Pundit

I've just come from Eden Park on the morning of the Rugby World Cup final, and I've got to say it was a treat to be there in the silence and calm, knowing that in 12 hours the place will be a cauldron of hope, nerves and excitement.

A slight clammy feeling. General anxiety. A sense that something is missing or out of place. Heightened frustration or even distress.

When Governor William Hobson famously declared "He iwi tahi tatou" (We are all one people) to the rangatira who signed the Treaty of Waitangi, he left an awkward legacy. I imagine he meant well and all, perhaps as he saw it merely offering some noble words of colonial unity.

Auckland, you've got to say, is looking fine. The new art gallery, the souped-up zoo, the new shared-space roads with people walking amongst the cars, the busy Britomart precinct, and the North Wharf, with its funky, Amsterdam-style bridge and people-friendly open spaces.

I am not good at self-promotion, but I am going to give it a shot anyway, because if you can't write about your new book with the pretty pink cover on your very own blog, there probably isn't anywhere you can safely do so.

My management study only extended to a few papers; it never amounted to a diploma, worse luck. But one thing I learnt was that management speak was a pile of... gobbledygook, sprinkled with a few diamonds.

One of my favourites was 'always hire people smarter than you'.

Last week, I was one of the usual suspects rounded up for a talk-fest on the Future of Public Television in New Zealand at Victoria University. Working up my own presentation on “Sustaining Local Content”, I became more and more depressed. I might as well share my misery.

You know what? Alasdair Thompson needs to figure out when to stop talking, because his array of apologies and explanations over the past 24 hours has only offended more and more people. But the man has a point. Or two.

"Save the life of my child, cried the desperate mother. Oh what's becoming of the children? People asking each other."

Lucy Worsely, in the Guardian Weekly, 

Review all the horse trading between the successive governments and the television networks over the last eight years, and you have to conclude that free-to-air, advertiser driven television networks cannot deliver on the taxpayers’ investment to see more New Zealand content on TV.

I got too busy to post about this yesterday, but the debate that barrister and journalist Steven Price and I began here on Pundit last week got an airing on TVNZ7's Court Report. You can watch last night's episode here. I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Okay Punditeers, we have two three-day passes to WOMAD (worth $458) sitting on the desk collecting dust. They could be yours, just comment on this post telling us why you want to go to WOMAD.

We are particularly keen to hear from Christchurch readers who could do with a treat.

My mother got an email last night from an old school friend reassuring Mum that she was safe, adding in lament, "our lovely city has gone forever". It seems we have lost what the New York Times has been calling "a graceful 19th-century city".

The below originally was a comment over on Imperator Fish, in response to Scott's claim that the All Whites were worthy recipients of the Halberg Award.

Tool. Iggy Pop. Primal Scream. This year's Big Day Out big names have all been doing the business for at least 20 years. Or in Iggy's case, a whole lot longer.

Adding the all-important local, younger flavour are The Naked and Famous, Kids of 88, Bic Runga and Shihad, who will perform every song from their 1999 album The General Electric.

Gay New Zealanders have now had the right to earn state recognition of our rainbow-coloured relationships for a little more than five years. In that time, a lot of the predictions made before civil union legislation have been proved wrong.

I like museums. I celebrated my wedding in one - in the Otago Museum's "Animal Attic", to be precise. And now I have a toddler daughter, I'm rediscovering the joy of puttering around the exhibits looking at things like 18th Century Japanese pottery, dioramas of pre-colonial Maori village life and stuffed rabbits.

The ironies just continue to pile up in this saga.

On the first night, we saw unionists outside the TVNZ mothership demonstrating, demanding that Paul Henry be sacked for his racist statements in the workplace.

Paul Henry is a bully who should be fired forthwith. His latest insult aimed at the Governor General is an insult to all Indians, and to all New Zealanders of whatever background who don’t wish to be identified with such racist abuse.

His employer, TVNZ, should also be held to account for their ongoing defence of the indefensible.

It seems hard to believe now, with the benefit of hindsight and the kleig lights of media attention directed on the case for the past three years, that we ever believed no responsible adult knew what was happening to Rotorua toddler Nia Glassie before her death.

The national shock after her 2007 murder was palpable. How could this happen? Here? With no-one noticing?

When it comes to fashion, calling me a layman would probably be generous. Well, maybe by the standards of most bloggers, I'm not that bad, and I know my Ralph Lauren from my Marc Jacobs, but I don't pay much attention to labels and have never been to Fashion Week. Until yesterday, that is.

Let me declare from the start, I got the idea and some help for this column from a male. It was not just from any man, it was from a Marxist - my colleague from the Herald on Sunday, Matt McCarten - who does actually understand the free market.

Unlike pork, apparently, and mushrooms, and back bench MPs, vegetables will not survive on this regime: feed ‘em shit, and keep ‘em in the dark.

I love an innovator, but I'm not sure why Pam Corkery's brothel for women is supposed to be progress.

Apparently I write like David Foster Wallace. I know, it came as a surprise to me too.

I guess one should never be surprised by the hypocrisy, sexism, and downright inhumanity of those who dwell in the higher echelons of the publishing, literary and art worlds. It's the same all over the world.

Does it make it better, or worse, to confide that the black-and-white habitué and I watch Glee, curled up in the firelight, glass in hand? (The drop in the glass is for me, and my friend sings, purrfectly.)

Samuel Beckett wrote “Waiting for Godot” after the Second World War, when he had been settled in Paris for twenty years or so. He had become completely bilingual, and the play as first performed at the Théâtre de Babylone in 1953 was almost certainly first conceived and written in French.

And that, my compatriots, is why sporting rights – and sports teams – have been central to Rupert Murdoch's success in building several television empires. A sit-com or drama can engross us, current affairs can change the way we think, but only sport is electric, as we saw in South Africa early this morning.

Last night I watched Tim Wilson slap a 600-pound woman on the stomach.

As I snuffled, and croaked, and rattled my bones, from bed to bath to couch — as I took in (quite happily, it is true) pap romcom film fare, and stepped in thin sun to the shop for fresh air

Our son thinks he is a dog. It stands to reason--his best friend is a Jack Russell-mini schnauzer cross named Scout who has lived with us for two years. Our son is only 14 months old, so as far as he is concerned Scout is part of what it means to be home. He is a tail to pull and a beard to tug and very often a source of fulsome baby giggles.

The white on black headline and the giant pull quote made it look more like a British red-top tabloid than a quality broadsheet, but the Sunday Star Times' front page had an element of old-school journalism about it that would have impressed Tom Wolfe or even F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Paul Holmes’ sixtieth birthday bash was the best party I’ve been at in years, but regrettably I can’t add any juicy detail to the reported contretemps involving Simon Dallow, Wendyl Nissen and Gilda Kirkpatrick.

As inevitable as it was, the axing of TV3's breakfast programming was disappointing news.

Friends I have heard from wonder what will be cut next. Television New Zealand has been undergoing (seemingly perpetual) austerity measures. Radio New Zealand has been asked to cut costs. And TV3 and its sister radio stations are under the thumb of their private equity firm owner.

I was at a journalist's get together recently, and promised to write this post to a group of senior journalists who were fed up with a tradition in New Zealand media that is far from world best practice. You couldn't get away with it in the US or Britain, but it's common practice here. And at the grassroots, many journalists have had enough.

Sunday morning, I listened to National Radio's wall-to-wall coverage of the impending Tsunami for a couple of hours.

Loyal Pundit readers, we want to say thank you. We have two three-day passes to WOMAD to give away--for the uninitiated that's the World of Music and Dance, a music festival that takes place in Taranaki every year.

The 2010 lineup includes Ladi 6, Calexico and House of Shem among others. To be in the draw, leave a comment below and we will randomly pick a winner.

Summer and I have a tricky relationship.

I don't do new year resolutions. I find them depressing. There is little that is worse than cleaning out a drawer to find a rumpled piece of paper bearing promises made to yourself five years before in the vein of, I will walk to work everyday, I will floss my teeth every night, I will be nicer to the drop-kicks I come across stealing disability car parks at the mall.

Pedro Almodóvar is a treasure of the screen, supremely sensitive to surfaces, characters, and the workings of the cinema itself. His devotion to the craft is unmistakable, demonstrated by constant hints, persistent allusions to past greats, and the mechanics of filmmaking.

I received an odd phone-call this week. Out of the blue, the alarmingly perky morning hosts of an Auckland radio station I've never listened to rang to say that they'd heard I lived in Copenhagen. They wanted me, live on-air, to tell their listeners "fun things about the Copenhagen climate summit".

New Moon, the latest movie instalment of the romance featuring lovelorn teenager Bella and her two subhuman admirers, vampire Edward and wolf-man Jacob, is a bona fide box office hit, having grossed US$255 million in the US and NZ$5 million in

I was broken when I read The Time Traveler’s Wife; it crept inside and stayed. So the film version, screening here from December 3, was hard to watch.

Oh, dear. December begins next week, the shops are laden in their Christmas finery and the new-look Whitcoull's Santa is peering over activities at the intersection of Queen and Victoria St West.

Time to panic about presents.

Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, even if it hadn't won the Man-Booker Prize this year, will surely install her as one of the great inventive stylists of English literature. Compared with A.S.

Every now and then we face really tough decisions…I mean capital ‘T’ tough. This week’s was whether or not to spend $34 on Sarah Palin’s God-bothering, petty and vindictive score-settling payback and thereby contribute to ‘the cause’ so to speak. Did I? You betcha!

A disclaimer to open with. I haven't read Witi Ihimaera's latest (and now infamous) novel, The Trowenna Sea. Nor am I likely to—while I respect Ihimaera's talent and importance as a writer, his later work just doesn't excite me that much. My failure, I know, but so it goes.

I have to admit, this is one cheesy British "documentary" that I really want to see.

Days after the Herald revealed, somewhat behind the eight ball, bless them, that New Zealand mothers are getting in on the international mummy blogger trend, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that American mothers have

It's not often that I read one of Garth George's columns from start to finish, but I was riveted by his account of Brian Tamaki's latest step towards evangelical superstardom.<

Language matters; always has, always will. That's especially true in things theological. So Destiny church leader Brian Tamaki's use of the words "spiritual father" is even more ominous than it appears at first glance.

I guess I’m out of the loop, or at least, excluded from the ranks of reviewers who have found themselves chortling throughout In The Loop, and for whom a Scottish-accented “fuckety bye” will be forever part of the lexicon.

As the successful bidder ducked his head and stepped into a glass-fronted room to seal the deal, people in the packed auction room applauded. It was a heartfelt moment during a dreary event, the sale of mortgagee properties.

Old dog Lincoln—the bandy, bewildered old soul who hit the headlines early this year, when he was kidnapped for fighting bait—will have his day in court on Friday.

Mini-mister is six months old. He can roll, squeal like a dolphin for 40 minutes at a time and blow raspberries, he has two teeth and a wonderfully silly sense of humour and he likes to play with his feet. In the time he has made these great strides in becoming a more fully functioning person, his mother has bombed out of two coffee groups.

Only 49 sleeps till Sarah Palin's book is released in the US, y'all!

Since December 2006, more than 13,000 people—police, soldiers, gangsters and civilians—have died across Mexico in shootouts, bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and torture.

John Bongard, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director
FISHER & PAYKEL APPLIANCES LTD

I love stories about ordinary people who are showered with crazy good fortune, especially when they take a hand in creating it for themselves. Even more so when they do it by spending thousands of hours alone in front of a computer screen, sending their thoughts out into the ether in the hope that someone else actually cares to read what they write.

“I have been on holiday for the past fortnight. I told everyone that I was going to Norway, which was a surprisingly effective means of closing the conversation down.

Everyone has a back-up plan. Mine is to move to Puhoi and make cheese.

I would live in a white house with a red iron roof and each evening after a day of separating curds from whey I would sit on my front porch and spend a happy hour or two spreading soft bleu onto crackers.

I've just spent part of last night and much of this morning reading the entries in the best feature section of the 2009 Aotearoa Students' Press Association awards. I must say, I was surprised.

To be late is to waste other people’s time. It is very, very rude. I truly believe this. When my perpetually late husband revealed to me during our courtship that he would rather be late and let other people wait for him than to be on time and be forced to wait for other people, I was horrified. “How arrogant!” I thought. “How RUDE.

I’m sorry about what follows. It feels a lot like farting in church.

Forgive me my presumption for I am new to this mothering game, but as far as I am concerned, if I’m losing sleep over it, I’m qualified to comment.

People like to think that our society is proactively generous and compassionate, with everyone actively seeking out causes to support.

About once a month I let Alice have her way with me.

This year’s valedictory in the Eng. Lit. School of Life is given by the Head Girl, Margaret Drabble.

The dairy on the corner sells Cocaine. I know this because the shop frontage is wallpapered in bright blue signs advertising the energy drink. It is the most distinctive thing about the dairy, which otherwise has disappointed me with stale bread and a miserly supply of Sunday newspapers.

Do you love being a mother? Do you love it?

As a new mother I get asked this all the time. Usually I answer, 'Yes,' with the appropriate aw-shucks grin. But sometimes I tell the truth, which is rather more complicated.

You can't really protect people from their own ignorance, it seems, and why would you when it's so easy to squeeze belly laughs and millions of dollars from their lack of insight?

Anyone who pays at least some minimal attention to the surface sheen of contemporary Italian politics will know about the antics of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

When we turn human beings into products, we can't expect to like the results. Michael Jackson is now the ultimate example of that, and hasn't the outpouring of emotion following his sudden heart attack last week been extraordinary?

I hate disposable technology.

Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca, which dates from 1933, is the first of a trilogy of late dramatic works, written in blank verse—the others are Yerma (1935) and The House of Bernada Alba (1936)—and performed in the years immediately preceding the Spanish Civil War of which Lorca himself was an ear

Alain de Botton and I parted company a while ago. As he’s said himself, Essays in Love and The Romantic Movement are books for a certain age and stage.

I remember an occasion during the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago in 1968 (which I attended) when a leader of the Yippies—a sort of off-shoot of the hippie movement, hippies with attitude they would have been called in the 1990s I imagine—announced that he and his colleagues intended to napalm a pig in Grant Park.

Since Christmas last year, I have devoted approximate 80 hours of my life to watching (and partially rewatching) all five series of The Wire on DVD. I can think of few better uses I could have made of that time.

Waiting for a baby to arrive is like waiting for a bomb to explode. I am the bomb. 

Peter Conradi, in his life of Iris Murdoch, describes her shock, on going to teach at the Royal College of Art in London in 1963, at how little the students had read. Gifted as they were in painting and design, photography and lithography, the use of materials and tools, most of them were, in literary and intellectual terms, more or less illiterate.

Since when are golliwogs cute? I didn’t even know it was acceptable to discuss the little cultural throwbacks again, let alone display them in chic children’s stores and be seen buying them.

Splendid though it was, Slumdog Millionaire slightly lost me when Jamal shouted “Lakita”, over and over, like a wimpy audition for Streetcar Named Desire. Hard to argue, though, that the film didn’t deserve its seven gongs – from eleven nominations – at the Baftas last night.

The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, by Alex Ross, can lay some claim to being the music book of the decade.

2008 was the year that the Age of Trash started to falter. That’s the optimist in me. In March we were treated to an evening of modernist music from France as a part of the International Festival of the Arts.

And yet how lovely life would seem if every man could weave a dream to keep him from despair...

Tony Stones, sculptor, will soon be seventy-five: a New Zealander of surpassing talent, but for whom there are unlikely to be celebrations or presentations in what was once his homeland, no Prime Minister’s prize for contributions to art, no TV special to look back on an artist’s life well lived, or forward to a blooming talent that still has much to contribute to sculpture - not just in subjec

Knowing how to look at paintings comes with patience and study. Everyone understands this. Our difficulty lies in access. How can we possibly know about paintings if we live so far away from the originals that we must make do with reproductions? And what is the likely effect of this distancing on the artistic culture of a society?

The NBR New Zealand Opera production of Janáček’s Jenůfa  has been warmly received in both Auckland and Wellington, and there are many good reasons why.

Force Field, an exhibition of works by Fiona Hall, is at the City Gallery, Wellington until October 19.

You know a guy like Timothy Ferriss. He is the work colleague who seems to glide by without doing that much yet always meets his targets and keeps the boss happy. He is the super-fit neighbour who spends his weekends skydiving and orienteering and diving with sharks and learning to play the bassoon.

Mark Sainsbury, what the hell happened to you?

• Esquire remembers the delicious Paul Newman in a story first published in 2000, when he was 75 and contemplating a graceful exit.

• Who knew he was such a sad sack? Brilliant profile of '30

Despite attempts to savour each crazy morsel, I gulped down the latest David Sedaris essay collection, When You Are Engulfed in Flames.