Lile Marlene

Went to the Threatre with a delicious Blonde tonight. Not the one in the picture, she's dead, but one who is also a 'theatrical' (albeit part-time), ten times as vivacious as the 'real' Marlene and a hundred times more than the 'World-Famous-in-New-Zealand' star of the show, Jennifer Ward-Lealand. Interesting signature she displays on her site, eh?

The Blonde was from out of town but knew Wellington because she used to work here. However, she had no idea where she was staying, totally the wrong end of town with her directions so I thought I had to pick her up and drive a fair way to the restaurant she'd given subtle hints about. I planned to arrive in the Jagwah and sweep her off her feet in the beige and olive leather, combined with what Elliot describes as 'Jaguar take elegance and shoves it right up your nose' ambiance and style; not to be. The car has been in the 'shop' for a month getting the stupid four-hits-in-seven-days, grill and radiator, nearside rear wing, rear bumper/fender and front offside wing bodywork repaired. They have to ship tiny parts out from England (where the real Jaguars live) and it takes time. So no fantastic car; taxi it was, driven by a Thai guy with compulsory Thai music and singing throughout the journey.

I'd arranged to pick The Blond up at precisely 6.15pm. She was sitting on the pavement waiting; no biggie because she could stop traffic just by waiting to cross the road even though she tried to convince me she'd paid $7 for the dress she was wearing.

Hadn't seen her for about three years so nice garble as we walked to The Duxton grill. One of the hotel's reviews says,
Dining at The Grill Restaurant
The Grill restaurant is one of the most popular restaurants in the capital, The Grill Restaurant has won many awards for its outstanding cuisine and service.

As the adverts here say, 'Yeah, right!' I had booked for the Dine and Dash service so we could ensure making the show; 6.30pm table for an 8pm show. Well the staff gave us the impression that 90 minutes was a bit of a problem. We were instructed to order quickly so it could all happen and they could have us out of there by 7.45 and we could walk to the Theatre in time. Absolutely fine but we hadn't seen each other in years so talking was more important than reading the menue! We eventually got the hang of it and ordered. Well, at least I did; The Blonde ordered two entrees instead of an entree and a main. Blonde does that to you. The waitress, however, must have been on her first night because she was S-L-O-W. And her head continually nodded slowly as if on a slightly malfunctioning spring. She continually came up to us asking if the food was alright but instead of asking. 'How's it all going?" she asked. 'Is - the - food - alright?' and gently nodded her head in time with the inflection.

Actually the food was not spectacular. Definitely nothing to write home about which is what I'm doing now! And they had us done and dusted by just after 7pm which left 45 minutes before we needed to leave. So we dawdled and then left for the theatre bar. Normally the walk from The Duxton to Downstage would take about 10 minutes but The Blond had been seduced by the wickedest pair of FM boots you have ever seen and she was having trouble walking. No-one else was having trouble because she looked spectacular but trouble she was having. We arrived and went to the bar looking for seats so she could rest her calves! No chance. No seats and the bar was gridlocked by geriatrics! Apart from The Blonde I was the youngest person in there.

The show started 'on time' which should have been a warning. When did you ever go to a concert which started on time? Jennifer W-L was good, sometimes very good, but not mind-blowingly awesome. She sang for 35 minutes then took a a 30 minute break! Then she returned for another 35 minutes and finished! She wandered offstage and, after the predictable demand for an encore (at that stage she hadn't sung the title song of the show so an encore was a real surprise!) she came back to do 'Falling In Love Again' but only once and for what seemed an abbreviated version. The one thing that was more authentic than I expected was the absence of 'Vot am I to do?' and the inclusion of 'What am I to do?' in the signature song. My memories of Fraulein Dietrich are obviously flawed.

Deathly Hallows

n.b.
PLOT
SPOILER
ALERT

If you haven't read the book don't read on!

I did well. Harry Potter arrived from Amazon on Thursday so I collected it around 6 in the evening when I got back from an all-day First Aid Course! That's five days after the launch and I had managed to totally avoid all plot-spoilers - good for me.

I buy from Amazon USA so the cover is the one at the top. If I'd bought in New Zealand it would be this one. Why do they do that? I prefer the NZ one. The leaky cauldren has a page where you can view all the various covers from around the world for all seven books and there's quite an assortment. I hope all the words inside are the same no matter where you buy.

So I read the first 500 pages through to 1.30am then another 100 or so the following morning. Back from work Friday and finished off the 759 pages at 1.15am Saturday morning. And, as you all will know, the last word isn't 'scar'; that sits eleven words from the end.

JK has always said she wrote the final chapter right at the beginning of the series but I reckon the 'Dear Padfoot' letter from Lily on page 180 is what she wrote back then. Up to that point the book felt as though it had been written by someone other than JK but then it picked up her usual style but not as extreme as usual. The entrance to Gringotts (p531) is a tad unconvincing but the exit on the dragon's back is genuine HP - see the Kiwi cover. So somewhat unconvincing until p576 when Hogwarts eventually makes its appearance then she's all-systems go and its a real HP book.

On p548 I sussed out that Harry was a Horcrux (or I actually sussed he and Voldmort - we can all say that now, can't we? - were the same which is pretty close to Harry having part of Voldemort's soul, isn't it?). On p601 I thought the sorting hat would be a Horcrux so I got that one wrong and I was convinced Hagrid was the one who would be killed but apparently JK was under a threat from her sister if she did that so he escaped.

My guess is JK was thinking, 'Gee, I wish I had eight books to spread the tale across,' but there are only seven years of secondary school so I guess she was stuck. It could have been reduced to six and a half books though. All that wandering around the countryside and house-sitting was a waste of time. Get to Hogwarts and get the job done!

Terrific; absolutely as great a feat as LOTR, no question about it. 'History of Hogwarts' here we come.

Garden Art

OK, suspend your disbelief for a while and imagine this tree stump transported to Rancho Relaxo (still waiting for alternative suggestions by the way) and 'planted' upside down as a sculpture!

Laugh yee not, I think it would be neat. It could be tidied up a bit and, maybe, 'painted' with a nice clear varnish to bring out the grain. It's lying/sitting at Fernside at the moment but as Bill and Toni are planning on moving I'd have to get it shifted pretty soon.

Transporting it will be a problem as it's HUGE!

This will give you the scale against the stupid car I'm driving while all the body work is being repaired on my beautiful Jagwah. It must weigh quite a few tons and would have to be lifted by crane then transported the 20k or so to my place then craned off at the other end.

... and here's what it might look like upside down. OK, you can unsuspend now.

The National Game

Remember the Shankley quote, "Some people think [sport's] about life and death. It's much more important than that." I used a few days ago in 'Freedom's Fury'? Well, in 2011 the Rugby World Cup is to be hosted in New Zealand. The All Blacks are expected, required, obliged, mandated, bound to win it, just as they are this year when the finals are in France. The New Zealand government has just announced that the dates of school terms will be changed in 2011 to allow as many people as possible to watch the final. 'People,' a.k.a. schoolchildren because there can't be that many teachers in a nation of 4 million, can there? The stadium currently holds 45,000 'people'.

If you get into the mood you can download the haka to your computer :)

Art for Art's Sake

In the first post on this blog, 'Starting Over', I referred to a painting I'd bought, 'an abstract oil painting from Roxy Cafe across the road from the office'; this is it.

It currently hangs in the Roxy Cafe which is run by a lovely couple from I think Vietnam, or Cambodia, or Basingstoke or somewhere. The food is wonderful and they know all the office staff's preferences and pander to us like we're Royalty; we use it as our 'offsite' meeting room because our own offices are totally inadequate.

First, a disclaimer; it was difficult taking the pictuire because the cafe is quite dark and the internal lights, combined with the camera default flash produced an extreme contrast between the lighter top of the picture (highlighted by the ceiling lights) and the dark bottom of the pictire (no lights on the floor), which confused the camera. Eventually we took the picture off the wall, stood it on the table which held the water jugs and leaned it against the wall. This was a mistake as the resultant angle produced distortions of the verticals and horizontals or maybe the wide-angle of the camera was set wrongly. I've tried to rectify this in photoshop but it's nowhere near perfect.

The picture is in oils on stretched canvas so can be hung without framing. It intrigues me. I see the 'subject' (it's abstract!) as two different possibilities, 1) a sunset/sunrise over a distant island across a sun-drenched ocean and 2) an 18th Century battleship (think Pirates of the Caribbean) on fire in the midst of a fire-saturated sea-battle.

I like it, as I said, it intrigues me. It will have a special place in whatever we decide to call The House!

Mark Time

When I was writing up my thought about Freedom's Fury, I nearly cited this article on a click-through from swiminfo.com. The sentence that grabbed my attention was:

'... Mark Spitz, the 16-year old from Santa Clara who reaped in five gold medals, as he set two world marks in his specialty (or what really is his specialty?) going 53.6 for the 100m. butterfly ...'

... which struck me as pretty spectacular for 1967, 40 years ago! That's a fairly decent time outside a major Championship even now. He was, after all, a fine swimmer and, up till March of this year, undoubtedly the best ever.

Then I started to ponder, 53.6, 53.6? His winning time in the 1972 Olympics was 54- something, wasn't it? Well, Nick Thierry, swimnews and the FINA Long Course Annual to the rescue; not 53.6 but 56.3! Spitz' first 100m Butterfly world record (he'd set the 200 five days earlier), set at the Pan-Pacific Championships in Winnepeg 31 July 1967, equalled by Doug Russell (USA) in Tokyo, 29 August 1967 and broken by Spitz in Berlin, 7 October 1967 with 55.7.

Just goes to show, don't believe everything you read in print ... unless it's from swimnews!

By the way, have a look at the diferent starting styles from 1972! Spitz, of course, is in lane 4. Jeepers there were some good swimmers around in those days :)

Freedom's Fury

It's film festival time in Wellington and they have one called 'Freedom's Fury which follows the 1956 Hungarian Olympic Water Polo team through their build-up years and on to the gold medal. Executive produers include Quentin Tarantino and Lucy Lui so, even though it's a documentary, it's no slouch, in fact it's really good. At that time Hungary was occupied by the Soviet Union and during the weeks leading up to the Games it became the first Soviet 'satellite' country to rebel, culminating in the Hungarian Uprising. Unfortunately, the uprising failed after Moscow sent in over 2,000 tanks to quell the 'freedom fighters'. According to the narration that's the same number Hitler used to occupy and subdue France in 1939, one of the strongest nations.

Water polo is the national game in Hungary and the core of the film centers on the Olympic semi-final between Hungary and the Soviet Union - the bloodiest team game ever played at the Olympics. At one point each of the seven players on both sides were involved in one-on-ones with the oppositon, the crowd rioted and stormed the poolside. The captain, Ervin Zador (pictured), was attacked towards the end of the match and had to miss the next day's final.

After the Games many of the team defected rather than return to Hungary. Zador went to California where he became a swim coach and coached a young boy called Mark Spitz between the ages of 11 and 12. The documentary narration is done by Spitz and he makes a good job of it.

Sometimes there's more to sport than 'just' sport. In the immortal words of Bill Shankley, "Some people think [sport's] about life and death. It's much more important than that."