Josh, Interrupted

Today’s celebrity Bible-Reader is... Tim Vine

But some seeds fell in good soil, and the plants sprouted, grew, and produced corn: some had thirty grains, others sixty, and others a hundred.”

And Jesus concluded, “Listen, then, if you have ears!”

- Mark 4:8-9 (Good News)

Eagles Farewell I Tour – Live from Melbourne

The Eagles must be legendary – even I’ve heard of them.

Spoken of with hushed reverence by fans whenever I’ve heard their name mentioned around the world, their reputation with me is only further cemented by the number of times that I’ve seen this DVD. Flatmate Dave quite likes them too, you see, I can tell by the way in which he, flatmate Cathy and I are still all sitting round watching this after five years.

And this DVD certainly lives up to that reputation. I don’t know the band well enough to critique each track, but it all sounds great, and both band and audience seem to be really enjoying themselves.

There's a pun in here somewhere about getting eagle-eyed, which as you know isn't considered to be a bad thing...


Fig. 1: Testing out my new phone.

(available here)

Priestville

I have just spent the past week living in a catholic seminary with a group of trainee priests.

This has been all thanks to old friend (and trainee Priest) Nigel, who upon hearing that I was again to return to NZ as a Missionary, contacted me in London from Sydney and insisted upon putting me up.

So with flatmate Dave back from Alaska, and flatmate Luke planning to move out a mere week later, the opportunity for a week’s free room and board could not have been better timed.

Quite apart from which, it’s been an interesting seven days here. I’ve attended a couple of services with these new friends, shared umpteen meals with them, and watched the awful Japanese tsunami unfold last week on live television with them.

Ultimately, I’ve come away with a renewed respect for those areas where our beliefs diverge.

I think it’s been handy for some of them to have someone to chat to about all the stuff they’ve been learning too, if for no other benefit than revision.

Tonight however it was farewells all round.

Well, not so much farewells, as see you laters.

As I and my gear caught a lift back to Howick in their cook’s car, it was testament to the friendliness of Auckland’s community of believers that I fully expected to see them again soon.

The same sort of friendliness that had offered me the room there in the first place.

City Lights 2011

Today I took part in a project that was sending teams of Christians out into Auckland to assist the community.

So after last night’s recruitment service at my old church Edge, this morning I was back at the Urban Vineyard (it’s been a while since I was last here), being paired up with a guy called Martyn to help tidy a lady’s garden.

Sounds simple right? I mean cutting back foliage is what I spent a significant amount of my day doing the previous occasion I’d taken part in this initiative.

However upon our arrival at the house, we passed a couple of smiling, suited young men who were just leaving. They appeared to be Mormons going door-to-door, which I felt placed a certain pressure upon us. Not because the lady might assume that we were from the same church, but because in comparison to their immaculate appearance, our version of faith in God was in danger of looking... well, a bit casual.

Basically, our beliefs were being communicated passively through our practical help. At any rate, there was definitely no backing out now, lest we make our faith look bad.

At least, we assumed that there would be no backing out...

We discovered that much of the work had already been done earlier in the week by the lady’s family, but not all of it. The pre-cleared rubbish had already filled up the skip there, so we decided to telephone round to find a company who would be willing to replace it with an empty one for us to fill. The only problems with this plan were that (a) the house didn’t have a phone, (b) Martyn had left his so-called mobile at home, and (c) my SIM card had died back in the UK.

So we drove back to the DIY store to scout out purchasing an enormous bag-skip. (a bag that's the same size as a skip - I don’t know what the technical term for this is) This in turn led to our borrowing the shop’s phone to call skip companies, directory enquiries, and ultimately the project’s organisers to approve the extra expenditure.

As it turned out, the bags cost quite a bit, no-one would collect a skip on a Saturday, and we couldn’t get hold of the project’s organisers anyway.

You can appreciate how that giving up and going home again option was beginning to look not just easy, but positively compelling.

As New Zealand’s now reliably hot sun heaved itself across the blue sky, we too began our return journey all the way back across West Auckland to the church to speak to someone in person. Then we had to pick up some gear from Martyn’s house. And eat something. And buy the new bag-skip. We were getting creamed by the afternoon sun, and we hadn’t even started yet.

The knock-on effect of all this was that, once we finally did get started, Martyn and I threw our heart and soul into the short window in which we could still get this thing happening. We chainsawed foliage, removed rubbish, and swept up leaves until finally even the sun was beating a retreat toward the horizon. We didn’t get it all cleared, but man we filled up our bag-skip.

After a big meal back at Edge, during which time I caught up with my old Bible-study leader Janine, it was time to help clear up the church afterwards, and then stroll home.

I’d like to think that the lady with the garden had felt some sense of peace at getting her space back again, but I have no idea. It hadn't been about getting a reaction. It had been about helping someone simply because it was right to.

Burning Up On Re-Entry

8th March


"What?! You're going to New Zealand AGAIN?!?"

There’s a famous episode of The Simpsons entitled The City Of New York vs. Homer Simpson.

In it, everyone’s favourite Nuclear Safety Officer discovers that he has to travel to New York to collect his car because Barney has dumped it there after a joyride. At this news, an appalled Homer promptly drifts off into a lengthy flashback to his youth...

Basically, we get to see how when young(er) Homer had visited the big city, everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. So we see him living in a backpackers for nine months, eating other people’s leftovers, failing at hundreds of job applications, presenting a radio show that hardly anyone listens to, reversing a truck into the side of someone’s 4x4, missing the return of his favourite TV show, joining a church which required him to learn Klingon, working six days a week all year round as a TESOL teacher, and then after four years ultimately losing a residency application despite having two jobs.

Poor old Homer J.

No, hang on, wasn’t that... me?

Anyway, as the familiar Kiwi landscape once more faded into view outside the Boeing 777’s windows last Saturday, the words that escaped my lips certainly could have been Homerish.

“Hello. Auckland.”

(second word possibly uttered with eyes squinted at the Sky Tower in mistrust)

Sure enough, the cab driver from the airport did well out of my business, if only by quoting one price at the outset and then later revising it to have been an estimate. Still, I’d have looked like an idiot walking.

Upon locating my new address, everyone had heard of my imminent return and had accordingly run away. Cathy was out for the day, flatmate Dave was in Alaska (kindly loaning me the use of his room), and even Tiger had heard of my approach and left home forever. (no, not that Tiger - Tiger the cat)

Still, meeting new flatmate Luke had been a long time in coming. This complete stranger had spent many months generously storing all my gear that I’d left behind, and probably just as long again stashing it in his sister’s garage, with whom I was also unacquainted. And no, Luke didn’t want any money for his kindness. As we proceeded to talk, and talk, and talk, the old cliché about a stranger being just a friend who you haven’t met yet was well and truly proven.

As the afternoon drew on, I had my second shower of the day (after Brisbane Airport), and presently stumbled back out into the sunshine to get some shopping. By an unusual turn of fate I had actually had some really deep sleep on the flight, thanks to having had three seats to stretch out across. However now that the New Zealand sun was beating down, the dehydration and tiredness were overcoming me.

I have never had much sense of direction, so even though I thought I was just heading up the one straight road to Food Town, I still immediately got lost.

Back in London, Herschel and I had once gone through a phase of watching movies of our area back-to-front, like a mirror-image. The effect had been disorientating - a sense that each image had been shot somewhere nearby, but exactly where neither one of us could quite pinpoint.

This was similar to the effect that Howick was now having on me in real life. The grass along the pavement, the car numberplates, and the feeling of the New Zealand sun and atmosphere on my skin told me unmistakably that I was in East Auckland. Yet I was crossing road after road with familiar names, but couldn’t place any of them.


Eventually I reached the end of the road where Picton Street really should have been. It wasn’t. That really messed with my head.

Yet depite the beating sun, spitting rain, and groaning headache, through all this inner confusion, I felt a really strong sense of shining peace. I was supposed to be back here in Howick. Perhaps I should never have left.



They now sell Spider-Man toothpaste here, and yes, my One Card still works!


The next day, my famous Howick & Eastern bus pass still worked too, so I blew the 10c that I’d left on it to help me achieve a long-held ambition – to once again attend my church.


So many times in the UK I’d dreamt of this moment, however in those plans I had always arrived cool and collected, and snuck in at the back during the worship. Now that it was real life’s turn, as I got to actually walk down that corridor, of course I was boiled stupid after trekking through the relentless sun from Burger King.


Real life rarely matches our expectations, and the actual moment of my re-entry was, to me, completely unexpected. Can you see the unexpected obstacle in the photo above? Yes, it was that unforeseen red so-called ‘child-proof’ gate...

10,000 miles, only to be prevented from crossing the final inch by a kids’ safety-feature.

Frank was the first to spot the incompetent Mr Bean routine unfolding at the back, and duly came over with a big smile and a handshake to help me out. I’d wanted Frank to be the first person I saw, because I knew exactly what I was going to say to him. “Are we still on for that coffee?”

And then, despite the dedication that Brett was conducting at the front, it all unfolded. I quietly sat down at the back next to Jean, and got to grin like an idiot as friend after friend made eye contact, smiled, and came over to welcome me back. Megan, Juanita, Kate, Paul, Shaune, Kristen, Greg... Once he was free to do so, even Brett came over to quietly shake my hand and remind me that he had once foreseen this moment in a dream...

And it could not have been a better service to return on. Part one of the Pages series was all about members of the community sharing their backstories for others to become better acquainted with them. These were all – to me - new people to whom I really needed an introduction. So as an American called Sara shared her testimony of the highs and lows of moving across the world to follow God in New Zealand, I couldn’t help feeling that I’d heard a story similar to this somewhere before. I was pretty sure it was Homer Simpson’s...

At any rate, the peace of being in Howick was even stronger here. I couldn’t see it, hear it, touch it, smell it or taste it, but as I looked up once again at the musicians and the instruments on the naturally-lit stage, somehow I felt an enormous peace in that room.

Afterwards I met Maree, helped to clear up, saw Carmel, and I’m pretty sure I had my usual lift home from Random Dave.

The next day I went to the bank to confirm that my ATM card was still working. It was. All of Howick had, apparently, been stored safely in cotton wool while I’d been gone.

The next day – Shrove Tuesday - it was time to return to work, and once more the journey had me boiling like a saucepan. When my second bus showed up, apparently the driver had decided to not bother displaying the number on the front, assuming that the word “Special” would explain. So having worked this out too late, eventually I had to instead go all the way to Ellerslie and then heave myself and the cake that I had brought all the way up the Great South Road on foot. Under that great firey orb in the sky again.

Arriving only 45 minutes late for my first day back, all the newer employees joined with Phil and whoever else remembered me to march into the office and form a line to greet me en masse. Maybe they were curious about what this Englishman would turn out to actually be like, but I think they were just genuinely pleased to meet a new friend.

I played down the occasion, conscious of trying too hard to be funny and coming across as a bit smug.

That afternoon, as I sat in my new office facing the same old computer screen, with the same trading estate outside the window, and making the same phone calls to churches as usual, there was no longer any sense of Auckland’s glowing peace. There was nothing wrong either.

Aside from my now dud NZ SIM card, everything in my life was perfectly normal again.

The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Four adults in kids’ bodies board a tube train in London and are transported back to the alternate realm where they had previously all grown up.

Marvellous, that doesn’t need explaining at all.

Some follow-up movies seem to betray a certain shame of their status as a sequel. If they reference their preceding chapter too closely, then they risk alienating new viewers who haven’t seen it. After all, nobody likes to feel left out.

However The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian doesn't stop at talking about just its prequel. Initially we get Lucy, Edmund, Peter and Susan reminiscing in the ruins of their old Narnian home, which I don’t think was even in the last film. If my memory is correct, then the risk here is of EVERYONE feeling left out.

Ultimately though, I’m afraid that, for me, the odds were well and truly stacked against this movie from the off. I’m not that into C S Lewis, it’s been almost five years since I saw The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and, most challengingly of all, I was watching this on a tiny screen attached to the back of an aeroplane seat.

As a result I got characters mixed-up, and was thoroughly confused by much of the story, but in fairness I also knew that I was consciously not bothering to even try to follow it. Hey – that sort of apathy is what thin oxygen does to the best of us.

The fact that the big friendly lion is absent for so much of the running time didn’t really help matters either. However once Azlan had finally made his big entrance, his dialogue was so rich as to warrant my pulling down the meal tray and copying some of it out...

Lucy: “I knew it was you! The whole time I knew it! But, the others didn’t believe me.”

Azlan: “And why would that stop you from coming to me?”

Lucy: “I’m sorry. [I was] too scared to come alone. Why wouldn’t you show yourself? Why couldn’t you come warring [probably ‘roaring’ but I heard ‘warring’] in and save us like last time?”

Azlan: “Things never happen the same way twice, dear one.”

Lucy: “If I'd have come earlier, everyone who died – could I have stopped that?”

Azlan: “We can never know what would have happened, Lucy, but what will happen, is another matter entirely.”

Lucy: “[You] mean you’ll help?”

Azlan: “Of course. As also will you.”

Lucy: “Oh. [I] wish I was braver.”

Azlan: “If you were any braver, you’d be a lioness!”

Finally, after the Pevensie kids had at last made it back across reality onto their tube train, all my protests at the lack of explanation for this journey were still failing me.

After all, I’d just got on a vehicle in London too. I was also being transported back to a land where I’d once had another life. In fact, because some of this film had been shot there, some of my destination looks literally identical to the spot where the Pevensies had found themselves set down.

And I didn’t have much of an explanation for my journey either.

(with thanks to Emirates)

(available here)
(review of The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe here)
(review of The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader here)

Dubai Date

Fig. 1: Taking off from United Arab Scalextrics.

Pages Within Borders

This afternoon I went out, took the train up to London, picked up today's editions of the Evening Standard and Daily Mail newspapers, travelled back in time to the year 2009, went into Borders bookshop, and then took this photograph of myself to prove it.

The Marx Brothers - 8 Movie Collection

Eight discs containing a scattergun of the iconic brothers' movies from across 20 years, many of which appear to have interchangeably irrelevant titles.

The Cocoanuts


Time has not been kind to the four Marx Brothers' attempts to run a hotel with great apathy. This 1929 film adaptation of a stage play is very strange to watch today with, tragically, just about no redeeming features.

80 years on, puns have to work harder to achieve, so the word 'viaduct' just doesn't sound enough like the phrase 'why a duck' to carry it. Much of their loud vocal projection for the stage appears to have been toned-down for the closer cameras, with the result that their anarchic personas seem kind of reserved. There are also several dance numbers, apparently, and a sub-plot that really should be the main plot.

If you try really hard to like this, I suppose it's probably possible, but likely easier with a big screen, cleaned-up audio and a crowd of people to laugh along with you. Much like in a theatre.

Disc also contains 3 brief excerpts from The Today Show of Groucho (in 1961), Harpo (in 1963) and Harpo's son William (in 1985).

Animal Crackers


This is much better, due in part to the advent of dubbing. (Coacoanuts actually had a live orchestra behind the cameras for the songs!) Both the picture and sound are much clearer, and the boys seem to have some idea what they're doing this time. They're mixed-up in an art-fraud/prank. Groucho's scattergun approach to humour delivers some great laughs, but while many of his quips stand up well, I couldn't find any scene that could really represent this film in a great light. The songs are still here breaking things up, but the dances have gone.

Monkey Business


At last the guys are starting to show some form. This is much more of a movie than the previous two, with much shorter scenes and heaps more visual humour. There's an immediacy to Groucho's verbose presence that makes me feel as though I'm watching his material live. This is much more in line with what I've been expecting.

Disc contains the same clips from The Today Show as included with The Cocoanuts.

Horse Feathers


After a slow first half, the film gets more and more pleasingly inventive. The location work looks and sounds great, with Harpo charging around in a chariot and Groucho idly strumming away to his latest intended in a boat. The final football sequence is a tremendous meshing of silent and talkie comedies, and surely original for its day. This kind of final reel surely paved the way for The Goodies, Monty Python and Vision On. Not brilliant, but fascinating.

Disc includes trailer.

Duck Soup


Already reviewed here.

Disc includes trailer.

Room Service (1938)


The brothers' only RKO comedy is their funniest yet! It's another adaptation from the stage (albeit a play that they weren't even in) but the sharp picture and sound quality make this fast-paced farce a real pleasure. The presence of such an overwhelming threat throughout works wonders for the characters' motivations and desperation too.

Love Happy


Billed on the back of the DVD as "The last official Marx Brothers Film", this is definitely a return to early form. Unfortunately, as noted above, I found their early form to be remote and a bit slow. After 20 years, the film still dwells too much on guest characters between indulging in long musical interludes.

Strangest of all is the three remaining brothers' apparent reluctance to share the screen together. Chico and Harpo just meet occasionally, while Groucho only enters the action in the final act, when I think he shares maybe two brief shots with Harpo. (he never appears in frame with Chico)

That said, there are several outstanding sequences which particularly highlight Harpo at his very best. The closing chase is nothing less than a live-action cartoon. Throw in a really formidable villain (who thanks to a sprawling plot actually wins at the end) and we have some of the brothers' finest film material ever. That the actors have aged 20 years, while their characters apparently have not, is a little odd but at least consistent.

A Girl In Every Port (1952)


Again, here's what the back of the box says:

"Screwball comedy starring Groucho Marx as a sailor embroiled in a scam involving a lame racehorse and a pair of identical twins!"

It omits to mention that said lame racehorse actually is one of those twins…

Thankfully it's another RKO comedy, co-produced by Irwin Allen, and plays like it's a movie-length version of Sergeant Bilko.

Fusing a new US serviceman character with his usual fast-talking persona, Groucho uses his brain to play umpteen factions more powerful than himself off against each other. It's a huge gambling scam where helping someone out ultimately means more to him than the money. All this and his commanding officer goes quietly mad due to witnessing crazy late-night equine goings-on through his bedroom window. Yes, Groucho's up to something!

We watched this in two halves, and such a complex plot seriously suffered for it. Although the lone Groucho is gentler here than he is when accompanied by his brothers, the whole cast is on top of their game.


Special note must go to Marie Wilson, who as the random Jane Sweet is highly reminiscent of Mary Jo Keenan as Julie Milbury in the 1990s TV sitcom Nurses. Get those two together, and this actually could have been about identical twins.

Jane: "Make sure to come in first, then be sure to win."


Overall, for me this box set collection didn't paint a great picture of these comedy legends. Although they - particularly Groucho - are today known as the definitive image of comedy, much of their material here has either dated or not been captured on film particularly well in the first place. Styles seem to have changed too, particularly the huge detours for straight musical numbers, but I find that difference in culture refreshing.

Though I have no idea if I'm right, I can't help supposing that a straight filming of their vaudeville shows might have worked better.

Still, their positive influence on comedy today is incalculable, and I'm so glad that some record of their work has survived.

The Marx Brothers will always hold a special place in my heart, but on the basis of this selection, I do think that history has sharpened their memory.

The New Mutants #38-40: Aftermath! / Pawns Of The White Queen / Avengers Assemble!

Writer: Chris Claremont
Guest artist: Rick Leonardi (#38), Keith Pollard (#39)
Penciler: Jackson Guice (#40)
Inker: Bill Sienkiewicz (#38), Dell Barras (#39), Kyle Baker (#40)
Letterer: Ken Bruzenak (#38), Tom Orzechowski (#39-40)
Colorist: Glynis Oliver (#38-39), Michelle Wrightson (#40)
Editor: Ann Nocenti
Editor in chief: Jim Shooter

The fate of the New Mutants has been bugging me for some time.

In New Mutants #37 the Beyonder obliterated them all so absolutely that they were wiped from history and had never existed in the first place. Then in Secret Wars II #9 the one from beyond brought back their bodies as soulless zombies to carry out his bidding.

And that's how they were left at the end of that epic. I think.

So just how on earth did their comicbook series still manage to keep running for another 63 issues plus specials?

Well, I should have known better than to expect a straight answer from the typewriter of X-author Chris Claremont.

Here he spends three issues telling the story of their spiritual healing at the hands of their two rival teachers - Magneto and the White Queen.

Such investment really ought to result in a satisfying explanation, yet I'm afraid that, if I followed this correctly, then it just doesn't seem to all be there to be found. It's not merely that the teams' minds appear to be quietly present again at the outset, but how everyone else in the world now remembers them once more, and indeed what their school is doing back in existence, appears simply glossed over.

I've always found one of Claremont's strengths to be his willingness to spend time on his characters, giving them plenty to say and think, resulting in comicbooks which take a good deal longer to read than most. In this respect, these issues don't disappoint, which is great. However I seem to be missing so much, and the sketchy artwork doesn't help me out a great deal.

Of course, being Marvel, it may well be that I'm simply overlooking key elements from concurrent issues of sister-title The Uncanny X-Men…

All the same, that there is an explanation, be it one that I perhaps haven't properly understood, is satisfying enough from a universe which I still find enthralling.

After all, how can anyone not be excited by a world in which videophones can do the following…

Black Knight: (in his civilian identity of Dane Whitman)"The Videocom system is programmed to show our callers computer generated facsimiles of us in costume, regardless of how we really look."

Ahhh, so is that how come the New Mutants now appear to be alive and well again?