Island Life by David Slack

Dying is easy, as the old saying goes, comedy is hard. You can't beat the experience of a roomful of people laughing at your words. There are few more mortifying than a pregnant pause or a deathly hush as you fail to connect. And let's not forget the low murmuring as you lose them altogether.

Speech writer's confession: I generally take the coward's way out - I throw in a little humour but give a straight talk. Just a few times in my life, I've had a room rolling; I am by no means sure I could achieve that routinely.

So how brave are the several dozen people who make up this year's roster for the comedy festival? Very. I've missed the festival altogether these last couple of years or so, but this time around I intend to make a pig of myself.

Penny Ashton kindly sprung us a couple of tickets for her MC Hot Pink in Busty Rhymes show and we had a fine time last night. I would not have thought you could construct a hip-hop lyric ending on the line: go feel up Charlotte Dawson's, but Penny did. I would not have thought you could pluck three unsuspecting people from an audience and discover some genuine hidden comic talent, but Penny did. And I would not have thought many women could get their bra cup to fit their head, but Penny did. She's on until Saturday and you should most definitely get yourself along there.

The dumbest thing you can try to do is figure out how comedy works. It's hard to resist poking and prodding at it, all the same. I do know this: the more confessional and candid you are, the better. Sharing your failures and your shortcomings, your anxieties and your frustrations - as long as you do it with no sense of self-pity - is a very good idea. It helps if you can share your own amusement at your various personal disasters.

MC Hot Pink runs a very good line in this. She's very candid, and very brave. She makes it look almost effortless, and that is one hell of an illusion to pull off. Once upon a time, we had scarcely an entertainer in the country who could manage that. Now there are dozens of them.

Of course they're all in it for the money. Radar was there last night and he was explaining to me how all of them are rolling in it.

As if. What he actually told me was that it's a bloody good thing when you stop on the way out and buy the books and the CDs and the posters. They'll even happily autograph a T shirt for you when it helps to shift the merchandise. Dig deep. These guys deserve it.

This week marks the second time in my life I’ve visited Disneyland. Karren and I were here a long time before we became parents, by way of an airfare that chucked in a free night in Anaheim with tickets to the magic kingdom. We gave Disneyland about three hours before we bailed.

I like the America you find in bars, in diners, in Amtrak cars, in the homes of friends, and in the offices where they work. I’m much more ambivalent about the America you get if you present yourself front-and -center for a full fire-hose blast of the tourist and/or consumer experience.

Still, you do things differently when you have a five year old on school holiday. I’m not complaining, you understand. The work I do gives me the latitude to take these holidays, and they’re welcome breaks, every one of them.

Actually, the work I do is an odd thing to explain to people. My companions over a few margaritas in a bar in San Diego’s Old Town listened to the description with incredulity. After a moment’s pause, Frankie said You’re a drug dealer, man.

That took us on to a conversation about Schapelle Corby and of course her nine fellow citizens who were arrested last week. More incredulity. Not, of course, that here in the USA you can’t also come unstuck in spectacularly awful ways. I recall Eric Schlosser documenting a pretty compelling case or two against the- three-strikes-and-you’re-out policy in Reefer Madness.

To add to the unlikelihood of my story I explained that I was supposed to be in Austin talking with a client about writing his life story. It involves a struggle for democracy, success against overwhelming odds, death threats, corruption, and some quite exciting moments along the way. He had, to my exasperation, at the last moment flown out to Europe. Uh huh, said Frankie, and we went back to talk about the construction business and how quickly he can remodel a service station.

I wish I was in Austin
In the Chili Parlour Bar
Drinkin' Mad Dog Margaritas
And not carin' where you are

There are two interpretations I can draw from the mystery of the disappearing client. One is that he is indeed a VIP with a hard schedule. The other is that he’s not entirely sure about doing the book. I’ll find out soon enough.

I’m ambivalent. It’s a great story and it would be good to tell it, but if it goes ahead, it will entail a lot of work. On the other hand, I’ve had time to draw breath after finishing a second book hard on the heels of the first, and it’s high time I returned my attention to the pretty vast scope that still remains for expanding the automated speeches business.

I got to thinking about such things because I am not father of the year, if being a good parent means remaining actively engaged at all times with your kids when you’re holidaying with them. So many hours in theme parks, so many opportunities for your mind to wander. I’ll give myself a break: it was the cheesy entertainment that was not getting my attention, rather than my daughter.

And do they ever trowel on the cheese. Principal culprit: Sea World. Give a young Southern Californian a microphone and watch them audition for the TV executives in the audience.

Still and all, I had been looking forward to three nights in Austin indulging the old alt.country predilection. In this vast nation of many vast people, it can be a little dispiriting to sink yourself fully into the consumer culture. So much crap food and crap entertainment ladled out to people who compliantly hoover it up. You know that America is vastly and elaborately more than this, but standing in line for the Peter Pan adventure in Fantasyland, or eating your way through a plate of ersatz pasta at San Diego Zoo, you can feel immersed in something altogether less edifying.

And yet even in this swamp of marketing-manipulated humanity, there have been small delights. Four guys singing a-capella sixties soul hits and the crowd loving it. A talking trash can whose discrete remote control operator was happy to address Mary-Margaret by name, to her great delight and astonishment. And you should see the 3D show they do for the Bugs Life. Our little girl turned six and had the time of her life.

The holiday, in other quintessentially Californian words, is not about me. The family is having fun. The family even thinks it might be nice to come and live here for a year or two. Even in a week where the appalling Ann Coulter is on the cover of Time in all the newsstands, the notion of living here and sharing the sympathies of the 48% who didn’t vote for the guy is full of appeal. When you live just a short(ish) flight away, a Mad Dog Margarita in the Chili Parlour Bar is always in easy reach.

A friend of mine often gives up drinking for all of January. He says he sometimes quite fancies the idea of giving up for the other eleven months as well. We were coming through the arrival lounge at Auckland airport the last time we were discussing this. We were solidly hung over, and full of resolve to treat ourselves better. I am under no illusions about the likely order of events next time we meet. Beers will be opened, wine bottles will be emptied, single malts may be drained.

On and on it goes. If you happened to join us at the Great Blend last month, you might have noticed this author celebrating his liberation just minutes previously from book deadline jail by tucking into the refreshing beverages. The following morning I didn’t feel even remotely inclined to the notion of tackling the subject of this blog. It’s high time I did, though. Try this on for size:

Alcohol is not just another consumer product. It is a powerful and potentially toxic psychoactive drug which, when misused, has high social and economic costs for the whole community. Alcohol is the fifth leading cause of death globally (third in ‘western/developed’ nations). In New Zealand, over 1000 deaths are attributed to alcohol every year.

Thus begins the eight point plan for action on alcohol which the New Zealand Drug Foundation presented at a roundtable it organised a couple of months ago in Wellington.

Ross Bell kindly invited a couple of your friends at PA to come along, and I spent a day listening to evidence that slowly but steadily reminded me that this stuff is not at all good for you. When misused. Important phrase that. A qualifier employed both by the people who advocate a high wide and generous approach to its availability and those who think we should be more cautious.

Regrets; I’ve had a few. Hangovers, too numerous to mention. Does that make me a misuser? I haven’t done anyone much harm under the influence. My own body has taken the biggest hits. Minor vehicle mishaps. Broke my nose a couple of times. Liver? Maybe. Brain cells, undoubtedly. I look at the impressive working of our five year old’s mind and I wonder how anyone could be stupid enough to trash such a marvelous piece of equipment with alcohol. That would be me.

And a great many others as well. You should have seen the stats: chastening. You know that liferaft that everyone lunges for – a glass or two of red wine will actually do you good? The researchers had plenty of stories to tell about people using that as an excuse to do a whole lot more drinking.

The bare unalloyed proposition it reduced to was this: pretty much most of the drinking you do does you harm. You just have to decide what you’re going to live with.

I would live my twenties at least some degree differently if I had them over again, knowing what I do now. There was a lot of waste in becoming as wasted as I fairly routinely did. And so did plenty of us. I don’t think we were ever quite immature or anal enough to want to save and count bottle tops or anything like that but some of the things we did were in the same downtown area of the city of A-Bit-Stupid.

But of course this is an adult’s personal choice, eh? This strikes me as the heart of the issue: if you work in the field of health promotion, your aim is to improve the wellbeing of the nation. You tally up the stats and you see that alcohol does untold harm. You conceive strategies to remedy that. What’s not to like?

But once that policy affects people who don’t perceive themselves to pose any kind of harm to the social fabric, they ask you what the hell you’re doing messing with their right to get wasted. Thus that much-employed qualifier: when misused.

What constitutes misuse: drinking when you can’t stop?
Harming others?
Or does it extend as far as harming your own health in the long term?

The roundtable that day had a range of people working in the field. They knew the data, they knew the arguments, they knew the problems.

The group did not include representatives of the liquor industry. That bought a bit of a media scrap, but I don’t think it was a misjudgement. I’ve seen these bunfights when the two sides line up. You just get a sort of World War One exchange of fire from opposing trenches and no one moves. Mental attrition, with breaks for nutrition.

This event – about fifty people – was productive. It identified the extent of the harm, it ran through the strategies that were being employed around the world to reduce that harm, and it came to some conclusions about what policies were worth promoting, and what looked futile.

In a nutshell: the damage is substantial and widespread, the lower the drinking age the younger the age at which the harm shows up, and if you want to do something about it, hardly anything works, with two exceptions; socking people with high prices and prohibiting or limiting advertising.

Around about now, you’re probably thinking: uh huh, room full of wowsers and do-gooders. Not really. There was a not-uncommon theme to aspects of the discussion: how can something so pleasurable be such a problem, and dammit can’t we find a way to have this cake and eat it too?

But you can’t. People do get hurt, and in much larger numbers than you might think, and in ways that even your own responsible drinking self might be surprised to find is not good news for your long term prospects. So when Mr Bell wheeled out the foundation’s eight point plan for action on alcohol, I couldn’t see much in it that didn’t make pretty good sense. Click here and make your own judgment, then raise it with your local election candidate if you’re looking for something interesting to ask at the meeting.

Meanwhile, school holidays are on the way, and we’re out of here. Dad will be making a side trip to Texas to do a little business while the family has fun in California, so if we have any readers in Austin who fancy a Long Neck, the reply button’s right underneath this post. I’ll just be having the one.

PS: Falloon, savage the book or its fearless author and so help me God, the puppy gets it. Roger Kerr is in chapters six and seven saying his piece and being accorded respect for it. What more could you ask?

It would be interesting to see the polling numbers the Government are reading. I wonder exactly how much better they expect things to be in the Maori seats if they can keep their marauding MP inside the tent. And what’s he calling his colleagues today after the ritual non-smacking? Frontbums, or soft-cocks?

I just wonder whether the Maori seats are already gone. In 1996 New Zealand First just rolled through them. I don’t know whether that startled Labour and its pollsters at the time, but it sure as hell appeared to startle the media with the exception of the ones who had been listening to the Maori radio stations.

I just hope that in all the excitement people don’t pass up the opportunity to explore one of the more interesting aspects of the whole saga, namely the manoeuvrings of sometime moon-howler Ian Wishart. People love to accuse any old reporter of having an “agenda” and it generally seems an overstatement, but in this case the relatively strategic nature of the whole business suggests the designs of someone with dreams of a New Zealand cut from an altogether stiffer patriarchal cloth than most of us would want to wear.

Still, his staged publication technique got me thinking: was there anything from the interview I had with John Tamihere for Bullshit Backlash and Bleeding Hearts that I’d left behind which might be interesting to haul out into the light a year later?

Well blow me down – look what I found:

I’ll tell you this – if Helen doesn’t get the arse in the next twelve months, I’m out of here. Mike Moore told Clayton Cosgrove the party wouldn’t last into the new century if it didn’t cut loose from the date-packers and tree-huggers.

As if. He said not a word of the sort. And nothing on the holocaust, either, mercifully. He had some good cogent stuff to say about the Treaty and how we were dealing with it. Helen Bain was there and whether her influence had anything to do with it or not, I don’t know, but Good John seemed to be hogging all the limelight.

He did have one interesting thing to say, though, that didn't appear in the book. I mentioned that someone else had argued that the Treaty relationship was – at that time - toxic because it was focusing on the dysfunctional nature of the relationship instead of contemplating how it might become productive.

Good John – perhaps with a bit of input from Bad John - thought that wasn’t a good way to look at it:

You’d never want to psychoanalyse your family to that extent. Because you’d probably accept that some of them should be committed. The more you focus on families with issues, the greater the issues become.

I wonder if he spent a bit of time in caucus urging them to take a care-in-the-community approach in his case. Whatever he said, he’s free for now. It’s hard to think, though, that any of them will be saying good night John Boy with any affection for a long time yet.

I should be careful what I write here, because I notice Mr Steve Braunias got in a bit of trouble for doing something similar a while ago. If you get mail that wasn't intended for you, the sensible thing - the prudent thing - the morally correct thing to do is to send it on to the intended recipient. Bugger that. Let me share my mail with you.

I have the domain name autowriter.com. Autowriter.com, as in "automatic writer". Not autowriter.com as in "motoring journalist". Believe me when I tell you I am really not the type. I've put a big end through a block, I've done several 360 degree turns on ice on the access road to Mount Hutt, and I've brought a truck around a corner on three of its six wheels, but it would be wrong to interpret any of that as suggesting petrolhead tendencies. The correct interpretation would be failed to pay sufficient attention. A car, for me, is something to get you from one place to another without having to endure any crap music.

But I'm starting to wonder if I should be taking a little more interest in motoring and turning autowriter.com into a car-spotter fan site. The reason for this interest can be captured in one tantalising word: junkets.

And here we come to the point where I share my email with you. Over the years, a steady steam of messages has washed into my mailbox from car makers. Some appear to be shotgun mail-outs - anything with "auto" in the address will do. Others are more interesting. Various journalists working on car publications have mangled their address and their correspondence has ended up in my intray. Recently, some fellow in America appears to have mistakenly told the people at Land Rover that they can contact him at chambers@autowriter.com . He does not share my first name and yet the interesting email I received begins with the inviting phrase "Dear David". It continues:

Please review the attached schedule of activities and letter from Larry Rosinski for details of our upcoming 2006 Range Rover program in Napa, California. Note that you will be met by a Land Rover representative in the BAGGAGE CLAIM area at SFO.
If you have any questions or have any unexpected delays along the way, please contact me or any of the Land Rover Public Affairs team.
Look forward to seeing you there.
Safe travels.
Monica

Naturally, I open the attached schedule of activities and the letter from Larry. What fun we will be having in Napa! Larry is looking forward to my arrival in San Francisco for the first opportunity to drive the Range Rover for 2006 in the United States. He has designed a program that will allow me to become immersed in the product and interact with Land Rover executives from both the US and Global who were directly responsible for the vehicle's design and development.

An attached document outlines the two days' schedule of activities. He asks me to note - and I most certainly do - that he has packed the program with drive opportunities for me - literally from the moment I am met upon arrival in San Francisco and make my way to the beautiful Napa wine region in The 2006 Range Rover.

Our program will include both on- and off-road driving, so I must pack appropriate sturdy shoes and outer wear. Temperatures in Napa during this time are normally in the 60's during the day and dip into in the 40's at night. As our evening activities may be outdoors I should pack a jacket. Attire for our final evening's dinner is business casual. Sport jackets, but no ties are suggested for gentlemen.

Larry, I am so there. Even the hotel looks entirely up to standard for a discerning motoring writer such as myself.

Sadly I failed to read the invitation until this morning, and the bloody thing starts tomorrow. Even if I could get there in time, Mary-Margaret's class is having an overnight camp in the school playground on Thursday and I lost the toss with Karren.

But my mind is racing with fresh inspiration. How hard could it be? I could transform autowriter.com into a review site. You don't have to know jack about cars - just re-purpose the copious volume of PR material that spills out each day from the car manufacturers and then spice it up with the disgruntled criticisms of the enthusiasts and other people who know what they're talking about on the discussion boards that litter the net. I could even go further and do an Average Joe review of cars: no expert knowledge required; just the impressions of a test-driver who thinks that a car is something to get you from one place to another without having to endure any crap music.

Instant Jeremy Clarkson, in other words. Just sit back and wait for the invitations to roll in. I have an acquaintance in Wellington in the car business. He gets obscenely well-treated by the car manufacturers. Junkets all over the place. If you're reading this, Williams, tell me if I'm on the right track here. You could start with your mates at Land Rover.

The best thing of all about this is that journalistic ethics need scarcely trouble me. No less an expert than David W Young has declared that bloggers aren't journalists, so I'm in like a big dog. I once had the pleasant task, in my life as a PR flack, of escorting a group of journalists to London with British Airways. Front of the plane the whole way. That didn't suck. I have to say that none of them looked too pained at the feeling of being ethically compromised by the faintly-implied obligation to write something nice about BA. Mr Brown had to wrestle with similar demons in his time as an IT writer, and I'm pretty sure he resolved them to his satisfaction.

So instead of writing about John Tamihere - a man who must surely have a great career behind him (every bit as colourful but every bit as doomed as that of John A Lee), or the deeply puzzling nature of current police administration, or the impressive tale of the man who was, when you think about it, only the second choice as Pontiff in 1978, I am directing my thinking to matters altogether more venal. I might even have to change my position on that marvellous car race we didn't get.

Update
David Young has informed me that he was not in fact the author of the paragraph in question, and that the dog-biting folk really do write as a collective on occasion. Sorry about that. A real journalist wouldn't make the assumption, of course.

Meanwhile, Tony Judd offered this splendid link describing a journalist's experiences of ethical dilemmas at the wheel of a shiny new Volvo.