Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Hard News: Drunk Town, in reply to Matthew Poole,
The financial incentives to look the other way when taking money from minors are enormous.
Sure – which is a vivid contrast with Germany, or at least Potsdam where we were staying. Germany broadly speaking has very liberal laws around the sale of liquor, but I had an interesting chat with the waitress at a suburban restaurant-bar where we had dinner one night after being intrigued by the young chap having a beer at the next table (legally, with his parents BTW). Yes, folks might get pissy about bring carded or refused service. But the marginal profit from selling a beer to an underage punter, versus the real risk of a five thousand Euro fine (near $NZ 8K) for each count and immediate – and permanent – revocation of your license? Just not worth the risk.
Sounds like the balance is about right to me. There's nothing more destructive to the rule of law than those laws not being enforced.
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Hard News: Drunk Town, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Probably won’t help.
Definitely won't help - we separate the legislature and the judiciary for perfectly good reasons. One unintentional consequence is that the latter unfairly get the stick for the former's shoddy work.
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Hard News: Drunk Town, in reply to Russell Brown,
Really? His comments are hardly incendiary
I’m not Brown’s biggest fan – and honestly not sure what the photo op walkabout in today’s Herald was supposed to achieve – but yeah… I’m not sure he’s guilty of vote-grabbing dick-waving here.
That said I’m also not sure The Herald isn’t living proof of Bernard Shaw’s snerk that your average newspaper can’t distinguish between an old lady falling off a bicycle and the end of the world. There is a legitimate and real issue here, but I fail to see how you make sensible decisions when the only newspaper in town keeps screeching "marauding drunken wolf cub!"
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Hard News: Drunk Town, in reply to Russell Brown,
There’s a show called Booze Britain that’s compellingly awful viewing. It’s hard to believe how wasted on alcohol people want to get.
OTOH, the week we were in London I honestly didn’t see any signs of the Yob-pocalypse. Liverpool and Bristol failed to live down to reputation; and my one (mildly) scary moment was in Bath. Go figure. Heathrow would make a saint want to get fucked up and smash shit, but that’s a whole other story…
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Hard News: Drunk Town, in reply to Paul Brislen,
Interestingly (or not, YMMV) I saw a UK TV show about policing in Yorkshire the other day and aside from the accents (and the incredibly pale skin) it looked a lot like K Road to me.
Can’t say I felt terribly unsafe walking home from dinner in York at 11.30 on a Friday night. And finding ourselves in the middle of a gargantuan Pride street party in Brussels was an experience (with a large but low-key & non-confrontational police presence) but not an unpleasant one. Yes, there were plenty of people who were, shall we say, chemically enhanced (it was also obvious many jazz cigarettes were being consumed) but it was rather nice to also see plenty of people looking out for each other.
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Hard News: Media7 will soon be Media3, in reply to Emma Hart,
Russell knows full well, there are no circumstances under which I will do a Guest Vagina spot.
Your vagina will always be a headliner to me. Sort of. Well, not really. Time to derail this train of thought...
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It’s not the place of the authorities to proscribe private behaviour, except insofar as it endangers people.
Totally agree with you, but it is their place to issue and enforce liquor licenses. I'm pretty sure the terms of every liquor license in Auckland say you’re not supposed to get your patrons in a state where they’re power-chucking all over the ceilings of public loos, but I may have missed something.
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Hard News: Media7 will soon be Media3, in reply to Deborah,
Absolutely. But I don’t think we will get past tokenism by just letting things be.
No disagreement from me – but it’s a little more complex that just saying “vagina, melanin, queer, three straight white guys, my work is done let’s go to the bar!” No it really isn’t; you're heart might be in the right place, but that’s condescending pseudo-diversity.
It’s a lot harder (and more worthwhile) to play the long-game of being clear-eyed and self-critical of whatever privilege goggles (sorry, Russell, know you hate the term but there’s a point coming up) you bring to the table and consciously widen your frame of reference. If you’re tempted to invite Witi Ihimaera to a panel on Maori writers for the squillionth time, how about Patricia Grace instead? If you’re programing a convention, wouldn’t a fresh angle on The Walking Dead be an hour with executive producer Gale Ann Hurd – who has great stories, and a not often heard perspective, as a woman in the macho world of action/genre films?
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Hard News: Media7 will soon be Media3, in reply to Deborah,
On the gripping hand, it won’t change unless a concerted effort is made to change it.
That’s true – but there’s also the right way and the wrong way. Sci-fi fandom is, all too often fairly, as being a huge slab of HAM (hetro, Anglo and male) – and a pretty rancid, borderline misogynist one at that. But I have an acquaintance who was not charmed at being invited to sit on a con panel because “THE WOMAN dropped out” – and I don’t think they meant Sherlock Holmes’ platonic paramour, Irene Adler.
Ten out of ten for good intentions. Minus several million for execution.
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Hard News: Friday Music: The Jazz, in reply to Richard Stewart,
It’s an odd genre, Jazz. I can’t think of any other, except perhaps Hip-Hop (and perhaps Country), that invokes such extreme reactions from people; you either like it or you hate it.
But it all really depends on what the meaning of "it" is, innit? (Sorry for getting all Clintonian there. :) ) If you come away from my Louis Armstrong mix disc without a spring in your step, I'll have to cut your head off because you're dead. And don't think I'm the only person who will argue that Duke Ellington is one of 20th century America's great composers, no qualifier required.
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