Thereafter, TV One revisited, like a dog returning to its vomit, the Michael Jackson circus every night, for significant periods, for the next 11 nights.
Ian Bayly, I love your work.
Author: Richard
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Read: The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith
It may have been a mistake to read this right after White Teeth. The Autograph Man is on a completely different scale to its predecessor, the narrative taking only a couple of weeks and centering around one main character, Alex Li-Tandem, an autograph collector who loses his father in the opening chapter.
Alex lacks charm and his obsession with film star Kitty Alexander is second only to his obsession with himself. Set in London (Mountjoy), the action takes us to New York and back again in search of… something. I never really engaged with Alex, and therefore never really engaged with the novel. There are enjoyable moments, like the set piece where Alex attempts to drown his sorrows by drinking his way through the alphabet:
Beer turned up again in brand name form for F, the spiteful, familiar Gin followed by Hot Toddy, made by Tommy who (with unguessed at athleticism) vaulted over the bar to make it.
The unsatisfying jumbled narrative attempts to bring together the autograph world and Jewish mysticism, and its’ main characters lack of charm, with a large dollop of pointless supporting cast members never pulled me completely. Hard to recommend.
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Dining – Q @ The Westin
My main was the Rack of South Island Wild Boar with a roast apple. It was a little bit chewy in places, but nothing to do with how it was cooked, which was beautifully. I got three generous sized ‘racks’ and a bit of pork belly, which didn’t last too long. Birthday Girl went for the Baked Whole Baby Snapper with lime and coriander which, again, was cooked to perfection. Few bones in that one though, as BG pointed out, sometimes it’s easier to get fish with bones in, then at least you can see them to eat around.
Turns out I had room for desert – Warm Sticky Date Pudding with Butterscotch Sauce and Vanilla Bean Ice Cream, played straight down the middle and VERY yummy.
It’s a great looking restaurant, and a very nice room to eat in as it’s divided up into lots of half a dozen tables, creating an intimate feeling, even though there were a couple of other large groups in at the same time. We had a great view of the kitchen too. The service was friendly, with great timing. Our fellow diners were a fairly entertaining lot too, we walked in past a couple having a huge row, who it turned out were sitting a couple of tables over. They didn’t let it spoil their night. Just as we were leaving an Australian couple turned up for a late meal about as drunk as you can be without falling over. ‘Don’t pressure me’ said she when the waiter had been back to their table for about the fourth time. He handled them very nicely too.
Recommended. dineout.co.nz reckons the toilets are spectacular too, but we didn’t check them out. Gutted.
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Upgrading is such sweet sorrow
Three and a half years ago I bought one of my most favorite gadgets ever – my first iPod. 4th generation, 20GB, that vanilla white.We had a lot of fun together. The iTrip meant I could play it over any radio, and when I changed cars, the new stereo had a cable to plug it in directly. It got some larfs on the TUANZ blog. I loved it so I replaced the hard drive and then the battery, scoffing at the next gen photo and video-capable iPods. My greyscreen, text only iPod did all I needed and wanted it to – play music.
The beginning of the end was a simple numbers game – I have about 55GB of music, which doesn’t go into a 20GB iPod. Shuffling music became a pain – what if I NEEDED to hear Don’t Stop Believing and it wasn’t loaded? You can see my dilemma.
Then came a music format re-think. I had about 200 CDs, only 15-20 of which we actually listen to. All other music came courtesy of iPods through the line in. All those CDs are burned to MP3 and in iTunes, so what do I need those bulky cases taking up space for, right? So it was off to Real Groovy with a big box and a funny feeling, trading in all those years of collecting for cash (it took great willpower and cool reminder of the point of the exercise to not take the higher ‘trade’ offer).
So those CDs and a little extra turned into a 5th Generation, 120GB iPod Classic (Grey. They don’t do white in these). It’s my #3 music collection backup, after the Mac and external hard drive. It does a few more cool things old Whitey wasn’t built for, like storing and showing all my photos, and playing video, through the TV, even (if a little grainy). I don’t LOVE it as much as iPod #1, OK it’s smaller, but its edges seem unnecessarily sharp, and the click wheel is taking some getting used to. It also cavalierly created a new time sucking task irresistible to the obsessive/compulsive music fan – collecting album art. Ta.
Still, I like it. A lot, lack of firewire syncing aside. If and when I get me mitts on an iPhone, the new iPod will essentially become a backup hard drive with bells on. Old faithful is out to pasture, sitting faithfully, loaded with an OSX emergency startup disc, and a bit of music ready to call on when needed. It’s hard to say goodbye sometimes, eh.
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Read: JPod by Douglas Coupland
What is it with writers putting themselves in their books? Brett Easton Ellis went from being a kind of bored god to me to totally frickin insane (in a bad way) in Lunar Park, and Douglas Coupland did much the same by sauntering into JPod in an exercise in twee pointlessness. It’s a sequal of sorts to Microserfs, one of my favourite novels, but where ‘serfs has feeling and characters that seem like *actual people*, Jpod has pointlessness and a bunch of totally un-charming cardboard cut outs. The narrative gets more and more lazy as it goes through and just feels like a first draft, complete with gimmicky typography stunts. Really disappointing. Not at all recommended.
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Read: White Teeth by Zadie Smith
This was kind of like reading Michael Chabon for the first time – I couldn’t wait to finish so I could rush out and read everything else she’d done. Set in London, White Teeth bucks its way over a hundred years or so to tell the story of three London families. But that’s kind of like calling The Simpsons a sitcom about a family of five. All kinds of little non sequiturs pop up, and Smith jumps out of the narrative regularly with a snappy metaphor or observation just to make it clear she’s way smart. You know she’d be great company over a pint. It’s a roller coaster ride that gathers up all the threads neatly just when it seems totally impossible. Recommended.
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On the road again
Here’s me on my way out of Telecom Wholesale – a wicked, wicked place to work.
No, my photoshopping skills are no better at work than at play 🙂
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Shut your maaaf
via B3ta