Do Not Adjust Your Set.

My devoted faithful followers (or at the very least the five of you I’ve sent this new link to) will have perhaps wondered if you have stepped across some time and space continuum where the blog you’re now reading is very similar to one you used to read, only different. It is as we say at work; same shit, different toilet.

Fear not, an episode of Lost this aint. God I miss you Kate.

No this is just me stepping back into the shadows, out of the limelight, back inside the sanctum. Oscar Wilde once said that it was better to be spoken about that not to be spoken of at all and he was a right fruity bugger (or rather buggerer) so he should know.

In some instances I would agree with that sentiment but this blog was only ever meant to be an outlet for my over-active imagination, crazy logic and Vietnam flashbacks. How it got to be on everybody’s daily reading list I don’t know but that put me in the rather precarious position of having folk potentially mistaking my pisstaking for genuine opinion and I’m not having that. Not on my watch.

So enough already. I’m closing in the Sanctum to just a select few, like it should be. And if this gets out I know just who’s letterbox to shit in and which email address to sign up to the daily porn site.

As you were. And hey, let’s be careful out there.

Taking the Piss @ 15000 Feet

Is it just me or is our national carrier attempting to wind back the 'credibility clock' on NZ to about 30 years when the world really did think we were a bunch of untamed natives and yokels?

Their latest in flight video stars Richard Simmons. Yes, he’s still alive and yes, he still wears shorts so short you can tell he’s crazy because you can see he’s nuts. Hey, is the ratepayer still bailing out Air NZ, because if so I want my money back.

First we had the series of ads where everyone was covered in body paint. That was okay but curiously not a nipple - male or female - on show. Funny that. Then the All Blacks starred in one where the gay flight attendant tried to get a kiss from Richard Kahui. That bit got pulled because the Homophobe Brigade was worried that somebody somewhere was being pulled off to it!

Admittedly those two campaigns were mildly sophisticated and amusing, but then shit went downhill coincidentally around the same time CEO Rob Fyfe decided he was so well known that someone might want to bid for his grundies on Trade Me. Puh-lease. Next Door Nikki he ain’t. At least she doesn’t wash hers before she puts them in the post. Allegedly.

Then they had a puppet who achieved world wide WTF? status when he starred in a promo vid rapping with Snoop Doggy Dogg. Snoop clearly needs the money because why would you star in anything with anyone who has a hand up their bottom? Unless you’re Nikki’s naughty neighbor, Annie. But I digress...

What was the puppet anyway? A rat? Or a possum? Were all the Kiwi puppets taken that day they made that decision, as well as the NZ names? Rico, my arse.

And now we have Richard Simmons and speaking of men that look like rodents, Paul Henry. Henry, like The Doggfather, clearly needs the money too because a year ago he would be making fun of a guy like Simmons, in between taking the piss out of women with mustachios and Indians of course...

Personally, I like Richard Simmons but not at the exact moment when I grip the arm rests and wish like hell my flight doesn’t end up like the first episode of Lost, but yet at the same time, if it does could I please hook up with Kate? Pretty please.

Put that Simmons and Henry vid on though and I just might hope the damn thing crashes. On takeoff even.

Imagine finding this in your bush?

Top 5: My Best Moments of 2010

So, hot on the heels of the Worst of 2010 is the Best, which proves, if anything, that I’m not just a negative bastard. Not all of the time anyway.

1. Spurs not only made the Champions League but have been doing the business ever since. Now they might not win it but for this particular fan of 25 years, football nirvana has already been reached...

2. My niece – the football prodigy herself – is now officially amongst the best dozen or so in her age group across all of Wellington. I'd like to think my coaching had something to do with it, but probably not.

3. I coached the best bunch of girls, ever, who reminded me just why it is I love coaching so much and revitalised my passion when it was at an all time low.

4. The only thing to feature in both lists – the ending of Lost. Not since the Matrix trilogy has a bit of moving picture moved me in the way the Lost TV series and ultimately, the ending did. Non believers will, of course, take the piss but I don’t give a flying fuck; this is my list, not yours. Oh and did I mention I love you Kate?

5. Weddings – particularly Emski & Melski’s (some of my best MC work) and Sully & Jess’s (some of my best groomsman work). I love a good wedding and this year I was lucky enough to be part of two great ones.

Maybe I should send Kate some pendants...?

Top 5: My Worst Moments of 2010

It’s that time of the year again when everybody who is anybody – or just a wanker with a blog – is making their ‘Best Of’ and ‘Worst Of’ list for the year just past.

Now I’ve said before just how much I loather a list maker, but then I went and made several of my own which is as funny as me pooh-poohing James Blunt when his new song came out a few weeks back now, only for me to not only have now bought it off iTunes, but have since learnt to play it on the guitar.

But then that’s just me – making statements I never keep.

So after some deep soul searching and a pretty decent trawl through the memory banks here is my list of disappointments this past year. Pack a lunch because shit is about to get deep.

1. I got Swine Flu and it nearly killed me. That pretty much sucked.

2. All the football teams I’ve coached this year have lost more games than they’ve won. But from those teams came more rep trialists and players than any other one team in each grade, so I must be doing something right.

3. That last one is not a disappointment; it’s me turning a frown upside down.

4. Lost, the TV show, finished in an ending that was emotional on two levels; it ended six years worth of wtf moments with a big tear jerker and sadly heralded the last time we've seen Kate (Evangeline Lilly) on TV other than in those 'Because you're worth it' ads. I love you Kate.

5. Natalie Portman is pregnant and unless she found a use for all the pendants of mans milk I’ve been sending her then I suspect that sadly, it’s not mine.

So stay tuned for the Best Of which like the above is totally subjective and complete arse to anyone but the writer, but hey, it’s not like you’ve got anything better to do right?

What has she done with all my pendants I wonder...?

Lost - An Ending

It was a highly emotional time this past weekend for me and my old Nam bum chum, Lancey.

Lost, the TV series that ran for six seasons and lost many along the way with its multitude of mysteries came to an end and the two of us sobbed like babies through most of it. We’re no strangers to crying through the night, him and me, but unlike those long nights spent in the Cambodian jungle we weren’t able to hold one another tightly till the sun came up this time round.

I loved Lost and for me the finale was a fitting conclusion to what has been one hell of a ride. I haven’t felt this way since I watched Matrix Revolutions for about the fifth time and finally understood it all. It’s a strange feeling this; finally ‘getting it’ but feeling a sense of loss at the same time because it’s only now that you realise the getting there was the best part.

I don’t know about you lot but I like to stimulated when confronted with arty things. I like to read books that you can’t put down, listen to music that stirs the senses and I like movies and TV shows that make you think about them long after you’ve finished watching.

These traditionally are not ‘paint by numbers’ productions. Sure, I like to put the brain on auto pilot occasionally and flop out with my cock out, who doesn’t? But if I had the choice – and it’s TV so I always do – I’d pick shows like Lost over anything that starts and ends predictably in an hour.

This isn’t the case for everyone and I get that, I really do. Lost was not a linear show. Right from the first episode that much was apparent and it wasn’t long before what we all thought was a story about a plane crash started to become so much more.

It was at this point that the Desperate Housewife and Greys Anatomy crowd started to turn off and again, that would be fine, if that was the end of it. But it isn’t. These fuckers were back in droves this week, on any site that would let them post shit, bleating about how stupid Lost was and how its mother dressed it funny.

I’ve decided that people who watched Lost can be categorised into three groups:

1. Those that watched it from beginning to end, got it, enjoyed the journey and were happy with the final episode and the thought provoking questions it left you with
2. Those that watched it from beginning to end, begrudgingly, because they couldn’t really figure it out and were pissed off with the final episode because it wasn’t the A to Z of answers that they had hoped it would be
3. Those that switched off in the first few seasons because they thought they had it figured out and watched the final episode only to find that they were way off all along. Now they’re fucked off because they’re not quite as cool as they thought they were.

For this last group ignorance is bliss because they will never bother to watch the series in full to appreciate it. They’ll continue on with the completely defunct ‘they were all dead the whole time’ theory because it’s far easier to do so and yet, rather ironically, they claim that it’s the Lost writers who lost the plot? I don’t think so braniac.

These are the same people that loved the first Matrix movie because of bullet time. They were disappointed when Reloaded and Revolutions expanded on the underlining story of love, choice and selfless sacrifice because they wanted five more hours of bullet time. Like Lost, they just didn’t get it. Why wasn’t there more bullet time, dammit?!

Lost was not a series about a plane crash. It was about relationships and the importance they play in all our lives and these weren’t candy coated, dreamy back ground music relationships; these were flawed, deceitful, dysfunction relationships. The characters were so well written that we found ourselves in them and the journey of redemption they all took became more than just a watching experience, it became an emotionally entwined one.

Along the way there were mysteries, red herrings and strange happenings that weren’t ever fully explained but you know what? Thats fucken life. You can know someone for thirty years and not know everything about them. Meeting someone and trusting them is a journey, one that changes every time we take it. If we all switched off after just the second series what lonely souls we would be. Sometimes it’s better to teach through the question, than it is by an answer.

And yes, there was a polar bear, but that was explained in Series 3. Maybe you should’ve kept watching, you peenarse.

"Live together and you won't die alone"