Please bear with me while I freshen the blog up a little.
Archive for November, 2006
A little housekeeping
Sunday, November 26th, 2006Robert Altman
Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006
Strange to relate, last night we watched Gosford Park and today we learn of Robert Altman’s death. From the impact of M*A*S*H‘s mirror on the Vietnam conflict and the knowing movie industry inside jokes of The Player to this year’s film interpretation of the US public radio series A Prairie Home Companion (the wonderful work of one of my favourite broadcasters and authors Garrison Keillor), Altman was never a Hollywood favourite but he was hard to ignore.
Ron Mueck at The Brooklyn Museum
Tuesday, November 21st, 2006
Even viewed on the web, the installations of Ron Mueck are startling and hard to process; so they must be stunning in the flesh.
Job done – except for a door handle
Monday, November 20th, 2006I was going to close by saying that the only outstanding task on my list is to fit a door handle to the utility room door but, as is the way in this house, another job has just been added with SWMBO informing me that ‘the new fangled wifi-server-thingy’ is not working. If you are reading this, then you’ll know I have fixed it and am back to just the door handle.
Kapa Haka
Saturday, November 4th, 2006Kapa Haka is the term used for the traditional Maori performing arts. The term kapa haka derives its meaning from two words: kapa (to stand in rows) and haka (M?ori dance). Kapa haka requires the performers to sing, dance, have expression as well as movement and combine all these elements into each performed item. In this sense, kapa haka also acts as a sign language, as each action has a meaning that mirrors the spoken words.
Here, our youngest sprog is making the ‘wiri’ hand gesture. The wiri represents the world around us, from the shimmering of the waters of a bright sunny day, to the heat waves rising from the ground to the wind rustling the leaves of the trees.
The boys of the Taupaki School Kapa Haka group perform the ‘Ra! Hupane, Ka -upane!’ part of the Ka Mate haka, the original of the two haka used by the All Blacks before their rugby internationals.
The newer haka, “Kapa o Pango”, features the controversial throat-slitting gesture which has received so much criticism – usually from the national press of the opposing team! For more information on the kapa haka and Maori culture, try http://www.maori.org.nz
Just like in the movies
Saturday, November 4th, 2006An unusual event interrupted my pottering about in the garden yesterday. I was in the middle of cat proofing my ‘square foot gardening‘ vegetable patches, surrounded by chicken wire, tools and the odd sprog, when I heard a sound one normally only hears in films.
Buuuur-bup-bup-bup … buuuur-bup-bup-bup … phut-phut-bup…
I looked up and saw a small jump plane tracking low across the clouds and blue sky above the township and seemingly trailing smoke from one engine. It was making the kind of noise that came from Ginger’s Spitfire shortly before he ‘pranged his kite’ in those ‘how the RAF won the war’ black and white movies of my childhood. A few seconds later, four skydivers exited the plane in close order, opening their canopies almost instantaneously while the plane lazily turned west. Shouting for the sprogs to come and see and grabbing the camera from the kitchen counter, I returned to snap a few shots, rationalising that I had obviously got it wrong and the smoke was simply vapour trail (unlikely at that low altitude in this warm weather) or a skydiver’s cannister that had malfunctioned in the plane (very unlikely but still possible). As I clicked away, I was aware of the noise again.
Buuuur-bup-bup-bup … phut-phut-bup…[silence]
Abrupt silence – never a good thing when flying I suspect, except in gliders maybe. As the skydivers slipped from view and into the paddock behind the local pub, I wondered whether I should dial 111. I didn’t. Well, for one, I wasn’t sure of what I had just seen – was it a plane in trouble or simply throttling back to reduce the prop wash for the skydivers? Did jump plane pilots have parachutes? There’d be a loud explosion if the plane had crashed, surely?
Later, at the school firework display, which the whole township attends, the jungle telegraph was in overdrive – the skydivers were rehearsing for a pre-display jump when the plane got into trouble. The pilot managed to walk away from a landing that left his plane upside down amongst the vines in a local vineyard. Not one to miss a trick, the head teacher raffled some of that vineyard’s latest output as ‘plane crash vintage, never to be tasted again as ten rows of the vines have been totalled by the plane!’
A write up and video report of TVNZ’s version of what they’re inevitably calling ‘The Grape Escape’ can be seen here.