Posts by Damian Christie
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
I enjoy your columns, but the rest of the team seem to have scarpered. I know they've all got to earn a penny somewhere.
Can't you get some new writers on who will post regularly?Well, five of us have posted in the last week, and Russell probably five times himself. That's a couple of decent-length columns a day, plus all the ensuing discussion here at the System... you not getting your money's worth or something? :)
I thought the law professor on Close Up was good last night, saying he thought Bain was being treated like a returning war hero. While I don't want to sound like Looney old Laws, baying for Bain's blood on the talkback, he is still accused of mass murder isn't he? I don't pretend to be an expert on the case, but I don't think the majority of the public are either, so perhaps we should hold off on the tickertape parade for a bit?
Re the "how do you feel" style questions to Bain (and I don't think those first few actually came from Sainso, listening to them again) from all the journos, I know it's cliche, but isn't it probably the most relevant question to someone who's just been released from prison after 13 years? Short of any questions about the retrial and the judicial system, which he wasn't going to answer.
Here's a list of all the questions I could make out in the scrum:
How does it feel to be out David?
how does it feel?
How does it feel david?
how does it feel?
Is it?
Were you expecting this today?
And did it feel like a long time waiting in the court?
What are you going to do first?
When you were standing in court, what was going through your head when you were listening to the judge?
A big smile came over your face when they said they were granting bail, could you believe it?
Did you expect it?
How hard have the past 12-13 years been?
How’s your heart rate feel?
How did you keep your head together the last 12 years?
Do you want a new trial?
What are your plans for tonight, do you have any plans for this evening?
What’s the thing you missed the most?
Do you have faith in the judicial system?
How odd is this entire experience right now, being free, being out of jail?
Was it emotional last night for you?
No jersey David?
Are you guys going to live together?
Which one’s the tidy one?
Who’s going to do the cooking?
What are you looking forward to?
You don’t like prison food?
How do you feel about not being able to go back to Dunedin?
What do you (unclear) want to do now, find a job?
Most of the questions seem to relate to emotions and Bain's mental state, whether it's "how do you feel", or "what's going through your mind", "how odd is it being out", "how did you keep it together" etc. Once those questions were done the reporters seemed to move pretty quickly to jerseys, prison food and whether living with Joe was going to be like a scene from 80s sitcom Perfect Strangers.I like Morgan's question earlier. But if you were in that scrum, and were only going to get one question before being shouted down by the others, what would you most want to know?
-
I've interviewed quite a few comedians over the years (when I was at George and bFM I'd usually have a locals and international artists from each comedy festival), and they do seem to be a range of people.
Some aren't overly funny, but as soon as the mic is on they switch instantly into character, this wacky persona that you can't actually _talk_ to, because everything has to have a punchline.
Some are genuinely funny whether they're on camera/mic or not.
Some are just normal people who tell jokes.
-
Could we not have programmes broken into meaningful chunks as well?
Close Up is broken into its component parts on the net. The TVNZ search function still isn't the best though - I often can't get search results pointing to my own stories, and I know what they're called!
Having the little 10 second or whatever ads at the start of stories now also provides some strange outcomes - I re-watched a story I did about dataveillance, where I looked at Progressive Enterprises' One Card, and privacy lawyer Tim McBride pointed out they're not doing it for altrusitic, reasons, they're mining your data, building a profile on you etc...
When I watched the story the opening ad (and surrounding banner throughout the story) was for Progressive... I'm not sure if either advertiser or journalist would be overly thrilled with that outcome.
Still, exactly the same thing happens in other media all the time. I heard Michael Laws slagging off snake oil on Radio Live, only to be followed by ads for biomag underlays, bee pollen, deer velvet etc...
-
Good points Jeremy, and nice to see a well reasoned response - certainly better than the comedian whose winning line in the argument the other night was to call me a "journalist c**t"...
There are obviously lots of reasons why one would want to use older, 'guaranteed' material, and I take your point that NZ comedians probably have to freshen their acts more often than overseas artists. So with that in mind, is it reasonable to expect - and I'm not just referring to Brendhan here - that a NZ comedian performing at the laugh fest would have a largely new routine from one year to the next? Or is it really that hard to develop new material? I'm genuinely interested to know your view on this, because it's one thing you didn't really touch on above.
-
I have incorporated this anecdote into my stand-up comedy routine.
It's a shame he didn't too, could've been 1% less new material to find...
-
This is a good blog site, but kind of dominated by testosterone...where all the ladies?
Yeah and I don't want to be like, a pedant, or anything, but I'm pretty sure we have a few female bloggers on publicaddress. It's not us lads fault that they keep on getting busy popping out children and stuff...
...Apart obviously from Fiona, I'm pretty sure Russell had something to do with that one.
Re the Blog Awards - I've spoken about this before, and I think it'd be a bit of an unecessary wankfest to be honest. Like, firstly there's bugger all blogs in NZ - even fewer seriously viable ones - so with enough categories everyone would be sure to come home with a trophy. Is that really what we want, some mutual appreciation backslapping kinda thing where even cyfswatch come home with a Hardest Tryer Plaque?
While I'm stoked that PA's collective mantlepiece is getting a bit crowded with *ahem* three from four now *ahem* Netguide Awards, and it's great people think to vote for us, I don't know that any of us would blog any less if there wasn't a gong to do it for... just like (I'm hoping) none of us are in it for the money...
-
Ben, I think you make very good points, mostly because they are all in agreement with mine. ;)
I was thinking about the Stone's productivity actually when I was writing that, and the Beatles too, who produced more than an album each year of their 8 or so years together.
But of course that's just music, which as those bestowed with the Gift of Comedy would doubtless point out, is nowhere near as hard as writing jokes for the stage... nothing is, apparently.
And to reiterate, if I thought a comic's material was timeless and classic, it'd be different. Your Wheatus/Stones comparison is bang on. Brendhan's definitely a very funny guy, but after the third time, I wasn't laughing...
-
Sorry, no Dory as in the fish played by Ellen DeGeneres (sp) in Finding Nemo, who has the memory of, well, a fish.
-
I have to add that as my memory ain't so good these days (my friends call me Dory), I will happily go and see Brendhan perform again in a few years' time, where even if the material isn't new, it will be for me :)
-
Graham: You think your thread has gone off the beaten track? I came back to my dog attacks discussion ("Flashback") after a couple of days off, and find several people gathered around writing a play about potatoes, guinea pigs, cycling and Gestetner machines... seriously....