Cracker by Damian Christie

As I predicted a week or so ago, Jeremy Newsboy’s new show Eating Media Lunch is a lot of fun. But who could have guessed exactly how much hilarity it would have prompted in the past 24 hours?

Yesterday afternoon Jeremy came up to bFM, as he does each Thursday, for a little feature we like to call Newsboy’s World of Sport. We talk, largely about cricket and rugby, people email us telling us we’re wrong, we admit we don’t know squat. It’s what they call interactive radio.

But yesterday Jeremy came bearing gifts. “Have a listen to this,” he says, a cheeky (some would say sinister) gleam in his eye.

Okay, enough build up: Here’s the Mike King phone message you're looking for.

What else needs to be said really?

Actually, I should add, Jeremy didn’t mean it to get out beyond his immediate circle of friends. I know that because I asked him what he was going to do about it. He said “nothing, we’ll just hang on to it, see what happens.” But things this precious, this classic have ways of getting out. And sure enough, after doing the rounds of a major advertising agency, it found its way quickly to TV3 News, and now to the front page of the Herald. I have it on good authority TV3 will be following up the story this evening.

I called Jeremy last night. He was sitting in the dark, contemplating life. Or so he says. I could imagine that grin getting ever wider, a smoking jacket, glass of cognac perhaps. When you’ve been Eating Media Lunch for a couple of weeks, it’s good to have a solid feed of New Zealand Pork.

Oh and in case you were thinking its an isolated incident, it's certainly not the first time Mike's potty mouth has run away from him, on tape (.mov file). Here it is as a Windows Media file.

A friend in the know also advises me:

"He sent a stroppy email to the Star-Times when Megan Nicol Reed (very briefly) panned his show. The b must be buzzing with the thought that New Zealand's favourite comedian has been outed as a psycho."

Ok. Enough about that, back to me for a sec. As you know I’m off to the Lord of the Rings junket in Wellington tomorrow. For all you fans out there, I will be posting a review about the film on Saturday, and more stuff after the premiere and junket on Sunday/Monday.

Have a great weekend. I know I'm going to.

The weather’s all over the place at the moment. Last week I was savouring my early finishes at work. Home by three-ish, on the deck, stretched out beside the cats, enjoying the sun. Or at least trying to enjoy the sun. The odd swampy smell from round the side of the house that gets worse in summer has, well, gotten worse. The landlord reckons it's nothing to worry about, but I’m still not convinced that having the Bog of Eternal Stench on your property is a good idea.

Still, any day above ground is a good day, or so they say, even if the ground is a tad squelchy underfoot. This week, the weather’s reverted, but people around me are optimistically talking about “the two weeks in late November when it always rains” as though it’s written in stone, and the three months after that are gonna be scorchers. Let’s hope they’re right.

Summer’s five days away, and I’m forced to admit my preparations are behind schedule. The car is still at the mechanics, where it’s been for an age. A friend of mine had recommended them, advising me you can get a bit of a discount if you tell them not to hurry. Six weeks later, I’m thinking about making a phone call: “Hurry.” It’s a summer sort of a car, and spends as much time off the road as on (i.e. broken, not ploughing across hills and muddy terrain) so I’m keen to at least get three months' solid use before putting it back on blocks for the winter.

I joined the varsity gym yesterday. Last time I joined a somewhat flasher establishment, went twice, and stoopidly – for someone who occasionally calls himself a lawyer – got locked into a year long contract. Two sessions, that’s four hundred dollars a session, you can see why I was more than a little hesitant to return.

[Actually, small gripe here: We all know people who have been locked into these sort of contracts, and it’s obviously how the gym makes money. They sell memberships to x number of people, knowing that only a quarter-or-so of them are ever going to attend regularly, so they only need to provide facilities for this number. But surely they have some moral obligation to motivate you? They’re keen as to sign you up and get you to part with your money, can’t they at least extend some of this enthusiasm to getting you along? Wouldn’t that be better PR in the long run? They have computers to monitor exactly how often you come, why not give you a friendly call if you haven’t been in for a couple of months, just to see if they can help? Oh that’s right, they only care about getting your money. Gripe over.]

With more outdoor entertaining in mind, Bog of Eternal Stench notwithstanding, I’ve decided to try my hand at a touch of gardening. There’s an old Chinese proverb, if you want to be happy for a day, get drunk… if you want to be happy for a lifetime, grow a garden. [the proverb in full apparently has something about slaughtering a pig? Odd] Curiously enough, for me, it was getting drunk that led to my newfound love of home horticulture…

The idea had its genesis last Sunday when I’d had a few too many, and decided to remove a Big Tangly Weedy Vine Thing, armed with only a rusty saw and scotch-fuelled determination. It turns out the Big Tangly Weedy Vine Thing was actually called Wisteria, and my landlord had intended it to be there. I’ll tell him the swamp got to it.

Not wanting said incident of intoxicated wanton destruction to be my sole legacy to what I optimistically call our garden, I’ve been making ecological amends. At least, I took some dead plants the little old lady next door didn’t want, and I’ve planted them. I’m not sure what they are, they’re pretty dead. Hopefully they're not little Wisterias.

Whatever they are, I fear, much like my car and my abs of steel, they’re not going to be ready by summer. If, as the Breeders sing, "Summer is ready when you are", would it mind waiting a few weeks? Ta.

First things first, yay, we won the award for best personal blog at the Netguide web awards. I’d like to thank our captain and convenor of selectors, Russell, who gave me the nod a year or so ago, despite some niggling injuries. Chad and Debra, ever supportive props, each proud of their singular cauliflowered ears; Jolisa and Rob, flankers, who despite being signed to overseas clubs, still manage to make it to the odd after-match (provided the drinks are flowing); The two locks, Karl and Matt from Cactuslab, whose style helped us push far beyond our collective weight. And, of course, you the readers and fellow bloggers, the thousands of numbers 8s and halfbacks, always ready to grab the ball and run with it. Me? Well I'm the hooker, of course.

It’s almost exactly a year since my first post on Cracker. I remember a news story written shortly after we’d all made our first posts. I can’t quote it precisely, but it was along the lines “Russell Brown is continuing his Hard News, Debra Daley will be writing about Yoga… and Damian Christie doesn’t seem to know what he’s writing about yet.”

A year on, nothing’s changed. Aside from being about stuff I’m interested in, or that affects me, there is no constant theme. Politics, music, films, sport, home renovation, they’re all there, and they’re all parts of the puzzle. I think if Cracker were a jigsaw, we’d be missing the picture on the box, not entirely sure whether we’ve got all the pieces, and we haven’t managed to find many edge-bits yet.

It worked last post, let’s try it again: So, we lost the rugby. I probably care a lot more than I otherwise would have, what with the effort and preparation that went into the 95bFM alternative commentary. For the record, we were great, and I’m disappointed we didn’t get a chance to prove it again this coming Saturday. Jeremy “tells it like it is” Newsboy’s calls – “ooh, he’s fucked it” and “he’s walking off the field injured, holding his balls” prompted great responses, and a number of callers remarked it was nice to be losing the game but still laughing. Thanks to everyone who responded, and no, we won’t be commentating the playoff for third place between France and New Zealand.

We were having a party at Sando, which I had to duck out of for a couple of hours, and when I got back the mood was fairly sombre. I proceeded to drown my sorrows, but invariably just when I would start to enjoy myself, someone would come out with “We lost the rugby eh?” It wasn’t until about 6.a.m, the new Xbox Karaoke system fired up, as I launched into “New York, New York”, that I truly forgot my woes.

Partly due to the disappointment, partly due to the fact that I was singing Sinatra as the sun rose, I just didn’t feel like watching England vs France last night. I was gunning for France though, God knows if we lost, I didn’t want the English to win either. Unfortunately this was not to be my weekend.

It’s a new week though, and because of some early starts at work, I was up with the sun just before six. It’s the most peaceful time of the day, as the suburbs slowly wake around you. It gave me some time for reflection, and while the nation dissects the performance of Thorne, Mitchell et al, I’m moving on. Won’t you join me?

Picks for the week: Two shows starting on Tuesday night, TV2. Jeremy Newsboy’s media analysis show Eating Media Lunch looks promising, and the return of Slave & Otis’ Mo’ Show is always going to be worth a look. They're on at 9.30pm and 10.00pm respectively.

I’ve fallen into the habit of wanting to start all my posts with the word ‘so’. And it would seem I’m not alone.

There’s a certain faux-casualness implicit in such a beginning, it’s good for dropping significant facts into a conversation without them seeming out of place. It’s like we’re just finishing a conversation we were having yesterday. “So my Chlamydia has cleared up nicely.” “Oh cool, I’m glad about that.”

So I’ve managed to Sméagol my way in to the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King junket in Wellington at the end of the month. And you, dear reader, will be right there with me, albeit in a slightly delayed and six degrees of separation kind of way, as I post and brag, and brag and post and generally gush about the greatness of Sir Pete.

The coolest part of it all is that I get to see the third instalment of Jackson’s masterwork TWO DAYS before the world premiere. After which I’m going to run to the nearest crowded place and talk loudly on my cellphone: “So I saw the new Lord of the Rings film…”. The next day I get to interview some of the cast (yes guys, Liv; yes ladies, Orlando) and generally make a nuisance of myself on the red carpet the following evening.

The fact that I’m going at all proves to me a couple of things. First, I’m good at Sméagoling. Second, the world is an inherently unfair place. My best mate Ben is one of the biggest Lord of the Rings fans around (while still retaining enough dignity to be cool). He’s read all the books countless times, including the Very Hard Going Silmarillion. He knows where the elves came from originally. He hates it when I constantly refer to “the Twin Towers” just to piss him off. He hates it more when I ask why the Ewoks haven’t featured yet.

He took the news I was going to Wellington remarkably well, all things considered.

So I can’t wait to tell him what I thought of “Return of the Ring”.

So I saw the Matrix: Revolutions last night. It was a advance preview thingy – it would be wrong (not to mention unnecessarily wanky) to call it a premiere. Anyway, there was no free food or drink, no-one from Shortland Street, only a couple of people from Pavement, and even they snuck out halfway through…

The one thing that did make it stand out from your run-of-the-mill movie session though, was the presence of a doorman, clutching a metal detector. At first I thought ‘Ok, they’re trying to do some kind of mock Big-Brother/Agent-Smith thing, albeit on a fairly modest scale.’ Turns out no, there was nothing mock about it. The [wonderful] local distributors had word from on high (or AOL Time Warner, which is a actually about as ‘on high’ as it gets, these days) to search everyone going in for recording devices, including of course, Pxt capable phone.

Now, being a Swimming Pool Pervert from way back, I came so equipped, and was amping to post some appallingly lo-res images for you to look at. But ahhh, foiled again, my phone confiscated and sealed in a manila envelope. Where’s David Blane when you need him? (Actually, he’d probably just leave my phone in the envelope for 40 days before opening it, perhaps Houdini’s my man.)

So in absence of said images, I give you this:

$ % & $ # # $
% & $ # # $ @
* $ % & $ # #
$ % & $ # # $
$ % & $ # # $
* $ % & $ # #
$ % & $ # # $
* $ % & $ # #

Squint a bit and you can kinda make out Neo, represented in Matrix-code. If that doesn’t work for you, it helps to remember, there is no code [sorry, Matrix joke]. In any event, it’s better than how my photos would have turned out taken on my shitty cellphone from inside a darkened cinema.

Before I tell you what I thought of the film, it might be good if you read a Really Positive Review by someone who knows more than I do and really liked it.

I too really wanted to like Matrix: Revolutions. Monica Bellucci aside, the second film, Matrix: Reloaded, was disappointing. Too much reliance on half-arsed Stage One Philosophy – “If you knew you were going to make that choice, would you still make it?” and other similarly ‘deep’ lines. Too much time spent in Zion, which looked like a bad commune, complete with ‘trippy’ tribal dancing – The Gathering on a Bad Trip. Too much time spent flogging a message that was simultaneously unsubtle and yet rushed/confusing.

If you’ve seen the second film, and agree with the above summary, I’m sorry, but Matrix: Reloaded is not the make-good you've been waiting for. Apart from a few scenes, the film takes place largely in the “real world”, either in Zion or inside the ships. Sartorial excess is replaced with grubby fisherman’s rib jerseys. There’s too much kissing. Monica Bellucci appears for all of 30 seconds, and doesn’t say anything [still…].

The dialogue becomes laughable in the second half, a pastiche of old war films, Star Wars and coaches’ half-time pep talks. There’s even a “young soldier gets told off by drill sergeant” scene straight from the likes of Full Metal Jacket.

“Where in hell are you from anyway, Private Neo?”

“Sir, The Matrix, sir!”

“Holy dogshit! The Matrix! Only steers and queers come from the Matrix, Private Neo! And you don't look much like a steer to me, so that kinda narrows it down!”

Or at least, that’s how I remember it. I would have recorded it, only…