Cracker by Damian Christie

It wasn’t a great surprise to read in the paper yesterday that Bridget Saunders’ About Town will be no more. After pretty much inventing the gossip pages for this generation (Felicity Ferret was years ago now, and never had the pages of photos that the promo girls clamour over so), Saunders column has lacked any zest for quite a while, the pages reduced to barely disguised press releases and giveaways, and what seems like a constant series of updates direct from Charlotte Dawson.

I’m sure Bridget’s trod on many toes over the years, often overstepping her mark and straying into areas she was if not unfit, then certainly not employed, to comment on – business, media, politics etc. But it wasn’t until R Glaucoma came along that I realised Bridget at least gave things a vague hint of class. Gossip after all caters to our basest natures – it feeds and breeds on negative energy, sneering at our peers, laughing at others’ misfortunes. So if she’s been forced to close shop because her competition enjoys rolling in the mud more, she should take it as some kinda of moral victory. At least I think people will continue to give Bridget the time of day.

I don’t think the same can be said for Glaucoma, who now seems to believe she actually has some kind of power; at least a couple of people I know say she’s literally told them “you need me.” Eech. The day that anyone who actually has a valid role in society (as opposed to wannabe promo girls and Friends of Seeby) needs an illiterate, nasty, waste-of-an-invite who seems happy to fabricate facts simply to fill space, is the day I provide the venue and the bubbly. If the Devil’s greatest trick is convincing people that he doesn’t exist, Rachel’s is convincing anyone that she matters. She doesn’t.

May’s not the best month to be trying to take it easy on the drink –as I’m once again trying– if you’re in my business. This month is not only New Zealand Music Month, but also the New Zealand International Comedy Festival, and the Readers and Writers Festival. Okay the latter is unlikely to be a piss-fest, but where there’s a will…

Aside from the odd live cross on the telly, NZ Music Month probably doesn’t have much of an influence on the life or drinking habits of the average Joe, but thanks to a career which is often low on income but always good on perks, I get to go to various functions. As Russell mentioned last week, the launch showcase event was at the start of May; ten bands or so performing to a bunch of industry types and fellow musos.

The new kids on the NZ Music block are Midnight Youth. I spoke to them last Saturday on the radio show, and they very kindly performed an acoustic version of their latest single. On the album it’s one of the more commercial tracks, but listening to it live in the album it literally brought shivers to my spine. The singer Jeremy is quite a talent, and all the band seem like really decent guys – I hope they go far and all signs are they will – the album has debuted at #2. Bloody Ronan Keating.

The lads have kindly allowed me to make the acoustic version of the song available here for y’all to listen to. It’s pretty rough and ready (it was recorded in an office off Khyber Pass Road and we just we shifted a microphone around to record the guitar…) but I hope you enjoy it – it was a pleasure hearing it live. I believe Midnight Youth are playing a few Wellington dates (Wed-Fri at the San Fran Bathhouse?) this week if you’re keen.

It might be New Zealand Music Month, but for me the past week and a half has been all about the New Zealand International Comedy Festival. I’ve been to six events since the Thursday before last – the 5 star comedy preview, Ben Hurley, Steve Coogan, Glenn Wool (Canada), Cori Gonzalez and then a dozen comedians performing for charity last night. My humour muscles are fighting fit, and I’m addicted, planning to squeeze in a bit more.

Ironically, it was the comedian I was most looking forward to seeing that I least enjoyed. I don’t want to sound ungrateful but with the gigs in the past I’m sure even the promoter won’t mind me saying that the Steve Coogan show was a bit shite.

After the show, everyone I spoke to; comedians, reviewers, festival staff and punters alike agreed much of his humour was pretty broad, pretty basic, and felt like it was from a different era (and by his own admission, much was reasonably old material), where a man with fake tits making cock jokes was funny. I don’t think Dame Edna would get many laughs at the today’s Festival either. It was nice to tick off the “I’ve seen Alan Partridge” box though, and his encore (finally playing himself) was very funny – justifying his frequent tabloid appearances and bad press through the Monty Python-esque ditty: “Everyone’s a bit of a C**t, sometimes.”

The locals I’ve seen this year have been great – I haven’t seen Michele A’Court on stage for a while, and she was in fine form last night; Cori’s stand-up show (Promo Girls Aren’t Models) is definitely one for those who prefer their comedy dry and deconstructed; and having caught small servings, I’m looking forward to seeing the full shows of locals Jesse Mulligan and Steve Wrigley (the latter in Wellington) this week, as well as Englishmen Mark Watson and Carey Marx if I have time. My standout favourite international so far is Glenn Wool – a bogan Canadian with great original riffs on drinking, drug use and divorce (here's some random YouTube footage). He’s done in Auckland but playing in Wellington all week for those of you down there, just $25, and well worth it.

Okay. For those of you looking for politics, Mr Slack and I interviewed Labour's David Shearer on the radio last weekend, (podcast here), in the first of a series of interviews with the Mt Albert candidates. National's Melissa Lee should be on this coming Saturday.

The Sunday Star Times seemed a tad bi-polar yesterday didn’t it? The front page, detailing Tony Veitch’s latest alleged suicide attempt, with pleas from friends, family, professionals and Sara Chatwin to leave the guy alone, is followed up a with two of its star columnists, Michael Laws and Rosemary McLeod adding their own doubts on the subject of Veitch’s mea maxima culpa. If the paper held any esteem for the advice from Chatwin, it certainly didn’t show it.

I don’t normally agree with much of what Laws says, but I thought he hit the nail on the head on Sunday. He expressed doubts about Veitch, but said he should be given a second chance and get on with his life.

Speaking of Laws, a weird post-script to my Twitter experiment turned up in the Business Herald on Friday. Unbeknownst to me, three bloggers – two of whom I’d never heard of until Friday, and a blubbery one I don’t make a habit of reading, have apparently been giving themselves high fives and circle jerks for bringing about the end of my professional career and/or giving up Twitter.

Long story short: A couple of weeks ago after reading his ludicrous overreaction to the wHanganui debate, I sent an open tweet to a journalist saying I thought Michael Laws was a c***. According to these bloggers, that could spell the end of my employment. Fortunately my boss – a Mr D Christie – is pretty forgiving, and if he ever tried anything he would have a sexual harassment claim against him so fast…

Anyway, so when I decided to stop Twittering last week – I think anyone who read my initial post will realise I was a bit sceptical from the outset – these three took it as a personal victory, and the blubbery fellow even took it upon himself to mount my photo on his trophy wall.

Ironically, it took an old-fashioned newspaper article to alert me to all this on Friday. Actually it took someone saying “oh did you see you got a mention in the Herald?” I really must start consuming more media. Although it might have come to my attention quicker if any of these people could actually spell my first name properly – note to self: Must start self-Googling alternate spellings as well.

So a few points:

1. At least one of these bloggers seems to make the point that we “journos” don’t know how social networking sites work. He then goes on to suggest that the person I SENT the message to (another journalist and vague acquaintance) should also lose his job over it. ¿Que?

2. Do I even need to point out how sad it is spending your Saturday nights trawling Twitter looking for people who are only vaguely more well-known than yourselves saying something vaguely controversial? One of these tweets simply says “Gotcha!” Oh dear.

3. Not to mention the hypocrisy in trying to expose people for speaking their mind - no matter how base - isn't that kinda the principle behind your work against the EFA?

4. The fact I had to Google two of these blogs on Friday to even find out who they were would suggest it’s possible they didn’t have much to do with my leaving Twitter. Maybe the fact I wrote all of three Tweets in the ten days before I quit would indicate I wasn’t exactly a Tweeting duck to the water.

5. The entire idea is premised on the fact that I should be embarrassed for calling Michael Laws a c*** in a public forum. The Blubbery One has taken it upon himself to buy a few consonants, but that’s okay, because for the sake of clarity, it was definitely that C word I had intended to use (rather than the one that ends in a k). I’ve made my views on Michael Laws pretty clear before, and if these bloggers follow my writing as closely as they follow my tweets, they’ll know that. But since insincere public apologies are all the rage these days, let me say this:

I’m sorry that I called Michael Laws a c***. First, because c***s are beautiful and useful, not to mention fun and handy. Secondly, because thanks to Twitter, I wasn’t able to add any more adjectives to clarify exactly what kind of c*** I think Michael Laws is. Words like wannabe-Machiavellian, kneejerk, pompous and reactionary all spring to mind as a start. And I genuinely hope at this time when things are getting a bit rough for him at home, he stops to consider the joke he made about the Kahui twins on national TV, and considers whether he’d do the same again.

Looking at his blog today, I find it odd the Blubbery One spends so much time attacking Rachel Glucina, when they clearly have so much in common – a love of bile, lack of social skills, literary ability, and a general hatred for anyone who’s doing something they can’t. At least she’s finally found a way to get invited to those cool kids’ parties she always pined over.

Dude, if it makes you feel hard (in any sense), you can leave me on your trophy wall – those times you've "been particularly successful in hobbling or destroying public careers". You've also claimed victories against everyone from Winston Peters to Steve Chadwick. I dare say none of these people know who you are, or what effect you claim to have had on them. Who's next, Richard Nixon? Leave me there though – it's okay, we both know the truth – but could you please correct the spelling?

That's it on this one, for me at least, but I'm sure they'll be panting about this elsewhere for weeks to come. No links are provided here but if you want to read more you can do what I did and Google it. Just remember to spell my name wrong.

I'm off to interview Steve Coogan now – can't wait – it'll be on the radio this weekend.

(In case you’re interested, since my last post I have joined Twitter, followed about 100 people, been followed by approximately the same, got really, really bored and left. Well, by ‘left’ I mean ‘stopped’ because I don’t want to lose my login to someone else for the reasons I gave in the last post.)

I had to work on Good Friday. I’m not one of those Christian cult-members, so it didn’t bother me other than getting calls from friends who were clearly entertaining themselves with alcohol, but as soon as I was done, we jumped in the car and headed up north. Leaving late was a blessing, we avoided the 18km traffic jam caused by a motorcycle accident, and made the four hour journey in four hours. When there’s no traffic, that new toll road is a doozy. As I guess it should be, for the Most Expensive Piece of Road Ever.

Easter tends to be like Labour weekend, doesn’t it? Rain ‘n’ all that. And despite good forecasts, Friday wasn’t looking like bucking the trend. But Saturday morning we got up and were welcomed by blue skies.

My aunt and uncle have a little bach at Tokerau Beach, which is a bit further north than Mangonui of the famous fish ‘n’ chips, a bit further north than Taipa, Coopers Beach, Cable Bay. North east from Kaitaia. Oh look, here.

Anyway, the bach isn’t much, as baches shouldn’t be, but it’s a beautiful spot. Although it’s now renamed ‘Death Beach’ because as we went for a walk (it’s a very long beach, essentially offering the left-hand-frame for Doubtless Bay) we first stumbled across dozens of rotting snapper frames, which had clearly been filleted not very far out at sea, and quickly washed up. Then we almost trod on an Ex-Penguin. Then a large log covered in flies turned out to be a Former Seal. And finally (after quite a few more fish frames of varying shapes, sizes and species), a Used Stingray. Not quite the romantic morning beach stroll we were aiming for.

Saturday afternoon we drove further north, to visit friends in a gorgeous secluded spot called Henderson Bay (google it yourself if you’re keen). Beautiful bush, bird life, stunning Martian like red-crusted sand dunes, and if I’d planned ahead, I reckon the diving would have been quite bountiful too. The water might have been a bit colder than at the height of summer, but it was so clear and inviting that I could resist having my first ever Easter swim in living memory. Later we fished unsuccessful from the rocks, rolled down sand-dunes and played table-tennis under the surprisingly scorching autumn sun.

I love being able to visit different parts of the country, and every time I make the effort I realise I don’t do it enough. Fortunately we live in a country where many of us have the sort of access I’m talking about. I’m not rich and nor are my family; I don’t own any land, but I have aunties and uncles who have a property here, an old holiday home there, and so do my friends. Even if you don’t know anyone, so much of our country is beautiful and unspoilt and an easy car ride away, that you can go camping for a few dollars a night on DOC land, or hire a bach off-season at very reasonable rates.

That’s all I have to say today: I heart Aotearoa, and Twitter is a waste of time – I love you Dubber, but I don’t care what’s happening at your conference – and I never, ever, ever will care if anyone I know (other than someone who is driving a vehicle I’m in at the time) is feeling sleepy and thinking of heading to bed. Oh, and despite what the unions and the cult-member-Christians say, it is a pain in the arse not being able to buy booze on Good Friday when you’re up North and you want to get on it.

If you feel that reading this blog has been a waste of time, here’s a link to some guys who have written a song about Samantha Hayes. She’s going to be impossible after this.

And here’s a link to an Australian musical comedian called Tim Minchin, who I saw at the Auckland Festival a wee while back and still think is awesomely funny and talented and intelligent and all those things good comedians should be. If you like this one it’s worth trawling through the others on offer.

See those of you in Auckland at the drinks tomorrow.

I turned 35 the other day. I say this not to elicit a flurry of warm wishes and virtual presents, but simply to explain why I have been in something of a reflective mood. I know it’s fashionable to push it out a bit these days, but for me 35 has always been officially middle-aged. The average life expectancy for a male in New Zealand is a bit over 75 years, but it’s lower for Maori, and since I’m about 1/8th or something, I round it down a bit. Plus I smoke, drink more than I should (yeah I know I wrote about this last year, having given them both up – it didn’t take), and for the past decade have secretly been having an affair with streaky bacon.

Ageing. There’s nothing quite like it. I’ve hardly gone to pack, but the signs are definitely there. The memory’s not as flash as it once was, which isn’t saying much. There’s usually something that aches or won’t work as it should. I start to wonder how long I can wear trainers before they stop looking ‘yoof’, and start looking like the old guy at the rest home shuffling past in his New Balances.

But to me the most obvious sign I’m Not Getting Any Younger is that increasingly, I just don’t get stuff. And the best example of that right now, is Twitter.

Not Getting Stuff Because You’re Old works like this. First of all, you don’t hear of it until heaps of other people already know what it is. Then, once you’ve heard about it, you don’t really know what it is until heaps of other people are already doing it. Then, once you work out what it is, you can’t figure out for the life of you why anyone would bother.

When we’d all been blogging here for a couple of years, I started working at TVNZ. I remember a number of the older journalists coming up and saying “so these blogs, what are they all about?” and “do you think we should do a story about blogging?” By this stage blogging was old hat to many of us – and at work we were using blogs as tools, for researching, getting opinions, ideas. The idea of reporting on the medium made as much sense as doing a story on ‘radio’ as a concept: “Yeah it’s great, you sort of have this box, and you twiddle with the knobs a bit until voices talk to you.”

So I’m at the point now where I sort of understand how it works. It’s just like the status line in Facebook, right? “Damian is having a slow start to Monday.”

Some of my friends got on the Not Getting Stuff train at Facebook station. No amount of “but you don’t have to let people see your private shit” and “it’s actually really useful for sharing photos and invites” would convince them. And yeah, when you’re on Facebook, updating your status is one way to procrastinate for another few seconds before getting back to work. But I don’t do it more than every few days, and in-and-of-itself I don’t think it’s particularly interesting.

Okay. So while I've been writing this, I’ve signed up to Twitter. I’m scared that if I don’t get it there and bags “damianchristie” right now, come 2014, when Prime Minister Collins pushes through the Twitter Registration (Let’s Not Have a Repeat of the Lockwood Incident) Act is passed and it becomes compulsory for everyone to have accounts we can be tracked, I’ll end up with dschristi347 or something similarly wack, and that's now how I roll.

Looking at the twitter friends I have been automatically assigned via my contacts list, I see that one is thinking of buying a new computer; another is annoyed at delays in outsourcing; while another is annoyed at the delays in his online supermarket shopping. Britney Spears apparently had a great dinner with her dancers. I take it all back…

Damian Christie is writing a blog about twitter. How circular.

I don’t know what I think about the David Bain t-shirts. I guess at least they’re kinda subtle, I mean they could have a picture of the man himself with “you were the only one who deserved to live” written underneath in an 80s computer font or something. But Bain’s jersey has, like Fleur’s undies and Pete’s Marmite jar, become something of a perverse icon. It was even asked after – by an effusive Mr Campbell if memory serves – at that poor excuse for a press conference a couple of years back

I’m not sure who, if anyone other than the Herald reporter, called them a ‘tasteless gimmick’ – those words aren’t specifically attributed – but it seems ironic that World’s Denise L’Estrange Corbet is called on to comment on offensive t-shirts, given it was only a couple of years ago she was in the firing line for the same thing – in her case producing a range of children’s t-shirts with tasteless, gimmicky slogans such as “Future Porn Star”.

Of course, when World do it, they are being “humorous and irreverent”. Wrong. Turns out they weren’t even being original, which is about the only positive adjective one could normally ascribe to their fashion aesthetic, which personally I’ve always found to fluctuate between tasteless and gimmicky and Rupert the Bear.

Anyway, blah. I might yet buy one, we’ll see.

In other news, I broke a longstanding rule last night – I was midway through becoming a Danger to Shipping – and went to the Casino. Generally I hate the place. As Louis Theroux so brilliantly illustrated in his documentary on gambling in Las Vegas, for an industry passing itself off as entertainment, very few people seem to be having fun.

But out with friends last night, walking from one awful Irish bar to the next, we passed that Tower of Babel on Victoria Street. Turns out my friends find the place almost as repulsive, but convinced me on the merits of their approach: Dash in, put a not-insubstantial sum of money all on Black (on the roulette table) and walk out a minute later, having either doubled your money, or lost it.

So while they chose Black, I chose Odds. One spin of the wheel later, the three of us walked away disappointed. Until I was called back. Turns out “Five Red” is an 'odd', go figure. A few quick hands of Blackjack (I’d never played in a Casino before, and well, you know how easy it is to spend money that was never yours), of which I won two and lost one, and I walked out with a tidy profit – all of which was then poured into this morning’s hangover.

A friend once told me that the worst thing that ever happened to him was his first win at the casino. Out of cash, his mother lent him money for cigarettes (I know). He walked into the Casino with $20, and walked out with $1000. For several years after, he had a serious gambling problem.

I don’t think I have a particularly addictive personality. Yes I smoke cigarettes, but when it comes to anything else, I seem able to start and stop at will. Unfortuantely this includes exercise, the only thing I’d really like to get hooked on. But gambling’s never really done it for me – my disappointment at losing money completely overwhelms the joy of possibly winning. Even when relatives send me a Lotto ticket for my birthday, I quietly wish they’d just send me nothing-a-week-later, because it amounts to the same thing, but with the bonus of a loser’s disappointment.

So instead of heading back to the casino today, I opened up a sharetrading account (you can do it via your Internet banking, it turns out) and bought some shares. I figure with stocks at record lows, anything I buy now is either going to go up, or crash and burn completely. Much like the roulette wheel, really, except I get to call it a ‘portfolio’, even if I start to lose.

(Advice from anyone who’s been doing this longer than me – i.e. since this morning – is gratefully received).