this american life

forgive my tardiness with regard to posting on this blog. there have been much goings-on going on at my other blog intraspace - which i heavily recommend you subscribe to.

here's a post replicated from intraspace...

podcasting is great. i mean, basically a lot of it is people doing amateur radio shows - kind of the radio version of blogging actually. but of course there are lots of 'official' podcasts as well - and some are by actual radio stations.

one of these is called 'this american life'. it is a radio show that has run on american public radio for over 10 years - apparently now it is also a tv show. but the part i love is that they release their weekly radio show as a podcast.

'this american life' is a very eclectic [liberal] show, but it has as its heart an examination of american culture. i personally think it is very useful for us non-americans to study the american culture in this way because it influences the rest of the world so much. i think it gives us useful insights into this dominant cultural force.

each week, 'this american life' has a seemingly random theme and then people are interviewed, tell their stories etc based on that theme. some recent themes include: 'road trip' (about the american road trip tradition), 'big wide world' (mainly about a young iraqi guy who works as a translator for the western media in iraq - excellent episode) and 'notes on camp' (people telling their stories about summer camp).

but the episode that inspired me to write this review was one about guantanamo bay. i really and honestly think everyone should listen to this podcast - whether or not you think you are interested in the goings-on at america's terrorist prison. the episode is somewhat mysteriously called 'Habeas Schmabeas 2007' (all will be revealed when you listen to the podcast). it is a rerun of an episode that 'this american life' aired last year (i think), with some updates. in this episode they interview some actual past detainees of guantanamo bay and some of the attorneys that are representing current prisoners. it is very enlightening.

the original episode won a peabody award - whatever the heck that is (oh, here we go). which means, that is it very very good. a quick hunt reveals that unless you were a 'this american life' podcast subscriber (free, through itunes, or by using this link http://feeds.thisamericanlife.org/talpodcast) when the episode came out, then you can no longer download it for free - very sad. but you can stream it for free online. i recommend doing that at your earliest convenience my friends.

sermonising: the questions God asks

early last month, i did a short sermon for the evening service at church... it was tag team preaching, i did the first part and my mate nathan miller did part two. we preached on 'the questions God asks'.

if you want to have a listen, the audio files are below. left click on the links to listen in your browser (files are 8 - 12 meg) or right click and 'save as...' to download.

Part 1: Andrew Killick

Part 2: Nathan Miller

safe little [bourgeois] world

i have just finished reading h.r. rookmaaker's 'modern art and the death of a culture'. i've reviewed it over at intraspace - check it.

one of the things that rookmaaker talks about is that modern art is opposed to suburban bourgeois culture. the point he makes is that christians should be opposed to it as well.

as i've mentioned before, my 'safe little world' concept contains a paradox and i love rookmaaker's critique of suburban life (this is part of longer passage):

"These thousands, millions live a normal human life. They play it safe. They evade any real problems. They are nice people living a nice life. They have their little melancholies, unfulfilled dreams of youth - but life is like that... So they live their lives fairly happily, even if not exactly adventurously, and look for fulfillment in their career, a nice home, a bit of affluence and some kind words at retirement." p210

my beautiful world

i should have posted this a few days ago... my mate malcolm (colm) is playing a live gig at the kings arms in auckland tonight. he is playing alongside flabotonum and mr slackjaw, for the release of a short film by shaun garea called 'my beautiful world' (click on the link to see the trailer and news clip about the film).

colm plays post-rock and i think this might be his first live outing for a few years (since the days when 'his' band humber were gigging). his work is featured on the film's soundtrack.

oh, and head over to intraspace - now called 'intraspace: the review lounge'. it is now functioning in its new expanded form. there is a new review of a book by brennan manning, a review of the new(ish) album from air, and a review of what it's like to be 32, by jonathan nalder. subscribe to it!

the dawn of a new blogging era

some changes are afoot at intraspace (my review blog). tired of just reading my own reviews of books that i've read, i've decided to open up the blog to other contributors and have also opened up the scope of the site.

so, now there will be reviews on all manner of things (books, films, albums, concerts... you name it) - well, that's the aim anyway. the majority of the authors will be christian in their worldview, although this won't necessarily be overt (sometimes it will be). we should end up with a rather interesting array of topics, opinion and content.

this is my first venture into team blogging so i suspect this will be an evolving process, including making a few adjustments to the site to make it more streamlined and suitable.

the best way to stay up to date with new content is to go to intraspace and sign up to the automatic email feed on the right. when a new review is posted, it will automatically be sent to your email. don't worry, you won't be inundated - i'm sure all our writers have a better things to do than post endless reviews to intraspace! and, if you find that you are getting too much email, you can always unsubscribe later.

on the headphones: 'angelica' by lamb, from the album 'between darkness and wonder'. www.lamb.tv

bytemare

and now, for your viewing pleasure, you can head over to youtube, and watch some amazing b-grade (c-grade? d-grade?) footage from a film i had a hand in back in 2000.

the film ('bytemare') was directed by my mate john butterworth, and i think my initial roles on the production were: "director's assistant" and "cinemagraphic advisor"(?!) - however i'm not sure what i am listed as officially. in the end i was only present for about half the filming because i took off to the uk for seven weeks.

the amazing thing about bytemare was that it was shot in 2000/2001 and has been in post-production ever since. but word on the street is that it will be released one day.

i would tell you what the film is about, but maybe john b is still guarding that secret, so i won't.

there are three clips on youtube: a behind the scenes (in which i make a brief appearance), a trailer, and montage thingee.

enough talk! go here for the clips.

fascinating book

i've just finished reading a fascinating book called 'no god but God: the origins, evolution and future of islam' by reza aslan. i've written a bit about the book over on my review blog, intraspace.

the review. check it.

30th

my 30th birthday party went down last weekend. it really went off and i think everyone had a good time.

i set up fluorescent tube lights in the trees as a light installation that lit half the lawn. we also strung up lights in the garage which was cleared to put the food tables in.

in the lounge i set up an exhibition of some of my artwork, printed up as A3 and A2 posters, and had a slide show of my photography on the computer screen.

from an artistic perspective it was a complete 'safe little world' production - having trialled a few things here, i hope one day i'll get to stage a bigger installation.

thanks to everyone who came to the party and to those that helped out with various stuff.

go here for flickr set that shows the shenanigans at the party.

the greatest game ever...

jonathan emailed me from australia yesterday to see if i thought that nz's victory over australia in hamilton was the greatest game of cricket i'd ever seen...

on tuesday i drove over to hamilton in my father-in-law's little green barina to go to the cricket with jamie. nz had already secured a historic series victory over australia with their wins in auckland and wellington in the days before. so i was off to see if we could do the impossible - make a clean sweep of the series. of course, when jamie and i got our tickets months ago we had no idea that this would be the scenario.

in the event, australia batted first and scored an enormous total - 346 - featuring a history-making innings of 181 n.o. from matthew hayden. this set nz a target well beyond anything that has ever been accomplished in nz before. nz lost early wickets to be 4-41 at one stage - not a dream start. but incredibly, the remaining batters got up and we defeated australia in the final over. craig macmillan's 117 was something special. the highlight of the game was when brendan mccallum hit a 6 off the first ball of the final over - giving nz 5 balls to score just 1 run - which we did.

the crowd went absolutely ape - there was dancing and hugging and kissing everywhere. 3-0 in the series.

when nz were 4 wickets down, i text aaron to see what score he thought we'd get - 249 all out he said. jamie thought 300. i thought 180. i can't vouch for the other guys, but the reason i thought we'd only get to 180 is that when you demoralise a nz cricket team they often give up. well, at least, they used to. this season we have seen a nz team that doesn't give up. in the game early in the season where nz got thumped by sri lanka, craig macmillan refused to quit - i wonder if that was a turning point? i thought to myself then - if this team's form catches up with their new determination, we're going to be good. i think this latest series is the fruition of that. we are now watching a nz team that is playing like an australian team and beating them at their own game.

needless to say, nzers are celebrating this victory. it means a tremendous amount to us - every time nz scores a big sporting victory we know that we are a nation of only 4 million people that has taken down a giant. when we beat australia in the cricket, one reason we celebrate so hard is because of their perceived arrogance. nzers don't like arrogance and we harbour a belief that if you get too cocky your fall is around the corner. nzers like to celebrate those falls... at the beginning of the commonwealth bank series in australia (a tri-series between australia, nz and england), australia made comments to the effect that nz and england wouldn't provide any serious opposition and so they were setting goals against themselves - aiming to score 400 during the series. if that doesn't reek of arrogance i don't know what does. as far as nzers are concerned australia deserved to lose.

at the end of the game i secretly took a photo of every fan in an aussie jumper that came near me. i planned to post them on this blog with a little caption saying "disappointed aussie fans". when i got home and looked at the pictures, the looks on their faces were too sad and i couldn't bring myself to do it. one guy looked straight into the camera as i took the photo - it is actually quite heartbreaking... the formally invincible aussies have shown they have a weakness. having lost about 5 games this season, australian fans are beginning to know what it feels like to be a cricket fan the world over.

so, was tuesday night the greatest game i've ever seen? honestly, for me the best game was game one of this series - our 10 wicket victory over australia - a complete performance - catapaulting nz cricket into what i hope will be a new era.

pictures: jamie keeps hydrated in the hamilton sun; peter "two-metre peter" fulton fielding on the boundary; the lights on, nz batting and battling; victory - the black caps on a lap around the field.

album art

this image (click to see it full cd-size) is the first in a series i am doing for jamie strange's album cover... the album is coming out maybe end of this year... the artwork will have about 8 similarly themed images.

we are still playing around with the concept - but yeah. (the photo was taken at the top of mount maunganui - on slide film - scanned in on my film scanner. i did the outline figure in illustrator and then overlaid, rasterized and filled it in photoshop.)

on the headphones: 'homesick' by the finn brothers, from the album 'everyone is here'. www.finnbros.com

charleston

my grandmother was a very staunch christchurch woman - didn't take no nonsense, and didn't suffer fools gladly.

i remember one day when she was staying with us, i was giving her some lip about something, getting smart as teenagers do. when all of a sudden she looked me straight in the eye and said "yeah? well i'd like to see you do this:" right there in the middle of the lounge my 84 year old grandmother busted out a flawless charleston. i'm not sure what the charleston had to do with what we were talking about, but her response was definitive. and i never messed with her again.

for your viewing pleasure, he is some old footage of some guys doing a 1950s charleston set to daft punk...

music retreat

last weekend our church music team headed off to a farm outside of te awamutu for a retreat. anyway, here are some digi pics that i took when we got up at 6.30am...

for the full set of 12 images, head over to flickr and feel free to leave comments... here!

on the headphones: 'should i stay or should i go' by the clash, from the album 'singles'. www.theclashonline.com

redneck botox

did you know that for the oscars red carpet, some celebrities inject botox into their armpits to disable the sweat glands so that they don't get embarrassing stains on their designer frocks?

in other news: there is a website on the internet that will translate any web page into one of the following dialects: redneck, jive, cockney, elmer fudd, swedish chef, moron, pig latin or hacker.

entertainingly, if you click here, and then click the 'Dialectize!' button you will see the 'about' profile from my website translated into redneck.

click here to try a web page and dialect of your choosing.

on the stereo: 'first breath after coma' by explosions in the sky, from the album 'the earth is not a cold dead place'. www.explosionsinthesky.com

slapping seagal

another gem of a quote found amongst the news items on stuff.co.nz...

The martial arts expert [jean-claude van damme] insists he is a lover, not a fighter.

He said: "My last fight was more than 20 years ago. I'm not a fighter, I'm a lover. If somebody's going to speak bad about me, I will walk away.

"But if a guy like Steven Seagal slaps me once, I will slap him twice as hard. Life is full of violence."

what an aging martial arts expert who colours his hair and wears pink jackets looks like:

quality internet news content

you may have noticed from my posts that i read stuff.co.nz quite a bit. normally it is excellent.

but today i came across an article that was simply remarkable. it is about the unveiling of waxwork models of david beckham and posh spice in the usa.

the first reason it is remarkable is that it introduces two new words to the english language: "Tuesdady" and "Girlwife"... [note: the tuesdady error has been corrected since i first wrote this post]

"Americans got a closer look at Los Angeles-bound celebrity couple David and Victoria Beckham on Tuesdady..." and "New York's Madame Tussauds museum put on display figures of the soccer idol and his former Spice Girlwife..."

so there's some hip new lingo for you. but the article also contains this beautifully insightful quote from rebecca ho, 14, of new york (please disregard the way the sentence confuses the reader about who was wearing the evening gown):

"Others knew who the Beckhams were but were unimpressed by the sight of Posh and Becks in a fashionable tuxedo and green evening gown. 'I only know them because they are celebrities,' said Rebecca Ho, 14, of New York."

what plastic, or wax, celebrities look like:

confession

hmmm, my computer just downloaded and installed internet explorer 7.

i've been using firefox for quite a while now and it was vastly superior to the last version of explorer.

but i've been playing around with the new explorer for a few minutes and i quite like it - it seems to work quite quickly and i'm getting used to the interface - quite nice.

all this is a bit of a problem, because you're not supposed to like microsoft programs. what should i do?

how to write propaganda

i'm still learning how to write propaganda. "gasp" you say. "why does he want to know how to write propaganda?!" thing is, if you know how to write it, you can detect it. and here's a grey area for you: the line between "persuasive writing" and "propaganda".

so because i'm still learning, i won't tell you how. but today i came across this interview via one of my favourite blogs 'conscientious'. it's an interview with professional conservative spin doctor frank luntz. the full article is here (on salon.com). but this is a little taste...

Frank Luntz is a Republican word doctor who coaches conservatives to talk to Americans about "personalizing" Social Security instead of "privatizing" it. He urges them to promote "tax relief," not "tax cuts." Recently he recommended that "drilling for oil" be referred to as "exploring for energy," which goes down much more smoothly. Luntz is so reviled by environmentalists that one group has named an award after him for great achievements in doublespeak.

this is what a spin doctor looks like:

the 8 tribes of new zealand

came across this interesting insight into new zealand culture today. following is an extract from an article on stuff.co.nz about a book that has just been released in nz by two PR people, Jill Caldwell and Christopher Brown. '8 Tribes: The Hidden Classes of New Zealand' describes nz culture by grouping nzers into 8 stereotypes. the official website relating to the book is here (nicely done). brilliantly, you can fill out an online questionnaire and find out your tribe here. the full article that this excerpt is from is here...

EIGHT TRIBES: The hidden classes of New Zealand

THE NORTH SHORE TRIBE: Aspiring

The ambitious, hard-working, heavily mortgaged inhabitants of the great suburban jungle for whom keeping up appearances is fundamentally important. They survive in the jungle by constantly moving ahead, up through the ranks of job, car, house, street and suburb.
FOUND IN: Suburbs with concentrations of malls, nice cars and plasma TVs - especially north, east and central Auckland, north and west Christchurch, Tauranga, Hamilton.

THE GREY LYNN TRIBE: Cognoscenti

The highly educated intelligentsia who value ideas above material things and intellectualise every element of their lives. Their most prized possession is a painting by the artist of the moment, they frequent film festivals, secretly wish they had more gay and Maori friends, feel guilty about discussing property values and deep down are uneasy about their passion for rugby.
FOUND IN: Bookshops, cafes and former working-class suburbs with concentrations of renovated villas - especially Grey Lynn, Ponsonby, Pt Chevalier, Mt Victoria, St Albans, Otago Peninsula.

THE REMUERA TRIBE: Entitled

The round-vowelled children of privilege for whom breeding is the greatest virtue, manners really do make a difference, money shows class if it's old but is crass if it's new, and what school you went to defines the rest of your life.
FOUND IN: Leafy suburbs with concentrations of mansions, English gardens and private schools - especially Remuera, Epsom, Karori, Wadestown, Fendalton, Merivale, Maori Hill, Havelock North.

THE BALCLUTHA TRIBE: Staunch

The tribe of the Kiwi heartland, the provincial conservatives, who see themselves as a source of stability and commonsense - solid, reliable and down to earth, but also deceptively smart.
FOUND IN: Small towns, provincial cities and any other area with a concentration of sheep, cows, and utes.

THE RAGLAN TRIBE: Free-spirited

The independent spirits who value the ability to live a life according to their own priorities, not what the boss or society says is important. They can be maverick entrepreneurs, or hedonists, spiritual journeyers, fitness fanatics, adrenaline junkies and adventurers.
FOUND IN: Professions where freelancers predominate, trades where free agents are well paid. Living in city suburbs in the midst of renewal, coastal towns and suburbs, near ski fields and lakes, or in a remote Kiwi bach.

THE CUBA STREET TRIBE: Funky

The hipster tribe on the cutting edge of cool, where "new" is the greatest virtue, being labelled mainstream the greatest fear and self-expression the preoccupation. In the 1980s it was the vanguard of espresso, in the 1990s of body piercing and tattoos.
FOUND IN: Bohemian areas of our largest cities attending art schools and the coolest gigs.

THE OTARA TRIBE: Community

Urban, often immigrant, often Polynesian, community-minded people for whom family is paramount and church is likely to play a central social role. The sense of belonging is strong as is the pressure to "do the right thing" and uphold appearances. In our grandparents' generation, many working-class Catholics fitted this profile.
FOUND IN: Areas with concentrations of churches and state housing - especially south Auckland, Porirua, east Christchurch.

THE PAPATOETOE TRIBE: Unpretentious

Urban working people who revere physical prowess, don't trust anything intellectual, disdain "wankers" and are unwilling to think of themselves as better than their mates - the classic "state house and jug of beer" Kiwis.
FOUND IN: Suburbs and towns with concentrations of car yards, supermarkets and sports grounds - especially south and west Auckland, Hastings, Hutt Valley, south Christchurch, Tokoroa, Invercargill.

my tribe, according to my questionnaire results, is predominantly 'grey lynn' (no surprise there i guess), followed by 'cuba st' (cool), but then surprisingly, i am slightly more 'balclutha' than 'north shore'... something funny there. i would say that i would tend towards 'north shore' by birth - it would seem that life is eradicating that from me.

on the stereo: '0078h' by m83, from the album 'dead cities, red seas & lost ghosts'. www.ilovem83.com

horopito motors

on a wet mid-week day this week, lance and i set out from tauranga and headed south to horopito motors. located on the central plateau of new zealand's north island, horopito motors was the location for the 1981 new zealand film 'smash palace'. along the way, we stopped off at the whakapapa ski field on mount ruapehu. there was no snow as this is summer...

i can't begin to express what an impact the wrecker's yard had on us - it is astonishing in real life. like a kind of grave yard. but also the size of the place is mind-blowing. we took about 3 and half hours to get round it in drizzly rain.

for more photos, go to flickr

on the stereo: 'bathe in the river (featuring holly smith)' by the mt. raskil preservation society, from the 'no. 2' soundtrack.

realisation

so, the creative shenanigans continue. this is my latest piece (click to see it bigger, and sorry about the 'safe little world' watermark).

again, this is an idea i've had in the pipeline for ages.

i love technical / architectural drawing - especially when it has a retro aspect to it. last year i found a brilliant old book from the 1960s in a secondhand bookshop explaining the art of rendering with pen and ink. it has 166 illustrations, many of which i absolutely love.

the basis of my piece is an illustration out of that book. process was: (1) scan illustration (that involved unstitching the binding of the book to pull out the page spread, then 'mending' the crease down the centre in photoshop). (2) drop two of my original colour images into the picture. (3) distort the photo on the right so that it fitted the perspective of a frame that was already in the original picture. (4) scan in a picture frame from another part of the same book (there is no picture on that wall in the original). (5) fit the other photo to the newly scanned frame, and size and position the new frame and photo on the back wall. (6) tweak contrast. (7) add caption - made to look like the kind of caption you would find in the original book...

i named the piece 'realisation 1', but i could have called it 'visualisation 1' - the concept being that this is what my photography would look like on the walls of a 1960s office - 'realisation' being the 'realisation' of the concept that one day my pictures will be hanging on people's walls.

i won't go into the legitimacy of making use of someone else's illustration too much here. but suffice to say, i have left the original artist's signature at the bottom of the picture - i consider that he has provided me with an architectural context for my photographs. so i don't consider myself the artist of the entire work, any more than a photographer who takes a photograph of a building would consider himself or herself the architect.

on the headphones: 'swing your heartache' by young galaxy, from the 'swing your heartache ep'. here