Cracker by Damian Christie

I was on the bus today, wondering quietly to myself how many times the lazy media of this world would use the word “angel” in reference to Bic Runga’s church tour of New Zealand.

I didn’t have to wait long for the first instance. Talulah, the envelope please… [drum roll]… Congratulations Rebecca Barry, there’s a certificate and a ten dollar book token with your name on it up here at Cracker HQ.

Another hackneyed phrase I feel compelled to gripe about is the use of “By George” every time a certain Ponsonby radio station appears in the papers. I was involved with George FM in its early days, and if I had a penny for every time I’ve seen a lazy sub-editor trot out some variation of “By George, it’s a great radio station” I’d have about seven pennies. This in my grandmother’s day was enough to buy an eel from the Maoris down the road. But I digress.

Bic Runga’s little sneak media preview of her upcoming church tour was… ahem… A Religious Experience. Like that one Ms Barry? You can use it if you want.

From the time I first saw her perform in 1997, through those cold Wellington mornings doing the graveyard shift at RadioActive when Drive got me through ‘til the dawn, I’ve been a bit of a fan of the younger Runga. I recall seeing her play, looking up and flashing an embarrassed grin like she’s just spotted her Nana in the back row. It’s hard not to fall for her mix of frail confidence and humbling talent.

Normally hallowed ground does strange things to me. Feet start burning, dogs barking, the ever-mounting piece from Carmina Burana, you know the drill. This time my experience was pretty much the opposite.

The vicar’s wife – yes quite literally – poured us cups of tea while bickies were laid out for all. Idol judge Paul Ellis was heard complaining (jokingly?) he doesn’t come to events where there’s no alcohol, but for me, well I was happy sitting down and pulling my Cameo Creme apart layer by layer.

While Bic played, I busied myself with fighting back the shivers up my spine. That and the overwhelming urge to flick my zippo, hold it in the air and see if others would follow. You can take the boy out of the Hutt... Probably not a good idea I decided on balance, the Kauri frame of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre would be dry as tinder by now.

Last night was just a teaser. Twenty-something minutes, eight songs – including a brave rendition of Edith Piaf’s “ne me quite pas” and a stripped back version of “Something Good”, in which she was ably assisted by Boxcar Benny of Boxcar Guitars fame.

What’s my point? Bic’s living in Paris now, who knows when you’ll next get to see her, let alone such a wonderfully stripped bare performance in the beautiful surroundings of our country’s chapels. If you only see one concert this Autumn yada yada yada. Oh, and since no-one else will probably say it publicly, Bic was looking hot. Damn hot. Amen to that, brother.

Right, if you’ll just quieten down for a minute, I’ve got a couple of announcements to make. First, can I ask you charge your glasses and drink to Sarah at Leto who’s decided to hang up her dainty pair of blogging shoes, here’s hoping she sees sense and returns to our screens quick smart. Hers is one of the few blogs outside of publicaddress I make an effort to read with any degree of regularlity. And this is how she rewards me.

Lastly, I completely forgot to plug my new show on 95bFM. It started last week, it’s called Sunday Best and it runs from 10am until 12pm. Listen to me chewing over the week’s issues and then slyly spitting them back onto my plate hoping you didn’t notice. Make it appointment radio this weekend and you can call yourself an “Early Adopter” when everyone else catches on. Ka kite.

I was having a wine or two at a friend’s the other night and called a cab to get home. A few minutes later I ambled down the drive and saw the car pull up outside the wrong house, about fifty metres down the road. It was after eleven o’clock, but the driver seemed not to care especially, as he pressed repeatedly on the horn.

I started trudging up the road towards the car. Halfway there, another lengthy salvo of loud air parpred through the streets of Mount Eden. I picked up my pace.

Jumping in, a little annoyed, I felt compelled to have a word. Just a small one, mind.

“Hey bud, I don’t think you should sound the horn this late at night.”

The driver was a youngish man from somewhere in Eastern Europe, perhaps part of the former Soviet Union. I mention this only so you can hear the dialogue in your own head.

“Yes.. well how was I to know you coming?”

“I was walking up the road… you parked outside the wrong house.”

“How can I see you? I have the headlights. You do not have the headlights…”

"Okay, but you shouldn't beep your horn so late."

(getting angrier) “I cannot see you coming. What… do you think I have the eyes of the cat?”

“Okay, whatever… just drive.”

“I do not have the eyes of the cat… you do not have the headlights!”

“...”

“I CANNOT SEE YOU!! I DO NOT HAVE THE EYES OF THE CAT!!”

“Pull over. I’m getting out.”

So I hop out, a little bewildered. I call another cab company. The driver turns up pretty quickly.

“Wow, I just had a weird experience with the last cab.”

“Wasn’t one of them bloody Indians, was he?”

“…”

“I tell you what mate, those bloody Indians, you can’t trust them.”

I sat in silence, not wanting to listen, not wanting to correct, not wanting to engage. Just wanting to get home.

I don’t know what offends me more. Being told I don’t have the headlights, or someone assuming that because I’m a white New Zealander, it’s okay to be racist with me.

It’s not just an isolated incident either and not one limited to taxi drivers, although they do seem to be common offenders. I blame too much driving around, Listening to Leighton, engaging mouth before brain.

Despite this, we don’t like to be seen as a racist country. Half of us can’t even pronounce the word properly. We hate it. Nah mate, that’s Australia you’re thinking of. What could Bic Runga be talking about?

Sure, what she said may have been blown out of all proportion by the papers, but to me that’s the whole point. Why should so many of us be mortified at the fact that Our Bic made some comments regarding her childhood as a part Maori, part Chinese kid growing up in Christchurch?

I’ve asked my Maori mates (and let me tell you, I’ve got Heaps of Maori Friends) about their experiences growing up, and they’ve all come into contact with some form of racism. Ditto a Chinese friend of mine, born in New Zealand, who is constantly running into discrimination when it comes to finding a job, a place to live, or even asking for directions without getting hassled.

I’m not saying we’re different to any other country, and neither was Bic. We’re probably better than many. But we’re a long way from being any kind of utopia where the Star Bellied Sneetches can live in harmony with those who have None Upon Thars (not to mention Those With The Headlights and Eyes of the Cat). And the first place to look should always be in the mirror.
__________________

Finally, my love and thoughts go out to Rachael King, her family and friends after the tragic passing of her father Michael and his wife Maria. Kia kaha Rach.

So I turned thirty today.

I rather hoped I’d have something solemn and substantial to say about it all, but just as on many other mornings in the past (and probably many more to come), I woke up tired, vaguely hungover and with as little wisdom as I had yesterday.

I’ve always had a bit of a problem coming up with just the right words to mark an occasion. Ironic really, considering how many words I throw around, both verbally and… writtenly? See, again my limited lexicon fails me. I remember being at the Gathering in Nelson on the cusp of the minnellium, (the one in 1999/000, not the one only pedants celebrated in 2000/2001). Time was tight and I was determined to make my last words of the twentieth century something appropriately momentous. Something like Oscar Wilde’s alleged last words “Either those curtains go or I do.”

Twelve years of school, five years of tertiary education, what’s the best I come up with?

“Shit, who am I gonna pash?”

Excuse me, my phone’s ringing… That’ll be The Oxford Book of Quotations wanting a word.

So I got up this morning, that’s right, tired, vaguely hungover and still lacking wisdom. Nor, I noted as I had a shave, do I look like a man. Why is that? Why do some guys look like men when they hit twenty, and others of us still get ID’d at Pak ‘n’ Save? Why does the odd ginger woman that gets on the bus each morning have a moustache I could never aspire to? Seriously, she scares me. It’s not so much the beard that worries me, or the odd smell, or the erratic eyes. It’s the stuffed toys she has hanging off her oversized backpack. If Furbies aren’t a sure sign of a sociopath, I don’t know what is.

A friend points out I got a nebulous mention in last week’s NBR. To be honest I’m unclear quite how to take it. In case you missed it (which I dare say is most of you), and care (surely a minority) it was in the context of a comedy piece about a divorce ceremony for Helen and Don. There was a mention of a poem, “Damian Christie’s Ode to Deborah’s Shawl”. Talk about obscure references, but there ya go.

For those of you who’ve been following it, I found out a few weeks back who was behind the radionzbias website, and the source of all the scurrilous allegations about me, and my apparently dodgy history. I’ve recorded a phone call in which I confront him with the facts, and it makes for amusing listening. A wee court case nothwithstanding, I’ll tell you soon who’s behind it, and possibly upload the phone call too for everyone’s mirth and amusement. Call me vindictive, but I prefer to think that in an open marketplace of ideas, it’s important to know your accusers. And to laugh at them, wherever possible.

Interestingly, radionzbias has been strangely silent since I first hinted I knew the masked man’s identity. Well, if there’s something positive to come out of all this, that’d be it.

Enough introspection. I apologise, it’s very twenty-something of me. It won't happen again. Sniff.

Is anyone concerned about our political leaders apparent inability to engage in a sustained debate without getting personal? We’ve already surrendered each day's parliamentary Question Time to name calling, mindless goading and point scoring.

This doesn't seem enough for our eager pollies however, and the behaviour is spreading outside of the hallowed halls. Take this exchange overheard in lunch queue at Bellamy's...

Helen: Just the two pies thanks.. Oh hang on, I've left my wallet upstairs, can I sort you out tomorrow?

Don: You can’t trust her - she’s an atheist fer Christ’s sake!

Helen: Oh it's you. Don't listen to him. Anyway, I'm an agnostic.

Don: Same diff.

Helen: You’re not exactly a choir boy yourself, four-eyes…

Don: If you mean, ‘do I believe there is a supernatural being with whom I can talk', then no.

Helen: This is 2004 Don, who still says ‘whom’? You’re such a geek... Not to mention a bloody cheater.

Don: Look, that was years ago – anyway, it’s not like you can talk about loveless marriages…

Ian: She’s a LESBIAN! She’s a LESBIAN!

TOGETHER: Piss off Wishart.

Ian: But I’ve got PROOF! Incontrovertible Evidence!

Prebble: And she’s got a deep voice…

Don: Precisely.

Prebble: And bad hair.

Don: Irrefutably.

Prebble: And she smells.

Don: Er, well I don't know if...

Carter: I could juhj her up a bit.

Helen: You could what?

Carter: You know… juhj… like they do on Queer Eye.

Ian: He’s a POOF! I've got PROOF!

ALL: PISS OFF WISHART!

Well, she’s been a cracker couple of weeks. I was halfway through a post last week complaining about the Summer that Never Was. I’d planned a weekend of cricket, drive-in movies and diving at the Poor Knights. It rained and everything was postponed. As March ticked over and Autumn fell upon us it became pretty clear that this was Little Summer that Just Wouldn’t.

I don’t want to sound all Season Obsessed or anything, but it’s becoming important to the inner gardener in me. My tree fern clippings aren’t taking, and my lilies, which had only just opened, took a hammering in the storms.

Everything I wrote about in the last week of November has failed to materialise. My gym membership has been and gone, and while I’m slightly trimmer than I was four months ago, I’m no Peter Andre.

Actually, can I just digress for a second to ask – what the HELL is up with Peter Andre having pole position on Top of the Pops with a re-release of the same song that annoyed us all in 1996? Does this open the door for all mediocre 90s artists (and really, the 90s were about as bad as it gets for pop music) to churn out the same old crap once again: MC Hammer? Bobby Brown? Who’s buying into this?

The car I was hoping would be ready for Summer isn’t quite there either. To recap, I dropped my old Austin Healey into the mechanic in October sometime to get a new gearbox. I wanted it ready for Summer. It’s now March. Anyone get the feeling they’re taking the piss? I called them up the other day.

“I kinda wanted it for Summer… it’s now Autumn.”

“Yeah, well you didn’t miss much, Summer was crap.”

“Thanks for that.”

It’s not all bad news however. There are huge piles of the crunchiest of crunchy leaves just begging to be jumped on in Albert Park. I was walking through said park the other day (you will have worked out by now it’s a bit of a fave of mine) when I came upon something I’d never seen before. It was a well. A big, brick well. I’ve walked through that park so many times before and never seen it.

“It must be new”, my brain suggested, not entirely helpfully.

The plaque (“reconstructed in 1979…”) and general old scuffed brickness of it suggested it was anything but. It might seem like a small thing, noticing something for the first time, but it really threw me. Glitch in the Matrix kinda styles.

Anyway, if anyone has any information backing up my particularly paranoid Someone’s Out to Mess with my Head conspiracy theory, feel free to let me know. Similarly, if anyone knows why there’s a huge letter D in Albert Park, send me feedback. I have my theory, but again I fear it’s unlikely and perhaps slightly egocentric.

I haven’t posted for a wee while, I know, and thanks for the concerned feedback. Yes, the pills are working, cheers. The real reason is that I’ve changed jobs (yes, again) and have made the big move up to that monolith on Hobson Street, Television New Zealand. And I'm having a great time. Still planning to do something on the mighty b, just not sure exactly what at the moment.

Issues wise, weather aside, I’ve been mulling over a few bits and pieces, but this is a Friday post, and I’d rather not weigh you down with my half-arsed theories on this that or the other when Russell’s been so prolific this week and nicely covered just about everything I was going to talk about. Ain’t he a champ.

Oh oh, try and check out the latest issue of Staple Magazine. Not only is it a great little read, but there's an interview in there I did with John Tamihere a month ago, which since the time I wrote it, has become even more relevant, given the talk of a new Maori party, etc.

Finally I'll provide you with a Waste Time on a Friday link – for you film buffs, here’s The Exorcist in 30 seconds as performed by some rabbits.

Enjoy the weekend. See you at the Garden Centre.