Luke 19:1-10 (Good News)

I was pleased to be asked to do the reading again at Cession tonight...

Jesus went on into Jericho and was passing through. There was a chief tax collector there named Zacchaeus, who was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but he was a little man and could not see Jesus because of the crowd. So he ran ahead of the crowd and climbed a sycamore tree to see Jesus, who was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to that place, he looked up and said to Zacchaeus, “Hurry down, Zacchaeus, because I must stay in your house today.”

Zacchaeus hurried down and welcomed him with great joy. All the people who saw it started grumbling. “This man has gone as a guest to the home of a sinner!”

Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Listen, sir! I will give half my belongings to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone, I will pay him back four times as much.”

Jesus said to him, “Salvation has come to this house today, for this man, also, is a descendant of Abraham. The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

That Anzac Day Feeling

Due to other commitments, I've been gently easing-off doing my weekly Christian radio shows of late. Well all right, I haven't done any since September. Last Wednesday however was Anzac Day, so I decided to make the time.


Then tonight, Tim downstairs and I headed over to Hope City FM to get together with Patrick. I've been promising to organise this meeting of minds for ages. They of course got yakking about technical matters, so I spent the evening repeating the Anzac Day programme, followed by several other old editions.

Clip here.

Who Is This?

Last night I dreamt that I had lost my memory. I was asking people what date it was, what country I was in, it was disturbing.

I think it came about partly from being set, in part, in the UK, which of course I have no recent memory of.

Whenever I travel between the UK and NZ in real life, upon my arrival, the absence of any recent memories in what appears to be my 'normal' life always throws me a bit. Actually it works to my advantage, as I get a great feeling of freedom from any sense of ongoing responsibility or commitments.

World Series of Uno

Revelation 21:3-4

Got asked to do another very brief reading at Cession this evening - Revelation 21:3-4. Someone came up afterwards and said she had been moved to tears when she heard it. Without trying to sound pretentious, it's a bit heartening when you find out that just repeating someone else's words from 1900 years ago has had such a positive effect in someone's life without you even realising.

The church videocamera wasn't being used this week, so ever keen to keep some sort of a record, when I got home I re-recorded my bit, taking care to repeat my inflection, pauses etc. as exactly as I could remember.

In short, it sounded an awful lot like this.

Up Stockade Hill to Pray

Cruel Bananas

Wellington Weekend (part 4 of 4): The Return Of The Overlander

One hour’s sleep.

Again.

Aaron gave my bleary self a lift to the station, and it was time for another goodbye.


Although I had booked a train ticket on The Overlander back up north to Auckland from Wellington station, I had decided to pick it up from Porirua, which was much nearer to Aaron's house. When I boarded the train and spoke to the guard however, she said that they hadn't been going to stop at Porirua, because no-one had booked to board at that station. The only reason that they had stopped there was to pick up another driver, who happened to be the guy that I had been chatting to on the platform!


The train had cost more than the bus, and would take about 3 hours longer, because it's aimed at tourists who want to enjoy the scenery. Like so much of New Zealand's rail network, it nearly closed last year due to lack of numbers. At the back was a relaxed panoramic lounge-like area, where I quickly sat down to read the paper and enjoy the wrap-around views, until the same guard told me to move so that everyone could have a go. Oh dear, I was quickly becoming her problem-passenger.

So I moved to a regular seat nearby, and a few minutes later the lounge-area was fairly deserted, so I moved back. After all, she could hardly complain that I was preventing other passengers from sitting there, when most of the other comfy seats in that area were empty.

Sure enough, when she returned, she sat down too and we had quite a pleasant chat about anything but. She even wound up helpfully taking my photo!


The real views were outside though…



At one point we passed an old man excitedly waving a red flag at us, as apparently he comes out of his house twice a day purely to wave at everyone on the train. The guard said over the tannoy that she didn’t know why he did this, but I think he’s just excited that the train is still running.

There were a few stops for meals, most notably at Hamilton, where I have for many years believed there to be a train station, but have never been able to prove it. Today I firmly set foot on its platform!

The final hour or so back to Auckland were marred by a few passengers who were utterly incapable of coping with the presence of a few happy children on their train. While the kids’ parents were off in another carriage, one old lady decided to start telling them off for being ‘noisy’ and disturbing ‘all’ the other passengers. In an extremely rare moment, I actually stood up and told her off for including me in her personal problem. I really had to wonder just how miserable she had made herself in her lifetime, if she hadn’t even been able to make room for some laughing children.

I moved to another carriage to get away from her – something she could easily have done herself, and wondered if I was now guilty of the same intolerance that I’d just judged her of. A while later the kids’ mother thanked me for defending them.


The approach into Auckland at nighttime was interesting. It was a bit like being on an unfamiliar line somewhere on the Underground. We trundled past more and more buildings until we eventually pulled-into Auckland’s Britomart station, where I was now becoming quite plodding.

Here I had one very special assignment to complete though. I had promised Dave that I would get some shots of The Overlander train for him to work from when drawing his forthcoming comicbook, set in Auckland. With a little bit of experience at writing comics, I racked my brains to think which angles would probably work well in frames. It was also a good chance to take some photos of the station that I’ve been meaning to get for years anyway.








It had only been four days, but for me it had all been a much-needed holiday. And now, like the tracks, I’d reached the end.

Day #1 of 4 here.
Day #2 of 4 here.
Day #3 of 4 here.

Wellington Weekend (part 3 of 4): Dim City

Dave, Fionnuala and I waved goodbye to Nigel as we left the priests’ retreat home, and headed for Johnny B and Mel B’s BBQ for the afternoon.

Here we actually had a chance to properly catch-up with them. I’d only met Mel once before the wedding – by Richmond Bridge last October – and I hadn’t seen John since that day either. I also picked-up Nigel’s shades for him, which he’d left behind at the reception last night.


At around 4:30pm, with proper catch-ups done, Dave, Fionnuala and I said our goodbyes to Mr and Mrs B, and headed into Wellington City for what little was left of the day.


I only had a checklist of three things to do in New Zealand’s capital city, and these we achieved quite quickly.


We caught the famous “cable car” (actually a funicular railway) up the hill…


visited the Wellington Botanical Gardens…


... and after strolling back down got to see New Zealand’s parliament building, which is disturbingly called “The Beehive.” (P.A.T.C.H. Work anyone?) I’ve been determined to see this ever since Tim Downstairs had shown me it from above on Google Earth.

After this I bought a banana and some other supplies for my train journey home tomorrow, before we crept into Sacred Heart Cathedral for the evening service, where the English priest knew exactly what to do when I crossed my arms.

After that we got lost, and discovered the one really big difference between Wellington and other capital cities of the world – everything was shut.

I have never been a fan of Sunday trading, and very rarely buy anything on Sundays, but I do think entertainments are one those exceptions, because they help people to relax on their seventh day off. (protesting that shopping is a form of relaxation is just twisting things) Anyway, once we’d found the road that contained the theatre, (and Topol in Fiddler On The Roof, which we didn’t go to see, apart from anything else because I already saw him in it about 20 years ago in Wimbledon – long tour) we went into Nando’s for a last goodbye dinner together. Nando’s is an international restaurant chain that holds a lot of good memories for me, particularly dinners with my colleagues in Kingston, and fellow Brit Karen in eerily-similar Botany.

The conversation somehow got onto the story of my coming to New Zealand. I recounted my crazy life at the youth hostel, the blessings of the free food shelf, the car I crashed, the Korea family, and my flatmates today. Having also spent some of our time recounting my 6-day visit to their place in Sydney in 2005, it occurred to me what a useful memory-aid this blog has become. I knew what we’d done on each day partly because I’d written it up and read it afterwards.

Finally we drove to Tawa to rendezvous with Aaron from the wedding yesterday, at whose house I would spent tonight. As I made a bee-line up the steps to ring a virtual stranger’s doorbell so that I could sleep the night there, Dave remarked “Just look at him – he’s so used to this.”

Actually I felt that I hadn’t done this for a while, and I almost missed the adventure of living in an unfamiliar place and skidding through on God.

Aaron answered the door, I shook Scottish Dave’s hand, gave Fionnuala a very genuine hug, tried and failed to give her a donation towards the weekend's petrol/car hire costs (I didn't stand a chance), and then they were gone into the night to their own borrowed accommodation.

Aaron and I sat up for a while, discussing how neither one of us watched TV, while we watched TV, until eventually we turned off and turned in.

Yet I had forgotten something. Something very important. Something that had begun this whole weekend.

I had forgotten that I can never sleep before travelling.

Day #1 of 4 here.
Day #2 of 4 here.
Day #4 of 4 here.

Wellington Weekend (part 2 of 4): Weddington

A massive night’s sleep, punctuated by unpleasant dreams in which everyone I knew in New Zealand was pressing me for work of some sort.


Arriving at St Mary’s catholic church, Scottish Dave, Fionnuala (both pictured above), Nigel and myself all saw what we had come for – our long-lost Irish friend Johnny B marrying Mel B. (the pop-celebrity names are genuine)

Above all, it was long. First there was a long wait for it to start. Then there was a lot of it. Then there was a sermon. But the time-factor didn’t matter a bit – we were happy and relaxed on a leisurely day with friends.

Then came communion. There’d been much discussion already this weekend between Dave (presbyterian), Nigel (catholic) and myself (drifter) about catholic protocols for non-catholics talking communion. Dave in particular, being passionate about church unity, specialised a bit in uncovering little-known precedents regarding the catholic church’s acceptance of people of other faiths and denominations. Nigel had suggested that I cross my arms as a signal to the priest to just give a blessing, but as we were going-up, Scottish Dave just had to flex his intellectual muscles.

“Why don’t you ask him what he thinks about consubstantiation?” he asked.

After I’d foolishly asked him for clarification, Dave went on to explain that consubstantiation was the belief that Christ was present in the bread and wine, but not necessarily physically the bread and wine. I looked forwards down the queue. I’d earlier told Nigel that I would “go for that blessing thing”, but Dave had just given me an opportunity, and I don’t generally like to turn those down, lest I judge myself to be weak.

So when I got to the front of the queue, trusting that Dave’s advice had been sound and that he hadn’t just hilariously set me up to volunteer for becoming a nun, I said to the priest “I’m a Christian, but I believe in consubstantiation.” This wasn’t necessarily true, but simplified my uncertainty enough for the brevity of the moment. The priest looked a little uncertain himself.

“Oh. Well I suppose I’d better give you a blessing then,” he concluded, holding out his hand as I followed Nigel’s advice and obediently crossed my arms. Then he stopped and added, “Hang on a minute, what do you want to do?”

It was all off again.

I answered “I really don’t mind, I just want to do what you want to do.”

“Oh, okay then.” It was on again. “But what do you want to do?” It was off again. Sheesh this was like trying to watch any TV series on the BBC.

“I just want to do the right thing.”

We both stood there in indecision. Oh great. Around me, John’s wedding, already a slow-burner, was grinding to a halt, and it was all my fault for trying not to offend anyone.

Anyway, he gave me the blessing, and I returned to my pew to report back to Dave on the results of his masterplan. “Troublemaker.”

Afterwards photos were taken, people stood around, the priest came and actually apologised to me (he really seemed as unbothered about it as I was) and somewhere along the line, significantly later than planned, we found ourselves an hour away at Lodge at the Inlet in Pauahatanui for the reception. Here Scottish Dave wasted no time in making a new friend…


I kid you not – they are actually comparing each other's kilts in this picture.

For myself, I got talking to a couple and their kids at my table. The woman – Margaret – was telling me that they had in fact been invited to two wedding receptions this evening, so she and her family all had to rush off halfway through this one to put in an appearance at the other. It all sounded like a bit of a sitcom plot to me.

Keeping with the comedy, the speeches were funny too, offering several different perspectives on the same events. Even the bride got a speech, (I don’t think I’ve seen one of those before) and the food was absolutely awesome. Somewhere in the breakneck speed of everything, I even got the photo that I wanted of all five of us reunited.


(looks like the Englishman has had one fruit-juice too many)

As the crowd began to subtley thin out a bit, Johnny B returned to our table to ask how we’d all got on with our table-guests, in particular how I’d got on with single girl Margaret. “No no, she’s married” I corrected him. “Her husband and two kids were here, but they had to all shoot off to another wedding reception.” Yes, I’d spent the entire evening calling the wrong woman Margaret.

The post-dinner dancing got started, Nigel introduced me to Aaron regarding finding a room to stay in tomorrow night, and I eventually found myself sitting alone at the table.

The music was pumping, everyone was on the dance floor, so I went to try some different layers of wedding cake.

A tipsy girl suddenly started touching me and claiming that she knew me from Wellington Hospital. I tried not to suppose what she might have been a patient there for. I quickly put some distance between us and sat down alone again, ate the cake and watched everyone else dancing.

And I went to the toilet, and I watched everyone else dancing.

I’d been here before.

A birthday party at the Richmond Hill hotel in 1990. University Pizza in Bacău, Romania. Those dance sessons in Crete. That late night alone with one of my close-ish long-term female friends, who was even gently dancing to some music by herself in front of me, but I daren’t even pull a minor facial expression.

It’s not fear. My paralysis is far too deep to just be that.

Mere minutes had passed, but the tipsy girl was already dancing with another guy, running her finger down his shirt-front and circling his naval. I was glad that wasn’t me.

A few friends tried to get me to join them on the dance floor, but I knew their ideas of old before they had even thought of them, so I was ready. I didn’t budge, and I knew how to refuse in such a way as they would quickly take their pity away.

As I stood against a pillar and watched them all, I reflected on my ever-lengthening muse about God’s will versus our will. Despite God’s all-powerful omnipotence, I knew that right now he was totally unable to make my feet touch that dance floor.

And I was proved right.

Even though I knew it would probably be better for me to have a go, everyone in that room couldn’t have budged me.

Afterwards in the car, Fionnuala, with good intentions, teasingly began to name-drop her single girl friends in Sydney… Rita… Mary-Ann… there was something ironic about her forgetting that I knew who these people were from when I was over there 2 years ago. Still, it was nice to hear Rita’s name again.

Day #1 of 4 here.
Day #3 of 4 here.
Day #4 of 4 here.

Wellington Weekend (part 1 of 4): But Coach, It’s These Boots

I had one hour’s sleep last night.

I can never sleep before travelling, even if it’s just for a weekend.

I think it has to do with my general disorganisation and lateness at packing the night before.

Heck, I’d only got around to even booking my coach and train tickets down to Palmerston North and back because super-organised Nigel had come over and bought them over the internet with me.

Super-Nigel had also fixed up my accomodation for the first 2 nights, and found a cut-price return plane ticket for himself. Truly, as my supercheap Naked Bus pulled into Manukau to pick up more passengers for my lonely 8-hour coach journey this morning, there was absolutely no conceivable way that the next paragraph could possibly be about anything going wrong.

Sender:
Nigel
Sent:
13-April-2007
ARE YOU ON THE BUS?

Sender:
Steve Goble
Sent:
13-April-2007
YES!

I sent my reply for free, by simply handing Nigel my phone as he sheepishly got on and sat down next to me. The airline had issued him with a return ticket all right, but in the wrong direction.

We were heading down to Wellington region for Johnny B’s wedding, which Scottish Dave and Fionnuala were also flying across from Sydney for. As the five of us all know each other from the same social circle in London, this weekend promised to be a trip back in time to the nostalgic tennis / Bible-group filled days of 2003.

But it all began with Nigel and I on our day-long road-trip down to Palmerston North, while back in Auckland, flatmate Dave was beginning a similar trip. He too was bussing down to Palmy North today for a train convention so, excitable juveniles that we are, we spent most of our respective journeys commentating on our progress via the miracle of text-messaging.

Sender:
David
Sent:
13-April-2007
10:43:13
The race commentary commences, Banana’s breaking from the bunch, Chewing Gum’s sticking to the rail, and Davycrockpot just passed Botany Town Centre.

Straining to keep my eyes open was a good move, as Nigel and I began a whistle-stop tour of places that held fond memories from yesteryear...


... Hamilton, Rotorua, Lake Taupo…

You stretch your legs in these places and think “Hey - I remember buying an apricot fruit-drink in that Pak’N’Save!”

Ah yes, the kiwiana...

Sender:
David
Sent:
13-April-2007
Had to stop for grumbling stomachs, but it really doesn’t matter.(matter)

Sender:
David
Sent:
13-April-2007
17:11:43
A mens garment of positive temperament

Sender:
Steve Goble
Sent:
13-April-2007
At a field in Fielding.

Finally, after surviving the desert road, Nigel and I reached our destination, fell out of our Naked Bus and, after circuiting Palmerston North bus station, happened upon a small rental car containing the two big smiles of Scottish Dave and Fionnuala!

As Nigel headed home for an evening of unparalelled parental conversation with his dad, the three of us flatly rejected any notion of catching-up with each other to instead… go shopping for shoes.

And I’m afraid that this was my idea.

See, I only really have two pairs of shoes in this country. A smart pair that’s far too small, and a second hand pair that Yves found at the youth hostel and gave to me years ago.

Rummaging through Palmy North’s local K-Mart, I also found a very antipodean pair of socks…

Apart from the colloquial title, I sigh in despair at the picture, which follows the current footwear advertising conceit of not even featuring the product. (I’m looking at you Nine West)

Anyway after driving to Otaki and buying a bloody nice veggie-burger, we managed to rendezvous with Nigel and others at a retreat bach for catholic priests.

And bach truly was the word – walking in there was like walking into 1982. Even the VHF stereo music-tower was tuned to Solid Gold FM. I loved it. Scottish Dave hated it. But he perked up after beating me at 2 games of pool.

Day #2 of 4 here.
Day #3 of 4 here.
Day #4 of 4 here.

With These Feet?

One day at school in the 1980s, the weather was quite wet. It got inside my right shoe, and stayed there. I developed a bit of a corn on my right heel. Then last year my doctor in the UK told me that it was in fact a varuca.


So here I am, 20 years after that rainy day, on the other side of the world, going at it with liquid nitrogen. It’s never really been a problem, but it seems like the thing to do. That was last month.

Then this month, Melissa at church wanted to photograph several people’s feet for an easter art exhibit she was putting together. She wanted lots of photos of very dirty feet, and one of a pair of very clean ones, to represent being washed clean of sin. Unlikely as it may sound, mine became both.


In fact, for the whole of easter weekend, there has been an entire 12-piece art exhibition on at Cession, showing different aspects of the Easter story. Some of it was art, some photography, some sculpt-work, and in one section there was even a video playing.

I’m not much one for museums, but on this occasion I was thoroughly fascinated by the high-quality of work on offer. Ordinarily I would have expected to jump at the chance to contribute something myself, but unlike these inspired geniuses, I had not had one single idea in my tiny head, let alone the discipline to turn it into something real.

On Easter Sunday the service, in the same room, provided a good opportunity for the various artists to speak about their work and answer questions, although I had to chuckle when Scott asked of Melissa’s piece “Who’s the guy with the weird bendy feet?”

Aside from visiting the above, my own easter this year was fairly low-key, although my flatmates and I all keenly got each other eggs.


Easter – it’s all about heeling the sole.

(yes I know it's corny)

Doctor Who: Attack Of The Graske

This was a special 15-minute episode that was transmitted to BBC Digital viewers back on Christmas Day 2005, which invited the viewer to become the companion and make decisions via their TV remote control.


“The power of the sonic (screwdriver) is yours now, so don’t let the cat sit on it.”

Plot: Having dropped Rose off at an Abba concert in 1979 (they really should have ignored her absence and just set it after her inevitable departure from the show, or at least in the big gap between The Christmas Invasion and New Earth when this was transmitted), the Doctor discovers that the alien Graske are ripping off the Chameleons by kidnapping people and replacing them with duplicates.

As spin-offs of dubious canonicity go, this one was pretty good. Doctor Who’s long history of comics, CDs, Jim’ll Fix It sketches and other apocrypha have endowed it with an unashamed confidence in relaunching such gimmicks now that kids are (finally) allowed to enjoy the show again.

And the production team, operating under tight budgetary and time restrictions, have clearly gone to some trouble to make the whole thing worth watching in its own right. With David Tennant only appearing as the Doctor fleetingly, they’ve wisely made sure that his visual presence is felt throughout via several carefully-scripted short scenes, that drive the entire story.

Unfortunately, the story is still, as always in modern Who, about, yes, yet more zombies invading present-day Earth and no-one remembering afterwards.


(groan…)

Curiously, keeping the new series’ recurring plot-flaws in mind, if the viewer makes the wrong choice in the penultimate scene, the alternate ending scorns them for losing the game, purely because they haven’t tied-up a different loose end instead.

I can’t see the difference meself. It proves it’s definitely the same show though.

Still, David Tennant is perfect as the Doctor as usual, as he gets to deliver a cracking non-stop barrage of one-liners throughout.


“It looks like any old Christmas – and it is. No! Joking! It isn’t.”


“I could shout, but that’d give you away, and I don’t want to get you eaten.”


(confidentially)“There is a risk that if you switch to ITV tonight the galaxy might implode, so…?”

The best line though has to go to the woman in 1883 who, upon encountering an alien Graske, sums up her shock like she’s in another era entirely…


“Oooh - love a duck!”

Such joyous dialogue is surely right up there with “Strike me pink.”

Meet The Robinsons in 3D

At that moment, Nigel discovered that one of his legs had broken off.

So heading back to the foyer to get a new pair of 3D glasses, he missed a specially-filmed 3D intro to the above film featuring standard wise-cracking Disney robot Carl.


Being a 3D announcement, about the essential wearing of 3D glasses to get the 3D effect, Carl of course wasted no time in leaning all the way out of the screen and across the huge cinema until his giant head was hovering just in front of me.

“You’re okay, you’re okay…” he rattled-off pointing at individual audience members somewhere behind me, until he got to Nigel’s empty seat next to me on my left, and told him off for wearing his 3D glasses backwards. I was gutted that Nigel had not actually been sitting there for this. But hey, he was outside, hopping mad.

Next up was a trailer for Tim Burton’s forthcoming The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D. This didn’t look particularly spectacular in 3D, mainly because it had originally been directed for just 2D. Now it had been updated into 3D, it consequently lacked many deep-looking shots and things flying out of the screen at me.

I’m curious – can they update any old movie into 3D now? As Des Lynam might ask, how on earth do they do that?

The 3D trailer finished, and Nigel strode back in just in time for a bonus cartoon short Working For Peanuts featuring Donald Duck with Chip and Dale. This was first released during 3D’s heyday in 1953, and was nothing to write home about (should that phrase now be “nothing to blog about”?) but for the fact that its 3D-ness had rendered it somewhat unviewable ever since then.

Again I didn’t really understand this – I thought they used a different 3D system in those days, using coloured lenses? Ah well, it’s so nice when I don’t understand how a film has been made. It means that I can actually stop seeing actors, camera-angles and stuntmen, and instead just believe in everything like I used to when I was a kid.

After the Donald Duck cartoon, would you believe, they ran the exact same footage of Carl the robot a second time… and this time he looked straight at Nigel when he told him off! I wanted to lean over and whisper to him to behave himself, but figured he’d seen Carl address the empty seat next to him, so elected not to break the illusion for either of us.

Finally, the film started. Meet The Robinsons - Disney’s latest CGI animated feature.

Any suspicion that this was the Pultrich 3D system was quickly scuppered by the second scene. The Pultrich system requires the camera to be constantly moving. For this scene our point-of-view remained totally static for a couple of minutes, and as such it was utterly fascinating. It was possible to really scrutinise the two characters, everything on the table and everything behind them – it was amazing. I’ll go on the record and spell this out - it all looked so real.


Meet The Robinsons is a time-travel movie about a kid who goes to the future and gets trapped. It’s not very story-driven, but it does bombard you with gags and enthusiasm. The villain isn’t remotely threatening, being as he is such a complete fool, but who cares? The whole film leisurely chooses jokes over serious characters throughout, yet still manages to be gutting in places. The lead character’s back-story about his mother giving him up as a baby speaks volumes about our broken world in which there just aren’t easy answers.

The scene in which Lewis meets Will Robinson’s family just goes on and on forever, but is so surreal that I was absolutely enthralled.

Amazingly, it was also a time-travel story that for me actually held together. I’ve never liked it when a character goes back in time and changes the future (because it prevents their very act of change from happening) but if you can accept that character’s immunity to such effects, and read a reasonable bit into other characters’ memories over a long period of time, then it just makes it home. Apart from the sound of footsteps in the opening scene, which I’ve decided to charitably assume is simply not in its correct chronological place in the film.

Throughout, the 3D was so spell-bindingly great that by the end it had become normal, and ceased to look so impressive. Man, what a terrible criticism to make!

After the credits were over, Nigel and I remained in the cinema for a few minutes, and were pleasantly surprised to see the projectionist recalibrating his two projectors for the following screening. So on went our glasses again, and as one test image got moved around the screen while the other remained static, it felt like someone was reaching inside my head and shaking my brain up and down.

After some eardrum-wobbling speaker-testing too, the projectionist came out and had a chat with us, explaining that anything shot in HD could now be updated into 3D. I still don’t get why or how, but we had certainly had our money’s worth by the time we left.

9/10. Well done Disney. Stay clean.



Thanks to Herschel for heartily recommending this motion picture publication / franchise.

Brett Rinsed The Fridge

This morning, several of us (including Dave and Jacob) were helping Rhett and Sarah to move house, when we realised that their fridge-freezer was too heavy to carry up their new staircase. So I suggested that we completely empty and defrost it to lessen the weight, and before I knew it, this slightly bizarre scene was taking place…



Full story here.

The internet is God.

You Are 72% Pure

Well, you're not exactly an angel - but you're pretty darn close. But chances are, you have a couple juicy secrets deep in your closet.

How Pure Are You?

Mr Bean's Holiday

After Goodbye Pork Pie the other night, tonight my flatties and I converged upon the brand-new Hoyts cinema at Sylvia Park for another road movie – Mr Bean’s Holiday.

I was apprehensive about this. Mr Bean’s first cinematic outing 10 years ago - Bean - The Ultimate Disaster Movie - had been utterly brilliant. Mel Smith – a comedy veteran – had polished every last sequence to near-perfection. I’d started laughing at the beginning, and pretty well kept on going until the end.

This one however looked to be based upon Jacques Tati’s long-winded Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, which I’d found pondering and… and… even the memory’s making me… me... zzzzzzzz

Anyway Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday is one of Bean-actor Rowan Atkinson’s favourite all-time movies, so I just wasn’t sure what to expect of Mr Bean’s Holiday.

What I found was a film that I at least laughed at. Mr Bean is a nice unthreatening character, and the situations he got into were so simple that they were easy to relate to – videoing a train, following directions, phoning up a stranger and so on.

Unfortunately a series of brief unconnected events just wasn’t what had made Bean's first film so enthralling for me – it had been the gigantic set-pieces that just kept on escalating.

Mr Bean’s Holiday features a brief sequence with him chasing a chicken, but for my money that’s the closest we come to the old epic magic.

That said, there are a lot of good short gags in here, particularly the subtlety of Carson Clay’s vanity project, and the surreal tone of the whole film, which – depending so much more on unlikely coincidences than logical progression – was tantalising in places. Also the woman and the kid who he shares the film with were thankfully both quite nice.

Ultimately though – like Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday - one spends most of this film waiting for it to get started.

Perhaps they should have made this one first.

Goodbye Pork Pie

Watched Goodbye Pork Pie tonight. It’s a kiwi road-movie from about 25 years ago chronicling a yellow-mini’s unlikely journey south from Auckland to Invercargill, whilst bumbling cops close-in, but repeatedly fail to achieve anything.

Aside from its unexpected nostalgia-value (wow – Auckland in the 80s!) the film champions a style that just doesn’t exist anymore – that of making a film just for the sake of making it. There’s no attempt to deliver a message or explore some aspect of the human condition – the characters throw all consequences to the wind simply because they can – they’re not real.

Fun, but as usual here comes my stock observation about the folly of swearing and sex in movies – what a shame it cut down its potential audience so much. Then it could have been huge, outside New Zealand as well.