Author Archive
No weasel words
Irish rugby captain Brian O’Driscoll is an impressive man, even in defeat. Here’s how he responded to losing to Wales in last night’s Rugby World Cup quarter final. We failed to do ourselves justice. You have to earn everything you get in Test rugby and today we were off the pace – and we go […]
A rich Green comedy performance from Matthew Hooton
STAND UP COMIC Matthew Hooton — he works part-time as a political commentator — had me howling, breathless with laughter at his latest comedy routine on RadioLIVE earlier in the week. Under the deeply ironic title of ‘The Political Panel’, talkback radio hosts Willie Jackson and John Tamihere sometimes give a platform to budding comedians […]
World’s Shortest Fairy Tale
{snort!} (Thanks to Jeremy Parkinson.)
Be careful what you believe
I had a coffee with Cameron Slater this morning. I like to interact face to face with people whom I criticize — it’s far better to engage, in my opinion, than to reach for pistols at dawn dueling online personas. We discussed some of our recent disagreements (most recently noted in Cameron Slater’s defective moral calculus) in […]
Congratulations Kimbra
I spotted this artist as ‘one to watch’ a while back — sparking minor eye-rolls from my teenage daughter at my positive comments. But she admits I spotted The Tings Tings too, and Mark Ronson. Yeah, I’m a pop-culture genius. (Just put my Horlicks down over there, thanks Matron.) Anyway, good on Kimbra. She’s just […]
Steve Jobs RIP
Am so sad to hear this. – P
I’m not imagining it … John Key’s selective absence
Wow, you can see why some people might see this as avoidance behaviour. I said the other day If Mr Key and his colleagues were more confident of the news media I think you would see more willingness to appear in ‘hard’ interview situations (rather than the photo ops and stand ups) and less of […]
Eloquent Eliota Sapolu on Campbell Live
I saw this interview between TV3’s John Campbell and Eliota Sapolu — the Samoan rugby centre who faced a judiciary hearing following his angry tweets accusing an IRB ref of bias and racist decisions during the South African/Samoan pool game in the Rugby World Cup. It’s a fabulous interview which impressed me very much. See […]
Media bias: In the eye of the beholder
This comment from Ivan feeds into what I think is a perception about the ‘wicked-news-meed-ya’ today … My opinion is that there is a monolithic seachange in media approach. I believe that there has been a shift toward populist shockjock opinionated and quite trite media. They look privileged – they sound privileged and they act […]
A dignified response to Labour’s complaint
I don’t want to get into the argy-bargy about the Prime Minister’s hour on RadioLIVE last Friday. I listened to it and enjoyed it. Good to hear John Key reading the weather and being a gushing fanboy interviewing people he looks up to. He does it well. I saw Mr Key copped a bit of […]
A wittle bit of hyperbole? Or not?
There’s a saying in newsrooms which goes something like: “We’d better hope when the End of the World comes there won’t be a sports reporter on the newsdesk … because they’ll have used up all their superlatives.“ Look at this great lead paragraph regarding a Rugby League star: Last night’s game redefined the word irreplaceable. […]
Dan Carter – a nation groans
News of NZ Rugby star Daniel Carter’s injury (Carter ruled out of World Cup 3News) drew a collective groan. Oh, ouch. Not what we wanted to hear. Good luck to him and the team. Now that is a story which will dominate the ‘news cycle’ … and rightly, because so many of us care. Bugger. […]
Let’s make it an even 5-million views … Leonard Cohen
When I watched this, it was sitting at 4,956,083 views on YouTube. I’ve seen Leonard Cohen perform this song LIVE twice: Montreal, Canada and Wellington New Zealand. What a legend. (Yeah, I’m a fan.) Apparently there’s a new collection coming out: The Complete Albums Collection while we’re waiting for a new album. – P
