Public Address - Island Life (Home)

Christchurch girls are easy | Sep 25, 2006 15:01

In all the flurry of the political turmoil, you may have missed a little gem. Wammo - who recently moved up from Christchurch's RDU to host a show on the bigger and brighter reincarnation of Kiwi FM - shares a talent with Noelle for relaxing Don Brash into a disarming candour.

Last week, Wammo dug up some old audio and shared it on air with Scoop's Kevin List, who subsequently posted it on their site. You'll find it here

In it, we hear Dr Brash, Love Guru, providing agony aunt advice to anyone having trouble with their sex life. He's an awfully good sport, and it really is very entertaining.

Once a week on RDU breakfast, Wammo and his sidekick Spanky would have a chat with Don. Perhaps it's fair to assume that hosts styling themselves Wammo and Spanky are not going to give you the grilling you'd expect from Sean Plunket and Geoff Robinson. But appearances can be deceptive. Wammo is very well informed, and he has his wits about him. Spanky was mostly doing it for laughs.

They hit on this wheeze of making up letters from their listeners asking about problems as varied as a woman with a preponderance of body hair and "a dude in a wheel chair" having relationship difficulties, and getting the leader of the opposition to weigh in with some advice.

Wammo would lead off with a question about the current account deficit, or preferential funding based on race, and then Spanky would chime in with a letter from a lovelorn listener.

Don had a decent and sympathetic word to offer all of them, and along the way he confided a few turbulent experiences of his own. His upbringing was clearly at least two universes removed from the licentious steaminess of Hot Springs, Arkansas where William Jefferson Clinton came to manhood. But there's no doubt that Don is a man of the world. His reminiscence about a night out with a beauty queen is magnificent. Steve Braunias would never be the same again, to coin a phrase.

All good things must come to an end, though. Wammo is pretty sure that the day Bryan Sinclair came along was the kiss of death. Within a week, the slot was dropped. One can't help pondering what Matthew Hooton would have advised.

Digg this Scoopit!

Yes Eugenia, there is a Racial Clause | Sep 25, 2006 09:24

And so to Howick yesterday afternoon. I was invited there by Ken Gillingham, a man with a lot on his troubled mind. Ken is the foundation president of Kiwi Bigots For Brash, and erstwhile ardent supporter of Don's doctrine on things Maori.

That changed on Sunday morning, as Ken was reading his paper. "He's lost the plot," he says, stabbing the offending story with a nicotine-ringed finger. "He says there's no such thing as a full-blooded Maori any more . Christ almighty, can't he see what that means? How I can we tell any hori jokes if there's no such thing as a hori?"

"Look at this one" he says, lifting his heavy frame from the La-Z-Boy and lurching across the lounge to the computer. A few taps at the grimy keyboard, and up comes a long file of jokes.

"This one's a cracker", he says, "and a smirk snakes its away across his stubbled face. "100,000 people at the funeral for the Maori queen and only five people take time off work! I've got a mate who's a Maori. He didn't get upset when I told it to him."

"And look at this! You just type 'Maori Jokes' into Google and look at all the stuff you can get."

how do u put 100 maoris in a mini?
put fish in chip in there
how do you get them out?
tell them they have to pay for it

"Mate, I only got the internet for the nudie pics, but I tell you what, some days I'm too busy pissing myself at the jokes to bother."

All very interesting, I said, but where did Don come into it?

"Mate, I thought he knew the score. You know and I know that the Maoris are different from the rest of us. Always will be. I'm not complaining. They make good bus drivers and that, except for the Maori overdrive of course - they're rough as guts on the gearbox. But we all know what One Law For All meant. Maoris were getting more than the rest of us. That just wasn't on."

"So I was right behind Don on that one. But now he's trying to pretend we're all the same. We'll he's dreaming. Never were, never will be."

Ken's not an easy man to trade ideas with, but I have a try. Let's say Don has a point – that cultures are being blended. If you're half Pakeha and half Maori, does it inevitably follow that you will adopt the Pakeha aspects of your life and abandon the Maori ones?

Ken looks at me quizzically. "Why wouldn't you?"

Digg this Scoopit!

Rectitude | Sep 19, 2006 21:58

Things we can't talk about are all the rage at the moment, so get a load of this shovelful. You'll have to make your way through this first paragraph, though, because mail censorship programs make it quite impossible for me to mention them until we are over the break. To fill the time, let me just say: I thought TVNZ had an unfortunate turn of phrase in one of their marketing releases last week. When you're describing the way your film crew in Tonga will be bringing news of the late king's funeral, is "in-depth coverage" really the best choice of words? I may lack a sense of reverence, but I couldn't help thinking of the uses you might make of those little TV sports action cameras. Two feet, three feet, four feet, down we go. Look out! Here comes the dirt!

Shameful disrespect, I know. But at least I didn't call anyone a slug.

If you found that unedifying, stop now. Things will only get worse from this point. My subject today is the male member. Mr Freud, may we have the first slide, please.

We read today on the Internet, thanks to Boing Boing, that a man in China met with a distressing fate some months ago. He was shorn, in some unspecified - but surely ghastly - accident, of his penis. But all was not lost. You can wait years for a heart or a kidney in most western nations, but in China, it is notoriously easy to lay your hand on a spare part. The surgeons got hold of another Johnson, and they skilfully and successfully attached it to the patient. (Yes, this will be a journey through the lexicon of penis euphemisms.)

Anyway…man and manhood were brought together, and science continued its proud march forward. But science, it appears, counts for not a lot within the sanctity of the bedroom, or the bathroom, or wherever it was that the man and wife of this tale paused to reflect on the foreign presence in their life. They beheld something new and It Was Not Good.

They freaked out; the doctors removed it.

Tell me you didn't flinch a little, men. I regaled this story to the women who were drinking wine here earlier tonight. They speculated about impaired performance. Nerve endings and the like. I believe this is as good an example as you will find of the difference between men and women when it comes to shopping.

Reading that sorry tale got me to thinking about Don Brash, the old goat. That picture of him in Saturday morning's Herald depicting him as a young blade in charge of Trust Bank, with two paternal arms around the shoulders of pretty young models sporting the new tellers' uniforms had a lot to say, much of it about testosterone and this mortal life of ours.

The sad truth, of course, is that if you play, you pay. I have been idly wondering what might happen if this undeniably upstanding and estimable man were inexplicably to surrender to the lusts and impulses of the flesh (which God knows can be a mighty temptation) and find himself in a full-scale Clintonesque bimbo eruption. More scary yet, what if there should be a Bobbit-like denouement?

In other words, suppose he should get himself into the very worst kind of trouble and end up in need of a transplant? We know there's a spare in Beijing. Would he accept it, and if he did, do you think he would make a point of telling all and sundry what part of the world it came from?

We don't want to hear about anyone's testicles, quite frankly, but the notion of a fellow walking around with another man's pecker in their trousers is, it must be said, a thing to ponder. Ian Wishart, it would seem, thinks of little else some days.

A man's pride and his self-esteem can be a fragile flower. Take a look at this video, of a man proposing to his girlfriend in front of several thousand people and being turned down. More instructively, read the comments beneath to see how people responded to it. Men's solidarity can quickly veer to the brutal. The joke, if you want to call it that, is that the whole thing was just an act. The basketball people, like all the other sports enterprises these days, are filling every spare minute at their games with bread and circuses. It leaves people with no empty time for contemplation, and heaven knows we can't have people contemplating.

But if contemplation is your preference, then I recommend this photograph by John Selkirk which appears at Stuff. It has more eloquence than almost anything anyone has written this past week about the people in the frame.

Digg this Scoopit!

Staying on the porch | Sep 14, 2006 11:54

That's all? No Goats? No rent-boys? Perhaps the secrets too-awful-to-reveal are yet to come. If they do, I daresay we'll read them first on Sydney indymedia who wrote on this very day one year ago:

Rumours have been rife in the New Zealand media that National party leader and contender for the office Prime Minister, Dr Don Brash, has been having another affair, this time with the Deputy Chair of the influential right-wing think tank the Business Roundtable Diane Foreman. Although it's common knowledge in NZ media circles, journalists have been too worried of the possible consequences to raise the matter.

I have anniversaries on my mind; on this very day fifteen years ago I became a married man. Last night I did a quick calculation. There were sixty or so couples at our wedding; all but three of them are still together today. That doesn't quite chime with the reputation of our neighborhood, or at least the one that was retold to us. Devonport offers a choice of four primary schools, including the one in our street. We think very highly of it, but we've heard that an acquaintance of ours begs to differ. "You don't want to send your kids to that school" she has reportedly said, "The mothers are all skinny blondes who have affairs."

Which brings me to my point, namely: infidelity. It's not unknown. For that reason, it remains to be seen whether – should the rumours be substantiated - Don Brash will have alienated himself from New Zealanders, mainstream or otherwise, to an irreparable degree.

A starting point might be to assess what women make of this, because Dr Brash won proportionately less support from them in the last election.

Weddings get a photo album, but divorces mostly have nothing but a paper trail. I remember the letters we got, in each case from the wife, after those three marriages came undone. They were documents of raw grief and bewilderment. They also described the humiliations exacted: the insistence that the errant partner be tested for STDs; the banishments; the screaming matches in public places. It can be a long and horrible business. For the most part, the husbands have ended up with the better end of the deal, and tend to be living lives not much burdened by anguish. The wives still carry clear scars.

Three marriages do not make a scientific study, but they bear out the familiar refrain: the woman is often left more damaged than the man. Every woman who stands with a marker pen in her hand will know this when she decides whether to vote for Don Brash at the next election, and that may prove to be his greatest obstacle to overcome.

My wife of fifteen years thinks this: (and again, assuming all the rumor is substantiated) Dr Brash may get an ultimatum from his wife: politics or the marriage. If it should come to that, it would be instructive indeed to know what choice he would make.

Digg this Scoopit!

Put down the vibrator slowly, sir | Sep 07, 2006 09:33

On the Internet you can see the whole world before breakfast.

Item 1.
Doesn't this photo of Coca-Cola managing director Geert Broos put you in mind of that scene where Monty Burns was running for office and Marge served him the three-eyed fish the kids had caught downstream from his nuclear plant?

Item 2.

I am not a crook, but I am one hell of a bowler. Nixon's life in pictures. Note especially the picture of his last meal before he left the White House.

On the Internet, you can just keep learning more and more about the guy. Remember the 18 and half minutes that were "accidentally' deleted from the White House tapes? It turns out Arlo Guthrie came up with the answer. Alice's Restaurant is exactly 18 and a half minutes long! They were embarrassed to be recorded listening to my song, so they deleted it! Implements of destruction indeed.

Item 3.
If it weren't for the fact that it pivots on a slightly shaky premise, this would be the best piece of oratory in criticism of the Bush administration I've seen this year. Keith Olbermann takes the President to task for conflating the media with Al Qaida and Hitler.

I think his inference is unduly sensitive. Bush and his people treat the media, at times, with the same disregard they hold for all the little people: inanimate tools. When Bush talks about Bin Laden "using the media to drive a wedge between the American people and their government" I think he simply perceives the media as involuntary conduit.

Having said that, though, the rest of it is splendid:

the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11 -- without ever actually saying so

and:

Moreover, Mr. Bush, you are accomplishing in part what Osama Bin Laden and others seek-a fearful American populace, easily manipulated, and willing to throw away any measure of restraint, any loyalty to our own ideals and freedoms, for the comforting illusion of safety.

His preceding serve on Rumsfeld is equally good.

Item 4.
If you find architects' drawings easier to follow than their words, you might find this helpful.

Peter Cresswell is running something of a primer this week on what makes great architecture. Being the champion of the honest contest of ideas he is, this takes the form of a debate with Den MT, with both of them nominating five of their own architectural favourites.

You can fit everything I know about architecture onto one postcard, but that hasn't stopped me from making my own contribution to the debate in the form of a scan of a cartoon from this week's Private Eye.

Item 5.
And, finally: proof that the terrorists cannot possibly have won when guys like this are still having some entertaining sport at the expense of the airport security people.

Digg this Scoopit!

You Scratch Mine | Sep 04, 2006 08:33

David Farrar's monthly statistics are, as ever, a telling reflection of contemporary New Zealand life. I see that once again Public Address has kindly delivered large numbers of visitors to his site, and I daresay he will be pleased to stand us a drink in appreciation next time he's in the Auckland Koru Lounge.

Favours make the world go around. You know it, I know it, and there can't be a voter alive in New Zealand who doesn't believe that Philip Field knows it.

So I invite you to click over to Kiwiblog once more and enjoy this nice change of pace in the comments thread from the more usual sour invective. Toby 1845, it seems to me, is right on the money.

I have a theory that the Police investigation will reveal that the Thai never intended to come to NZ after all. What actually happened was that he was hired by a Samoan who need him to get access for himself (ie, the Samoan).
The whole thing was a misunderstanding. The Samoan in question went to the NZ Immigration Office in Apia wearing a lava lava, singlet and jandals, and was told: "You won't get into New Zealand without a Thai."
Or, at least, that's what he thought he heard.
In the event he got the Thai to do some work on his cousin's house while they were waiting for two seats on a flight to NZ.

I'll bet there's more. I wouldn't be surprised if we soon hear from Islam-type people who made refuge in South Auckland and discovered that their local MP was Philip Field. They will no doubt have made inquiries and learned of the local custom of offering lafo when making representations to a politician.

Language difficulties being what they are, I can imagine the awkward pause in the still of the electorate office when they conclude their imprecation to the elected representative of the poor and huddled masses of Mangere by pulling this out of their scrappy little bag.

(Ferrit.co.nz readers, if either of you fancy one for yourself, but can't find it on your favourite shopping site, just click here.)

Oh, that man is fast becoming the last, loneliest and unloveliest, isn't he? I do have a little fragment of sympathy for him all the same. Taito is a title, not a name. Jeffrey Archer's servants called him Lord Archer, his friends called him Jeffrey, Private Eye called him Archole. I don't know what Kim Hill called him, although I can hazard a reasonable guess; but no-one called him "Lord" as though it were an alternative Christian name.

So is it too much to ask that we stop calling Philip "Taito" as though it's interchangeable with "Ken"? That simply paints us to be the kind of simple folk who might get to our feet as Jim Bolger did years ago at a Goethe-Institut affair in Wellington and banged on about the prodigious talent of "Go-eth".

Digg this Scoopit!