Posts by Joe Wylie
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Clearly I am not. Nor is the person who called a restaurant in Auckland _Pompino_, I know this for a fact.
FFS. Wonder if they offer free parking if you turn up in a pajero?
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RB, could you translate "Prego" for the benefit of... non Aucklanders, I presume? I'm intrigued.
Are you sure you're Italian?
It's probably symptomatic of the long unchanging twilight of postmodernity that Prego's still there after twenty-plus years. In case anyone thinks that LOL cats are a bit twee, Prego's predecessor was a vaguely themed establishment by the name of Toad Hall. There was something on the menu named Gamekeeper's Gumboots.
Once upon a time in an ancient Metro editorial Warwick Roger, in musing about the rich local multiculturality that lay beyond the magazine's scope, noted that dinner at Prego wasn't everyone's idea of a good time. I know this is true, because I once dined there with someone who took along her copy of Heidi to read so she wouldn't be bored. The waiter was really nice about it.
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David:
The word 'soporific' had been censored from the 'Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies'. As a six year old, I remember finding it to be a very useful word, and felt grateful to Potter for exposing me to it. It's still a useful word, come to think of it.
If I hadn't seen that kind of thing done I'd have difficulty believing it. There's a particularly awful Peter Rabbit from the 80s, re-illustrated with photographed soft toys, where the description of the rabbits' home "underneath the root of a very big fir-tree" has been reduced to "an old tree". God knows why.
Craig:
But it's interesting -- when you think about it -- how much great children's literature does have a heart of darkness that parents would rather pretend doesn't exist.
I think the great childrens' authors are those who've discovered that you don't get the enduring light without the dark. C. S. Lewis famously cited Squirrel Nutkin as an early encounter with the religio-mystical quality that he described as "joy", and claimed to have returned to the book throughout his life. While the marvellously eccentric Marianne Moore wasn't exactly a childrens' author, she was dead serious when she included Squirrel Nutkin and Peter Rabbit among her list of greatest literary works, along with Henry James, Stendhal, Trollope, and, uh, Ogden Nash.
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We have a lone Tui who likes to sing from the apple tree next door. It likes to sing the four notes from Beethoven's 5th, but very, very slowly: "tweet tweet tweet..(sometimes a 5 second pause)... twoot".
Hmmm . . . I recall a throwaway remark from someone about a possible German origin for tuis, on account of their sometimes guttural vocalising. There seems to be a pattern emerging.
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Interesting how Beatrix Potter's unmodified work retains its appeal, while the numerous attempts at bowdlerisation are quickly forgotten. The ongoing attempts to dumb-down Potter seem to stem from an urge to make the world safe for a certain kind of schoolteacher, while rendering it sterile for most kids.
Despite the superficial anthropomorphism, Potter's critters are based on her observation of real animals, and it's this often dark authenticity that ensures their ongoing appeal. Squirrel Nutkin loses his tail after narrowly escaping being skinned alive by an owl. Despite his foppish Gainsborough suit, Tom Kitten is rolled in pastry and prepared for the oven by the ogre-ish rat Samuel Whiskers and his evil wife. Peter Rabbit is trapped by his brass buttons in a bird net in Mr MacGregor's garden - he went there knowing full well that his dad had been killed there - and frees himself by shedding the trappings of anthropomorphism, his ditzy blue jacket.
While Potter received plenty of critical acclaim in her lifetime she was no sentimentalist. When Graham Greene described her in a 1933 essay as "an acute and unromantic observer", he copped a freociously articulate letter from the author for daring to attempt a little amateur Freudian analysis of her work.
There was a cartoon from the last years of Punch that Potter might well have enjoyed. Taken straight from Peter Rabbit, it showed Mrs. Rabbit raising her arms in horror as Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail bring the news that that Peter has entered the fatal garden. The only modification to the original pic is that the little girl bunnies are missing the top half of their ears. The caption reads "Mr. MacGregor's got a Flymo!"
Who knows, Beatrix Potter might even have enjoyed this:
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So for those of you who'll still be net-enabled this Christmas, what are your favourite sites for roaming around when the shopping and the eating get too much?
The Gunslinger never disappoints.
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__Yes, I'm kicking myself for not working out you could vote three times for the same word.__
I didn't know either, till it happened
Islander: Author, linguist, and hacker.
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I once told Paul Holmes that while I might on occasion disagree mightily with his words or actions, I had never doubted his authenticity. In a world where so many empty vessels make noise, he is what he is; sometimes maddening but rich and real. On the day of his final breakfast radio broadcast, I wish him all the best.
Jesus Russell you're generous - up until the last sentence I thought he'd popped off and that was something you'd knocked up for the state send-off.
While I dont begrudge the old chap his olive oil etc, when it comes to Holmes I'll go with Chris Knox - "the gnome of banality".
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This was a very pommie Rita, though.
I remember. Saw it back in the day, I think at Mission Bay, where the audience seemed to know the punch lines, and shamelessly shouted them aloud. While the experience of watching an eastern suburbs cult movie was pretty resistable, to the film's credit it still held up.
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That said, mine was merely a quotation from Educating Rita - Tom nabbed it right away.
Then in comes his daughter
Whose name was Rita
She looked like she stepped out of
La Dolce Vita
Bob Dylan, ,Motorpsycho Nightmare
Those bloody Italians, eh?