Sunday, April 09, 2006

It’s just an opinion, ok

  1. A window into a society or a culture, it seems to me, is indicated by the way they ride their bicycles. A silly statement, perhaps, made after countless hours avoiding the very many slow, happy, meandering cyclists here on the streets on Bali. Australians tend to ride their cycles aggressively as if they are more important than they are; New Zealanders, with their silly hats (yes I know why they have them) don’t seem able to work out whether they are riding a cycle or aspiring to a motorcycle; Germans ride clean bicycles on designated pathways and park them tidily in the correct place; and Americans always have more gadgets on the bike than they need to do the job. The Indonesian ride is best done at a pace which somehow defies the natural pull of gravity to pull them over at that speed, and involves a glazed, content look. Tidak Apa Apa…it doesn’t matter.
  2. Dear Ms Caro….NZ Film directors seem to have this infuriating habit of making a wonderful, groundbreaking, and moving movie and then, almost without hesitation rolling over for the Hollywood dollar and the house in Malibu. Witness Lee Tamahori (or perhaps not). Once Were Warriors, still, after all these years, fucks with my mind. The first time I saw it in a theatre, the whole place left after in complete silence. Now, I’ve seen it half a dozen times and every time, despite the familiarity, it chills me, and I crave that alternative happy resolution that we all know will never come. But, Lee’s work post Warriors is relentlessly nothing…not good or bad but simply Yankee nothing. Roger Donaldson is another (although his No Way Back may be the highpoint of Kevin Costner’s career but, really that’s not saying a lot), and he has, last year, finally done something worthy of his talent. But how many years did that take. I want to wave the flag and go yeah..look, a Kiwi, but when it’s the likes of Cocktail, its hard. So….. If I’d wanted to watch Erin Brocavich, or whatever it was called, again, I’ve would’ve watched it, not made the mistake of spending two hours on a lame poor cousin of it called North Country. And how bad was the bloody courtroom scene. Whale Rider was not Warriors, or even Quiet Earth or Smash Palace, all of which I regard as NZ masterpieces, but it was still a fine, fine film and something to be proud of and work from, so what happened? Was the lure of the big house too much or is it, I hope, a clever foot in the door, and better is to come. I know we don’t own you or have a right to expect anything, it’s just that we do…regards, disappointed of Sanur.
  3. I wonder if any mainstream politician in America has the balls, the dang gumption, to actually stand up and tell the truth about Iraq to the US constituency. To date, none have. Both Democrats and, more so, Republicans, still cloud their rhetoric in a façade, in a myth, the right with the something called “freedom and democracy”, with “winning”; and the left with the “bring the troops home” bullshit. No hint of liability or responsibility for destroying a people, for the deaths of god knows how many…
  4. I don’t get Mariah Carey. I really don’t. She is gruesomely ugly (I’m not usually one to make judgements like that, and I don’t feel that comfortable doing so but she insists on popping out all over my screen and it’s not pleasant. She made the choice to put herself up on show); she can’t sing…well she can but it’s a mediocre caterwaul at best; her materiel is generously best described as sub mediocre; oh, and she can’t act. And she’s not even doing the Watuzi on the boardroom table with Tommy Mottola anymore. At least when she was on Sony, her success made logical sense. But now, I don’t understand. And I really don’t want to. Not that she cares…
  5. I wasn’t born to co-exist with snakes. I’ve known a couple over the years but I mean the ones that exist in the wild (and in our garden) here in Bali. Brigid almost stood on a brown thing a few weeks back, on the front steps. We (well, not actually me) cornered it in a hole before Gustu, the gardener, filled the thing in with fast dry cement, so I guess it remains there. Yesterday, a barking dog, the dachshund, caught the household’s attention and Brigid found it head to head with a raised, flared Cobra in the garden. Pulling the dog away by its tail, the, now experienced reptile-er, Gustu, dispatched it with a stick and put it outside in the sampah, the rubbish, only for the guy over the road in the motorcycle repair place to come over, bite its head off, and eat it raw. This is not Ponsonby…..

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Flat white and one conra thanx