Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Administrivia

Various things I wanted to pass comment on.

I've seen a few movies over the last few weeks/months that I thought deserved a mention:

"Things We Lost in the Fire". A really interesting and moving film.

"The Boat That Rocked". About a pirate radio station in the North Sea in the early 60's. Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Bill Nighy are in it, as well as a lot of other people you've seen in lots of Brit films. The story is great and the music awesome. A fun movie.

I finally saw "Shaun of the Dead". How funny is that?

I recently sent PGL a NZ music cd featuring some good NZ songwriters. My top ten from the disc:

1. Welcome Home - Dave Dobbyn. The song was written by him in response to some backlash about immigrants to NZ a few years ago. I get verklemt every time I hear it.
2. Sinner - Neil Finn. I listen to this one over and over. I love Neil.
3. Arithmetic - Brooke Fraser. Such a pretty song.
4. No Ordinary Thing - Opshop.
5. Venus - The Feelers. This song was on the radio the first summer I spent in NZ. I will always remember getting to know my new family with this song in the background.
6. Better Be Home Soon - Crowded House. I don't actually know how they were able to pick just one Crowded House song.
7. Drive - Bic Runga. Love this song.
8. Not Many - Scribe. Hometown homeboy from Christchurch.
9. Swing - Savage. My nephews liked it so much they put it on their iPods immediately.
10. Give it a Whirl - Split Enz.

Honorable Mentions:
It's too Late - Evermore
Damn the River - The Phoenix Foundation. Love it for the blatant rip off of Dire Straits.
Sophie - Goodshirt
Wandering Eye - Fat Freddy's Drop.
Whaling - DD Smash
Why Does Love Do this To Me? - The Exponents

The funny thing about this CD is that some artists are represented multiple times. For example, DD Smash, Dave Dobbyn, The Exponents, Dave Dobbyn and Herbs are all featuring Dave Dobbyn. Same with Split Enz and Neil Finn, and Crowded House. Not to mention Tim and Liam Finn (Tim is the brother of Neil and founder of Split Enz, while Liam is either Tim or Neil's son. Liam also has a band called Betchadupa which isn't represented here). Bic Runga has a sister (Boh) who is the lead singer for Stellar*. So, the gist is that NZ is musically quite incestuous.

The other thing that's funny about it is that so many of the songs have been used as commercials. I listened to the CD the first time and said to myself "that's the ferry commercial", "that's the KMart commercial", "oh, THAT'S a KMart commercial too", "hey! the margerine commercial!" etc.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it. Listen for a while. It grows on you.

It's a Jolly Holiday

So, I had my whirlwind holiday with my family in Lake Tahoe. Overall, it was fun if overwhelming. My family is loud in a Big Fat Greek Wedding sort of way, without the lamb. I have five (count 'em) nephews between the ages of six and thirteen (well, nearly thirteen). They are actually hilarious and were very well behaved. We all got to see a bear getting into the dumpsters on the first night, which meant that the rest of the week the boys stood bear watch each night. We never saw the bear again but it was pretty exciting all the same.

I taught the nephews to play blackjack under the pretense of it being a "counting" game. The Kiwi feels that there are other more suitable counting games to teach young children, but then the Kiwi doesn't like to gamble. Anyway, the boys rocked at blackjack. The six year old is one of the faster ones to count up his cards. I also taught them to say "Winner, winner, chicken dinner" whenever they win a hand. We covered basic strategy and I felt enormous pride when I said "and why don't we take insurance?" and they all yelled "BECAUSE IT'S A SUCKER BET!!!".

So, I had a lot of bonding time with the nephews and a bit with my niece, who is also pregnant (she's nearly 24 and married). We saw some old family friends and I got to play golf with my brothers as well as go shopping and lunching with my sisters-in-law (two thirds of them anyway). All in all, a good trip. I was happy to get home though.

And now I'm heading to Auckland tomorrow to see the Kiwi, whom I haven't seen in nearly a month.

I'll post a link to a Flickr feed once I've got it set up - I have heaps of pics of my family and a lengthy photo expose on short sheeting a bed, which the boys apparently thought would be a good thing to capture with my camera.

There's the short and the long of it.