Random Play: So. I'm off Te Radar again
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Really interesting post, Graeme, appreciate it.
I knew "Te Radar" well before he was "Te Radar" when he was a fellow student here in Dunedin in the early '90s. (He was good mates with one of my flatmates). He was pretty witty even then and he totally deserves his success as a comedian.
Unlike some "celebs" or "media" people in this little fishbowl of a country, he's still pretty down-to-earth despite his profile.
I last saw him about two years ago in the supermarket around the corner from my place; we had a quick yarn, caught up on the gossip about my old flatmate, etc.
If he does a Dunedin show, I'll have to go. Maybe he'll even put my name on the door...
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I know quite a bit about Thomas Brunner, little about "Te Radar" (met him a couple of times is all - and he naturally wasnt being funny, he was being himself. He was dropped from my tribal magazine because he was - irrelevant.)
You, Graham, may think our country young: it is old (and so are some of earth's creatures dwelling in/on it.) There are people who know stuff - and write about it- and then, there are the others.This is really one of the most uninteresting PAS posts I have encountered to date. Heoi.
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I was fortunate to win tickets through Public Address for Eating the Dog when it was in Wellington a couple of months ago. I like people who popularise history and Te Radar does it in a gentle and non-threatening way, and the last night at Downstage was a sell-out which was good for all concerned. It wasn't perfect - repellent title, far too male, and unreferenced (I like clear attributions on historical documentation). But he's open to suggestions and the show apparently grows and adapts as it goes around NZ, and he also generously offers it as a fundraiser to local community groups. He also says nice things about his mother. I'm now a fan.
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So, Islander, are you suggesting that you know something that Graham doesn't? Or that you are somehow more relevant than Te Radar? Please share.
And wouldn't you say that this country being the last big bit of land (outside Antarctica) anywhere in the world to be populated by anyone, and that having happened just about 100 years ago, makes it really quite a young country? At least relative to every other country on the planet?
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Te Radar and his show are both great. I too met him when he was't famous - at Squid rather regularly - and he's always had a unique outlook. And he knows an impressive amount aout gardening and keeping chickens.
I saw him at an event a few months ago where he told Tariana Turia they had a lot in common since he's removed the H from his first name for cultural reasons. What a crack up!
I wonder if his appeal is limited to people with a youthful attitude? -
And wouldn't you say that this country being the last big bit of land (outside Antarctica) anywhere in the world to be populated by anyone, and that having happened just about 100 years ago, makes it really quite a young country? At least relative to every other country on the planet?
What? The entire African continent wasn't even discovered until 1998
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The doors, people are strange...
My three sons (copyright) were in rock bands in Auckland and – because I know more than something about that world from considerably damaging experience – I would always tell them that rock'n'roll was “pay at the door”.
Sage advice!
I remember from my days (early '80s) on the door at The Windsor there were some bands that had ridiculously huge "guest lists" that I used to say:
"Oh, I'll just use the Auckland phone book, and if they're not in there, they pay!"
My view was that if they were all the band's "friends" they wouldn't mind paying and supporting their endeavours, otherwise they were cutting the legs out from under them... -
...and that having happened just about 100 years ago
I can only assume that's a typo for 1000 years ago
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I am compelled to see this show, based on yr enthusiasm Mr Reid.
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the last big bit of land (outside Antarctica) anywhere in the world to be populated by anyone, and that having happened just about 100 years ago, makes it really quite a young country?
How quaint. Dating land by when it was populated by us talking apes.
As for Te Radar, He's making a living in a difficult profession in a small country. Good for him. -
Islander,
This is really one of the most insulting PAS replies I have encountered to date. -
My view was that if they were all the band's "friends" they wouldn't mind paying and supporting their endeavours, otherwise they were cutting the legs out from under them...
That's how I see business in the trade industry. Just because one can plumb, do electrics or build, it does not mean they don't have to eat. Mates rates, pah! And when did this post get so serious? Lighten up, it's about a comedic performance.
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How quaint. Dating land by when it was populated by us talking apes.
Graeme may, of course, be making the distinction between history (subsequent to written records) and prehistory (prior to written records) as often used in academia.
Interestingly, Iceland is often said to be (by, for example, Encyclopedia Brittannica) the only country with no prehistory, since it was originally settled by literate people.
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Hang in there Bryan Dods - you'll encounter much worse.
Graeme - apologies for mis-spelling your name.
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Graeme may, of course, be making the distinction
Ummm thanks for the info. But it wasn't Graeme............
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Graeme may, of course, be making the distinction between history (subsequent to written records) and prehistory (prior to written records) as often used in academia.
"Mountainous New Zealand fell late into the possession of man. Even the oldest proclamation of human tenancy here—perhaps some crude, simple cave-drawing—postdates the rise and fall of the earth's great early civilisations, Egyptian, Greek and Roman; and the founding of the earth's abiding religions, Christian, Muslim and Buddhist. The visitor might be tempted to see this shore as innocent of history; he would be wrong. Wrong, that is, unless he excludes the struggle of a restless land to find shape, within some final skin; wrong unless lie excludes the eccentricities of creation, of flora and fauna, upon these isolated islands; and above all wrong if he imagines the human occupation of the country, relatively so recent, to be a simple story."
Maurice Shadbolt, The Shell Guide to New Zealand, 1968.
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Maurice Shadbolt, The Shell Guide to New Zealand, 1968.
If I'd been asked to take a blind guess who wrote that I'd have gone for Chris Trotter.
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(bastards like red-light runners and property developers)
And Bus Lane jumpers. Like ex Nats Party Presidents who skite on TV that they "do it all the time".
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Geez Joe - Shadbolt's words are *intelligent* and organised- dont mispercieve the 'some crude simple cave-drawing' against his knowledge of (age, aside from anything else) of the Wairau Bar artefacts...
Chris Trotter is sublimely indifferent to such stuff.
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Geez Joe
While I don't doubt Shadbolt's expertise re. NZ history, I'm perfectly capable of recognising overwrought and portentous for its own sake. It was everywhere when I was growing up, and much of it was Shadbolt's 'official' wordsmithery. Good on him, it was the state-sanctioned style of the day, there wasn't a lot of such work about, and he had to turn a buck.
That's why Trotter's such a goddam dinosaur, still puffing on in the overpadded manner that was all the go four decades ago.
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I'd sort of agree but
"unless he excludes the struggle of a restless land to find shape,within some final skin"
let alone the next 2 loaded clauses-
-this land has been under-sea/overseas, and rising to great mountain heights: aside from Maori mythology, Shadbolt is the only Pakeha writer who has engaged with this (that I know about) and he did it in terms of a gazeteer.C Trotter actually doesnt know this country anywhere near as well as Maurice Shadbolt did-
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Shadbolt is the only Pakeha writer who has engaged with this (that I know about)
Does Tim Flannery's being Australian disqualify him as a Pakeha?
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Joe W - totally. A Pakeha is a person of European ancestry who was
a)born here
b)has left a placenta or a body in the ground here (o, of their own generation!) -
Long as we don't start getting out the calipers & measuring skulls :)
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Weelll Joe W
(fingering her rocker jaw)....seriously, I have all Tim Flannery's books, and respect his opinons.
Maurice was writing for a commercial brief, and I think he accomplished an excellent resume of the -then- current archaeological & history situations for the late *1960s*.
And not all that much has changed since then-
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