A Bloody Good Night Out

Last night I travelled to Palmerston North to see the bloodworks theatre collective's rendition of Dracula. It was staged in an old power station - a large brick building, built in 1923. The machinery, dials and gantries and so on are all still in there, and were used during the performance.
In short: very cool. A nice chopped down version of the story, told in vignettes. Incredibly impressive acrobatics from several cast members, most notably Dracula himself. Some very pretty costumes, some great use of percussion (who knew disused Power Plant machinery could be so musical?). Sugoi!

Long Version: We started off the night milling around in an antechamber, decorated with candles, bowls of garlic, and animal skulls. We weren't allowed any further in as they had to assemble the audience and give us an OSH warning, plus some instructions on where to go and what to expect.

We then filed through dark corridors into the main plant space. There was white material draped around the room to form a kind of indoor tent, into which the audience filed. The first act was an audience standing affair. We formed a circle of sorts, around the 2 youngest cast members who were seated in the middle of the space. They were 2 young girls - probably around 10 years old - wearing Victorian dresses, playing patty-cake and singing a spooky nursery rhyme. THey had cool mauled looking dolls as well, which they used to do a kind of precis of the play, before walking out through the audience and out of sight (black curtains had been used to create 'backstage' areas around the room - this allowed the actors to sneak into the room from various points, and make their exits too).

The first act, with Jonathan Harker arriving in Transylvania, being tormented by vampires, and the count embarking for London, was all standing. It also featured some awesome stunt work - people climbing along gantries, Dracula hanging upside down from a chain 'sleeping', some graceful leaps up onto things and down from things. Very nice.

Following this, the tent swept away over our heads, being gathered by crew members, and two long rolls of material were draped the length of the room (much bigger without the tent). They formed an impression of sails, whilst the Captain delivered lines from the gantry. The two long cloth drapes were billowed by stage hands, whilst the captain swayed from side to side. A very cool effect.

Cue smoke machine, and we were all ushered to seats around 3 edges of the room for the remainder of the play. Highlights of the rest of the play included:

Acrobatics: From people climbing onto and up and down things, leaping around, choreographed fighting to cartwheels and people being lifted around, and the coolest stunt I have ever seen involving a steep staircase's rails.

A freaky minute long complete blackout (with vampire characters moving around and hissing in the dark).

A lunatic dangling above us in a cage.

More percussive use of the machinery around us.

If you ever get a chance to see this production, I highly recommend it. Of course, the venue was a huge factor in its coolness, but the people behind it are highly talented folks, and who knows - maybe they'll do it again next year?

Pacifiers, Umbilical Cords, and Blankies

This week there are exams at my school, and I had to supervise a group of Y13 students. Seventh formers. This is their 3rd year of doing exams, so they pretty much know the drill. I was pleased to see that none of them talked during the exam, or tried to pass notes. There were 2 students, however, who had the same issue.
Over the course of 7 school days, these students will have 5 or 6 exams. That's about 10 to 15 hours during which they have to be without their cellphones. Apparently, that's too much for some students. I caught 2 kids who kept their cellphones in their pockets despite multiple instructions and warnings that they had to either put their cellphones in their bags at the front of the class, or put them in a box on the teacher's desk. Then one kid had the audacity to try to text someone in the middle of the exam!

Surprisingly, the HOD didn't look kindly on the offence, and the girl in questions is not going to have her exam marked. She gets a big fat zero.

The puzzling thing is, that despite being told repeatedly that they aren't allowed to have phones in exams, kids still persist in doing it. They just can't bear to be separated from their phones. I may be an old fogey, but I just don't get it.

More Inspiring Tales of Beauty

"Joe wasn't really named Joe. His real name was Simon. But he was more hillbilly than anyone anybody knew. He was your perfect impression. Ragged straw hat on a head with no fewer than 6 teeth, faded overals with no teeshirt covering a giant beer gut, a corn feild, and a rocking chair on hisdeck in which he sat drinking from an old jug labled 'XXXX'. And with an appearance like that everybody thought he was better suited to the name Joe. Or Cletus, But Joe seemed to stick."
I think I have a new concept for my upcoming Orpheus character ;)

Gems of student writing:

"His brain was being disembowelled!"
"Speeding over the snowy plain's, in a custom military hovercrafts towards a very important Recon mission where valuable U.S. scientists that had been researching minerals and substances that the United State's had been looking for, for years. The Scientists had been taken hostage by some French terrorist troops who had been wanting their research for themselves."

Sheer poetry. Heartwarming and inspiring.

Lovely Weekend

Well, that was nice. This weekend Debbie and I played host to my sister Lynda and her husband Gregg. It was a surprise visit organised by Gregg. Lynda knew they were taking a trip, but didn't know where until they arrived at the airport. It was a very nice weekend.
We ate dinner in town on Friday, and saw '50 First Dates', a movie which I quite enjoyed. The romanceyness of it was quite charming, and the humour was pretty on the money also. Most enjoyable.

We also went bowling, went to Lindale, wandered around central Wellington, and spent some chilled out time at home. Debbie and I were pretty damn tired at times, but it was a lot of fun.

Exciting bowling story: Whilst at the bowling alley, they had a few prizes to give away. All you had to do was bowl a ball between the legs, facing away from the pins, and knock over 7 or more pins. lynda gave it a try, and knocked down 7 with her first ball. The prize was a free game. I gave it a try, and guttered the first ball. Lynda had made it look so easy! However, my second ball through the legs was my third best ball of the game - 9 pins! I only managed one strike and one spare during the game, and both of those were after the through-the-legs shot. It got my mojo going :) Debbie also managed 7 pins, on her second ball through the legs. It was a lot of fun, and we ended up with 4 free games as prizes!

200 Flaming Popstare

Our scene opens in a green, wooded valley at night. The valley is quite steep, with a meandering river at its nadir. The vegetation is lush, and in places well manicured. There are large, wonderfully nice houses dotted along the valley. To our left, the two sides of the valley come close together, and the river forms a small, reasonably gentle waterfall. To our right, the valley opens up into a beautiful vista. On our side of the valley, there is a road which winds along the side of the hill. Along this road, at regular intervals, are brand new villas. The lights are on in every single villa – every light in the building, from the porch lights to bathrooms to kitchens. Our side of the valley is lit up like a Christmas tree. On the opposite side of the valley the houses are larger, and older, and more spread out. It’s almost as though they are ‘old money’ houses, and we are on a brand new development.
An American accented voice floats over the scene: “Here we see a row of newly developed houses. Of course, the neighbours across the valley are not pleased to have their peace disturbed by these new houses, but as the river below forms a border between these 2 countries, there is little they can do about it. The lights here blaze day and night, advertising the properties to potential buyers.” Imagine a tacky ‘lifestyles of the rich and famous’ voice-over.

The camera swings round to focus on the new houses. A pair of figures is coming down the road on foot, passing in and out of the pools of light surrounding each house. There is a tall, determined looking young woman, and a man. They are both dressed in dark clothing, and are carrying bulky bags. They look somewhat like spies.

There is a small flash of light across the valley from one of the houses. The woman looks up at the house, flashes a torch beam twice in response. They are indeed agents, hired by a disgruntled neighbour to send a message to the property developer. The property developers house is the last along the valley road.

These international spies have flown into the country on their mission, despite their employer being in shouting distance of the developer. They are professionals, and they are armed. The woman breaks into the developers house while the man waits outside. Inside, the woman takes a deep breath, then disables the alarm system and cameras. She crosses to the kitchen table, and leaves a note. The note says that the developer has powerful enemies, and he needs to turn off the lights on his ‘for-sale’ houses, or dire consequences will follow. The spy-girl cautiously heads upstairs, where she leaves a note on the developer’s bedside table. The note reads, “We’re serious.”

As she exits the building, she bumps into another woman. The woman is taller, with dark hair and small horns protruding from her forehead. The dark haired woman is dressed in business attire, and is holding a small leather attache case.

“Yeah, they got me. But it’s not so bad,” she says. It is obvious that she was once a colleague of spy-girl.

Meanwhile, down the road, the male spy is looking worriedly back along the road. There is a distant figure moving in the darkness.

A random tall man in a coat appears beside the spy, who is now me.

“They’ve found us. He’s out there, and there are more coming…”

I squint into the darkness, only to see a bazooka shell flying toward me. I dodge to one side, and there is a massive explosion from behind me. One of the beautiful villas begins to burn, half the front of the building in ruins.

I raise a huge machinegun, start firing into the darkness. There is a tiny figure, a darker shadow against the black skyline. More bazooka shells fly towards me. I lift my own bazooka, and take a shot. Two bazooka shells fly toward each other in the darkness, collide, and explode.

I turn to spy-girl to check if she’s OK, and she has become a demon. She is also Britney Spears, flaming. She now has horns. The other demon woman stands beside her, holding a contract of some kind. She smiles and disappears in a puff of smoke.

Demon Britney Spears is unhurt, but is on fire. She looks over my shoulder at the assassin out in the darkness, and the hundreds of U.S. soldiers who have started to pour into the valley on foot. Most carry machine guns with huge night-sights, one is carrying a piece of artillery, with the wheels still attached. Random guy and I start shooting wildly, knowing that there is no way we can win. We are vastly outnumbered.

Abruptly the tide turns, as Demon Britney Spears runs off into the night, attacking the U.S. soldiers. She is supernaturally fast, flaming, and vicious. She is also able to split into about 200 mirror images of herself. Random guy and I continue with suppressing fire, as demon Britneys flit across the hillside cutting down U.S. troops, trails of fire flashing bright in the night. The camera pulls back and up, the flaming figures like tiny burning ants in the night, the lights of the houses popping and twinkling out as bullets rip into the villas. The dream fades into darkness, and is done.

Talented Wee Monkeys

Just saw a couple of Y10 kids deliver speeches in a speech competition type deal. Y10 means they were probably 14, maybe 15 years old. Damn they were good. The first speech, all about zoos, was pretty well written and delivered. Talked about pros and cons, actually seemed to have some thought behind it, and was delivered with way more confidence and flair than I could manage today.
The second speech, on wanting things you can't have, was not quite as thoroughly researched or cleverly written, but the delivery was outstanding. How a 14 year old can possibly be that good at delivering a dramatic performance escapes me. Quite the opposite of film acting too, which is more subsumed and subtle a beast. This was in-your-face, full intensity stage acting styles, and it was very impressive. I am quite envious of these talented youngsters. When I was at school, I felt like I knew what was required, but was generally incapable of delivering when it came to speeches. I had one or two speechifying successes, but mostly I went with what was safe, dull, and easy to do. Pushing oneself leads to failure as often as not, and failure in front of a whole class of your peers is one of the worst situations little teenage me could imagine. Now I get to make an ass of myself in front of classrooms full of kids on a daily basis, so I tend not to sweat it so much ;)

Monitoring Language

I find that I have to strongly partition my language use, to set myself very distinct speech patterns for different situations. The result is that some people don't have any idea that I am capable of profanity, and others may have no idea that there is anything resembling a brain in my head. Of course, the latter is much less common nowadays - I have mostly left my wayward youth behind.
When at work, in front of a class, I am very careful with my language. In fact, I probably talk a little like I write, which is to say fairly formally. I apparently also have an accent (as in a not kiwi accent) when teaching. Whether this is just the kids being unable to comprehend how someone can talk using multi-syllabic words, or whether I do in fact channel my 'respectable' persona via some psuedo-British mentality, who knows. Debbie never mentioned me doing a funny British accent when she observed me teaching, so I'm guessing it's just kids being weird.

It does mean that kids have no comprehension of the fact that I'm capable of using other kinds of language. They even seem surprised when I know that they're being rude when they describe another student's shoes as being really 'Rangi', or Hillary Duff as 'serious beating material'.

Silly little kiddies.

Anyways, I control my speech very carefully, which makes it much easier for me not to accidentally let fly with a string of profanity when the little darlings are being, well, childlike.

Hitchhiker's Guide!

Having recently read that there is already a third HHGG radio series, which is currently awaiting release, I am a very excited chap. I absolutely adore the first 2 radio series (and the TV series and the LPs and the books), and am thrilled to know that some time soonish, assuming legal hurdles can be overcome, the third radio series will air.
I found out about it here, I think, though the format looked a little different yesterday. Lots of excitment at the moment with regards to HHGG, including the official blog which started today.

The movie is evidently filming at the moment, slated for release next year. The picture of the test Marvin is sooo cute!

Man, I'm way too excited. Must take a few deep breaths, and realise that the release of these gems may be years away...

The evils of Social Studies

I know that a lot of students don't really think that Social Studies is a real subject. In fact, my Social Studies curriculum course last year featured a whole week of trying to convince us that Social Studies was a valid, real course. This was convincing people who had paid to become teachers and take the course - preaching to the choir? Not really. Most of the people in Social Studies were wanting to be some other flavour of teahcer: English, Languages, History, Geography, Economics, PE etc. There was a requirement to study 2 curriculum areas, so a lot of people ended up in Social Studies as a default option.
I was not aware of the full effect of Social Studies until I read an essay from a student on the importance of Role Models for students. He mentioned that times were tough, and that teens needed people to look up to. As an example, he wrote the following:

"Due to Social Studies, increasing numbers of teens are abusing alcohol, drugs, and getting depressed..."

And learning about Social Decision Making and Inquiry processes too I suppose ;)

The Genius of Bill Bailey

I'm currently listening to a very, very silly parody of Portishead by British Comedian Bill Bailey. It's an mp3 I found here, along with a few other bits and pieces. The 2 episodes of 'I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue' are 25 minutes long each, and are kind of amusing in an old fashioned, BBC radio sort of way. They really don't feel like modern shows, but then the audience is probably octogenarians. Tim Brooke Taylor accompanying the Pet Shop Boys record of Go West is pretty painful. It starts out like bad Karaoke, then they turn the record off, so you just have the bad singing, then they bring the record back for a bar to see how out of time the singer is. Bill Bailey doing Ziggy Stardust is also an oddity. He does 'sing' the guitar bits, which is mildly amusing, but on the whole, I kind of went huh? The sound effects charade of 'Neighbours from Hell' was unusual also. Being a wireless show, they basically acted out a skit about organising a street party with the neighbours 'Old Nick', Mr and Mrs Luicifer at number 666, and Adolf and Eva being inside wathching Third Reich from The Sun. The other team then had to guess the title of the TV show.
Then there was this - any guesses as to the title of this film:
"Who's that fellow over there?"
"He's half Sri-Lankan, and half Czech."

I'm back home, too, having braved a morning at school. I'm getting a little tired of being sick, truth be told, but the not being at school isn't so bad ;)

Excellently Bad English

I've just been reading about Kushiro, in Hokkaido, Japan. It's in the far North East of Japan, where it is snowy in Winter, where there are lots of cranes and protected wetlands, near the lake that I was reverse-named for (I stole its kanji for my own when I was in Japan) - Mashuu-ko. Kushiro is the new home of kiwigirl, a Wellingtonian I don't believe I've ever met. She moved to Japan a couple of months ago, and is blogging about her experiences on stonesoup.
In my readings, I have renewed my love of Japanese English. The average Japanese person's English is vastly better than my feeble Japanese, but phrases like the following still bring a smile to my face and a warm glow to my heart:

* Old Ainu of a country specification immaterial cultural property is performed.

* Japanese display grand-prix is awarded by the outstanding exhibition article and the outstanding exhibition method. City burying cultural-property investigation center.

* Shireba Cape(Car 60 minutes, 46km from Kushiro station)
Beautiful flower will bloom in the upper part of a cape in 6-July, and a blue sea and a green blue prairie world spread.

I want to see the blue prairie world!

To learn more, visit Kushiro.com

Honour Watch

Just saw this on CNN. After about 15 minutes of news on damage control over prisoner abuse in Iraq, they finished with a new segment: Honour Roll of Fallen Heroes or some such thing. Basically, they mentioned that 3 more soldiers had died in Iraq, and proceeded to spend 30 seconds talking about one of them. He'd married his high school sweetheart just after he found out he was going to Iraq (they pushed forward the wedding), and he'd arranged to have a bouquet of flowers sent to her if he got killed while over there. There were glossy photos of the soldier looking very dapper in his uniform, and shots of his hometown and sweet blonde widow.
It seemed slightly incongruous, as the news before about Iraq was quite gritty and explicit. Following it up with glossy, obvious sentimentality didn't quite gel. A sad story to be sure, but it seemed kinda tacky following on from 'real news'.

Birthday Bloggage

Today, I am 28 years old. I am also sick, which mars the occasion a little. On the plus side, I am not at school today, having set up activities yesterday which would make it relatively easy to take today off. I felt really pants yesterday, and knew I wouldn't be going in to school today.
Birthdays are good. As are days off. I particularly like the luxury of being able to sit in front of a heater, eat whatever random food I happen to be craving (Rogan Josh Tuna Toasted Sandwich for breakfast), and not having to look awake or talk coherently. Very nice.

On another note, I saw Hellboy this weekend, and on a rating from cool to awesome, it was off the frickin' scale! . (Sorry, that very StrongBadesque phrase was used by a fashion guru on the E! channel last night, and it almost made Debbie choke to death with laughter). It was a cool, cool movie, and it had something I've been hanging out to see for years : a really cool looking Cthulhuesque apocalypse scene.

Driving in from Lower Hutt to Wellington on a daily basis, I had a beautiful view of the harbour, and the town of Wellington nestled into the hills. An incredibly beautiful, charming vista. I've lost count of the number of times I thought to myself, "It would be so cool to see a movie where dread Cthulhu rose out of the water, on a bright sunny day like this, and laid waste to this city. Obviously he'd need a welcoming committee of cultists on the docks (who'd be the first to be crushed), and he might not destroy the whole city - just a few selected buildings as a he cut a swathe to his mysterious destination. Man, that would rock."

For some reason, in my head, the movie would be a freaky 3D or total immersion style film, really realistic and huge in scale. Don't get me wrong - I love Wellington. I don't want Wellington to be destroyed. I'd just love to see Wellington take a pounding from a Great Old One. Sigh...

So anyhoos, without giving too much away, there are cool Cthulhuesque gods in Hellboy, and they blew me away. I will be seeing this movie again, at the cinema and on DVD when it comes out. It is da bomb.

Are My Cheeks Red?

Hee hee. I just got caught talking to myself. Well, to be more accurate, I just got caught having a conversation with an imaginary parent. I have round 2 of parent-teacher interviews next week, and whilst in the shower was thinking of what the hell to tell some of the parents. I'd just gotten out of the shower, and was running through a conversation in my head, complete with gestures and facial expressions, when I noticed a cheeky Debbie grinning at me from the doorway.
Busted!

I'm quite happy with the whole talking to myself thing - I do it all the time. It is, however, a little silly being caught mid-gesture fully rehearsing/acting out a conversation. So - I ponder the extent to which other people talk to themselves when they think nobody's watching?

Fundraising that rocks

I really don't like people phoning during dinner to beg money for charities. I also don't like the way people holding buckets, standing on streetcorners make me feel guilty. I have nothing against the charities, quite the opposite, but I don't like being made to feel guilty for not supporting them.
However, there is a form of fundraising that I highly approve of, and that is food based fundraising. I'm quite happy to pay $2 for a chocolate bar if half of that is going to some worthy cause. I'm a noble man - I'll eat a sausage in bread with oodles of sauce and onions if it helps the Japanese students get closer to a trip to Tokyo. I'm right there on the front line, eating my way toward a happier world. Sausage sizzles are a greasy highway to goodness.

Man, now I feel guilty and greedy. I'll have to go find a bucket-bearing charity worker, and buy them a sausage or something...

Deja-vu and Old Man Pants

I ran an RPG scenario (Amnesia) at WARGS last night for the fourth or fifth time, having not run it for a little over a year. It was an odd feeling, being back in that head-space again, with the same characters and same events, just with different faces and voices driving them. Made for a very strange feeling - just a niggling tickle at the back of my brain, saying "you've been here before - but it wasn't quite the same".
The game went well, as the players were all very cool. It was perhaps not the best of the 4 runs through (last session of Kapcon (Wellington RPG Convention) has just the right crazy energy for this scenario), but it was very good. Some moments were better than any of the other sessions. But it all had that lingering feeling of deja-vu.

Which brings me to a question: How often do people experience feelings of deja-vu? Is it a once-in-a-blue-moon type feeling? Or is it more common? For myself, I tend to get it in patches. My brain will click onto deja-vu mode, and for a week I'll get that odd sensation once or twice a day. Then it'll go away again...

Old Man Pants : sarumata is Japanese for monkey pants (saru = monkey). They are baggy white thermal pants, the kind you really ought to wear trousers over. Apparently elderly Japanese men are known to wander about in what is pretty much long underwear, all year round. And also to have a monkey-like, bow-legged gait. Hence, sarumata.

Collaborative Artwork

I've been doing a lot of drawing recently (after an inactive phase). Specifically, I've been drawing portraits of Victorian characters. That is to say, cartoonesque portraits. I have no real art skills, just cobbled together comic drawing styles.
I was struggling for a long time with a picture of a Victorian villain. Debbie had something in mind which she wanted me to draw, and I was struggling to realise it. I came up with a few perfectly adequate villains, but nothing which matched the character Debbie had created (an NPC for a roleplaying game). Finally, after several days of toil, Debbie took a pencil and sketched what she was after. The sketch wasn't perfect, but it did perfectly capture the feel and shape of the villain's face. So, having tried and failed to emulate her style, I decided to ink her sketch. The result was extremely cool - Debbie's picture, shaped and given detail by my hand. A truly collaborative piece of artwork. Hooray!!!

We've co-written a fair number of things over the years, but never co-drawn. We're both keen to try this again some time, though the right occasion has not yet arisen.

This entry brought to you by the letters a, and b, and probably c, and, well, most of the alphabet, except maybe x and z. And q? And the theme for today, for those of you who crave such things, is cooperation

Crazy Dream Picture

Back when I was living in Japan, I had a friend named Greg. He was a Canadian, and was in the process of slowly breaching the dress code at work by growing his hair long. He also grew a cool handlebar moustache / goatee thing, and started to look a little like a biker, but that's beside the point.
Debbie and I used to be able to sleep a lot. We didn't start work until 1pm many days (we worked until 9pm), which meant plenty of sleeping in in the morning. I have all my coolest dreams after the hour of 8am, at least the coolest ones I can remember.

Having moved house recently, I was going through a box of stuff, trying to sort it into useful junk and useless junk, when I came across a pitcure.

It was something I drew at around 11am, having just woken from a dream. It's an image of Greg tying his hair back, extreme sports style. The funny thing is that it is a picture of a picture I dreamt about. I had a dream that I was sitting at the kitchen table, looking at a cartoon I'd just drawn of Greg tying his hair back. So I drew it, chuckled quietly to myself, showed it to Debbie (but not to Greg) and put it into the back of my drawing pad. Then, a couple of years later, I found it again.

I make a happy, nostalgic sigh...

hotel fred

So, I kept bugging Debbie about things I thought she should blog about, or random stuff I wanted her to add to her blog. She eventually forced me to start this. I'm not entirely sure that I have enough to say to warrant the existence of a blog, but what the hey. I'll give it a go.
So, one of the things I wanted Debbie to post was a link to Hotel Fred. This site contains a whole bunch o stuff by Roger Langridge, a kiwi living in the UK who writes/draws extremely cool, silly comics. His mini-comics (available in pdf for from his website) were some of the comics that got me into drawing. I especially remember 'Piano', not because it was the best comic I'd ever seen, but because it was free. The concept of someone drawing and producing comics to give away was a pretty cool idea - it appealed to the bohemian side I wished I had. So, in a hopelessly crap way, I emulated Mr Langridge (and Mr Karl Wills, the main motivator for me to get into drawing comics). And the results are, well, resulty.