Random Play by Graham Reid

Usually I don’t bother responding to those who bait me about my hometown, they are usually parochial yokels whose opinions about Auckland are based on something they saw on the news. Traffic and crime for the most part.

But this week an aside from Linda “I mean” Clark really irritated me, it was one of those smug jibes from someone living in Wellington which seems to style itself as some crucible of aesthetics and arbiter of the arts.

It was a bad week for Clark actually: on Friday her promo, full of gravitas, repeatedly said they would be paying tribute to “the late Paul Fuemana“. Fortunately Manu Taylor, who knew the late Phil Fuemana knew which brother he was talking about.

Then there was the segment by the programme’s residents wits (their words, not mine) Te Radar and, I think, Jon Gadsby. I know it wasn’t the execrable Jim Hopkins, a man who laughs after everything he says to make it sound funny, and never finds a pun too low to be beneath him.

The wits were on about Winston Peters’ showing in Parliament and the matter of a man who once unwittingly employed a paedophile in the US (in the same year as the Chill’s Love My Leather Jacket if you want some time perspective on the matter).

The wits and Clark were stumped as to what Winston had to gain from his shameful outburst, as have been any number of highly paid political pundits I noticed. I have waited for someone to point out that two dogs will scrap over a bone but won’t work together to bring down a cow.

And just days before the Act (2%) conference wouldn’t it have been in Winston’s interests to kneecap Rodney Hide? Just a thought.

Anyway back to what Clark said this week. It was in a discussion about the AK05 festival and how it hadn’t pulled quite the numbers the various promoters had hoped. At this Clark sniffed and laughed, “Aucklanders and art”.

The subtext was clear: Aucklanders aren’t interested in the arts.

I’m not sure about that, and was pleased that Carla Van Zon who had worked on the International Festival of the Arts held in Wellington said on television that it had taken a decade before it had made a buck.

Clark’s snide aside about Auckland needs to be put in some larger kind of context, so here goes. My two cents worth, as Kent Brockman on The Simpsons says.

Auckland is a city and, like it or not, other places in this country are large towns or villages. And I include Wellington in that. It is a big town and, at best, maybe a really small city.

During AK05 we went to a few things: the sellout Town Hall show by Zakir Hussain and the opening night of the much over-rated play Three Furies which received a fair and damningly polite review by the Herald critic. If I’d read that review I wouldn’t have bothered going.

During that fortnight we also went to a couple of movies (there are about three dozens screens within a 10 minute drive from our place, six within a five minute walk) and went to the art gallery for the Mixed-Up Childhood exhibition.

We also went to the International Cultural festival at Potters Park, and walked around the corner to spend half a day at Pasifika.

I mention this because Auckland isn’t a big town, it’s a city. A lot goes on in diverse arts all the time.

International rock bands and musicians regularly pass through here without venturing anywhere else in the country; there are pocket-sized film festivals regularly; at least half a dozen dance/DJ events on Friday and Saturday nights; dozens of art galleries; and blah blah blah.

So AK05 wasn’t the only thing on our agenda the past fortnight. Aucklanders don’t feel we have to rush off to every damn arty thing, there will be more coming down the turnpike.

That’s the problem arts festival organisers here have to live with, but of course isn’t a problem if you are an arts consumer, or even just like getting out of the house, in a big city.

During AK05 we also went out to dinner a couple of times, on both occasions to Ponsonby Rd oddly enough which isn’t a place we normally go. Why not, when it’s the Restaurant Mile?

Well, we live five minutes from the intersection of Valley and Dominion Rds (where we can choose from a dozen different Asian restaurants, an excellent GPK and a Russian place), or can walk up to Kingsland which is the new Ponsonby (at least the Ponsonby News devotes pages to all the café‘s, funky shops, restaurants, frock shops and so on which are within the 100 or so metre-long strip).

There’s also multi-ethnic Sandringham a five minute drive away. And Parnell, Newmarket and other suburbs I suppose.

Oh, and one afternoon I went for a swim at the beach at the end of Sentinel Rd in Herne Bay which is literally a five minute drive from the foot of Queen St. (Yep, Auckland Harbour water may not be the cleanest on the planet but at least it is warm).

So when civilians from elsewhere in the country are sniffy about my city I generally couldn’t give a shit. I like where I live: it is an interesting, diverse, amusing and lively place.

Hell, even the mayors of Wellington and Hamilton conceded it was the economic powerhouse of the nation when I interviewed them a few years back.

(By the way, Auckland didn’t lose the V8 race, it didn’t want it. Wellington is now stuck with it, and already rates are going to rise and the bike race there illustrated how even such a small event can disrupt traffic. I wish you luck with big noisy cars in the middle of your town.)

So that’s my take on my city. I don‘t decry the place where anyone else lives, that‘s their choice. But maybe we need some perspective. Auckland is a city.

And “Morningside for life,” as Prince Charles says.

That’s it: it’s Sunday avo, the papers are read, and we’re now off to the Great Blend.

Couple of final things though: my sincere thanks to all those who have responded to various columns of late. I reply to everyone although a few e-mails bounce back. I appreciate your humour and so here’s a quick catch-up on some things.

Yes, the Ask Ms Manners column (Jan 27) was a joke but thanks to those who added their own urban protocols (no weed eaters or lawn-mowers before 10am on weekends is a good one), and way back I wrote about the great Pacific guitarist Bill Sevesi (Under a Pacific Sky, Dec 31). Bill now has his own website and it’s really good.

Thanks also to those who suggested what to do about my noisy neighbour (whom I genuinely like) in the previous blog Come. Feel the Noise. The one I liked best was borrowing an album of animal noises from the library and when they start getting loud and intimate to put it on. Neighbours will think there is bestiality at work and call the cops. Ha!

Of course many, many thanks to the sincere and often moving messages after my column about my mum (Family Matters, December 4, 2004). All genuinely appreciated. And by the way, my book which I have I mentioned a couple of times is currently being printed and will be out late May. Check www.elsewhere.co.nz for some background.

And way back I mentioned I was going to the gym. Lots of nice supportive e-mails and so to all you people you’ll be pleased to know I am still going. I was there this morning actually, but followed Joe Rokocoko into the showers. His taut physique tells me I still have some way to go.

But I am twice his age. And he was the one in pain and limping.

A question: is female orgasm the satisfied whimper at the end, or the 40 minutes of moaning and groaning which my neighbour does loudly at 2am? Or at 6am.

Living in a block of townhouses brings with it a certain unwanted knowledge of your neighbour’s intimacies, although I am a little unsure as to whether they are unhappy about us knowing. She once said, “you’ve probably heard us” which indicates she knows her groans can carry.

And if she was in any doubt -- although perhaps she was too busy to notice -- about 1am a fortnight ago, when her moans were echoing around the courtyard, one guy came out on his patio and yelled, “Give her one for me, and give her one for the rest of us too”.

For a few weeks I have said to myself, “Well, it could be worse. They could be fighting”.

But while I used to admire their stamina now I just find it inconsiderate. My sour mood today -- they started around 7am when she came in from work -- isn’t helped by the arrival a new neighbour across the courtyard a week ago.

Things just got worse.

For the first few days he danced around his lounge in full view from my kitchen bench doing hip-hop manoeuvres (which really do look odd coming from a rotund, a-rhythmic white guy) and drank beer. Then he collapsed.

But this morning at just after 5am his unit exploded with noise as he started his own dance party.

The walls of the block shook, his neighbours’ lights went on and the young Asian student next door to him came out helplessly in her dressing gown, he and his mates bellowing at each other, and Fatboy Slim or some other repetitive shit rattled my windows on the other side of the carpark.

While I was making a cup of tea at 6am -- there was nothing else to do -- my wife got onto noise control. She had to wait on the line for about 20 minutes -- the music they had while she was on hold were classic NZ hits played very loudly she said -- and when she got through she was told that they’d already had three other complaints. They would be sending someone.

We went back to bed and the van outside the guy’s place revved up amidst hoots and shouts then took off, the music played on for a while and then wound down.

I guess at some point noise control may have arrived and had a wee word because a bit later when I was up reading the paper at a more reasonable hour I saw him on his patio glowering around the apartments, then he went back inside and pulled his curtains. I guess he crashed.

My belief is noise control should be allowed to come back at this time, knock loudly on the door and wake the bastard up. That would be appropriate.

Anyway, he was quiet around 7am when my neighbour started her moaning. Loudly. I hope she woke him up, like she did us at 2am the other morning.

See my logic? If noise control had arrived back then they could have got two for the price of one.

I feel like I’m stuck between a cock and a hard case.

In January 98 the on-line version of the Chicago Tribune beat all other media when it published its obituary of Frank Sinatra. Unfortunately it also beat the ailing Frank who hung around for another six months.

It was an embarrassing error -- it still contained a “fill in the blank” part for the actual day of his demise -- but it wasn’t like they were alone on the deathwatch: Sinatra’s various record companies had been gearing up the previous year for posthumous album releases, and in this country Real Groove published a premature obit five months before the Chairman of the Board left the building.

I know about this because I wrote a piece about it -- and of course was myself also writing a thinly-disguised obituary for old Blue Eyes. Frank stayed on another four months. Boy, did I feel foolish.

It is unwise to predict a demise, so it is understandable the media caution that surrounds the illnesses of the Pope which started some months ago.

Even the cynical secular media isn’t wanting to be too presumptuous and insensitive as to start running big stories about his papacy, legacy and possible successors.

Very wise in the case of this pope as I learned some years ago.

In late 2001 when he was on his 95th foreign tour and was taken ill I wrote a lengthy piece about how his successor would be chosen. In that story I quoted the Guardian which said, “He could go tonight”. The paper had said that in 99.

And people describe Winston as the comeback kid?

At the time of writing this the Pope seems to be okay again, but what journalism has taught me is that the second you say something with certainty, the opposite is bound to happen.

Or some damn thing will happen which will make you look stupid. (And everyone remembers that ocassion, they don't remember the times you were right or prescient.)

So, even though I have already written a piece about the Pope in anticipation of his demise (I wrote it three years ago and have just had to keep updating it) I still wouldn’t want to be taking bets on a timeframe.

But right now you do -- again -- feel like the wheel of history is about to turn and so you can guess that television documentaries about the rituals of the Catholic Church will follow. They will be fascinating.

The curious thing is how television -- a medium which thinks nothing of stalker-like door-knock interviews, reducing people to tears for ratings and asking the newly widowed “How do you feel?” -- has kept a respectful distance in matters pertaining to the Pope’s health.

There have been a few discreet suggestions that the next pope might come Africa or South America, but as New Zealand’s Cardinal Tom Williams said to me all those years ago when I was writing about what we all thought was the Pope’s impending demise, the person who goes into the conclave of cardinals as the most favoured Pope comes out a cardinal.

This is an interseting time to be living through. The Catholic Church has taken a hammering under this Pope's office -- declining numbers in the developed world, child molestation and contraception controversies, the abuse in schools -- yet such times galvanise people of a faith.

Especially when that faith has it roots in the distant past. That throws the present into perspective.

The arcane rituals which surround the election of a new pope seem medieval and mysterious in the fast-pace of the 21st century, but there is still a place for ritual and religion.

And when it comes to picking a new pope Williams said something that really struck me: Never discount the possibility of divine intervention.

Oddly enough even though we were talking about religion I hadn’t thought of that.

But it seems kind of obvious, doesn’t it?

You don’t have to be in Australia long before you fall into bad habits and start saying things like, “Mate, how good was that?” I was there a week -- not Australia actually but Surfers Paradise which is another thing altogether -- and I started dumbing down.

Don’t get me wrong, this is no anti-Aussie bash (there’s a lot I love about the place) but at Surfers there was a pool outside my motel door, constant sunshine, the local newspaper contained nothing worth reading, and the television channels didn’t show any international news. Quite an enforced holiday.

We were there to scatter my mum’s ashes but the flights were so cheap and the motel only $50 a night so we turned a weekend trip into seven nights, hired a car and tootled off to Byron Bay and Brisbane. Mate, how good was that?

Once I had finished my book -- Spoken Here by Mark Abley about dying or endangered languages, really good -- I was forced to read the local papers.

New Zealand was mentioned twice, and neither time favourably. First there was the Helen Clark thing about John Farnham, the second was about the yobbos at the cricket pelting the Australians with bottles and suchlike. Mate, how dumb was that?

It was tough being a Kiwi in Paradise last week.

Of the former it was hard to get any hard information but locals hooted about how sour our PM looks and of course John Farnham, whatever you think of him, is a cross-generational icon in Australia. I don’t mind the guy, anyone who can go from Sadie The Cleaning Lady to being The Voice of his homeland has done pretty well.

Clark may well have been right about the Gallipoli thing -- although Farnham isn’t quite that insensitive and his few songs were utterly respectful of the occasion, it was never going to be a rock concert. But I have some difficulty with the way in which she phrased her comments. It was as if, because she hadn’t heard of him he somehow didn’t count. That’s the kind of arrogance we are seeing too often from this government, and hear too often from the Dear Leader.

It was on off-the-cuff comment which speaks volumes about ego. Mate, how arrogant was that?

And why would you wave your ignorance like a flag?

Anyway dumbness is everywhere right now. I picked up the Gold Coast Tabloid and read of a sad case where a guy had backed the car over his daughter in the driveway. The interesting thing was the big sort of public service sidebar which was full of advice like: always know where your children are; look carefully before backing down the driveway, and so on.

Do people really need to be told such basic information? It seems they do. Attune yourself and you’ll see what I mean. There is a dumbing down everywhere.

When we got back home there was nothing to eat in the house so we went shopping at the local Foodtown. No, it wasn’t the one where insecure idiots think if someone is speaking something other than English they are probably talking about them. (Doesn’t that strike you as arrogant, that some think they might be worthy of someone else’s conversation?)

And it wasn’t the Foodtown where they have bilingual announcements. Mate, how ka pai was that?

This one did have announcements, but if this is public service then I think we’re in serious trouble and getting more stupid by the minute. The sweet lady’s voice announced a wine tip from Bob Campbell, one of the country's most knowledgeable wine writers and a man whom I’m always happy to take advice from.

So I tuned in, and people around me must have wondered what I was laughing my arse off about. This is what Bob said: if you are having trouble opening a screw cap top hold the top in the palm of your hand and turn the bottle from the bottom.

Mate, how dumb was that?

News of the death of Max Schmeling came through this weekend, a man who stood briefly in the spotlight of history. His name will not be familiar to you unless you are interested in boxing. I am.

Beside my stereo as I type this there are a few old slices of vinyl which I play regularly, just for own enjoyment. There’s Greatest Rap Hits Vol 2 (Grandmaster Flash, the Sugar Hill Gang and so on), 60s garage band r’n’b by Britain’s Downliners Sect, and the first Ramones album.

And there is Great Moments in Boxing in a yellowing sleeve, narrated by Don Dunphy and on the Coral label. That one belonged to my father.

My Dad was a big fight fan and when I was a kid we used to go to the bouts at the YMCA. He was a big supporter of Muhammad Ali and always considered him the Champ. The only place he could lose the title was in the ring, he’d say. No politician or army board could take it away from him.

But mostly my dad’s period was before the war so I grew up hearing about Max Baer and Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano and “Jersey Joe” Walcott, Gene Tunney and “Two Ton” Tony Galento. And Max Schmeling.

Schmeling was a German heavyweight who won the title from Jack Sharkey in 1930 in controversial circumstances. The two met at Yankee Stadium on June 12 and at the end of the fourth round, with Schmeling writhing in pain in his corner, the fight was over and ring announcer Joe Humphries told a bewildered, then furious, crowd that Schmeling was the new champ.

Just before the end of the fourth Schmeling -- who had lost every round -- apparently took a low blow. Referee Jim Crowley disqualified Sharkey and gave the fight, and therefore the title, to Schmeling. Sharkey left the ring unmarked, Schmeling was carried out.

Two years later Sharkey took the title back from Schmeling whom many called the “caretaker champion“, but the German’s biggest fights were yet to come. They were against the great Joe Louis, the “brown bomber” from Detroit who was only defeated three times in his long career. Once by Schmeling in 1936.

Louis, at 22, was on his way up and due to fight Jim Braddock, but before that he had to take on Schmeling, then close to 31. In the short fight Louis sprained both his thumbs in futile punching, and took serious blows to the face from the powerful Schmeling. He was in serious trouble by the fourth, tossing punches wildly, several hitting Schmeling low, and his left eye was closed, his lip bleeding.

In the 12th he was felled by a staggering flurry and was counted out as he held onto the ropes. Against odds of 10-1 Schmeling had defeated the great Joe Louis. There was a riot in Harlem.

A year later Louis defeated Braddock for the tile (Braddock needed 23 stitches in face) and then there was the inevitable rematch with Schmeling.

But this time the context was very different. It was characterised as a revenge match for Louis and Schmeling had attacked him in the media fro the low blows in the first fight.

More than that however it was a political event. With the rise of Nazism in Europe -- the war was just a year away -- and Hitler having snubbed Jesse Owens at the Berlin Olympics the fight was seen as a symbolic conflict between the two rival nations and ideologies.

Hitler said Louis was a man of inferior blood and Schmeling was of the Aryan race, Schmeling could not lose.

There was a nasty feeling in the air when the fight at Yankee Stadium on June 22 1938 took place before a crowd of 70,000. It was the most anticipated bout in boxing history.

The crowd got the victory it wanted, but perhaps not value for money. Within seconds Louis was dominant, he powered a huge right hand sledgehammer into Schmeling’s left side and kept up a relentless barrage. Schmeling went down three times and a little over two minutes into the round his corner threw in the towel.

Schmeling lost on a TKO.

Hitler was furious, and Schmeling all but retired. He never fought another major bout and he disappeared into the history books as the war ravaged the planet.

Hitler tried to use him as a propaganda tool and get him to join the Nazi party but Schmeling repeatedly declined. He refused to get rid of his American Jewish manager Joe Jacobs and was forced into the army.

He served with distinction as a paratrooper and was decorated, he fought again in 1948 and when he retired after a few more bouts he bought the Coca Cola franchise and became the head of the company.

He was not the man he had been characterised as before the war either: later it was learned that during the war he had rescued some Jewish teenagers from the Nazis.

Schmeling was a great philanthropist and remained good friends with Joe Louis who, despite his remarkable record was reduced to being a doorman at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. Louis was often down on his luck and broke and Schmeling would help him out. He paid for Louis’ funeral in 1981.

In 1975 he said, “Looking back, I’m almost happy I lost that fight. Just imagine if I had come back to Germany with a victory. I had nothing to do with the Nazis, but they would have given me a medal. After the war I might have been considered a war criminal.”

He may have only stood in the spotlight of history for a few brutal minutes, but he went the distance.

When Max Schmeling died last week he was 99.