Living in the material world

From the Wikipedia article on George Harrison:

In a complaint later brought on behalf of Harrison's estate, it was alleged that while under the care of Staten Island University Hospital [where he was undergoing radiotherapy for lung cancer], Dr Gilbert Lederman, a radiation oncologist, repeatedly revealed Harrison's confidential medical information during television interviews and forced him to autograph a guitar. The complaint alleged that Lederman and his family came to visit Harrison and began singing, and that, in laboured breaths, Harrison said, "Please stop talking." Later, Lederman allegedly had his son play the guitar for Harrison. The complaint alleged that after the performance, Lederman asked Harrison for an autograph on the guitar, and that Harrison responded, "I do not even know if I know how to sign my name any more." Lederman then allegedly took Harrison's hand and guided his hand along to spell his name while encouraging him by saying, "Come on, George. You can do this. G-E-O...". The suit was ultimately settled out of court under the condition that the guitar be "disposed of".

Te Araroa revisited

Back in August 2007 (yes, this blog really has been going that long) I wrote about Te Araroa, the proposed walking track running the length of New Zealand. I mentioned that it was due to open in 2008.

Well, today, some three years behind schedule, it was officially opened. In this story on the Radio New Zealand website, the chief executive of Te Araroa Trust, Geoff Chapple, who conceived the idea of the track, is quoted as saying he'd like to see all New Zealanders make it their goal to walk it.

"I remember Mao Zedong saying every Chinese has to see the Great Wall at some time," he says. "Cultural goals are fun...so we'll put it up as a goal: walk New Zealand in your lifetime."

The official Te Araroa website is here.

Road Cone Exhibition

The other day I took my camera into central Christchurch for the first time since the earthquake in February. My main aim was to take some photos of the Road Cone Exhibition for Erik, but I also took a couple of photos of buildings inside the "red zone".

This is Clarendon Tower, which is awaiting demolition.

 

And this is Rydges Hotel, which is currently inaccessible but due to reopen in 2012. In the foreground is the plinth that once supported the Scott Statue, which toppled and was damaged in the earthquake. There's a picture of what's left of the statue here.

 

So, on to the exhibition, which featured over 40 cone sculptures by Certificate in Design students at the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology (CPIT). The venue was under a large tree in the Botanic Gardens.

Below are just a few of the many fine pieces on display.

 

 

 

Jazz musician plays burning piano

#1

All my life I've dreamed of being the best in the world at something. Now I've done it! I have just been informed that this page on my blog ranks #1 on Google for searches for the phrase "Amtrak bagel" (without the quotation marks). This is proof that you can achieve anything if you really put your mind to it. I would like to thank my parents, without whom this would not have been possible. And god.

Order tracking

Order No. XXX-831-4257162061 placed 23 Jul 2011 (02:48:31) on BookDepository.com
Order status: Processing

"1q84"
by (author) Haruki Murakami
Qty: 1
$22.88
(Save $7.62)

Item status: Awaiting publication

1Q84

The opening paragraph of the long-awaited English translation of Murakami Haruki's latest novel, 1Q84 (due out on 25 October 2011):

The taxi’s radio was tuned to a classical FM broadcast. Janáček’s Sinfonietta—probably not the ideal music to hear in a taxi caught in traffic. The middle-aged driver didn’t seem to be listening very closely, either. With his mouth clamped shut, he stared straight ahead at the endless line of cars stretching out on the elevated expressway, like a veteran fisherman standing in the bow of his boat, reading the ominous confluence of two currents. Aomame settled into the broad back seat, closed her eyes, and listened to the music.

Patong Beach

Patong Beach on the Thai resort island of Phuket certainly has its fair share of sleazy bars. If I had a hundred baht for every fat foreign bloke in a wife-beater I saw sitting on a bar stool with one hand glued to a bottle of Singha beer, the other hand glued to the thigh of the young Thai lass on the stool next to him, and his eyes glued to the footie playing on the bar's flat screen TV, well, I'd be several hundred baht richer. And this is in the middle of the day. Heaven knows what it's like at night.

Actually, I probably would have spent the money shopping. Or on a tuk-tuk back to the hotel. That's another thing Patong Beach is famous for. The shopping. They sell everything from T-shirts and hats to DVDs and sunglasses. At first I didn't realise you had to barter. So I probably spent way too much on stuff to begin with. But I soon got the hang of it, and ended up getting a real good deal on some of those Bay-Ran sunglasses. Just like the ones Michael J. Fox wore in that movie Big Lights Bright City.

That was a great movie, by the way, except I didn't really understand the bit at the end where the Michael J. Fox character swaps his Bay-Rans for a loaf of bread. I mean Bay-Rans are worth a lot more than a loaf of bread. Even second hand ones. Maybe it was just to emphasise how much of a loser he was. He sure couldn't barter.

Kunzru on Herzog and Haneke

In two separate pieces for the Guardian (one a couple of years old), one of my favourite novelists, Hari Kunzru, assesses the films of two of my favourite directors: Werner Herzog and Michael Haneke. Enjoy!

Apropos of nothing

The other day I was hurtling down Curletts Road at close to the speed limit of 100km/h on my way back from the airport, near the Canterbury A&P showgrounds where the 350 campervans hired by the government as emergency accommodation after the February earthquake at a cost of $1.5 million sit empty, when a man, barefoot and naked apart from a flimsy pair of blue shorts, darted out onto the road a few hundred metres in front of me like some startled wild animal. At first I thought he must have been fleeing something, but as he crossed the road and turned and ran past me on the grass verge between the road and a row of tall trees I realized he was simply going for a run.

My mind went back to the incredibly warm Northern Hemisphere spring day in June 2001 (hard to believe it's nearly ten years ago) when Erik and his then partner drove Mrs Fool and me from Erik's apartment in Jersey City where we were staying to West Point, where I ate catfish for the first time in my life and marvelled at the might and sheer beauty of the Hudson River, and then on to Woodbury Common, where I bought a Brooks Brothers shirt. Anyway, along the way - I believe we were on the New Jersey Turnpike - we saw a deer wandering along the strip of grass separating the lanes of traffic going one way from the lanes going the other. I forget his exact words, but Erik said something including the expression "roadkill" that left me in no doubt as to the animal's probable fate.

The night after seeing the near-naked runner on Curletts Road I dreamed I was running effortlessly over rolling fields of grass, and I was barefoot.

By any other name

Excerpt from a letter to the editor published in this morning's edition of The Press complaining about student behaviour in the wake of the Christchurch earthquake (emphasis added).

Not only were the students running down the middle of Ilam Rd against traffic, some decided to pick up and throw the orange road safety witches' hats down the road, while many strolled over the road, en masse, through traffic, making drivers stop.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Among my latest trove of purchases from the Book Depository (free shipping to most of the civilised world) is The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. Mitchell, who featured in Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2007 (see here), lived in Japan for many years, and skimming through the synopses of his earlier novels, it's clear that his time there has had no small influence on his writing, with at least two boasting Japanese settings and/or Japanese characters. Mitchell also has a Japanese partner, whose first name just happens to be the same as Mrs Fool's.

Anyway, I'm nearly half way through The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. It's set during the Edo period on the island of Dejima (which I'm sure you all remember from this post about the Nagasaki Kaido). The eponymous hero is a clerk with the Dutch East India Company. This morning I came across the following passage. Jacob is riding out a typhoon in the company of the intriguing Dr Lucas Marinus, physician and botanist.

Each time Jacob is certain the wind cannot rampage more maniacally without the roof tearing free; the wind does, but the roof doesn't, not yet. Joists and beams strain and clunk and shudder like a windmill rattling at full kilter. A terrifying night, Jacob thinks, yet even terror can pale into monotony. Eelattu darns a sock whilst the doctor reminisces about his journey to Edo with the late Chief Hemmij and Head Clerk van Cleef. 'They bemoaned the lack of buildings to compare to St Peter's or Notre Dame; but the genius of the Japanese race is manifest in its roads. The Tokaido Highway runs from Osaka to Edo - from the Empire's belly to the head, if you will - and knows of no equal, I assert, anywhere on Earth, in either modernity or antiquity. The road is a city, fifteen feet in width, but three hundred well-drained, well-maintained and well-ordered German miles in length, served by fifty-three way stations where travellers can hire porters, change horses and rest or carouse for the night. And the simplest, most commonsensical joy of all? All traffic proceeds on the left-hand side, so the numerous collisions, seizures and stand-offs that so clog Europe's arteries are here unknown. On less populated stretches of the road, I unnerved our inspectors by slipping out of my palanquin and botanising along the verges. I found more than thirty new species for my Flora Japonica, missed by Thurnberg and Kaempfer. And then, at the end, is Edo.'

Sad toys

The final straw?

Just as Mrs Fool and I were starting to come to terms with the natural disasters here and in Mrs Fool's homeland of Japan, another shock. Last night I went down to buy some fish and chips, only to discover that our local shop had put up its prices! No warning at all. Where is "moon man" Ken Ring when you need him?

The novel

As those of you who frequent my brother's blog may have read, I'm writing my first novel. When I mention this to people, they're usually very interested at first and ask what it's about, but when I tell them their eyes glaze over and the conversation quickly moves on to other topics. So instead of giving you a synopsis I've decided to take a leaf out of Hari Kunzru's book and post a few photos.

Earthquake!

This morning someone from the council came along and placed these shiny new cones around a pile of silt in the middle of the road by our house. The silt is the result of soil liquefaction from Tuesday's earthquake.

Welcome to Australia

The Tomasz Stanko concert was on the Friday night, so I'd originally planned to stay in Sydney on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, but Mrs Fool, ever sentient of the opportunity to save a few dollars, found that the hotel tariffs were cheaper on weekdays than Saturdays, so we decided to fly into Sydney on the Wednesday. This was Australia Day, but we saw no reason why this should affect us, especially as we wouldn't be arriving till the evening.

In fact there were advantages to arriving on a public holiday. For a start, the streets were relatively free of traffic, making the taxi journey from the airport to our hotel a swift one. We checked in and went out for a walk, intending to buy some food at a supermarket or convenience store on the way back to eat in our room. It had been a scorcher of a day (the hottest Australia Day in decades, apparently), and the temperature was till in the 30s. Along the way we passed a cheap pasta and pizza place with outside seating facing the street and decided to try it out. The pizza and Greek salad were surprisingly good.

The restaurant was near Darling Harbour, and as we were eating we watched people walking by on their way to view the fireworks display later that evening. A surprising number had Australian flags draped over their shoulders, wore Australian flag T-shirts, or had Australian flags painted on their faces or bodies. I said to Mrs Fool I thought there was something childish about such displays of nationalism. In truth, I find them rather disquieting. Mrs Fool agreed with me, mainly because Haruki Murakami had expressed similar sentiments in a book she had just read (written after Murakami visited Australia during the Sydney Olympics). Mrs Fool then ventured an opinion of her own, expressing surprise at the number of Asian people with Australian flags painted on the faces. I countered by saying that nationalism was about nationality, not about ethnicity, but deep down I knew she had a point. One only needs to think back to the ugly scenes in Manly on Australia Day in 2009, when a mob of up to 100 drunken youths verbally and physically attacked non-white Australians, to realize how easily the celebration of national identity can become a celebration of racial or ethnic pride, something exclusionary as opposed to something inclusionary. On the television news that night, much was made of the fact that arrests in 2011 were down 20% on the previous Australia Day, with only 180 boozy revellers nabbed by police in the entire state of New South Wales.

The following day we shopped (can you call it that even if you don't buy anything?) and in the evening caught the bus to Leichhardt, where we'd booked a table at Elio's, an Italian restaurant we went to several years ago and liked. The meal was OK (and I learnt what a spatchcock is), but negotiating Sydney's bus system during the evening rush hour to get there took some of the gloss off the evening. On the way back, the bus driver (a Sikh) had to swerve and brake to avoid ploughing into a car door, whose owner had chosen the moment the bus driver was pulling out from a bus stop to open it. This was dramatic enough, but the interaction that followed was even more startling. The bus driver, who had brought his vehicle to a stop, opened his door and shouted something at the female driver of the car. (She was plainly at fault; not only was she parked in a bus lane, but she hadn't looked behind her before opening her car door.) She responded by striding over and yelling at the top of her voice, "Don't drive so bloody fast. This is Australia." The subtext was obvious.

The next day we spent the morning looking around the Museum of Contemporary Art and the early afternoon exploring The Rocks. For dinner we went to Medusa, a lovely Greek restaurant not far from Darling Harbour. We had the most delicious entrée of grilled octopus. As we tucked into the tentacled treats, we mused on how the Japanese and the Greeks both share a passion for munching on these multi-limbed molluscs. For a main I had the vegetarian Moussaka, which was so satisfying I had no room for any baklava, a pity seeing as it's possibly my favourite sweet thing on the face of the earth.

And then it was off to see the Tomaz Stanko Quintet at the City Recital Hall. Once again, Stanko delivered. Mrs Fool said it was the best jazz concert she had ever been to. For me the concert didn't quite live up to the experience of seeing Stanko's quartet in 2009, but I put that down to the fact that this time my expectations were so high. It was interesting to see him playing with a completely different line-up. I tend to prefer purely acoustic jazz over anything with amplified instruments, but I found it difficult not to appreciate the skill and sensitivity of the young (compared to the 68-year-old Stanko) electric guitarist and electric bassist. Occasionally the quintet produced a Bitches Brew-like barrage of noise, but for the most part the music was restrained and melodic with just a touch of melancholy. Just the way I like it.

Buzzing

The blogosphere is abuzz with talk of Sacha Baron Cohen playing Saddam Hussein in a movie adaptation of a novel penned by the late Iraqi dictator, but I'm still reeling from the news, first revealed to me in this article on the Guardian website about the current obsession with fact-based movies and novels (Is the concentration on reality stopping writers using the imagination for storytelling?), that Baron Cohen is playing Freddie Mercury in a biopic of the Queen front man. Due out in 2012 apparently.

Speaking of buzzing, I'm off to Sydney tomorrow to see the Tomasz Stanko Quintet. Hoping the concert's as good as the one put on by Stanko's quartet in Wellington a couple of years ago. Back on Saturday.

Fossil

I spotted this can carcass by the side of the road as I was leaving Chino on day 3 of my Koshu Kaido walk. Who knows how long it had been lying there? If I'd been travelling by car or cycling I would have passed it by.

An embarassing admission

Until yesterday I thought the word "teetotaller" was spelt "teatotaller", its derivation having something to do with drinking lots of tea instead of alcohol. Its exact etymology is unclear, but one possible explanation, which traces the word's origins to a meeting of the Preston Temperance Society in 1832 or 1833, is quite intriguing. To quote from Wikipedia:

The story attributes the word to Dicky Turner, a member of the society, who had a stammer, and in a speech said that nothing would do but "tee-tee-total abstinence".

Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo

As I've alluded to previously, it was as a result of seeing a documentary about him (Burden of Dreams) and learning of his passion for walking that I first became interested in the German filmmaker Werner Herzog. Only later, after seeing Encounters at the End of the World at a film festival, did I become a fan of his documentaries. Since then I've watched Grizzly Man, Wheel of Time, The White Diamond, and most recently, Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Until a few weeks ago, however, I'd only seen two of his features (Rescue Dawn and The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans), neither of which I really enjoyed. So it was with some trepidation that I sat down the other day to watch one of Herzog's first features, Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), a DVD of which I borrowed from a friend.

The opening sequence alone, shot near Machu Picchu on the side of a mountain with a sheer vertical drop of 600 metres, is, as they say, well worth the price of admission. And Klaus Kinski is anything but dull. Some of the other cast members, however, are not so convincing, perhaps understandably so given they're not professional actors. This amateurishness extends to other aspects of the production. But then Aguirre, the Wrath of God was shot on a budget of just US$370,000, a third of which went to Kinski (apparently he demanded another US$1 million to come into the studio to dub his own dialogue, forcing Herzog to hire another actor to do his dialogue instead). Amazingly, it was all shot on a single 35-mm camera, which, according to Herzog, he stole from what is now the Munich Film School.

A decade after the release of Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Herzog returned to the jungles of Peru to make another feature, Fitzcarraldo, this time with a budget of US$6 million and a number of famous actors. But to say things didn't quite go to plan would be a gross understatement. Both Jason Robards, who was cast in the title role of an obsessed opera fan who dreams of building an opera house in the Amazonian jungle, and Mick Jagger, who was cast as Fitzcarraldo's "retarded actor sidekick", had to pull out midway through filming, Robards due to illness (his doctor in the United States forbade him to return) and Jagger due to Rolling Stones touring commitments. Herzog himself briefly considered playing the part of Fitzcarraldo, but in the end he called on his old "friend", Klaus Kinski.

Central to the story of Fitzcarraldo is the transportation of a 340-ton ship over a mountain between two rivers. Herzog insisted on shooting this part of the film on location using a real ship and old-fashioned technology (pulleys and cables), and the problems this created helped establish his reputation as a megalomaniacal film director with little regard for the safety of his cast and crew. Herzog emphatically denies that anyone was ever at risk while the ship was being pulled over the mountain. And contrary to popular belief, no one was killed on the film set, although one extra drowned after stealing a boat and capsizing it on a river.

In Herzog on Herzog, Herzog explains the decision to use a real boat as follows:

I want to take cinema audiences back to the earliest days, like when the Lumiere brothers screened their film of a train pulling into a station. Reports say that the audience fled in panic because they believed the train would run them over. I cannot confirm this, maybe it is a legend, but I do very much like this story...

...Nowadays even six-year-olds know when something is a special effect and even how the shot is done. I remember when the film was shown in Germany there was shouting from the audiences at the moment when the boat was hoisted up on to the mountain. Little by little they realized that this was no trick.