Posts by Sarah Nathan
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Golly JLM - thanks! But I have just found an array of paperbacks - and 1 hardback even - on Amazon, so I don't bust a boiler on my account. Am about to head overseas so will be incommunicado for a couple of weeks, so don't feel slighted if I don't reply to you in the near future. But thanks again!
Synchronicity, eh?
Were you, too, a fan? (Not U2, ahem).
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Wow Dyan and Riddley. Thanks for war stories - amazing to read.
I am late to the 'books that changed your life' topic but here goes - despite now advertising to all and sundry my distinctly low-brow tastes...
Pet Day - a junior reader at primary. Loved it. Wanted pet calf. Never got pet calf. Cue much therapy. And a stupid labrador I named "Brown Dog*". *Unrelated to 'Pet Day'.
Enid Blyton - Secret Seven and Famous Five inspired in me the urge to stay up waaaaay past my bedtime and read and read and read. Addictive when you're seven to ten yrs old.
Watership Down - Richard Adams. The first big, huge, mammoth novel I ever read. Sad to look at it now and realise it's only an inch thick. Seemed bigger. Probably was...
Victoria Holt novels - romances set in Victorian times, usually involving dark, brooding heirs and gorgeous, down-at-heel but noble and panting governesses. Addictive when you're 12. (And possibly why am I still single at 40 - ugh)
Thorn Birds - stolen from mum in order to read the rude bits aloud on the school bus. Addictive when you're 14.
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez. - Made it okay, if not heroic, to nurse pathetic, all-encompassing unrequited passions. Addictive when y ou're 25. Oh, alright, 35. But I've grown out of that now that I'm 40. And still single. Doh!
Christopher Brookmeyer - "Be My Enemy" self-satisfied, smart-arse, high-adrenalin, post-modern, 007-type poppycock of the highest order. Addictive when you're mentally defective from a surfiet of vodka.
"The Movie" by trash queen Louise Bagshawe. Based loosely if obviously on The Smashing Pumpkins and a fantasy about a fat girl screenwriter losing weight and winning the heart of... well, I don't want to spoil it for y'all.
And may I just go back to some fave kids' books:
Milly Molly Mandy - anyone who has a friend called Toby and thinks it's great fun to go and pick mushrooms gets a big tick from me.
Maurice Sendak - yes, my personaly fave was called "Sarah's Room" for purely egotistical reasons. The plants on the wallpaper grew at night. Good, clean, freaky fun.
Richard Scarry's "Busy Busy World". Because when I travelled through Europe much, much later I was able to recognise all of the key places: hey look it's the Coloseum! The Arc de Triomphe! Brought the world alive. But where's Lowly?
"Marianne Dreams" by Catherine Storr - a kids book that I read as an adult but only b/c i was obsessed for many years with the 1070s B&W TV show it spawned. TV show "Escape Into Night" was about a bed-ridden chick who drew pictures in a sketchbook that came to life when she fell asleep. She drew an invalid friend in a house - Mark - who she visited in her dreams. But when she got the pip with him she drew eyes in the large rocks that surrounded his house. Then the rocks started moving towards them both in a menacing fashion... Talk about cack your pants! Auckland Public Library has this in the special stack of the kids book dept - worth asking for.
AND lastly but not leasly:
Wises Maps. Like to know where I'm supposed to be going. Even if, at 40, I have yet to figure it out.
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The hbo site also gives details on the soundtrack, episode by sweet episode
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The most impressive thing for me is that the programmes (across all of series 1 and 2) stand up to repeated viewing. Sex and the City never did that for me, as the acting and theme seemed a little laboured / mannered second time around.
I think I've watched that first Entourage ep on DVD with various friends 5 or 6 times and yet I still tuned in when it went to air.
Don't miss a single one. Even when they're not totally on-form-superb, they're still excellent, which is saying something. And the cameos and locations are mind-blowing - particularly in series 2.
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envision
Call me old-fashioned, but what's wrong with good old envisage?
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I'm sorry, but Anal Mana was by far the best moment in New Zealand television since the dead air between Paul Holmes from Aramoana to Judy Bailey in the studio when neither of them had anything to say except that the gunman was "somewhere down there". Or maybe the Goftas.
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anybody remember that TV series from the early 90s or late 80s "Chances"
Hey Yamis, I totally remember Chances. Sadly, they took a fab concept (sex + lotto) and did okay - but not brilliantly - with it.
I'll never forgive them for using up this great concept and preventing me from pitching same to the networks here . (Oh, not that I've tried, ahem).
AND Chances is guilty of traumatising me with Aussie actor Jeremy whats-his-name. He was handcuffed to his bed, stark naked, by some disgruntled chick or other. Euwww.
All in all, I felt sorry for their neighbour, old uncle whats-his-name from The Sullivans, who was gypped out of his lotto winnings. Okay, so he didn't actually chip in for the ticket on the winning week but he usually did and... so very sad.
But, more importantly, who remembers "Return to Eden"? No traffic on Auckland roads on the nights that three-parter aired. (I'm not talking about the lame series that followed). Yum yum, crocodiles and the guy from Australian Crawl. I should know his name, I own the DVD. Doh x 2. There we go, James Reyne.
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How very, very classy - Murray McCully
Classy is my favourite one-word oxymoron. How apt.
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Geez, I don't even suffer from "usual issues". The only glitch I've experienced, a few months ago, was when watching a show live, as well as recording it. Live pausing then resuming led to a malfunction and I lost the whole ep from the hard drive. But it was only the penultimate ep of Donald Trump's Apprentice so I wasn't tooooo upset. I reported it to Sky and they told me it was a known glitch and that their IT programmers were looking into it.
Gawd how I love my MySky. Thanks, Cass, for talking me into it. (BTW, James Griffin wrote this week's O.F. I think). Loved those NZ porn titles.
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Oh, I had this all worked out when I was 14. Everyone was to drink rum & CokeTM, wear grey and pink and listen to some rocking Elton John. Sadly, I still have the written evidence.
Now that I am much more... erm...sophisticated it will be margaritas ahoy, wall to wall grey and black and Parliament's "Flashlight".
"Now, I lay me down to sleep
Ooh, I just can't find a beat
Flash light (ohh, I will never dance!)"Coz it'd be pretty hard not to tap your feet to that one. Feel the guilt - you're supposed to be grieving you bastards!
In my defence, my fave line is actually the profound and encouraging: "Everybody's got a little light under the sun..."