Public Address - Heat (Home)

By popular demand, the Girlie | Mar 30, 2004 16:58

A week in New Zealand for me, and then three days away on a roadshow allowed the girlie to stretch out and call the place her own for a while.

I was in NZ for a friend's wedding, and very good it was with a bunch of people turning up I hadn't seen for a while. Setting? A kumeu vineyard. Fan bloody tastic. I was also over there to see the Girlie's older sister into hospital. Dicky kidney, you see. They were going to do a Something Ectomy but in the end settled for an Irish procedure, a Something O'Plasty, which was music to our ears.

So right now Girlie Major is relaxing at home with a tube and a bag sticking out of her side. But everything went well and she'll be up and causing trouble again soon. Girlie Major went a bit off the rails as a teen but has come out the other end, after a few good scares, a very fine thing indeed.

I went with her to the doctors a few months ago, a urology clinic in Gillies Avenue, to have scans and so forth. The doc was terrific – he only had one kidney and reckoned it was a doddle. One was enough, he said. He still regularly knocks back a few drams too many. Funny thing is, when you get to the reception area you can see into a courtyard out the back with a fountain and two or three of those Germanic "little boys taking a pee" statues.

Inspirational stuff.

Anyway the doc asked a lot of questions, as docs do. Very personal questions about, you know, down there. And about sex. Then he whipped Girlie Major behind a curtain to inspect her waterworks.

Then I heard a little voice:

"If I'd known you were going to do this I wouldn't have brought my Dad!"

When the inspection was over he came back to his desk and drew a couple of diagrams to explain what was wrong and what he was going to do to fix it. Girlie Major cringed.

Girlie Minor, meanwhile, is planning her Schoolies Week. Schoolies is a great Aussie tradition a la Spring Break in the US of A, they've even made a movie about it. Kids head up to Surfers, rent a hotel room between about ten of them, drink themselves stupid, take drugs and shag each-other senseless.

Being a supportive parent, I'm expected to pay.

Schoolies has been troublesome in the past and the authorities have tried to reign it in. But the Girlie isn't planning to go to Surfers, because it sucks. She and her friends are heading for Bali, where, hopefully they'll just lie on the beach go home to watch telly and go to bed early.

Yeah, right.

In other news, the boys lost the last test against South Africa and their best opportunity to knock off the one nation they have never beaten in a series. Damn shame, but a great series. Murali is in trouble again, and rightly so in my humble.

ABC's MediaWatch was funny as hell last night with a terrific fisking, of right-wing columnists Greg Sheridan and the appalling Andrew Bolt. Also a funny item on NZ's own Sunday News.

Digg this Scoopit!

Happy birthday L240 | Mar 15, 2004 11:30

I realised recently it's my stereo's 25th birthday. I wouldn't mention it except me and my stereo are pretty close. We've traveled everywhere together. I've mentioned the turntable, sorry the "deck", before, but the heart of my system is a trusty New Zealand-made Linear L240 amplifier, a big late '70s industrial black steel job.

I bought it in my first year at Uni. It was on sale as most of the local manufacturers were going out of business as protection ended. It's hard to believe now that in those days most of the consumer electronics available in New Zealand were made in New Zealand: AWA TVs, Fountain and Linear stereos and lots more.

Strangely no obsessive stereo nerd has created a web site for these rapidly disappearing pieces of New Zealand technological and economic history. The only reference I could find to any of this stuff online was some guy rating his New Zealand-made stereo the worst piece of equipment he'd ever owned.

But my amp is fantastic. The L240 has a great sound but is known to blow speakers. It peaks at about 60 watts per channel, well up on its 40-watt rating. I've blown at least three sets.

If I have visitors they look at it and think: "You poor sad loser, Rob." But they do a double-take when I wind the old bastard up. When I was shifting to Australia, the moving guy asked if I wanted insurance. He paused, looked at my stereo and other junk.

"I reckon the minimum would do," he mused.

Perreaux, the most innovative of the local manufacturers, has fittingly survived and thrived at the quality end of the market. And I guess that just proves the point of those reforms – if you could produce something the market wanted and built a brand reputation you succeeded, no matter if you were thousands of miles away.

Anyway, Linear didn't survive, but around my place one old unit is still pumping out those sweet grooves, baby! Yeah!

Speaking of grooves I went up to the Cat and Fiddle in Balmain on Saturday for one of my increasingly rare live music outings. We caught the reformed Hard-Ons. They were okay, loud and thrashy, which was what I was after. My mate, Dan "once you've tried Jew you've had the best screw" Kaufman, hated them. But I thought they were okay.

At this point I'd like to declare Balmain the most over-rated place in Sydney. It has 26 pubs so if that doesn't win me over nothing will. Despite that it's a bit of a twee colonial hell. Mainly a residential area, you can't get in anywhere after midnight. The restaurants aren't all that crash hot, despite what they think, and it's quite hard to get around on foot.

Okay, so five Britons have been released from Guantanamo, people George Bush had declared to be terrorists and murderers. What gives? Well, they are the latest of over 80 prisoners released to date. George caught in another lie, the United States losing more of its moral authority and moving ever further from its founding principles. Sigh.

Bush will be watching developments like these closely.

And this just in from Stephen, a muslim fisking of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Digg this Scoopit!

So long, Wog | Mar 02, 2004 13:40

Warren Berryman, managing editor and co-founder of the Independent Business Weekly died this morning from complications arising from cancer.

Warren was one of those rare people you meet in life who make an indelible mark. He lived life with gusto, took a lot of risks and was always willing to spare time for a "yarn", usually accompanied by a beer, or wine, or maybe a gin. At the Indy Warren, or Wog as he was known to friends, created a place where journalists could do good work, where they had both the freedom and backing to stir things up. It was and is a challenging place, and a lot of very good journos have benefited from their time there and their time with Warren.

I was there for just under a year and usually caught up with Warren (I couldn't bring myself to call him Wog until a trip over in November, just before he was taken ill) on my trips home. It was always a highlight, full of mischief and gossip.

The Warren I knew was at his best on deadline. Deadline at the Indy is on Tuesday nights. To get the paper out, printed and distributed nationally that deadline is absolute. It can't be shifted by more than about half an hour and most of the best stories were written right at the end, often by Warren's great love Jenni McManus.

Early in the day there would be an editorial meeting, led by Jenni, to decide what was in, what was in the pipeline and what would hit the front page. Then everyone would knuckle down to squeeze out the last few and usually most important stories. Jenni in particular would disappear and rattle off a couple of killers that would usually lead the paper. For me and most others it was mainly about winning the second lead.

Warren would often be grumpy early in the day, concerned about putting out the best possible edition of the paper and breaking stories that you would see, to his glee, in the Herald on Thursday or even later. He'd be in his office subbing most of the day and sometimes he'd call you in to watch what he did to your stories.

It was a learning experience.

"There's two words you won't see in my paper, Rob," he'd say. " 'That' and 'fuck'."

Then he'd think for a minute: "Actually, you might get 'fuck' in."

As the day wore on Wog would lighten up and as the focus moved away from writing and onto production he would sit down at one of the Macs and start to pump out pages, singing bawdy songs and reciting rude rhymes as he went with a coffee mug of wine by his mouse.

The fridge at the Indy was always full and mostly the staff and various drop-ins would sit around helping themselves, brainstorming headlines while the last couple of pages were finished. Everyone would sit around and imbibe for some time after the paper was sent or maybe head down to our local, The Rose and Crown.

Then Jenni and Warren would wander off to the ferry, arm in arm as always.

The next day we'd find out whether we'd done good or not. Warren would come in and slam the Herald down if they'd gotten any of our major stories, but mostly he was happy. Mostly we found stuff that the other papers didn't.

My last trip over, for my own sister's funeral from the same cancer Warren contracted, was in January. During that trip and feeling very fragile already I heard Wog had been diagnosed. So I wandered downtown for one more Indy deadline. Nothing had changed, everyone was sitting around, beers in hand and planning where to go next. Warren just looked a bit thinner, that's all. We said our goodbyes as men do: fumbling, with few words.

As the doctor said to my sister Ann, it's a hell of a way to lose weight.

Warren's career as a journo was full of highlights, but one of his best known solo coups was to get his hands on a draft copy of a credit rating assessment of New Zealand in Muldoon's time and confront him with it. Usually the government had a chance to edit these before release.

Taking on Muldoon was not something for the faint-hearted, and Warren showed real courage time and again, especially in supporting Jenni's dogged pursuit of the Winebox scandal. His support of his journos when they were up against it was also a legend.

Where other papers let stories drop or fade away, the Indy followed them and followed them right to the very end. You couldn't run and you couldn't hide.

Wog was a great writer on matters of freedom, in fact if there is one word that characterises the man "freedom" is it. He fought hard for it, writing eloquently especially on matters of freedom of the press. For Warren freedom was about freedom from bureaucratic interference. He'd rail against government meddling and bureaucracy constantly.

We didn't always see eye to eye on these matters, but it was fun taking him on.

Less well known to many is Warren's life before journalism, as a paua fisherman (or was that poacher, I was never sure), diver, miner and blaster of the Wellington tunnel, gun runner in the Middle-East running a truckload of weapons to Afghanistan in the 60s and bringing back prized Afghan jackets to swinging London.

Free trade Berryman style.

Somewhere along the line Warren bought a boat, an old wooden World War II minesweeper converted for big game fishing. Apparently at one stage the record for the largest fish caught on rod and reel was caught off this boat. Wog would often come to work with oil under his nails and paint on his hands and at Christmas he and Jenni would sail off up north to do battle with a marlin or two.

In the January of my year there Wog turned up with smoked marlin for all the staff.

"You're not a catch and release man then, Warren?" I chided.

"Heh, heh. Yup, I am. I catch 'em and release 'em into the smokehouse!"

It was delicious. So long Wog.

Digg this Scoopit!

Go you Cats! | Mar 01, 2004 13:54

I went to see the Warratahs play the Sharks at Aussie Stadium on Saturday and I'm a worried man. These Warratahs are really, you know, quite good. Yes I know they've had Indian summers before, in fact just about every year before, but this team looks the real McCoy.

The backs are terrific and Matt Rogers, now over his early fumbles, is starting to look like a rugby genius. But the Tahs have always had good backs – or so their fans tell me. The buzz this year is they have now got some "tall timber" up front. They win the odd lineout and their rolling mauls are working a treat.

I'm worried and it looks to me as if it's down to the Blues to stop them. It'll be interesting to watch whether the rest of the country can get behind Auckland when push comes to shove.

Intense regional rivalry is pretty common over here too. Back in late 2002 when I was in Queensland there was a lot of support for the Warriors after the locals felt the Broncos had been cheated out of the league finals.

Anyway, I was supporting the Cats strongly, much to the confusion of those around me. It's tough being a Cats supporter.

Like Russell I have to mention those Black Caps. For a few hours yesterday they were ranked third in the world in the one-day game by the ICC, recovering from seventh or eighth on the back of this series. Then Aussie lost to Sri Lanka and we were back in fourth. Still, we have a game in hand and can get back up with a fifth win on the trot!. Go you good things!

I shouldn't do that really – it's the kiss of death.

But this is a great team with the emphasis on "team". And it's great to see Cairns on the comeback as well. Is Bond getting fit again? I can't find out from here so someone email me!

I've had a series of visitors of late so I'm acting like a tour-guide: Friday morning on Bondi Beach, lunch in Newtown and a big night out; a run from Bronte to Coogee and back, a sunny lunch and a bottle of wine in the micro-Italian neighbourhood of Stanley Street. Off to the rugger.

Can't complain really. Well, I could, but nobody would listen.

One who has been complaining is the Girlie cos nothing's getting done around the house. She was home all day Saturday doing homework and waiting for me to arrive back with some food. Any food. When I told her I'd be late, like about midnight, she was not a happy camper.

I got the F-word! Whoooooeee!

Oscars Update, 3.45 NZ time
There's some real trans-tasman sledging going on here with live Oscar coverage.

Digg this Scoopit!