August 2006 Archives

look. it's exactly like the man said:

it's snakes on a plane. either you want to see that or you don't.

we went tonight at the gobsmackingly lovely embassy theater where we walked up marble staircases to push past the wood doors to sit in our leather seats. to watch snakes on a plane.

it was precisely as inane as you'd expect. just as cheesy. and fun and silly and some guy got bit by a viper on his pecker. or something.

whatever. it's snakes on a plane. either you want to see that or you dont.

so who got all into the hype and then went and was all, "oh. it's snakes on a plane."

uh. how could you not be satisfied? it's like ordering circus peanuts and then being all shocked when they give you nasty orangey-pink peanut shaped marshmallows. there were snakes. they were on a plane. people got attacked and samuel l. jackson said "motherfucker" quite a few times, with feeling.

also, there was nudity and people who were about to retire got killed.

it lives!

almost....

in between tromping around wellington, buying woolens and trying various local brews i've been plugging away on a crossword puzzle. lemme tell you; those bastards are tricky. putting together a NYT-quality sunday puzzle is not for the faint of heart. less than 140 words, only 1/6th black space...

but i've finished doing "the fill" on a 21 x 21 puzzle and i'm onto writing the clues. if anyone wants to be in the initial test group let me know and i'll send you a copy when it's ready. hopefully you crossword geeks can help me tighten it up before i post it off to will shortz at the times.

then he can buy it and pay me and i can make business cards that say "cruciverbalist."

the end.
or the beginning? who can say!

in other news, i would now like to give a massive "whoop whoop" to the wellington public library. their dvd section is better than most rental stores and even surpasses places like Lost Weekend on Valencia (in SF). not only do they have the expected library classics (pride & prejudice, citizen kane), but they have weird art stuff (man with a movie camera!), indie goodies, (full frontal, stranger than paradise), popular escapism (a knight's tale, all of buffy) and plenty of new releases.

frankly, it's the only video place i've been inside in YEARS where i've not only NOT had trouble finding something to rent, but where i've had trouble choosing only one!

they charge $3 for a week compared to $8 a night at the local stores.

i think i may have to volunteer, or at least write a very nice letter.

i watched battle royal last night. cool!

i've got a new king.

which is sort of odd, as i never had a king before. or a queen. and i guess if i become a kiwi i'll have a king -- the above pictured Tuheitia Paki, and a queen, Elizabeth, since this is a British Commonwealth nation.

dude, i'm like rolling in royalty! and sheep too! i'm rolling in royalty and sheep!

for the price of an airline ticket you could be as well...

it really is far away here.

i have to say that i'm somewhat shocked at the photo the press supplied of the new king. he's described as humble and hardworking but in this photo he looks more like a laborer (sorry, "labourer") called back early from his coffee break (sorry, tea break).

no disrespect intended. just i would have thought they could have found a photo without his hands in his pockets. he is the new king, after all.

but i guess he is also the new king whose mother just died and there's nothing funny about losing your moms.

for those of you who have no idea what i'm talking about, here in New Zealand the native people are Maori and they have a new king. as far as i can figure out the king has no official role in the elected goverment which regulates both Maoris and Pakeha (the rest of us).

still. a king. all hail. vive le roi. hip hip hoo-ray your majesty!

we've been in En Zed for a week now and my impressions of the place are starting to congeal a bit. it's not nearly as foreign as i expected. it's quite a bit more deserted than pictured however. on the train down from Auckland i saw a peacock, a million cows and a trillion sheep but little in the way of people or towns. a quarter of the population lives in Auckland and it's just a million peeps.

we did not lurve Auckland. it's pretty, but not exciting.

Wellington is better. it is small but has a sizable number of interesting restaurants and bars and what appears to be a genuinely friendly populace. (guy steps on my toes in the bar, stops to apologize twice.) hopefully these factors will make up for the weather, which has been fair this week. as opposed to normal. which we're warned is windy and wet. they say, "oh yeah. this is a northerly wind. nothing really. it's the southerlies. those come from the antarctic."

ha ha ha. the antarctic!

we've tromped about the town's extensive park system. we've explored the downtown a bit. we watched the national rugby team, the All Blacks, knock the Australians for a loop. we've met a mess of interesting people through our hosts and as of yesterday we've taken over full residence of our first home in about a year.

we made dinner. watched lord of the rings.

today bartlebee is meeting with a professor at Victoria University to see if she can get into his lab this fall (read = March). if she can, we'll spend approximately two weeks going, "here? we want to live here for 3.5 years?" and then hopefully commit. if she can't, i guess we start making googly eyes at Melbourne.

i go back and forth over which sounds better.

i think it's probably going to be more interesting here and friendlier. there we'll have a much stronger community to start with and better weather and likely more in the way of work options.

'cause king is taken and i'm not sure i'd be a good shepherd.

they have a law here in new zealand.

the law is: i can't have a job.

i think i'm going to like it here.

i mean, sure, i can have a job SOME DAY, but first i need to fill out a bunch of paperwork and have my chest x-rayed and pay a bunch of money.

and, i guess, get a job -- but really, that seems like a minor detail.

we're in Wellington now and it's strange to finally be in this place. we've spent months trying to picture it. we've lucked out with fantastic weather; all sun, no wind. we've got great hosts -- allyn and jodi here and sean in Auckland. the place we're going to be subletting is cute and has a foosball table in the bathroom. so it's all good.

i even read today that they're starting up a new zealand/san francisco sister city society thingamabobby. or maybe it was a step-sister thingy? whatever. soon it will be the law that we will need to like san francisco and you will need to like Wellington.

the LAW.

and you can't mess with johnny law. no siree bob.

so we've been here a whole day and everything is looking peachy. the immigration people were friendly. the police said they'd fingerprint me for free so i could send 'em off to the FBI where they'd get lost for $18. it's purty. bartlebee is in communication with her doctoral advisor of choice. and i do not have to carry any of our massively overpacked bags anywhere for at least two months.

we took some pictures. i'm sure there will be more.

tomorrow i'm going to find me a hobbit. i hear thems good eatin'.

addendum:

we saw a flier yesterday for a tour of "hobbiton". it had three pictures with captions:
1) the way it looked in the film
2) the way it looks now
3) sheep

i'm beginning to sense a theme here.

we are actually in new zealand now. so far, so good.

i saw this on stereogum:

Gary J. Malone, chief of psychiatry at Baylor All Saints Hospital in Ft. Worth says, "You can't pour vodka on a turnip and have it say anti-Semitic remarks." (Via Newsweek.)

and i think we all know what that means, right? yes. it means it's time to move to new zealand. i mean mel gibson is clearly going to start imposing his vast personal regret on us all out of some sort of PR-induced sense of shame and i just don't think i can handle that. he's icky. i don't want him following me around offering to pour me another cup of tea or rub my shoulders.

nope. it's time to do the off. up up and away like the man says.

this week it's really begun to sink in that we're going -- and when i say "sink" i'm picturing some paunchy guy with cement shoes frowning at the hudson river.

i've gone away before. i've gone away long-term before. i've even moved places i have little to no knowledge of before -- LA, Honolulu, San Francisco. this is the first time i'll move somewhere so far away i won't be able to afford to visit home. the first time i'll move somewhere where the plan is to stay at least three years. the first time i'll move somewhere where the decision to bag it is not one i can make on my own.

and there are a lot of people i'm going to miss.

last night i got a drink at dalva with blackie. i met blackie at my first burning man in 1996. he was a friend of wanko's and we all camped together on the outskirts of madness. when i moved to san francisco shortly thereafter i called him up. and then i called him again. and again.

then he called me back and confessed he had no idea who i was and why did i keep calling him?

ha ha.

but we met up, at blondie's, back when it was double-size martini bar for hipsters and not a double-price martini bar for assholes, and we got to be friends. we hung out on saturday nights, bar hopping in the mission. we made vast bowls of fresh salsa. we laughed over old pick-up lines. we hitched around maui. we quit jobs and got lucky and told stories and rubbed sleep from our eyes and made it through stage-two of life. no longer kids, not quite adults.

it was blackie who was going to travel around the world with me in '99 but couldn't make it. it was blackie who helped me pack up and move once in less than 24 hours. later i peformed his wedding.

and we're both married now. he's a father, too. he doesn't call often, or even call back often, but i know him.

so last night over yucatana food, i tell him why he's my friend; because i can be honest with him. i can tell him what's really going on with me, even if it's not pretty. and i can tell him what i think of what he's doing, even if that's not pretty either.

you can't find that stuff lying around on the street. that sort of trust needs to ferment.

that's what i'm thinking about five days before departure.

time is short.

this is what i keep saying to my friends in emails.

they write. they say, "hey. let's get together."

i respond, "time is short."

it is. we're leaving for new zealand in less than two weeks. in that time we need to:

a) pack
b) see our families
c) attend to obligations
d) work
e) purchase entire new wardrobes as a good chunk of everything we own was destroyed by mold, water and insects

ha ha ha.

oh yeah,

f) try not to freak out

by the way, i'm writing this on my new laptop. so far so good. or at least so good compared to the last one. and as compared to my shoes.

the mold ate all my shoes.

it's a long depressing story.