Captain James Cook, considered

I am fascinated by Captain James Cook, and the footprints he's left on New Zealand history.

Cook was the first European to widely explore New Zealand, to reach eastern Australia, to enter the Antarctic and visit many of the South Pacific nations. His travels took him from the bottom of the world to nearly the top in Alaska. By any measurement, he was one of the greatest explorers of all time, adding detail to a globe that was largely blank.

Cook's traces are everywhere in New Zealand - he spent a lot of time here on his three global voyages, mapping more of the country than anyone before and engaging with the Maori people. Last weekend, we were up in the Bay of Islands on holiday, and I stood in Oneroa Bay looking at the spot where Cook weighed anchor in 1769. I don't imagine the view has changed much since. I've visited several other spots Cook once landed in New Zealand and it's always fascinating to put your mind into this vanished world. A few years ago I got to see a life-size working replica of his famous ship the Endeavour in Sydney, and it blew my mind to realise just how small and cramped the vessel really was.

Captain Cook's legacy is seen as mixed these days - while he was unquestionably one of the greatest explorers of all time, the European invasion also changed life for the worse in many of the Pacific Islands and countries he visited. Disease, guns, poverty, even genocide followed in a lot of the countries Cook visited, like a dismal trail of modernization. But can you really lay all the ills of western civilisation at the feet of Captain Cook?

I've read several books about Cook, who kind of like Lincoln or Churchill, has new facets seen in each retelling of his familiar story. One of my favorite "Cook books" is New Zealand historian Anne Salmond's "Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas," which attempts to equally give both the European and Pacific view of his travels. Salmond goes far deeper than the usual cliched "happy native" portrayal of islanders. She gives a deep and knowing look at their cultures and shows how places like Tahiti, with an entire society built upon the notion of free love, honour and lack of possessions clashed with the European culture. Salmond shows Cook's flaws, but also explains why things ended so badly for him in a compelling, original fashion.

Another book I highly recommend is Tony Horwitz's "Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before," which is steeped in fascination with Cook's legacy and deeds. Horwitz has a very fun approach with the subject, hopping about and interviewing modern-day New Zealanders and others about their feelings on Cook, travelling queasily in a replica of the Endeavour, and trying to repair the "Conqueror Cook" reputation that has become fashionable these days.

My own opinion is that Cook was a great figure of history - not a perfect one by any means. But he filled in the map for nearly half the globe in a way few can even fathom now. The sheer courage involved in sailing off the edge of the map again and again is unimaginable. I was pretty fascinated a few years ago to stand on the replica of the Endeavour in Sydney and imagine this small boat heaving through the oceans, not just to the South Pacific but as far as the frozen Antarctic and all the way up to the Bering Strait in Alaska.

He could've been another Pizarro, wiping out natives with impunity. But Cook often genuinely tried to understand the cultures he encountered and forbade his men from raping and pillaging. Sure, by our standards today he would still come off as rather biased and racist, but you cannot judge a man of 1770 by the perspective of 2012. Cook's own moderately enlightened views frayed with time - by his third voyage, a worn-out Cook began acting far more ruthlessly, took umbrage at repeated thefts by Hawaiian natives, and the conflicts ended in his brutal death.

It's perhaps faint praise to say Captain Cook was a bit more liberal when compared to many other explorers of his time. But the rest of the world would have discovered the South Pacific eventually even if Cook had sunk just outside British ports on his first voyage. For his sheer intrepid ambition, his tremendous sailing skills and his attempts, blinkered as they might have been, to learn about the places he visited, Cook is still very much worth remembering.

"Ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go." - Captain James Cook

A Yank's Humble Guide To Kiwi Music (Part II)

It’s May, and down here that means New Zealand Music Month, a celebration I grow increasingly fond of every year. For such a wee little country at the bottom of the world, NZ has a rich and diverse pop music history.

Anyway, so like FOUR YEARS ago I spotlighted a handful of my favourite kiwi musicians here for NZ Music Month and optimistically called that “Part 1.” Here’s part two, with another group of fantastic Antipodean sounds for anyone who wants to learn more about the way-out tunes from down under. This time I spotlight seven young newer bands that are doing outstanding work, and together they do help show that New Zealand pop is very healthy.

Dictaphone Blues

I’m always a sucker for power-pop, and Dictaphone Blues ably follow in the footsteps of acts like Big Star and Badfinger with a bombastic, melodic range of songs on their latest, “Beneath The Crystal Palace.” Shredding guitar solos, heaven-sent harmonies cloaked in a pristine production style, they’re retro in the best possible fashion and well worth a spin.

Recommended if you like: Cheap Trick, Badfinger

Listen to: “Cliché,” live

Drab Doo Riffs

Snarky and charmingly ramshackle, this combo filters rockabilly through a bit of punk attitude. I’ve read them described as sounding like music from a Quentin Tarantino soundtrack, and can’t quite think of a more apt description. Their songs like “Juggernaut” and “I’m Depressed” roar past you in a snide burst and are a rollicking good time.

Recommended if you like: The Cramps, Dick Dale

Listen to “Juggernaut,” live

Great North

To be fair, I do work with the lead singer in this band, but hey, they’re still pretty darned good – a sweeping Kiwi take on Americana that evokes the lonesome open road and heartbreak on the way. “Alt-country” isn’t something that seems very common in Kiwi music but Great North bring class and a distinctive voice to the genre. I’d listen to these guys even if my mate Hayden wasn’t in them.

Recommended if you like: Ryan Adams, Bruce Springsteen

Listen to “Second Skin,” live

Kimbra

NZ-raised Kimbra has hit stardom on the back of her duet in Goyte’s inescapable Sting sound-a-like tune “Somebody I Used To Know,” but she’s a very formidable talent on her own merit. Even The New York Times thinks so. Her debut album “Vows” is pretty charming, bouncy dance-pop that has just enough strangeness and style to it that it sounds quite fresh – and her voice is remarkably versatile, moving from be-bop scatting to a banshee wail.

Recommended if you like: Bjork, Amy Winehouse

Listen to “Settle Down”

Lawrence Arabia

The Finn family hold a mighty sway over NZ pop music – Neil Finn’s Crowded House and Split Enz with his brother Tim, and the up-and-coming dazzling songcraft of Neil’s son Liam Finn. But the true heir of “Beatlesque” pop in NZ right now has to be Lawrence Arabia, whose warm, inviting sound is utterly, effortlessly catchy. His tunes combine nostalgic psychedelia with a dreamy wisdom. The songs are light and airy, with lyrics that are subtly amusing and world-weary at the same time.

Recommended if you like: The Beatles, Squeeze

Listen to “Apple Pie Bed”

Tono and the Finance Company

Arch and witty, this young new band have lyrics so sharp that you find yourself rewinding songs to catch the bits you missed. Frontman Anthonie Tonnon writes songs about being young, confused and broke, but with a poet’s eye. Not every band can pull off a song about how a landlord has ripped you off (“Marion Bates Realty”) and have it come off as a sweeping existential ode.

Recommended if you like: The Smiths, Elvis Costello

Listen to “Marion Bates Realty”

Unknown Mortal Orchestra

Born from the ashes of the late punk-pop combo The Mint Chicks, UMO offer a bent and elastic take on psychedelic pop. I already named their debut one of my favourite albums of 2011, and still adore it – splicing together elements of psych and funk to make music that skitters about into unexpected corners. There’s a shaggy-dog beauty to this highly rhythmic, yet weirdly melancholy music that sticks in your head.

Recommended if you like: Prince, MGMT

Listen to “How Can U Love Me?”

The weed of crime bears bitter fruit

So, our car was stolen last week. Evaporated into thin air in the middle of a nice afternoon, parked on the street one moment, gone the next. It was our “second car,” the one my wife has been using, and nowhere near new, but still quite a shock to find it gone so quickly from our life. Fortunately it was insured, fortunately it was old, and fortunately nobody got hurt (“carjacking” is pretty darned rare here downunder).

But it still highly irritating, to find yourself victimised by some complete stranger, likely some “boy racer” type who’s taken our Subaru and zipped it around Auckland until they run into a tree, or taken it to a chop-shop for spare parts. I don’t imagine we’ll ever see it again, and frankly I’d rather it just disappeared instead of turning up ripped to bits.

For someone who reads an awful lot of comic books about brightly clad heroes beating up the bad guys, I actually haven’t been the victim of much crime so far in life. In fact, I’d pretty much never been robbed/burgled etc. before we moved to Auckland. That’s not meant to be a slam on New Zealand, actually – in America, I always lived in smaller towns, but here, I’m in a city of 1.5 million, and I imagine any equivalent size city in the states has its own problems. Any image you might have of New Zealand as some crime-free paradise is a bit too utopian to really believe.

In the nearly 6 years we’ve lived here, we’ve had one car’s window smashed in (for about $2 in pocket change sitting in the car) and now the other one stolen. I was actually far more irritated over the broken window than I was over the entirely stolen car – mainly because the former incident happened in our own driveway, while we were sleeping, and some worthless dirtbag was rifling through my car. The other happened across town, on an ostensibly “safe” street, so it didn’t feel quite so intimate.

But while I’m annoyed I’d say I recognize that on the general scale of crime this ranks pretty low – I’ve never been physically attacked, and (knock on wood) our house has never been burgled. It does make you feel more sympathy for those who are the victims of crime – and more disgust at the kind of lowlifes who think it’s a lark to steal a man’s car. Sigh. Where's Batman when you really need him?

Sir Peter Siddell, 1935-2011

My father-in-law Sir Peter Siddell died peacefully Monday, nearly three years after being diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor, and nearly two months to the day since his beloved wife Sylvia passed away.

To say 2011 has been a tough year for our family would be an understatement. To lose two parents, two grandparents, in less than 8 weeks is the kind of thing I hope nobody has to go through. The deaths were not surprises -- in many ways, we've been preparing for them for several years now. The year has been filled with slow declines, fading away and too many vigils, hospital visits and emergencies to count. There hasn't been a lot of time for blogging, or whatever passes for ordinary life.

Now all that's over. But it really is going to take us a terribly long time to get "over" losing Peter and Sylvia. I'm apparently going to be speaking at Sir Peter's funeral in Auckland Monday, and one of the things I will mention is how unceasingly welcome he was to this strange American joining his family, dragging his daughter around the USA and eventually bringing her home again.

Sir Peter was one of New Zealand's most famous painters, and it's a great comfort that he lived long enough to see his work recognized -- a wonderful coffee-table book of his art came out this year. And the family has a tremendous legacy left behind of his distinctive, uniquely Kiwi work.

Passed almost unnoticed this week was that it's been exactly five years since we moved back to New Zealand. We didn't know then what we'd be dealing with, or that our son would have such a short time with his New Zealand grandparents. But I'm still glad we've been here for it, that we were able to be a part of their lives and that my wife and her sister were so supportive in their final days.

We don't always know what kind of family we'll get when we marry someone. I was extraordinarily lucky and honored to be part of this one as long as I was.

More on Sir Peter's passing from local media:

* New Zealand Herald

* TVNZ

* Auckland Art Gallery

* Artists NZ

* Beattie's Book Blog

* Siddell Art

Rugby World Cup madness comes to town

In New Zealand, there's only one event right now -- the massive Rugby World Cup. If you're in America, you might not know much about this, but if you're anywhere else in the world, it's one of the biggest sporting events in the known universe.

We in the media have been preparing for this for months, and my colleagues in print and online at the NZ Herald have done an amazing job. It's a massive undertaking, and I have to admit knowing it's just the start of a 6-week, dozens of game tournament kind of makes you quake a bit. It'd be lovely if this was just for two weeks or something, but going on till the end of October? Egad!

In-between working on the website and the paper Friday, I'd duck out and check out the scenes outside the building. It was like every college football game I'd ever seen rolled into one roiling mass of people -- flags of many nations, screaming drunken boys, nervous tourists, honking horns -- it was fun but also rather insane. Nobody in power seemed to be prepared at all for the massive crowds. Clearly NZ has gone a bit rugby-mad.

Unfortunately, the big opening celebration Friday night was a bit of a debacle on several fronts -- after months of hyping Auckland's public transport system it failed badly, with stuck trains, cancelled ferries, even elementary measures like failing to close the city's major downtown streets until hours of traffic chaos had ensued. Downtown Auckland was pretty madhouse Friday night -- estimates of anywhere from 120,000 to 200,000 people poured into downtown, which in a country of 4 million people is a HUGE gathering.

Yet there were pretty awesome moments -- the opening ceremony was amazing, the All Blacks won the first game against Tonga, the sheer energy was invigorating, and the gigantic fireworks ceremony -- apparently Auckland's biggest ever -- was stunning. A bunch of us climbed up on the roof of the Herald building for some stunning views of fireworks erupting from the Sky Tower and buildings around us.

It's hard to compare an event like this to something you'd see in the United States -- the US has never been a big player in the soccer, cricket or rugby international tournaments, so perhaps something like the Olympics is the only comparison. I've never been a huge sports guy, but you have to get swept up in it all. It is cool to see how tourists from the 20 nations have swarmed into town -- a peculiar mix of countries from rugby standards like England, Australia and South Africa to a dashing of proud Pacific Island nations like Tonga, Samoa and Fiji and then a few "what the heck" countries like Romania and Namibia.

While there's a certain sense of craziness and inconvenience to it all it's also kind of a cool thing to witness. You either ride with something like this or you waste energy getting annoyed at it. Right now for rugby-heads New Zealand is the centre of the universe. And for the next six weeks, it'll continue to be.

All the news that's fit to tweet

I've worked in journalism for 15+ years now, but rarely have I enjoyed the kind of immediacy I do with my new online job, where all it takes to disseminate your story to the world is a click of the button. This week has been a non-stop onslaught of breaking news -- the royal wedding, some Osama character you might've heard about, and an extraordinarily rare fatal tornado right here in Auckland yesterday.
 
For both the big global news stories of the last week I've been tasked with running a kind of NZ-centric Storify feed on the website of "vox populi," filtering Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and more into a giant mass o' opinion that runs concurrently with the more hard-news stories. This sort of aggregation is a kind of reporting that would've been hard to imagine 10 years ago -- there's a massive, ever-sprawling pool now of rants and raves and viewpoints online, and it never ever stops. As I "live tweeted" the royal wedding I found it fascinating -- the flow of information is so fast on the Twitter/Facebook feeds that you literally have to just grab and run -- and it was also kind of dizzying, too. After 6 hours straight of reading the world's Tweets on Wills and Kate your brain does kind of turn into mush.
 
And then the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, met his logical end Monday and it was a whole other set of tweets and comments to gather up. This story was very different from the royal wedding and tended to arouse all kind of firm views. As a fence-straddler, I found myself kind of turned off both by the bloodthirsty patriotism and the sanctimonious moralizing from both extremes.

I agree, people who live in America have no idea how utterly awful the mobs shouting "USA! USA!" looks from overseas, but I also think that at this point in its history, America desperately needed a "win." It seems like dozens of my US Facebook friends are unemployed now, there's a cynicism in US society that never quite goes away, and this long-desired news gave the country something to celebrate, as tacky as some of the cheering may have seemed from afar. 
 
Both stories were strange to watch as an American living in New Zealand -- one dealt with the British monarchy and the possible future king of New Zealand, while one offered a very US-centric kind of catharsis that I don't imagine as many New Zealanders might have felt.

The Twitter/Facebook beast is something wholly new in journalism -- a never-ceasing flow of quotes without having to pick up a notebook. During President Obama's speech on Monday 4,000 tweets came per second. This quoteflow is the sort of thing that has newspapers and journalists questioning their relevance -- although I fall on the side of good journalism still being firmly necessary, as a way to filter through the impossibly dense voice of humanity online these days. By night's end I had 15,000+ hits on the Osama Storify feed -- a kind of instant gratification journalists rarely get.

Once upon a time the question used to be, how do I get the information? It's then moved on to how fast can I get the information? But maybe as the world continues to change every millisecond, the new question might be, where does the information stop?

Concert review: Gang Of Four, Auckland, February 24

OK, so this week was pretty much a disaster I'd like to forget. The terrible earthquake, more dismaying family sickness news, lots of quake-related stress at work of course, and to top it all off my car got broken into in our own driveway last night; $300 worth of damage for the sake of about $2 in change.

About the only thing that saves this week from a total write-off is a cathartic, phenomenal show last night by post-punk pioneers Gang Of Four at the Powerstation. Ninety minutes, two encores of high-octane, lacerating guitar and bass and a frontman who seemed to be channeling David Byrne and Iggy Pop's illegitimate child. Some nights, you need to be in a row full of people jumping up and down and singing "To hell with poverty / we'll get drunk on cheap wine."

Gang Of Four, to my mind, are an unfairly overlooked pivotal late '70s act who combined punk and funk to make political rock you can't help but dance to. Bands from Red Hot Chili Peppers to Franz Ferdinand and LCD Soundsystem owe them big. Their debut, 1979's "Entertainment!," is one of the signature postpunk albums, all coiled angst, bass that twangs away like a gong, shrieking, staccato guitar and chant/sung lyrics. Frontman Jon King and guitarist Andy Gill are the two founding members who lead the group today, and it's their drive that feeds the push-pull of grinding rock with highly political subjects -- "At Home He's A Tourist," "Natural's Not In It," and "I Love A Man In Uniform," one of the most sneeringly witty anti-war songs ever written. This is the band Rage Against The Machine always tried to be (and failed to quite live up to, but that's just my opinion).

Gang Of Four's songs are often accused of being chilly, with gloomy lyrics like "this heaven / gives me migraine" or the awesomely snide "Love'll get you like a case of anthrax / And that's something I don't want to catch." But live, King threw sweat, gymnastics (a headstand!) and microphone-stand twirling energy into the Gang's songs, adding a whole new dimension to their work. King was fantastic, swirling, shaking and gyrating like a man 20 years younger. At one point he sat out for a song played by Gill and I worried he was having a mild heart attack downstage. Meanwhile, Andy Gill had approximately one facial expression for the whole show but let all his emotions out with his scorching guitar work, which places its focus on bursts of tone rather than showy solos.

For a group that's got a rather serious reputation, I was pleased at just how much joyful fun Gang Of Four are live. Bass man Thomas McNeice, looking like a Lenny Kravitz impersonator with his swaying dreadlocks, was terrific at playing all the classic songs, sending out resonating bursts of corded sound that stabbed right through the audience. Gang Of Four played most of Entertainment! plus a selection of their other tunes and some from their really solid comeback new album Content. We had the seething blast-furnace fury of "Anthrax", "To Hell With Poverty" became a raucous mosh pit singalong, and "I Love A Man In Uniform" was an encore delight, while "Damaged Goods" closed out the set. Good show, mates.

Here's Gang Of Four on David Letterman recently performing their new single "You'll Never Pay For The Farm." Jon King in full effect!


And a recent take on "To Hell With Poverty":

Earthquake. Again.

Today's awful earthquake appears to make the dramatic earthquake of last September look like a mild tremor. It's only been four hours since the quake struck here as I write this, but already the scenes are horrific -- entire buildings down, unknown fatalities. We basically got off lucky in September, with not a single death. But that quake was at 4am, and this one struck in the middle of the lunch hour, and was far shallower.

Grim times, and terrible to see Christchurch suffer so much. One of our sister newspapers down there had their roof fall in on them. We visited Cathedral Square, shown here today, back in 2009 -- and to see that massive icon cathedral tumbling like a set of children's blocks is humbling and frightening in equal measure.

It'll be some time before we know just how bad this was today. All my thoughts, and all New Zealand's thoughts, go to the people of Southland today.

'The Art of Peter Siddell' takes flight

So Thursday night finally marked the official launch of my father-in-law Sir Peter Siddell's massive coffee table art book of his life's work, The Art of Peter Siddell.

It is no exaggeration on my part to say my father-in-law is one of New Zealand's most respected living painters. I chose a good family to marry into, as both of Avril's parents and her sister and brother-in-law are all acclaimed artists. I remember when I first met my wife's father more than a decade ago now and I was telling him I thought a big book of his paintings would be wonderful to see sometime. It's been very good of the kind folks at Random House to work so diligently to bring this project to fruition. It's a highly handsome tome -- hey, it's even got paintings of my wife and son in it (and a photo of some disreputable blogger/journalist American expatriate in the introduction as part of a family portrait). The book's been getting some very kind notices and press (special kudos to Beattie's Book Blog which has given it multiple plugs).

Thursday night was special, because nearly 100 people came out to the invitation-only event for Sir Peter at Parson's bookshop, longtime family and friends.

It's no hyperbole to say it's been a rather rough couple of years for our family down here. I've written, sparingly and out of respect for the family's privacy, of Sir Peter's battle with a brain tumour he was diagnosed with in 2008. He is still with us, perhaps slower than once before, but doing far better than anyone would've predicted more than two years ago when we got the diagnosis. But my wife's mum, Sylvia Siddell, has also had an extraordinarily hard time of it lately with her own cancer diagnoses, including multiple painful surgeries. She was actually in hospital just this week for a spell and got out just in time to be able to attend the book launch. Even Sir Peter's sister, my wife's aunt, has been ailing and in hospital (at one point this week my wife's mum and aunt were in the same hospital ward opposite each other). At times like these when you start to feel like a plague of locusts might be around the bend, the support of so many friends and supporters of Peter's art is a mighty thing.

Seek out the book if you get a chance -- it's an impressive testament to one artist's imagination, vision and peerless skill over nearly 50 years of work. And I'm not just saying that because he's my father-in-law.

Under the sea, darling it's better down where it's wetter

One thing I never take for granted about New Zealand, after more than four years of living here, is how accessible the sea is. Most Americans have to make a bit of a trek to get to a beach -- and unless you live in a really temperate place like Florida chances are much of the year it's not a swimmable sea.

But Auckland, as I've written about before, has a million kinds of beaches all within a short drive from home. One that I haven't been to we finally visited yesterday, Goat Island Marine Reserve. It's a beautiful spot about 90 minutes north of town where like few other beaches in New Zealand, fish don't worry about being caught and their populations have exploded into life.

And the fish -- huge fish all so tame they'll swim right by you unafraid of being eaten. Blue maomao, gorgeous striped red moki, bulge-eyed cod, little bewhiskered goatfish feeding on the bottom of the sea, and giant snapper. The beach is studded with rock formations that make deep canyons when the tide comes in, and as you float on the sea looking down you feel like you're observing entire hidden cities. I only wish I'd had an underwater camera to capture the sights, but here's a few online pics of fish I spotted.

I realized that I've never really properly snorkeled before. I've worn one but never in a place where the water is clear as glass and so many tame fish come up within inches of you -- one gigantic snapper who seemed to be the size of my torso scared the hell out of us all. Water magnifies, of course, so each of these great mouthed fish seemed like a dinosaur, hugely confident in their environment.

The snorkel takes away one of the big hard parts of swimming, the whole having to breathe thing. With a snorkel I could float, like a spaceman, above the undersea world. It's very peaceful and calming, visiting this other world in the ocean like that.

And so I float.

Merry Christmas and all that jazz

We return from a brief camping getaway to Coromandel Peninsula and on into the Christmas rush! More posting including my Top 10 albums of 2010 before the year's out!

Five-sentence Friday

1. This is super-duper cool, and it's great to see my father-in-law Sir Peter Siddell's art career anthologised in one huge hefty package, coming in early 2011 -- I've seen the proofs and the book looks fantastic!

2. Keith Richards' autobiography "Life" makes for entertaining reading, although a bit too rambling, it's got a remarkable story to tell and he holds little back; great insights into his relationship with Mick Jagger to be found here though.

3. Some band called U2 is playing just down from the road to us this week on their 360 tour, and I'm just not quite huge enough a U2 fan to spring for tickets -- but it turns out we didn't need to, as the concert, also including opening act Jay-Z, was quite loud and audible from our house 3km away, so we pulled out lawn chairs and blankets and sat on our front lawn last night for a live U2 show, without even having to leave our driveway!

4. The Pike River mining tragedy has obviously dominated New Zealand news for the past week, and while we all feared the worst, we hoped for the best; a distinct sting to the situation was added by the fresh memory of the recent Chilean miner rescue miracle, but unfortunately the NZ mine was a completely different type of mine and situation and such a happy outcome seemed unlikely from the start. My sympathies and good thoughts remain with the families of the Pike River 29.

Into the TARDIS with two Doctor Whos

I've been to several big old American comic-book conventions like the ChicagoCon, so really, compared to them, New Zealand's Armageddon Expo is rather small. But it's still a decent size and a lot of fun to while away a day at -- a couple of hundred booths of stuff for sale and show, celebrity guests, tons of bizarre costumes to gawk at and the usual kind of overcrowded, sweaty, adrenaline-filled rush of stimuli you get at conventions.

But the big draw for me this time was the chance to see TWO former Doctor Whos appear -- the "seventh Doctor," Sylvester McCoy, and the little-known "eighth Doctor," who only appeared in one 1996 TV movie, Paul McGann. Both appeared for photos etc as well as in panels. I always find these kind of panels quite fascinating, a bit of a peek behind the curtain at what an actor's life is really like. They have to put up with a lot of inane fans, but I appreciate it when an actor takes the time to talk to the crowd. McCoy played the seasoned old showman/raconteur, rambling off into oddball and amusing stories about shoving ferrets down his pants in his circus days (I kid you not). He's had a long and varied career (and is apparently going to play a role in "The Hobbit" movies if they even actually get made) and was quite comfortable playing to the crowd.

McGann was a bit more wistful and down-to-earth (and I think jet-lagged). I've just watched the 1990s "Doctor Who" movie he was in, and while it was a mixed bag story-wise, I really liked McGann's portrayal of the Doctor, half Victorian dandy, half imperious alien. It's a shame he didn't get to play the Doctor more (although he has done a ton of audio-only adventures.) McGann isn't a household name but he's been in some good stuff, notably as the "I" in the Brit cult classic movie "Withnail And I," and he also waxed rhapsodic about his appearance in, er, lower-brow flicks such as "Lesbian Vampire Killers." He seemed like a good bloke, basically, and both he and McCoy had a lot of fun geek tidbits into "Dr. Who" history which I found fascinating, as a relatively novice Who-vian who really only got into the show starting with the new 2005 series. (McGann mentioned that during the casting for the 1990s "Doctor Who" would-be revival, one actor's name came up repeatedly for the part of the Doctor -- Monty Python's Eric Idle. While I do love the Python, I suspect that would've been a bizarre misstep indeed.)

It's a change of Hobbit

Is The Hobbit leaving New Zealand? Sure sounds like it. I honestly don't know enough details about these labour woes to weigh in too much on whether the actors union is in the right or wrong here, but I do think it's a bloody debacle if the Hobbit movies end up being filmed elsewhere than New Zealand as a result of them.

The Lord of the Rings movies were a huge boost for New Zealand and its image overseas, and that kind of image and impression is simply priceless. The idea that Devonshire or Australia might be hired up to substitute for New Zealand in the next films is mind-boggling, especially since Kiwi Sir Peter Jackson will be back as director. This production has been hugely troubled (witness the loss of originally signed director Guillermo Del Toro, who would've been a great fit).

I sure hope that a resolution to this situation might be found, as it's just a horrible look for New Zealand to lose The Hobbit. The movies are good for the country's economy, image and the national sense of pride, and labour complaints shouldn't derail them. Frankly, I'm wondering if these movies will ever really get made. My precious!

I left my heart in San Francisco

...Yeah man, I'm back down under, after several groovy weeks in California. It was my second trip back for a visit since we emigrated in 2006, and it is always a bit strange trying to cram so much into two or three weeks. Not to mention rather exhausting being the single-dad with the 6-year-old boy while Mom stays in New Zealand. There's the meet-ups with old friends, wedged into everyone's busy schedules, where you get an hour or two to play speed catch-up of the last four (or even 20) years of your lives. There's trying to show your son all around the area you grew up in, trying to ensure quality time with the grandparents and the uncle, and trying to get some American-style shopping in there. Somewhere you also attempt to "relax" on this "vacation" some.

Highlights of this year's journey --
• The places that are etched in my mind from childhood and onwards, all wonderful to see again -- the high, dry foothills of the Sierra Nevada where I grew up; the sweeping lonely casino-filled vistas of Reno and Western Nevada, both tacky and epic western at the same time. The sweeping blue expanse of Lake Tahoe, where I spent much of the late 1990s, the grand granite-lined canyons of the Yuba River, the finest place in the world to while away a hot summer's day. And of course sweet San Francisco, which still has the same kinetic effect on me it did the first time I saw it back in the 1970s -- Coit Tower, North Beach, Chinatown, the giant Sutro Tower (the "monster tower" of my childhood), the candy-box spectacle of the houses stippled up and down the hills, the sweeping Golden Gate Bridge, foreboding Alcatraz hunched in the harbour -- I do love that place.

• The climate really knocked me for a loop, though. I'd forgotten that late September is peak allergy/pollen season and that, combined with the staggering dryness of the climate after being so used to humid New Zealand, left my sinuses feeling like a barometer the entire time. It's a shame I love an area yet hate the atmosphere.

• One thing that struck me is how battered and cynical the American "mood" seemed. A liberal like me thinks it's the hangover from 8 years of colossal failure by Bush and the impossible expectations laid on his successor. Far as I can figure the Tea Party folks are against nearly everything being done these days but I have yet to really figure out what they'd do about it or why they didn't speak out during the wild government expansion of the Bush years. It's nearly Election Day in the US and while I hope people aren't dense enough to give the party that screwed everything up for 8 years ANOTHER chance at the House or Senate, my feelings are that the American people just love being fooled by big promises and vague platitudes, from either side of the aisle. The failure of the two-party system -- if we don't like the guy in the White House, we'll just vote against EVERYTHING he proposes -- is manifest. While NZ politics are far from perfect, the minor parties here have a much stronger chance of actually getting their views shown and making a difference through coalition governments. In general politics here seem a bit less shrill, less polarized. I really am starting to fear the American system is terminally broken, no matter who's President.

• The recession that hadn't quite happened last time I visited in summer 2008 was in clear evidence -- vacant shops from Sacramento to Reno, several friends who've lost jobs/money in the past two years. The newspapers I once read have all shrunk into near-nothingness -- thanks to narrower "web widths" (reducing print costs) and staff cutbacks. I remember when the San Francisco Bay Guardian, say, was a thick monster of a free weekly tabloid you could kill a cat with, whereas the one I picked up last week was a wee thin thing. I know my industry is changing and it has to change, but it is a shame to see the newspaper so withered in size and influence.

• As always the sheer SCALE of everything in America dazzles after a few years away in a small, small country. Mega-malls the size of small New Zealand towns, spreading silently over the countryside that once contained nothing but fields; more big box stores than you ever imagined existed; giant cars everywhere. Theme restaurants that serve more food on a plate than one man can decently eat; a "large" cup of coffee that is at least twice the size of one you'd find down under. All of this exists in some form or another in NZ, of course, but just "less" of it.

* On the flip side of course is how cheap anything and everything seems in America compared to NZ -- as usual I stuffed my suitcases to the brim with things like books, CDs, toys, over-the-counter medicines and blue jeans, all far more costly down here. Found several wonderful things to jam in the bags such as the "Nuggets II" CD box set, a great "Art of Brian Bolland" coffee-table book I didn't even know existed, lots of awesome Beat literature at the wonderful City Lights Books in SF, and much, much more. It's a good thing we only get back to the US every couple of years as my wallet and bookshelves really couldn't handle more often.

God save the queen - maybe.

My head of state in New Zealand is Queen Elizabeth II. We're still part of the Commonwealth, still a fragment of the once-huge British Empire. While we have our own Prime Minster and all that, in theory, the Queen is our big boss, even if the power is more ceremonial than not.

In recent weeks the debate on New Zealand's future has flared up again, with the leader of the opposition party saying it's time to start making plans for a republic. "We need to start the conversation now," said Labour leader Phil Goff. Prime Minister John Key seems to be content with vagueness, having said before a New Zealand republic is "inevitable" but not actually doing much more than that. Bills introduced to actually move the debate don't get far; the most recent one failed on its first reading in Parliament.

The sentiment generally seems to be that when Queen Elizabeth II dies or steps down, NZ (and probably Australia) will move to sever their last ties to the monarchy. The notion of poor King Charles III doesn't seem to instill a lot of confidence in people. (We might still have Queen Elizabeth for another 20 years though - while she's 84, her mum lasted to 101.)

However, you could argue that without the ties to the motherland New Zealand suddenly becomes a mighty small country at the bottom of the world. Australia already has a lot over us economically. Would losing the monarchy actually benefit us in any tangible way on the world stage? Do we need it to stay afloat? Yet culturally, we're hardly "Southern Britain" anymore. NZ is a vibrant, multicultural nation - a little bit Pacifica, a little bit Maori, a little bit Australian, a little bit Asian. Britain really is an awful long ways away. We're our own identity now.

I've got nothing against old Queenie, and I find the novelty of it all kind of interesting to observe coming from the American system of government. If pressed, I'd have to admit the whole notion of a hereditary leader, as limited as her actual power might be, kind of flies in the face of my good ol' "anybody can be President" American idealism.

But I'd bet firm money a change is going to happen, in the next decade if not sooner. I certainly see no harm in the notion of planning for it, but there seems to be a political timidity to engage on this -- for fear of offending the last hardcore monarchists. But it's foolish to wait until Queen Elizabeth II kicks the bucket to even start thinking about the future. While there's a kind of quaint charm to the idea of the monarchy, in reality New Zealand stopped being just an outpost of empire some time ago. It's only a formality that we still have a Queen.

(Speaking of outposts of Empire, I'm off to the United States for a long-overdue holiday and will be on blog hiatus until mid-October sometime. Cheers mates!)

And it burns, burns, burns, like a ring of fire...

So we had a magnitude 7.1 earthquake down here yesterday morning, the most damaging in New Zealand in about 80 years from the looks of it. It didn't hit anywhere near us in Auckland, but about 500 miles south in Christchurch on the South Island, NZ's second biggest city. I visited there for the first time a year or so ago and it's a really beautiful city with great buildings, and am sad to see how torn up it's been -- though thankfully, no loss of life reported so far.

Because I'm lucky, I was actually awake at 4.35 am Saturday when the quake hit -- I work at danged early hours on Saturday mornings. Didn't feel it in Auckland, although by (perhaps) freakish concidence, at almost the exact same time the giant glass front door of my workplace shattered into a million pieces. We were having a ferocious gale-force windstorm up here at the time so I can't say it was the earthquake that caused it, but then again, who knows if it wasn't a factor?

It is a vivid reminder that we here live right on the Pacific Ring of Fire, which isn't just a Johnny Cash song but the most active geothermal zone on earth. NZ straddles a continental shelf and the entire country is dotted with volcanoes, thermal vents and more. Our home of Auckland has literally dozens of theoretically extinct volcanos (used as Maori ancient pa, fortresses). In our harbour is a giant looming volcano island, Rangitoto, which erupted out of the ocean not 700 years ago, which is a mere eyeblink in geological time. It's hard to imagine the sheer chaos a giant volcano in the nation's biggest harbour would cause if it popped up today.

Peter, 6, was a bit freaked out by all the earthquake coverage on the TV last night and can't say I blame him. Growing up in California earthquakes were a constant fear too. My thoughts go out to all those down south affected by this billion-dollar disaster, and it's a stern and worrying reminder that when it comes right down to it, the human race are mere visitors on a playing field of immense natural forces far more powerful than we are.

• In other quake coverage, Arthur talks about disasters and social networking (I too got a flurry of anxious Facebook messages yesterday).

• To help: Salvation Army NZ

Living on the island of lost birds

One of the things that's fascinating about living in New Zealand to me is that for most of the millions of years of its existence, it was a land of birds, and birds alone. Until the first Polynesians arrived about 800 years ago, isolated NZ was a feathered place with no native mammals. Unfortunately, between the Maori and later European colonisation, many of this land's most unique and dazzling birds were soon extinct.

Most people know about the moa, the largest bird ever to live. If you've ever seen a skeleton of one of these, it's pretty amazing to imagine a bird as tall as a giraffe. They were wiped out not long after the Maori arrived and were gone by the time Europeans came. At their biggest, they stood 12 feet tall.

But there were tons of other amazing long-gone feathered things -- the Haast's eagle -- the world's largest eagle; the beautiful black and yellow huia (right); the moa-lite adzebill; the whekau or laughing owl... I've a long list of things I'd do if I ever got my mitts on a time machine, but I think one of the things I'd love to do is see what New Zealand looked like, pre-colonization -- before the original bush was mostly wiped out, when the only thing you'd hear was a million different bird calls and imagined herds of moa roaming the land. It's just a tremendous shame to know that thanks to man's greed or man-introduced predators like rats and cats, we'll never know what a wonder a country of birds would've been.

Not all the unique birds of New Zealand are extinct, of course. Everyone knows about kiwi - which are fascinating creatures, but I tell you, there hasn't been a bird less prepared for foreign invaders since the dodo. Flightless, nocturnal, timid and nearly defenseless, the poor kiwi doesn't make it easy on itself. Another gorgeous yet terribly hapless critter is the flightless kakapo, the rarest, fattest parrot in the world -- dozens of people work long hours in the bush trying to force this exceedingly stubborn animal to mate. Living on the ground and not flying makes it hard to be a bird in the modern age.

Another native bird I discovered just a month or two ago is the beautiful kokako (right), which is a sleek grey with dazzling blue wattles and the cutest dark little cry you ever heard -- it sounds exactly like a person saying "ko-ka-ko," hence the bird's name. There's not a lot of them left, either, but we saw one at a bird sanctuary near Wellington and they're just awesome.

But hey, not all birds here are evolutionary dead-ends. My favorite New Zealand bird is the pukeko, (right) which is like a punk-rock chicken. They're gorgeous, gawky things, a sleek and sparkling blue with an orange helmet, about the size of a chicken but with huge oversized feet. They're awkward and amusing little fellows and they're as common as pigeons in many New Zealand parks. I like to think they're a reminder of what it was like in a country of birds.

Winding our way to Wellington

So last week was school holidays and we packed up for a quick jaunt down to Wellington, New Zealand's illustrious capital city. I hadn't been there in 10 years, since my very first trip to NZ. It was good to get on an old-fashioned road trip, too. Geography here kind of means you can't drive most directions without hitting the sea before too long, but the 8-hour drive south to Wellington is one of the longest treks you can take on one island. And sometimes, this American just misses the lure of the open road.

Of all the NZ cities I've been to Wellington reminds me the most of my beloved San Francisco -- jammed into a tight bay, hilly, perched over the tempestous ocean, with lots of nifty architecture, narrow, charming timber structures wedged onto vertical spaces. And Wellington is WINDY. Not just mildly breezy but incredibly windy, with winds pouring into the U-shaped harbour at varying degrees of severity. It wasn't even particularly gusty while we were there but after a couple of days of it I thought yeah, this could be tiresome.

That aside, though, Wellington is a fine place -- the city centre is compact and has that "government town" feeling most capitals do, with lots of folks in suits and ties. Compared to the 1.2 million or so people in the Auckland area, Wellington feels like a small town. You've got the Parliament (which I toured last time I was in town so we didn't go today), plus the huuuuuge national museum Te Papa, which we took the boy to. It's full of art, buttons to push, flashing lights, holographic maps and even a giant dead pickled colossal squid.

As I mentioned before, Wellington is VERY vertical (many houses have long steep steps going up to them, and some even have little motorized cable cars to carry them up). I love the steep scale of Wellington, with so much packed vertically into small space, it's got a cozy feeling. There's some excellent shopping -- big ups to Slowboat Records where I found a rare Alex Chilton CD I've been hunting, and the awesome Sweet Mother's Kitchen, a New Orleans-inspired restaurant where we ate twice in once day (and I had hush puppies for the first time in yeeeears). Another nifty spot to visit was Weta Studios' small museum/shop out in the burbs -- Weta is the special effects studio who work with Sir Peter Jackson on films such as "Lord of the Rings" and "King Kong" and they had tons of interesting props on show. We also drove along the Wellington peninsula which had marvelous views out into Cook Strait, and full of beautiful little isolated beach communities that don't feel like they're 10 minutes from downtown. You could even park at the edge of the airport and watch planes come down into the runway.

'Twas a swell trip down to NZ's second city, and I'm hoping it's not another 10 years before we make it down there again!

Across the gulf to Waiheke Island

As mentioned previously, my parents are back over here from the US for a few weeks visiting, which has been keeping us quite busy. The other day we did one of those quintessential Auckland experiences that I've never actually done, visiting Waiheke Island. Waiheke is about a half-hour ferry ride from downtown Auckland and home to 8,000 people. A sizable community lives over here in the Hauraki Gulf and it's a very popular holiday home and tourism destination. I've meant to go go over here for years but never quite got around to it (in the way you often don't visit the most touristy things in your hometown until you have out-of-town guests). We found a nice ferry/guided tour/bus pass package that worked out really well for a day's adventure. It's a beautiful rambling island, full of vineyards, beaches and greenery and with a nice "back in the bush" feeling with Auckland's skyscapers visible in the distance across the gulf.






In an Auckland spring you get about 40 different kinds of weather a week but fortunately the weather gods smiled on us for our day on Waiheke. Gorgeous clear skies, weather warm enough I regretted not bringing the swimming togs, and low winds. If there's anything finer in life than fish, chips and beer by the golden sandy beaches, I don't want to know it.