about putting an old head on young shoulders, but surely it is part of a teacher's job description to try.

    What I would like to see is all schools of architecture to purchase a wheelchair - just the one, or the little buggers would hold races - and make it compulsory for each budding architect to spend a week in it as part of their training. Their eyes would be opened to so many of the difficulties their ilk have placed in the way of the older and not so athletic, and I reckon urban design would be revolutionised. Seriously.

    I'd also like to see those young blokes compulsorily dressed in skirts and heels, carrying some shopping and a handbag, and going into a ladies' loo to change their tights. (I'll spare them struggling also with a toddler or stroller. I am merciful.) The result would be twice as many ladies' loos everywhere, and they would all be twice the size, have the sanitary towel disposal unit behind the loo or as a built-in fitting, not as an afterthought jutting across the door, and have a shelf and a hook behind the door for hanging your handbag on instead of having to put it on the floor. So there.

    At the moment I am on crutches, and public loos are a menace. Nowhere to put the damned sticks once I'm in there, even if I can get through the narrow doors with them. And don't get me started on tiled and marbled floors. It's a wonder half the country is not on ACC.

    You sound like a chap with finer feelings. Thank you for anything you can do.

    Since Jul 2007 • 198 posts Report Reply

  • Craig Ranapia,

    Forget all the weeds and tacky architecture, didn’t anyone notice from the Herald on Sunday story that Key's bach is on a road called 'Success Court'? Isn’t that an example of 'nuff said'?

    Yes, just not in the sense you think. FFS, I live in a suburb that bears the insufferably twee moniker 'Sunnynook' (or Mairangi Bay, if you want to fool casual correspondents into thinking you live closer to the water than you actually do) - and to add insult to injury, we live on Sunset Road. What great insights are to be drawn from that?

    Really, Connor, I've got to side with Ben and Don on this. Stick a fork in this property snob crap, 'cause its done.

    And just to give everyone a mental health break, here's a poem by my favourite 'Naki Girl, Elizabeth Smither:

    **Visiting Juliet Street**

    All the streets are named after Shakespeare.
    Hamlet and Juliet are separated by an intersection
    down which floats Ophelia Street, very sleepy.
    They are all such demanding people
    Which lends the town an air of tragedy
    As though Mecutio coming home after a party
    Failed to dip his lights and ran over
    Polonius Street right up onto the sidewalk.
    Even Shakespeare thought it best to keep them separated.
    At the end of long girlish Juliet Street
    With limbs like Twiggy the air grows
    Sleepier and sleepier as though
    Juliet had anorexia nervosa and could hardly bear
    A morsel of blossoms or any sap.

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Jackie Clark,

    Oh yes, dale, yes. And those toilets that are only big enough for the loo, so that when you sit down, your knees almost touch the walls? I don't think so.

    Mt Eden, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 3136 posts Report Reply

  • Craig Ranapia,

    Oh yes, dale, yes. And those toilets that are only big enough for the loo, so that when you sit down, your knees almost touch the walls? I don't think so.

    OMG, yes! The morning bowel movement should be a moment for peaceful contemplation and unity with the great cycle of nature, not a panic attack because the light bulb's blown and you're in a fricking coffin with your knickers around your ankles. :(

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Conor Roberts,

    Really, Connor, I've got to side with Ben and Don on this. Stick a fork in this property snob crap, 'cause its done.

    You might be right Craig, but I think there is a genuine discussion to be had as to why developers feel the need to name things in such convoluted and wankerish ways. Surely we can be a bit more innovative, or indeed indigenous, in our selection of names for bits of road and new sub-divisions.

    Our country has a wealth of historical icons, birds or (as you point out) our own New Zealand monikers with which we could name our streets. 'Success Court' just sounds vacuous - which I guess is the same adjective that people seem to be attaching to its now most famous part-time inhabitant; hence the interest.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 57 posts Report Reply

  • Stephen Judd,

    In the suburb where I grew up in Hamilton is a bunch of streets all named after classic English poets and writers - Shakespeare, Tennyson, Masefield, Wordsworth, Dryden, and so on. It was known locally as "Poets' Corner". It was not, shall we say, a very poetical area.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 3122 posts Report Reply

  • Josh Addison,

    Forget all the weeds and tacky architecture, didn’t anyone notice from the Herald on Sunday story that Key's bach is on a road called 'Success Court'? Isn’t that an example of 'nuff said'?

    Interesting - that's actually the less wanky part of Omaha, in a sub-division that's been there since I was a kid (my parents have a bach there.) It's when you get to the new sub-divisions down the south end that have names like "The Sands" and "The Dunes" that you're really into "rich prick" territory. Incidentally, all of the roads around there sound like they were named by someone's mother-in-law....

    Onehunga, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 298 posts Report Reply

  • Emma Hart,

    Shakespeare, Tennyson, Masefield, Wordsworth, Dryden, and so on. It was known locally as "Poets' Corner". It was not, shall we say, a very poetical area.

    We also have this area in Chch, just south of the central city. It's hard industrial.

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2006 • 4651 posts Report Reply

  • Craig Ranapia,

    Incidentally, all of the roads around there sound like they were named by someone's mother-in-law....

    As a general rule, don't street names get dished out by a dull-but-worthy sub-committee of the relevant local authority? So I guess the mother-in-law analogy is fundamentally accurate. :)

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Snowy,

    developers usually have an input into the names, hence their aspirational but tasteless nature.

    Wellington • Since Jan 2008 • 62 posts Report Reply

First ←Older Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 Newer→ Last

Post your response…

Please sign in using your Public Address credentials…

Login

You may also create an account or retrieve your password.