Our house, in the middle of the street

Nearly a year since we arrived, the whole Moving to New Zealand thing has been going pretty darned well, really -- Avril got a swell job just after we arrived, I got a fine job myself in my first week of looking, Peter is settled in and happy at daycare, we love the country and I can eat meat pies and fish and chips whenever I like -- all of it is done of course except for the final piece of the puzzle, a place to call our own. We've been relying on the amazingly grand hospitality of Avril's parents since we arrived, staying in an apartment built on the back of their house, but this was never meant to be more than a temporary fix in the expensive Auckland housing market.

And so we've begun the dreaded house hunt, for the very first time in our lives attempting to move from perpetual renters into bona fide property owners. It's pretty damned daunting, I must admit, and we've only just begun to dip our feet in the water by going to a few open houses and doing a lot of research. And I met with our banker today to get an idea what we can afford and freely admit I only understood about 40% of the conversation.

Pretty much everywhere we've lived the last decade – Lake Tahoe, Oregon, here – we've had the uncanny knack to move there just after the property market explodes in value. Auckland home prices have doubled in value several times over since the 1990s unfortunately, which severely limits our options. No sweeping sea views and matching guest house, in other words. But we're hopeful we can afford a decent townhouse or, fingers crossed, small standalone house, in one of Auckland's less ritzy suburbs but without a gang or crack dealer next door. We're making decent, if not spectacular money, and have next to no debt which is always good. And after getting shafted by our last landlords, we're well and truly sick of the renting thing. But there seems like a hell of a lot we don't know and the uncertainty of it all is creating one heaping helping of stress stew.

I imagine house-buying is like those other big things in life – marriage, having a kid, moving – in that it hopefully isn't quite as bad as you make it out to be in your head before doing it. Or maybe not. Is it worse?

Excuse me while I kiss the mattress

...Egad, is that the time? So this week I began my new work schedule, which is on the one hand is grand because I'm now working only four days of the week, but which is bad because I'm now working four 10-hour shifts starting at 6 am. Which takes a little getting used to. I generally like working early rather than later (no 3-12 midnight morning paper shifts for me, thank you) but it's still been rather a shock to the system to get up at 5 am in the morning these days. I'm starting to adjust but the first week there's been a lot of yawning and excessive coffee consumption. It is swell to get off while it's still light (and the clockwork chirping of the tui birds lets us know it's nearly spring), and, the main reason for this schedule, it allows us to put Peter in day care less of the week. So if it gets me greyer and wrinklier (a 10-hour shift is a little like a mini-marathon I think) it's worth it in the end.

And of course New Zealand has gone mad for the Rugby World Cup right now and I've been doing a lot of work relating to that. I know about as much about rugby (and well, sports in general) as I do about Swedish tax systems, and so I admit I've had a lot of baffled moments as I try to sort out the difference between the scrum and the pitch and why the Wallabies and Springboks are such bastards. Which doesn't help when you're trying to edit copy about the game. (Which I realized to my utter astonishment lasts something like 40 days. Eat that, Super Bowl!) NZ is pretty sport-mad in general, even more than the US I think I'd say. Not all New Zealanders but Joe Kiwi (if there is such a person) is pretty well into the rugby and the cricket and so forth. I've never really been anti-sport, but neither have I been particularly into it ... too much time spent on books, music, comics and movies, and, oh yeah, family. But with American sport, you at least just sort of pick up some of it in the culture and I know the general workings of football and baseball and the like just through osmosis. However, rugby and the rest baffles me and I have to play catch-up just to get what I'd otherwise have picked up growing up here. I will say these players are sheer giants who put wimpy US football (with its padding and helmets) to shame. Never get between a 400-lb. Tongan and his ball. It's unhealthy.

It was eight years ago today...

...That some crazy kiwi married some wacko American journalist. A lot's changed since then - the manic toddler, the moving around America and then to New Zealand, a couple of cars, travels everywhere from Alaska to Mississippi, but it's all been grand indeed. This last year has maybe been the toughest yet to deal with and keep our sanity, but so far, we're still here. I haven't always been the best husband, but as Jules in Pulp Fiction put it, "I'm trying. I'm tryin' real hard to be a shepherd." By which I don't mean New Zealand sheep, honest. It's all pretty remarkable when you think it began with a random letter sent across an ocean in 1992 from a New Zealand gal looking for foreign pen-pals. Happy anniversary, sweetie!

The Favorites #1: Actress, Song of the Week, Blog

In the interest of trying to keep this blog a valuable destination point in your Internetting experience, here's a new occasional feature I'll do just to tell you what I'm into right now (and really isn't that mostly what a blog is about?). Today's Favorites that I'm digging:

FAVORITE ACTRESS: Cate Blanchett has taken the crown from Nicole Kidman, who's almost always worth watching but who has the knack of picking some really crummy movies to waste her gifts in (Bewitched, The Invasion, The Human Stain, anyone?). Cate, on the other hand, is really taking on some extraordinarily varied roles lately, and this fall promises to be the winter of our Blanchett -- I'm dying to see her playing a version of Dylan in the wacky new Bob Dylan biopic, "I'm Not There," and quite intrigued to see her take on a sequel to the role that brought her stardom with "Elizabeth: The Golden Age." Most recently I watched "Notes On A Scandal" the other night, starring Cate as a ditzy young teacher who becomes involved in a parasitic relationship with a bitter colleague (an excellent Judi Dench). It reaffirmed my notion that Cate can play nearly anything -- a sex object in "Scandal," a wounded housewife in the otherwise overwrought "Babel," an elf queen in "Lord of the Rings," and that marvelous take on Katherine Hepburn that won her an Oscar in "The Aviator." (A role Kidman passed up, reportedly -- doh!) Blanchett brings an intelligence to her roles that's rarely calculating, a kind of gentle realism that obscures her remarkable talent a bit. I don't think of her as "flashy" or tabloid material, but as a serious actress who just happens to be rather gorgeous. As if we needed further evidence she's the queen bee of acting these days, she'll be in 2008's fantastically titled "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." No word on whether she's Indy's love interest or nemesis -- but personally, I'd love to see her take a crack at playing a villain. Heck, I might even have to root for her against Indiana Jones.

FAVORITE NEW BLOG DISCOVERY: Todd Klein is the niftiest letterer in comic books, perhaps best known for his work on Neil Gaiman's Sandman and Alan Moore's Americas Best Comics. And he like everyone else has a blog, which is a remarkably fun site for anyone interested in comics trivia and design. I flipped out like a monkey on crack over his amazing ongoing essay series Logo Studies, which dissects the genesis and varying appearance of iconic logos such as Superman and Batman over the decades. I know, I know, it's like a 10.8 on the Geek Scale, but Klein is a fascinating guide through the years showing how approaches to these iconic type designs have changed (and you're hearing this from a guy who watched an entire documentary on a type font not too long ago, so it's kinda up my alley). That sturdy "Superman" logo pretty much defines the character in letters alone, and it's been really nifty having Todd look at how these designs came to be. An excellent "behind the scenes" look at the comic industry that is quite different than the norm.

A quick dip into 'Mister Pip'

"Mister Pip" is a haunting New Zealand book by Lloyd Jones that's being pipped (er, sorry) to win the Booker Prize next month. It's a brief but lingering read, a kind of combination of "Dead Poets Society" and "Hotel Rwanda" that pays homage to the mysterious power of storytelling. Set on a remote New Guinea island during a time of violent revolution in the early 1990s, it's the tale of village girl Matilda and the bond she forms with her eccentric schoolteacher, Mr. Watts, the last white man left on the island. With next to nothing in the way of resources, the ragged, exiled Mr. Watts tries to teach the children by reading his way through a copy of Charles Dickens' novel "Great Expectations." But the novel becomes a startling focal point in the battles between the army and the rebels and Matilda's entire world is drawn into the fight. Matilda comes to identify with Dickens' prodigal orphan Pip, despite them coming from two very different worlds.

The novel's biggest strength is how it undercuts dreamy reverie with startling bursts of real-life horror. Jones creates some finely drawn characters in his direct, toned prose, and he mostly manages to avoid the cliches inherent in the whole "kindly white gent educates the natives" plot. Jones genuinely probes at the clash between "native" and "white man" culture, and comes to interesting conclusions about it all. He makes Mr. Watts a haunted, flawed figure, particularly in a brilliant final act in the novel in which Matilda goes in search of the truth. Given the choice between a life of war and torture and one of fiction, which would you choose? A fine book and I certainly wouldn't be upset if it took home a big international honor on behalf of Kiwi lit.

Of newspapers, vampires and the Tardis

Random thoughts:

• Work, work, work, work. It's been good but extraordinarily busy these last couple of weeks as we constantly add new publications and magazines to the roster of those we're dealing with, which means learning whole new styles and designs pretty much every week. At some point by the end of the year it will settle down into more of a routine but until then, very hectic but mostly enjoyable. I've been busily designing many of the pages and sections in the NZ Herald, which is pretty nifty – a year ago I'd worried what I would do once I left my job in Oregon, but I've ended up working with the country's biggest newspaper and seeing my fingerprints in there daily. ("Whole lotta love for Zeppelin fans" – oh yeah, that's my headline, baby!). And next month it looks like I'll get to do a little traveling around NZ to some of the smaller regional newspapers we're also adding to the roster.

• But when I haven't been working, I've been slaying. Vampire slaying, that is. One or two of you may recall way back before we emigrated I mentioned that I had never watched the famed "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" TV show before, and having sampled it, was determined to catch the entire 7 seasons worth of DVDs from start to finish. So how's that ambitious project going? Well, the wife and I have been zipping along renting DVDs in Buffy-land lately, due largely to the fact NZ Television's five or six channels have next to nothing to watch. We're about midway through Season 3, and it's been some of the best TV I've watched in eons. I missed "Buffy" first time 'round as by the time I noticed it the mythology seemed too daunting – and the main character was named Buffy, so I figured it was Beverly Hills 90210 with fangs. But really, as a zillion others have pointed out before me, "Buffy" has a rich subtext using horror as a metaphor for high school and life in general. The second season found the show settling into a wonderful groove combining angst, romance and monster-of-the-week kung fu with flair, and the great tragic Buffy/Angel love affair packs a real sting. Joss Whedon's characters are so great that I sometimes find the marquee violence and kung fu distracting to the quieter scenes. I can't wait to see what happens next (Spike came back in the latest one we watched – hurray!), and it's cool to know I've got 3 1/2 seasons to go. (The hard part is avoiding spoilers on the Internets about the future of Buffy.)

• And did I mention I've never ever watched "Dr. Who" before either? Well, not until last weekend... Yep, I'm a failure as a geek. The next obsession lurks ahead in the Tardis, I guess!

The Perfect Songs, Part XI

Right on, right on, here's another installment in my perpetual series of brief essays on songs I would deem "perfect," whatever that means to me. Songs that stick with you and keep circling about in your heads like bats at sunset. Songs that end up as mix-tape fodder (hey kids, remember tapes?). Here's three more to add to the list* (and I know, more Bob Dylan and Ryan Adams, but hey, it's what I've been listening to lately on the daily commute):

31. Bob Dylan, "Tombstone Blues." This song launches down the track like a locomotive on steroids and never looks back, conductor Dylan taking a gonzo tour of weird America, waving from the engine room. It's from the height of Bob's quest for that sound like "thin wild mercury," the abandonment of the gentler squawk of folk and appropriation of balls-out rock 'n' roll that resulted in his two best albums, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. "Tombstone Blues" is like the road map – locked into an unstoppable groove by guitarist Michael Bloomfield and the band, it's a tour of the wild psyche, surreal scraps of imagery hurtling by as fast as Dylan can spit them out. The hysterical bride in the penny arcade, John the Baptist, the reincarnation of Paul Revere's horse, Gypsy Davey and Cecil B. DeMille – it all rockets along and then collapses with Dylan's cruel, unforgiving line: "Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain / That could hold you dear lady from going insane / That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain / Of your useless and pointless knowledge." Full of more imagery in a mere five minutes or so than most artists manage in an entire career. "I'm in the kitchen / With the tombstone blues."

32. John Lee Hooker, "Boogie Chillen." Covered in tape hiss, nothing but a guitar strumming along so starkly you can almost see the straining strings, it's like a voice from a time machine. You can hear his foot tapping to keep the beat, and imagine the dusty long-gone room it was recorded in. Hooker's 1948 iconic tune is right there at the birth of rock 'n' roll as we know it, a loose, ecstatic celebration of the joys of music. Hooker was working as a janitor to support himself, imagining the big time, and this tune features keenly observed little moments of the Detroit black community that lend it a kind of vibrant life. It's almost like he's making it up as he goes along – name-dropping the Henry Swing Club and the people of the streets. Still spontaneous and delightful 60 years on. "I heard papa tell mama, let that boy boogie-woogie / it's in him, and it got to come out."

33. Ryan Adams, "Magnolia Mountain." I never really got into the Grateful Dead, but I can see their appeal. They're a tie-dyed take on the American dream, all optimism and groove and confidence. I don't hate 'em, but I never quite dug their scene, to use the lingo. So why should Ryan Adams' "Magnolia Mountain," a song crafted wholesale out of Deadhead ideas, ring so true with me? I guess it's a song that dreams wholeheartedly of the magic moment lurking, the sunshine around the corner – but the difference between the Dead and the Adams is that Adams' resigned, older-than-he-should-be voice tells us it's a beautiful scene that's never going to quite happen. Gorgeous imagery of bluebirds singing, love blooming counter with the repeated refrain of "Lie to me," and the dirty morning after. Musically, it's a fantastic song, full of soaring choruses and anthemic guitar. It's only when you eyeball it closer that you see the ache under every cliche, and that's what makes this Deadhead tribute so acute a summation of the promise and the impossibility of the American dream itself. Trippy, eh? "There ain't nothing but the truth up on the Magnolia Mountain/ Where nobody ever dies."

(*To recap: parts one, two, three, four; five; six; seven, eight, nine and egad, ten.)

No worries, mate!

I've been diligently learning my kiwi slang this past year, all the "yonks" and "dags" and "hoons." It's best not to have a vacant expression when someone says something unknown to you. But the one saying that I've taken to with reckless abandon is "No worries, mate." I believe it deserves worldwide importation. It's such a marvelous one-size-fits-all saying, one I find shooting out of my mouth at every opportunity at work lately. Page layout changed with 10 minutes to deadline? "No worries, mate." Accidentally put the picture of Gandhi in the story about the serial killer from Liverpool? "No worries, mate." Coffee machine on fire? "No worries, mate." Actually, I really need to say it a bit less often.

What's marvelous about the saying is that it can take on whatever tone you want. It can signal can-do optimism, resigned bravado, or just take the place of "uh, dude" in California-speak. It's actually a little bit emblematic of the Down Under spirit, where whining is far less accepted than it is in the US, where few tasks are seen as impossible. I wouldn't call it "resignation" really but "no worries mate" implies that we'll do it, we'll have a bit of a laugh and won't whinge (kiwi for whine) too much in the process. Not a bad philosophy, really. "She'll be right!"

(Once again I refer to to the fine Kiwi Slang guide so you too can speak like a kiwi.)

The eternal sickness

Ye gods, it never ends. Despite this being, weather-wise, one of the better winters we've experienced in years, feels like there's been at least one person in the house sick constantly these past 6 weeks or so. And most of the time it's been poor Peter. I'd always heard that when a kid started going to day care or school or whatever, he'd pick up a lot of bugs, but I swear, our (otherwise very nice) day care ought to be declared a biohazard unit with all the germs P's been grabbing since he started there last month. These past four days or so have been the worst yet. He started Saturday with a fever that just continued throughout the weekend, reducing our usually hyper little monkey to a zombie Peter who stared vacantly into space. When we took him to the doctor yesterday turned out he had a temperature of 104 F! He's now on various antibiotics treating his ear infection and was already looking a lot better last night. (And thank god again for that nearly-free medical care!)

I know this is all part and parcel of parenthood, and he certainly could have been a lot sicker, so we're grateful he'll be OK. Now that we're both working we get to balance it all – Avril took time off yesterday and the grandparents have been helping out, while today I'm working a late shift to mind the boy during the day. Hopefully he can return to day care tomorrow (and catch the next virus in line, sigh...)

Parents out there – it gets better, right? Or at least less sickly?

He yam what he yam: Popeye is back

OK, Popeye the Sailor Man is no spring chicken - he's 78 years old now. He's still strong to the finish because he eats his spinach, but admittedly, his days as a major cultural creative power are gone. He's a cartoon icon like Mickey Mouse – famous, but you're darned if you can remember what for exactly.

Well, all you need to do to learn what made Popeye world-famous is pick up the absolutely amazing new DVD set Popeye The Sailor Vol. 1: 1933-1938. Over four jam-packed discs, you'll find a platoon of the still-dazzling cartoons that drew in huge crowds nearly 70 years ago. These were some of the most popular cartoons ever made, spun out of the "Thimble Theatre" newspaper comic by E.C. Segar. Segar created Popeye as a throwaway character in 1929, but the rough-and-ready, hard-fighting, loyal and stubborn sailor man soon took over the whole strip. Segar's spunky 'toons have their own kind of populist genius, but it was the screen cartoons by the Fleischer brothers Max and Dave that made Popeye a global sensation. (Heck, a poll of theater owners back in the 1930s showed the sailor was even more popular than his big cartoon rival, Mickey Mouse.)

Fleischer Studios' cartoons were some of the earliest animation creations, and their work still looks great today. The animators experimented with the possibilities of cartoons, packing every frame with gags, surreal action and slapstick. The new DVD set collects the first 60 cartoons by the Fleischers, all cleaned up and restored, but even more important, there's a wealth of special features here.

This set has been called "the best animation package ever put out on DVD" by comics writer and historian Mark Evanier. It's a cornucopia of material not just on the sailor man, but on the early days of animation in general, and it offers weeks of viewing. Many of the shorts feature commentary by animation experts and even a few surviving artists who worked on the films. There are two major documentaries, one a look at the creation and history of Popeye on film, one on the roots of animation from 1900 to 1920. You've even got mini-documentaries on everything from the use of music in the shorts to Olive Oyl's femininity (in a short marvelously titled, "Me Fickle Goyl, Olive Oyl: The World's Least Likely Sex Symbol"). As if all that wasn't enough, several dozen primitive pre-Popeye animated shorts dating back to 1915 are included as bonuses -- raw cartoons more interesting as time capsules now, true, but still a fascinating look at where the medium began, and how far it came in just 15 years or so.

Of course, all 60 of these toons follow a rote basic plotline - Popeye encounters bad guy (usually Bluto), has fight, nearly loses until pulling out that magical can of spinach, cue thrilling music, final battle, roll credits. But it's the endless variations on this theme and the cunning artistry involved that make these animations so timeless. The figures quiver and dance, and the backgrounds are filled with endless sight gags. It's all a reminder that while hand-drawn animation seems a bit quaint these days, there's a homespun depth to it that modern stuff rarely has. It's all invested with the sense of novelty that these early animation pioneers must've felt -- they churned out one of these shorts every MONTH for years and yet they rarely cut corners and constantly came up with new ideas. It's all steeped in the gritty reality of the urban Depression years, somehow giving these outrageous cartoons a sense of reality that the more sanitized Disney product sometimes lacked. (Of course, there's a down side to the era, shown in the occasional dated politically incorrect short, such as the ones where Popeye beats up "red Indians.")

The shorts really start to come into their own when the gruff and growling Billy Costello was replaced by Jack Mercer, who became the voice of Popeye for nearly 50 years. Mercer added a great deal of charm to Popeye through his muttering asides and grouchy wit. And of course, with quirky, hilarious supporting characters like Olive Oyl, the crude Bluto, mooching Wimpy and infant Swee'Pea, there were plenty of personalities for Popeye to play off of in the cartoons.

The remastering is stunning. All but two of the shorts are black and white, but you'll barely notice, the images are so alive. Particularly amazing are the three-dimensional backgrounds created by the Fleischers' "Stereoptical" process, the details of which were long lost in previous muddy video releases. Two color "feature length" (or 20-minute) cartoons, "Popeye The Sailor meets Sindbad The Sailor" and "Popeye The Sailor Meets Ali Baba's 40 Thieves," are also included. The colors on these pop right off the screen.

It's a shame it all had to end – during World War II, Fleischer Studios shut down (but not before also producing some legendary "Superman" cartoons as well). Popeye continued to romp through tales by Paramount and other studios, but they lacked that special combination of humor and invention that these earliest adventures had. By the 1970s, there was some truly dire material being pumped out with the Popeye name on it. It's a shame – because although they're nearly a century old, the material in these toons is still fresh and vital. If you wonder why Popeye became a household name, there's 60 cartoons' worth of reasons right here.

If you're any kind of fan of animation, Popeye or, heck, even spinach, this set is a must-have. It's one of the best DVD collections I've ever seen and a model for re-presenting vintage material with all the bells and whistles our modern era can sum up.