The New International Version (NIV) Bible

I was 11 when I was first given a free NIV New Testament at secondary school by the Gideons.

It was a bit of a Godsend. My passive nature was making me an easy target at that big angry school, and I was very unhappy there. The New Testament that I'd been given contained a 2-year reading-plan, which I determined to complete, reading a passage a night. Why sure I would get behind, but I would also catch up.

On the night of January 18th 1983 I was in bed reading to my mum Matthew 10:16-31. It was about Jesus sending the disciples out to work on his behalf, and contained the line "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves." My mum used this verse to suppose that I was like a sheep going to school amongst wolves. I didn't know until that moment that she and my dad knew how unhappy I was there. I think it was then, or maybe shortly afterwards, that she told me they were considering sending me to a different school.

I didn't know anything about the other schools in the area, but I did recall that there was one called "Christ's School." I very much wanted to go there, purely because the name made it sound like the best one, although I knew what a completely irrelevant reason that was. Anyway, it turned out that that was the same school that my parents were considering moving me too.

So they moved me there, and it did turn out to be a markedly gentler school. Over the next couple of years I was much happier, and nailed the reading-plan, completing the New Testament at 13 or 14.

I don't know what eventually became of my little NT from school, (the picture at the top is of a friend's duplicate) but I somehow still retain one page of the reading plan, which now lives in my pocket Good News Bible as a bookmark.

On Saturday 17th August 1996, I was given a copy of the full NIV Bible by Audrey.

Today I finished it.

I guess that it's because we had used the simpler Good News translation at school that I had assumed the NIV to be something of a step-up. Certainly, I've rarely heard a bad word said about it. In tests, several people I've known (who've expressed a preference) have preferred it.

Certainly, the preface to this '96 edition makes it sound like the most thoroughly-researched Bible-translation ever, and that's even allowing for how so many Bible-translations tend to open by crowing that about themselves anyway.

This weighty paperback isn't nearly so well-travelled as my pocket Good News Bible though, although it did come with me to NZ in Feb '04, and is now just as dilapidated, as you can see above. However over the years I have repeatedly found two opinions forming in my mind about its prose:

1. Its wording reads more easily than other translations.

2. Its wording reads more awkwardly than other translations.

As I've never held both the above two - fairly polarised - opinions at the same time, I guess they might depend upon which other version I was also dipping-into that season.

As an alternative means of reconciliation, or maybe an additional one, in a wholly non-judgemental way, I also find the NIV Bible to be thoroughly bland. Little about it stands-out to me as particularly good or bad. For me, it's become the control Bible by which I form opinions on all the other English translations. Now that I think about it, I guess that's actually a good thing, right?

The one and only negative opinion I've formed is that I find its footnotes system quite muddly. It identifies each comment with a letter of the alphabet, but starts again at 'a' as soon as the next chapter begins. That's a whole lots of 'a's, often confusingly sharing the same page. The Good News on the other hand goes right through to 'z' before repeating itself.

Also, footnotes get recycled, so that, for example, the footnote for the word "Babylonians" in Jeremiah 32:4 says "Or Chaldeans; also in verses 5, 24, 25, 28, 29 and 43". Those other verses don't direct you back to that footnote though, so anyone dipping-in at verse 5 or later will miss this. This happens rather a lot in the NIV.

I do quite like what they've done with Matthew 18:24 though:

As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents[f] was brought to him.

f24 That is, millions of pounds

Nice and exacting. Or, if you prefer the version currently on biblegateway.com…

g. That is, millions of dollars

It's true – the Bible really is relevant to everyone. But hopefully not in this instance prophetic, or sterling may be doomed.

However the other good thing that I'll always remember the NIV doing for me is introducing me to what may well be my favourite verses in the whole Bible. I came across them on a sojourn in the UK some years ago, but once back in NZ, and separated from the volume, I was at a complete loss to locate them again. Scrolling through pages on the internet just isn't the same as thumbing through the pages of a book. So when I touched-down in the greyer hemisphere once more, I located the passage in question, and later shared the following in an email to fellow Brit Karen:

"There's a bit in Ezekiel that I came across, lost, and then managed to find again. The world makes a bit more sense, and I feel as though I've finally reached the crest of a very tall hill that God's been leading me up, and am finally walking down the other side."

They're not words that I felt personally convicted by, but they have since reshaped much of the perspective through which I encounter the Bible, and my relationship with God, and I suppose will continue to do so. There's another translation of them in the sidebar, but here's how the NIV put them:

If I tell the righteous man that he will surely live, but then he trusts in his righteousness and does evil, none of the righteous things he has done will be remembered; he will die for the evil he has done. And if I say to the wicked man, 'You will surely die,' but he then turns away from his sin and does what is just and right- if he gives back what he took in pledge for a loan, returns what he has stolen, follows the decrees that give life, and does no evil, he will surely live; he will not die. None of the sins he has committed will be remembered against him. He has done what is just and right; he will surely live.

- Ezekiel 33:13-16 (NIV)

It's about the future, not the past.

(review of Good News Bible here)
(review of The Message Bible here)

Today's Yahoo! Headlines

Is it me, or do today's headlines on Yahoo! become increasingly surreal?

Inland Empire

About 10 years ago I thought that it would be a terrific idea to shoot a movie that deliberately made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Well obviously, I shouldn't have dragged my feet. Now that I've seen Inland Empire, I know that David Lynch has beaten me to it.


I mean just look at that quote on the DVD cover above from Jonathan Ross: "Bold and distinctive... a work of genius." Really? Genius?

I'm certainly not going to disagree with that. For me, this film was three hours of debating whether:

a. there was a tremendous intelligence at work here, far more cerebral and clever than my lowly brain, or

b. the script, direction and editing were in fact just any old thing.

It probably didn't help that, before starting, I foolishly went into the audio setup and turned-off the English subtitles. I must have been a full hour in when I realised that a great deal of this film is in Polish. Maybe that was a mercy – how much less sense might the foreign dialogue have actually made? As little as the stuff in English?

Inland Empire is a bit like The Star Wars Holiday Special, in that it goads you into sitting through the whole thing like some sort of cinematic endurance test. Even this DVD release has brutally denied the viewer a wimpy Scene-Selection option. Nope, ha ha, you just have to start from the beginning. Every. Single. Time.

Eurghhhhh...

But while this movie can be boring, slow, clumsily filmed and awkwardly performed (many of the actors seem as unsure of themselves as I was), for all that, the film itself's conviction is stunning. Lynch coolly cuts from one scene, location, inanimate object or language to another, without ever attempting to spoon-feed the viewer. His range of imagery and juxtaposition of time and context make this one film that you really have to relax and make time for.

Bits of it are disturbing, none of it is funny, and everything, absolutely everything, has you clawing to create some sort of order out of events. When Jeremy Irons shows up as a film-director, things actually seem to progress in some sort of linear fashion for a while, but never enough that I could trust the characters not to suddenly start speaking apparent nonsense.

So - genius, or rubbish?

Well, I'm not intelligent enough to recognise genius, but neither, hopefully, am I cruel enough to whinge rubbish without any opinion on why I don't get it.

After it had finally finished, I must admit that I had thoroughly enjoyed the last 180 minutes.

But I only have theories about what was going on.

NB. According to Wikipedia, Jonathan Ross actually said "a work of genius... I think."

Yakko's World

I came across the third compilation of songs from the TV series Animaniacs on cassette in HMV in Vancouver in 1996, but didn't buy it, figuring that I'd easily get hold of the CD later.

I never saw the title again until my birthday this year.

It's hard to believe that, at long last, I'm finally holding it in my hand!


At just 22 minutes, it's definitely a shortie, and the fact that almost a quarter of the tracks are rereleases from the first two albums is a bit sad too, but since all these pieces are about geography, the title track would have been conspicuous by its absence.

These songs are Yakko, Wacko and Dot in their element. Compositions like A Quake! A Quake! remind you that their sometimes educational TV show could be very near-the-knuckle on occasion.

The dirt, the rocks
Those crazy aftershocks
It's just the planet
Moving granite
Several city blocks

The most redeeming feature of the album is its style. These are all vaudevillian numbers, complete with theatre-echo on the singers' voices, and performed with so much enthusiasm and vigour that they're very counter-cultural to much of 1990s kids' TV.

My favourite track is the final one There's Only One Of You. It's yet another listy number worded by (Doctor Who fan) Randy Rogel, who wrote so many of these that he's hopefully done extremely well out of this album. (6 of these 13 songs are his)

Please, WB, make more of these!

Available here.

Waikaremoana Jones And The Quest For The Lost Holy MacGuffin, Chapter Two

The original script to episode two, performed twice at Cession Church today. The subtext this time was to relate covenants to "Community Vision & Mission". I did have a joke about events in Cairo taking place in cairological time, but I had to cut it, ironically for time reasons. In retrospect, it also occurs to me that I should have given Crystal the surname "Palace"…

(episode one here)


Waikaremoana Jones And The Quest For The Lost Holy MacGuffin, Chapter Two

MUSIC.

ANNOUNCER. Thrills! Excitement! Adventure! Another exciting archaeological escapade with Waikaremoana Jones! This week: Waikaremoana Jones And The Quest For The Lost Holy MacGuffin! Part Two!

Last week, as you recall, Waikaremoana Jones uncovered an ancient scroll, which foretold that he would find the lost holy MacGuffin in Cairo, in the crypt of the unknown guest-star. But he had no sooner read the prophesy, than his adventurous assistant Crystal turned out to be working for the other side... the Nazis!

MUSIC FADES. AS END OF EPISODE ONE – JONES HOLDS THE SCROLL AS CRYSTAL POINTS HER GUN AT HIM.

JONES. O M G – she's a German! I should have suspected after this happened in both services last week.

CRYSTAL. And now, Vaikaremoana Jones, hand over zee scroll, or I shall kill you!

JONES. (BRAVELY) No. I'm going to do nothing. Because I've read the ancient prophesy on this scroll. And it said that to fulfil the prophesy, find the lost holy MacGuffin and save the world, I had to obey its instructions. That suggests that I might have to commit myself to trying to make it come to pass.

HE POINTS BEHIND HER.

Look over there! It's a young Barney The Dinosaur!

CRYSTAL. (LOOKING BEHIND HER) Huh?

JONES WRESTLES THE GUN OFF HER AND, TREATING HER LIKE A MAN, KNOCKS HER UNCONSCIOUS.

JONES. (TO AUDIENCE) Whew. That was close. I could have been killed! Now I'd better get out of here and get to Cairo before OSH finds out about this.

MUSIC. POCKETING THE GUN, JONES PUTS A HELMET ON AND MIMES AS THOUGH PILOTING A PLANE. CAN WE GET A SIMPLE MAP ON THE SCREEN WITH A PLANE FLYING ACROSS IT? I CAN DO THIS AND EMAIL IT IN.

ANNOUNCER. And so, Waikaremoana Jones gets in his pre-world war two aircraft and flies west across the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea (he got a bit lost) all the way to Al-Qahirah in Egypt, better known to you and I as... Cairo!

MUSIC ENDS. JONES STANDS UP AND WALKS SLOWLY ACROSS STAGE CARRYING A TORCH.

JONES. Well, I've arrived in Cairo, where the people seem very friendly. Of course, that might change now that I've just broken-into the crypt of the unknown guest-star. According to the ancient prediction, it's somewhere here that I should find the lost holy MacGuffin.

HE GASPS AT A BOX ON THE GROUND LABELLED "THE LOST HOLY MACGUFFIN".

And here it is! (TO AUDIENCE) That was about a week earlier than I was expecting!

HE STOOPS TO OPEN THE BOX, BUT RECOILS WHEN CRYSTAL APPEARS BEHIND IT, POINTING A SWORD AT HIS FACE.

CRYSTAL. So, Waikaremoana Jones, I have been expecting you.

JONES. Crystal! But - it isn't possible!

CRYSTAL. Why – because you thought your pathetic fisticuffs had left me for dead?

JONES. No, because I left you behind and came here by the shortest route, at the fastest speed, in the quickest possible time. It is literally impossible for you to arrive here before me.

CRYSTAL. No it's not, you got lost.

JONES. Oh yeah. Wait a minute, how did you know I got lost?

CRYSTAL. (CONFUSED) I'll explain later. As for now, prepare to die, again, Waikaremoana Jones!

JONES. Wait! (HOLDING SCROLL) I've still been promised that I will be ultimately successful in this battle. You're not named in it at all.

CRYSTAL. No, you invalidated your claim on that when you didn't leave the cave when it explicitly instructed you to. Now neither one of us is named in it, which means that you and I have an equal chance at victory.

JONES. (EXAMINING SCROLL) Hmm. (THOUGHTFULLY) Since you are about to kill me anyway, you might as well tell me your plan.

CRYSTAL. Very well. First, I am going to kill you. Then, I am going to use the lost holy MacGuffin's awesome power to take over the world for der Vaterland. And then finally, I am going to wipe your entire disgusting country of New Zealand off of the face of planet Earth. The only evidence I shall leave behind that New Zealand ever existed, shall be the town of... Rotorua!

JONES. (TO AUDIENCE) She's baaaaad. (READING THOUGHTFULLY) "You MUST obey the instructions in this letter. Work WITH this letter, for the good of the world, and the people around you." But in this instance, in order to serve the good of the world, I have to sacrifice the good of one of the people around me. Well, if there's one thing I learnt from the end of the last episode, it's that I mustn't be passive about this. I must be active! (TO CRYSTAL) Look over there – it's the Balloons Over Waikato Festival!

WHILE CRYSTAL LOOKS ROUND, JONES QUICKLY RETRIEVES THE GUN FROM HIS POCKET, BUT CRYSTAL LOOKS BACK AGAIN TOO QUICKLY. SHE USES HER SWORD TO KNOCK THE GUN FROM HIS HANDS, AND THEN STRIKES HIM WITH IT. JONES DIES ANOTHER LONG, PROTRACTED, OVERACTED DEATH. AGAIN, CRYSTAL LEANS OVER HIM, TAKES THE SCROLL AND CHECKS HIS PULSE.

CRYSTAL. Dead. Farewell, Wairakemoana Jones! (TO HERSELF) No, no this doesn't seem familiar in the slightest.

MUSIC.

ANNOUNCER. Oh no! Is Waikaremoana Jones really dead? Will the evil Nazi Crystal rule the world? Tune in next week, same Waikaremoana-time, same Waikaremoana-church, when you'll hear Dr Jones say...

JONES FEEBLY RAISES HIS OTHER HAND, GAGS, AND COLLAPSES DEAD AGAIN.

ANNOUNCER. Yes, that's all next week on Waikaremoana Jones And The Quest For The Lost Holy MacGuffin!

(episode three here)

the radiophonic workshop (CD)

Another psychedelic trip through far-off alien landscapes, and schools programmes of yesteryear on BBC2.

This was the third LP to be released by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and bears the distinction of having been specially composed for publication. Instead of just compiling tracks from their TV and radio work, the team had the opportunity to let their imagniations run riot, and prove just how weird and unearthly the music they constructed out of everyday sounds could really be.

The result, for my money, is a mixed success. Several tracks sound a bit over-produced, purely because every sound making-up the piece is so unusual. For these tracks it's hard to know which elements to focus on listening to, because it all grabs the attention.

Or it does on headphones anyway. When I first listened to this album through speakers, it all sounded a bit, well, synthesised. (!) Headphones, definitely on headphones.

Several tracks are cool, low-key affairs, basking in their own effortless weirdness, just in case anyone thought the composers might be showing-off.

But then there are also two tracks on here from my favourite composer, Paddy Kingsland. His composition The Panel Beaters is so wide-eyed and happy that it reminds you of a child full of sugar. This is radiophonic music! This is the best music in the world! It'll never stop being this brilliant!!! You feel you should tell the track to settle down and take some deep breaths, but frankly its optimism dwarves even my deepest reserves of negativity.

And then there's Dick Mills' Crazy Dazy, telling a very short audio story with no words.

Now there's creativity for you.

(Sample, and buy, here!)

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Day Of The Clown

More zombies.

First we get:


...clown zombies, and then later...


... schoolkid zombies! In a new twist however, in this one they are actually referred to as 'zombies'.

The subplot introduces new girl Rani, who, like Maria, lives in the same house across the road, like Maria goes to Luke and Clyde's school, and (like Maria) keeps the whole aliens thing a secret. All that said though, she is actually introduced very well, mainly because the writers don’t patronise us by suddenly forgetting Maria, just as the viewers won't have.

The waxworks look like people, and Odd Bob's laugh is the same soundbite over and over, but as usual The Sarah Jane Adventures soars over these things with its clever characters and sense of humour. Even Clyde's stream of jokes at the end – to counter the clown's fear – are jokes that are actually funny. That must have taken some brainstorming and care to script.

"Two fish were in a tank. One said to the other: 'Do you know how to drive this?'"

Bradley Walsh is terrific as Elijah Spellman.

The ending was a bit easy, but with so much going so well in this series, that's hardly enough to spoil things.

Hoping for a story with no zombies in it soon though.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Last Sontaran

There's a moment in this two-parter when our heroes are being held-up at gunpoint by a Sontaran in the middle of a wood. So Maria points behind said extra-terrestrial nasty and shouts "Look – U.N.I.T!" The villain looks behind him, and our heroes run away...

Doctor Who spinoff The Sarah Jane Adventures is back for a second series, and on the basis of this opener it's still a breath of fresh-air from the other two franchises. While the above scene hopefully conveys the show's sense of fun, it doesn't represent the story's complexity or depth of characters.

With such a well-known parent show, there's also no fear of SJA's audience failing to have seen The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky, enabling this cross-series sequel to function without fear of, um, alienation.


Fig. 1: Zombies.

There are several formulaic elements to this that threaten to deaden the proceedings (last series' opener was also a sequel to a recent Who story, which also featured zombies, a girl-character with divorced parents, and people failing to realise how long light is supposed to take to travel across space) but this was all outweighed by good stuff by the end.

Conservative Quiz Night 2

Tonight, just like this time last year, my mum and I went to the annual local Conservatives' quiz night. This time, with one other person, we named our team "riverrun". And yes, once again, we came last!

Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life

Arguably, the purest Python production.

It may have been 13 years since they began their first TV series, but in 1983 these six fortysomethings resolutely refused to let the creativity of their thirties fade-away, and the result was their most exacting silliness yet. The sketches about the Crimson Assurance Pirates, the fish hidden in another film, and Death as an unwanted dinner-guest have no place in either real-life or the movies, and as a result are utterly absorbing.

This is 107 minutes of very strange surrealism, sustained by the Pythons' total conviction that all their material is well worth doing. (which much of it is) There are no compromises here to fit-in famous guest-stars or younger, more attractive performers. It's the six of them doing whatever the heck they want to, and for that reason alone the entire 18-certificate film carries a tone of wild abandon like no other.

As is so often the case with Python though, their misguided determination to offend both dates some of the material, and makes you cringe at how proud they seem of it. When the Every Sperm Is Sacred song comes on, you know it's going to be three long minutes of the same joke. Okay, you think I'm offended, I've got it.

(not to mention the inherently ill-fated strategy of hoping to make some of the audience laugh by eliciting the opposite feelings in many of them)

But then, I really wouldn't have it any other way. The last thing I want is anyone, me included, telling the Pythons what to do. Then it just wouldn't be their unique material.

And on that score, Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life is their holy grail.

Speed Scrabble®

I've spent much of this weekend playing this with Herschel. The principle is very simple.

You just don't take turns.

Games are generally over in about 15-20 minutes.

Waikaremoana Jones And The Quest For The Lost Holy MacGuffin, Chapter One

I miss my church in Auckland quite a bit, so it's always heartening when they get in touch to ask for my continued involvement.

This time it was for a series of three Indiana Jones-inspired sketches, to break the ice on the subject of covenants. The idea had already transformed into the adventures of kiwi archaeologist "Waikaremoana Jones". Since Indie's adventures were originally inspired by Saturday-morning adventure serials, I decided to take those as my starting point too. The resulting scripts were probably closer to the panto of 'Allo 'Allo than anything else, but I thoroughly enjoyed the old thrill of hammering-out a melodrama-parody to such a tight deadline again.

Week one's service was specifically going to concentrate on how covenants concern our relationship with God. I've no idea how much of my submission actually made-it through unedited to performance at Cession's two services today, in fact I'm not even certain who the actors were (though I understand that Jacob narrated it), but I guess it went something like this...


Waikaremoana Jones And The Quest For The Lost Holy MacGuffin, Chapter One

MUSIC.

BRITISH ANNOUNCER V/O. Thrills! Excitement! Adventure! Another exciting archaeological escapade with young Waikaremoana Jones, in... Young Waikaremoana Jones And The Quest For The Holy MacGuffin!

ENTER WAIKAREMOANA JONES IN LEATHER JACKET WITH BULLWHIP, AND HIS ASSISTANT CRYSTAL WITH A SPADE. CRYSTAL TOILS AWAY DIGGING A HOLE IN THE GROUND. JONES SITS WRITING IN HIS MACGUFFIN DIARY.

JONES. "Saturday 15th February 1940. Dear MacGuffin Diary. I can't believe I've started writing-down every single word that I think. What makes this seem really pointless is that I'm saying it all out loud too. I've really got to stop this process of...

TURNS PAGE.

... continual self-narration. I was going to buy one of those big reel-to-reel tape-recorder thingies made by AMPEX, so that I could record myself, but since AMPEX aren't going to develop them for another seven years, I felt that would be too anachronistic. It's bad enough that 15th February 1940 wasn't actually a Saturday. It was a Thursday. In fact, now that I think of it, Crystal's digital watch seems a bit out of place too.

CRYSTAL PAUSES, CHECKS THE TIME ON HER DIGITAL WATCH, AND CONTINUES HER EXHAUSTIVE DIGGING.

But hey – that's all in-keeping with the unbelievable series of events that have led me – archaeologist adventurer Waikaremoana Jones - and Crystal – my feisty assistant who I keep arguing with even though we both secretly fancy each other - here to this deserted cave in India in 1940. Wait a minute – I said that out loud too. That means she probably heard me.

CRYSTAL. In your dreams!

JONES. (CONTINUES WRITING) I knew there was a reason why I decided not to ask her to take this by dictation. Anyway, according to three mysterious holy men we encountered, buried somewhere in this cave is a millennia-old scroll, which contains an ancient blessing for the finder. We have to unearth it before those pesky Nazis get here and find it first. That's why I've organised for Crystal to dig-up this entire cave, while I fill-out all this much harder paperwork. Crystal!

CRYSTAL. WHAT?!

JONES. Dig faster!

CRYSTAL. GRRRRRRR!!!

CRYSTAL THRUSTS HER SPADE INTO THE GROUND AGAIN AND WE HEAR IT HIT SOMETHING METAL. SHE AND JONES BOTH GASP AT EACH OTHER AND LOOK AT HER FEET. JONES HURRIES OVER AND TOGETHER THEY LIFT-UP A CYLINDRICAL EARTH-COVERED ARTEFACT AND DUST IT OFF. IT'S A COKE CAN.

JONES. Okay, do some more digging then. Come on! Our Indian Work Visas aren't going to last forever!

CRYSTAL CONTINUES DIGGING. JONES RETURNS TO HIS SEAT AND GOES TO SIT-DOWN, BUT STOPS. HE LEANS DOWN TO WHERE HE HAS BEEN SITTING AND PICKS-UP THE ANCIENT SCROLL, (CAN BE JUST A FOLDED-UP PIECE OF PAPER) WHICH HE HAS BEEN UNKNOWINGLY SITTING ON / JUST NEXT TO ALL THIS TIME.

JONES. Er... oh. Crystal! I've found it! I've found the ancient prophesy!

SHE JOINS HIM AS HE UNROLLS IT TO READ.

CRYSTAL. I don't understand. It's all written in some indecipherable ancient language.

JONES. No, that's Welsh. And I should know – my surname's Jones. It says (READING) "To the finder of this scroll, boyo. I have seen the future, see, and it is set in stone, like. I have even witnessed the moment at which you find and read this letter.

JONES AND CRYSTAL GLANCE NERVOUSLY AROUND THEMSELVES AND SHIVER.

JONES. (STILL READING) "Stop shivering. You – Waikaremoana Jones" – (TO CRYSTAL) it knows my name! – "are going to go to Cairo, to the crypt of the unknown guest-star. There you will discover the lost holy MacGuffin – an ancient artefact that will bestow awesome power upon its finder. But you MUST obey the instructions in this letter. Work WITH this letter, for the good of the world, and the people around you. Go now, quickly. Now! I said go NOW! Stop reading this letter and go NOW! All right, that's it - if you're not going to bother doing what I say, then there's obviously no point in my writing any more." Oh, he seems to have stopped writing at that point. Quickly, Crystal! We gotta get outta here and fly all the way to Cairo before the Nazis catch us and get hold of this!

CRYSTAL. (IN THICK GERMAN ACCENT) I'm afraid zat you are only half-right, Herr Jones!

SHE PRODUCES A GUN AND POINTS IT AT HIM. JONES LOOKS HORRIFIED AT THE AUDIENCE.

JONES. O M G – she's a German! I should have suspected when we went to that bar and she started singing The Birdie Song.

CRYSTAL. And now, Vaikaremoana Jones, hand over zee scroll, or I shall kill you!

JONES. (BRAVELY) No. I'm going to do nothing. Because I've read the ancient prediction on this scroll. No matter what I choose to do, I will defeat you, find the lost holy MacGuffin and save the world. Even if you pull that trigger, the gun will malfunction or something. You cannot change the future – it's been foretold.

CRYSTAL FIRES THE GUN. JONES SCREAMS AND FALLS TO THE GROUND, DYING A LONG, OVERACTED DEATH. CRYSTAL APPROACHES HIM AND CHECKS HIS PULSE.

CRYSTAL. Dead.

SHE PICKS UP THE SCROLL AND HOLDS IT VICTORIOUSLY.

Farewell, Doctor Vaikaremoana Jones. I'll see you in heck.

EXIT CRYSTAL. JONES REMAINS LYING ON GROUND. MUSIC.

ANNOUNCER. Oh no! Is Waikaremoana Jones really dead? Will the evil Nazi Crystal rule the world? Tune in next week, same Waikaremoana-time, same Waikaremoana-church, when you'll hear Dr Jones say...

JONES FEEBLY RAISES A HAND, GAGS, AND COLLAPSES DEAD AGAIN.

Yes, that's all next week on Waikaremoana Jones And The Quest For The Lost Holy MacGuffin!

(chapter two here)
(chapter three here)

Doctor Who: Made Of Steel by Terrance Dicks

I don't know whether Terrance Dicks penned this book before or after his other tenth Doctor & Martha outing Revenge Of The Judoon, but he sure sounds like he's enjoying writing Doctor Who again. Here are the two leads in the TARDIS:

'What's so fascinating about those dials anyway?'

The Doctor straightened up. 'Oh, goodness knows. Do you know? I don't know. Though I started picking up some strange readings as soon as we reached your sector of space-time.'

'What kind of readings?'

'All sorts of stuff. Energy spikes, transmit signatures, Radio 5 Live. Maybe someone's using a teleportation device.'

'A how much?'

'Or a digital radio.'

'At last – something I do understand.'

'Or cellular dissemination.'

Martha shook her head. 'Nope, gone again.'

It’s another sequel to a recent TV story, this time set in the present day, and Dicks seems quite keen to tie-up some of the many loose ends left hanging in this era. The aftermath of the battle of Canary Wharf. The procedures in place for government cover-ups. The subtle reframing of Martha's identical twin cousin Adeola, via her simple description 'She looked a bit like me.'

Even the villains of the piece – the diet-Cybermen – are a book-long attempt to tie-up what became of their remaining new converts after the episode Doomsday had finished.

That said, there are a couple of plot-anomalies thrown-up by this book too, but they are much less weighty than that. The main issue seems to be that the Diet-Cybermen in the new TV series, are not the same race of Cybermen as in the classic series. So when the Doctor claims to be such an expert on them, he's quite mistaken.

Even so, that doesn't stop these new Cybermen from quoting bits of dialogue from yesteryear anyway, such as 'We will survive' and the one about 'Promises made to inferior species.' Not that there's anything actually impossible about either of those two points.

If anything, the biggest problem here is that, thanks to later events on television, this book now features the Doctor taking Martha a little way into her own future. Again, nothing actually wrong, just something that he's usually dead-set against doing these days.

Made Of Steel is a great fun book that doesn't tax you at all to read, and I'm considering getting further ones in the series. Given that I'm so little of a book-reader, that's quite an achievement.

The Quick Reads series really seems to have worked on me.

The Beatles In Australia – Euphoria In Australia

This is a picture-disc that I bought as a souvenir for Herschel from Real Groovy on Queen Street on 12th December 2007.

It contains recordings of This Boy and Can't Buy Me Love from their performance in Adelaide on June 12th 1964, although this release wasn't published until 1988.

Both sides feature the group's trademark screaming fans throughout, although it's fun to imagine that this is actually the sound of the left-facing kangaroo on the cover as it spins backwards at 45rpm.

Apparently, Herschel was so grateful for this gift that he's now planning to sell it on Ebay, hence this rare opportunity for me to hear it again tonight. I guess I should have seen this coming - he's always had this weak spot for making money by selling cheap entertainment overseas...

Time-Lapsed Film-Making

25 years of film-making have taught me just one word: preparation.

Well, two words, actually. The second word I've learnt is procrastination. In fact, maybe I learnt that word first.

Preparation and procrastination don't go too well together, apart from potentially in songs by Eminem. And if Slim Shady were indeed writing a rap about my film-making experiences, then he'd probably also include words like tribulation, exacerbation and reorganisation. (I suspect he read Dr Seuss books as a kid)

I am something of an introvert, and find it terribly hard to ask people for favours, which is a bit of a bind, when your entire cast consists of yer mates on their days off.

There was this one film that I began shooting with Gideon and Richard in 1995. Two years later, in 1997-8, having got much of it in the can, I sat down at my typewriter and finished scripting the remaining scenes, including the first one, and the last one.

Said final scene was to see the lead character (played by Gideon) reading a letter from another character. (played by Richard) Often in the world of movies this sort of event will typically feature the voice of the character who wrote the letter paradoxically reading it out loud on the soundtrack, but I wanted to be more visual than that. (it was a film after all)

So six years after that, in 2004, Richard gamely came over, stood in front of the camera, and I filmed a close-up of his face reading the whole letter to camera, to superimpose over the sheet of paper that Gideon was to pretend to be reading. In 2006, having not actually seen Gideon for eight years, I gave him a call and, after a few other meet-ups, (and one other shoot) we agreed on a filming date for those opening and closing scenes in 2009.

Today was to be that day.

So, really, I'd had, ooh, about 14 years to prepare today properly.

Late last night (those words don't bode well for this paragraph, do they?) I'd begun to assemble the many props and equipment that we would need.

The opening scene would feature a tramp in 1990, so I knew I'd need Gideon to be sleeping under the sheets of an actual newspaper from 19 years ago. There probably aren't many people in the world who can do this, but I simply went to my archive of old newspapers that I'd collected over the years specifically for film-making purposes, and trawled them until I found some that fitted the requirement. One of them - The Guardian from 6th August 1990, carried the headline "Bush hints at military action against Iraq", which I would ironically have to keep out of shot in case it looked like an anachronism.


There were also a couple of Sunday Mirror Magazines from 1989, which we used, as it was perfectly possible, although a little unlikely, for someone to be in possession of them in 1990. (as evidently I had been throughout that year)

Then, in the early hours of this morning, I was busy tapping away on this computer, generating a roadsign "DOG'S STOMACH APPROACH" that I wanted to have in shot for a joke. I'd measured the real roadsign that it would be placed over and everything. Too late I realised that I'd been going about doing this the wrong way. I knew what I had to do to formulate and print-out the sign properly, but I was getting tired, and it would take maybe another hour, so I decided to just let that joke go. Getting the extra hour of sleep would be more important to me following day than one elaborate minor-gag.

I had also been searching high and low for the battery-pack that powers my digital DAT audio recorder, which I had been intending to capture the sound on. Nup, nowhere. In all probability, I had left it in my other hemisphere.

So this morning, with about an hour to go before starting, I was out at the local electronics shop, hoping to procure another one. The guy said that, yes, he did have just such a battery-pack, that yes, should fit my DAT recorder fine, and he was perfectly happy to sell it to me. The only problem was that he, also, had mislaid it.

So back home I dug-out an old-style cassette-recorder, to lay-down the audio old-school.

Gideon was held-up getting to the location by about an hour, which was a terrific boon because it gave me a whole extra sixty minutes of last-minute prep-time. Once I'm running hopelessly behind schedule, I can charge through twenty-times more tasks than I do when the pressure's off.

Gideon arrived, so I phoned Herschel and suddenly everything was happening.

Being an afternoon in early February, we were almost immediately losing the light, but we got started, and as usual I don't think I looked at any of my storyboards even once. Gideon was wearing the beanie I'd found beside an Auckland mororway in 2004, the bulky mail-order bride prop that we'd built over two years ago finally got filmed, and thank you God, the light actually held-up for a good twenty minutes longer than it should have. Barring cutaways, scene one was finally in the can!

Then it was back into the warm indoors for a few minutes where I set-up the the second of our three scenes for today. Gideon was to stand in front of a sign (that I'd also made years ago) and deliver some very brief lines. It was one of those scenes for which just about everything went wrong.

Although we were now indoors, I still recorded the audio onto compact cassette, instead of plugging-in the DAT recorder to the mains. I was trying-out a different light, that turned-out to be kinda dim. I gave Gideon the wrong clipboard prop. I only noticed afterwards that he had been wearing the wrong glasses throughout too. There was an extra person present who I didn't think to use as an additonal extra. And I clean forgot to take any publicity photos, as I usually do for every scene.

Anyhow, when the footage comes back from the lab, I still hope to use it.

Back out into the cold again, we ran-out the new extention lead I'd bought from the electronics shop that morning, and continued to record the audio onto regular analogue tape instead of plugging-in the digital. It was dark now, and I was talking to Herschel via the walkie-talkie as he turned-on every light he could find in the building behind where Gideon would be sitting. Despite the snow this week, we seemed to be filming in front of the only building where absolutely none was visible.

Herschel returned, and passed me my still camera. My fingertips brushed against it, and it immediately fell to the ground, crashing onto the concrete pavement. My beloved, well-travelled 35mm camera. Nope, it was completely dead. No more still photos today, maybe ever.

Finally we got the last scenes of the film happening. I was dressed in an ill-fitting suit to body-double for Monty, who'd shot his line for it back in 2006. When I say 'ill-fitting', I mean that although it's my suit, I can no longer breathe-in enough to do the flies all the way up. But we managed.

And then came the moment when Gideon was to read the letter. The camera rolled, he undid the package that I'd sealed-up before his arrival, got-out the sheet of paper that I'd printed-up last night, and, in character, began to scrutinise it.

At that moment an out-of-shot film-projector suddenly came to life, projecting Richard's looming face, from 4½ years ago, onto the letter. A second cassette-player ran the audio roughly in-sync, for Gideon to listen and react to.

As Gideon and Richard communicated with each other across the years, it was a thoroughly ridiculous moment, especially given the surrealness of the pre-millenial script, but such silliness is what I live for.

Because, God knows, I'd die without friends to be silly with.

I'm Dreaming Of A White Birthday...

Today's celebrity Bible-Reader is... Father Jack Hackett

Drink!

- Habakkuk 2:16b (God's Word)

Today's celebrity Bible-Reader is... Master Sergeant Bosco A ("B.A.") Baracus

Jehu went back out to his master's officers. They asked, "Is everything all right? What did that crazy fool want with you?"

- 2 Kings 9:11a (Message)