Tuesday, August 29, 2006

On being sick, skiing and choosing your attitude

Ruapehu skifields: photo copyright René HeldBleagh. I'm sick with a crappy cold/cough thingy, and I hate it. I almost never get sick, and I don't do it well at all. There's no-one to look after me on an hourly basis, no-one to stroke my hair and ask me if I'd like a nice drink of hot blackcurrant juice, no-one to tuck me in and bring me a hot water bottle when I need it. I have to be sick all by myself and I don't like it.

Normally I get rid of colds by telling them to go away - and they go - but I wasn't really onto it this time. It kinda sneaked up on me by manifesting as a horribly sore throat for the first few days, but this morning it finally wiped me out. My head hurts, my face hurts, my eyes hurt, my sinuses hurt, my teeth hurt, my throat hurts. Ugh.

The Chateau: photo copyright Ross Howard www.abitcloser.comWell, at least I managed to keep it at bay during Shift's annual hui. This year we stayed at The Chateau Tongariro, and in addition to organising lots of team-building stuff for us, Shift also arranged for the Auckland and Wellington teams to head on up the mountain for an afternoon's skiing on Friday. It was the most perfect day - warm and sunny - the snow was deep and powdery and the sky was intensely blue. Gorgeous!


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Thursday, August 17, 2006

Clay Aiken - Without You

Clay Aiken - A Thousand Different Ways - possible album cover. As akcanuck commented on Clay's MySpace page today:

Dude.

Wow.

That was just......

Whoa.

My feelings exactly.

We found out today that Clay's first single from his upcoming album A Thousand Different Ways will be the classic Nilsson song, Without You.

Go take a listen to it on Clay's MySpace page. It's an absolute stunner. IMO, this is Clay's best studio recording ever. His voice is front and centre, the orchestration is beautiful, and the production is flawless.

But it's Clay's immaculate voice and the pure, raw emotion that flows through it which just blew me away.

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Sunday, August 13, 2006

Notes from a weary traveller

I'm writing this in Hong Kong airport - so I'm halfway home now. Yaaay!

I spent Friday shopping for protective cases for all my fragile stuff - so now my laptop is inside a massively strong briefcase in my suitcase - and my camera and iPod are in a special camera case. I've backed up my laptop and protected it with passwords galore.

Hope I see all my stuff in one piece when I get to Wellington!

Check-in at Heathrow on Saturday morning was not too bad - pretty much like a normal day, actually. They advised me to go straight upstairs to Departures - even though it was two and a half hours until my flight - and after popping out for a final cigarette I went upstairs and realised why. The queue for Departures snaked back and forth across the entire Departures floor - hundreds and hundreds of people waiting in line to go through to Security.

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Thursday, August 10, 2006

Flying out of Heathrow

Oh, man...

I'm watching the BBC news covering the "Terror Plot" involving plans to blow up aircraft flying from Heathrow to the US - and the chaos that has already ensued due to the cancellation of all flights in and out of Heathrow today.

I'm due to fly home on Saturday - two days from now - and the thing that's really worrying me is the "no hand-luggage" thing. No book to read. No puzzle magazines allowed. No bottle of water. No iPod. And no laptop. Fuckshitbollocks.

What am I going to do with my laptop? My iPod? My digital camera? And how on earth am I going to keep myself occupied for 36 hours (12 hour flight from Heathrow to HK, 12 hours at HK airport and 12 hour flight from HK to NZ) with nothing to read except the in-flight magazine???

  • Your bag gets opened and your valuables are stolen
  • Your delicate and fragile laptop/iPod/camera get crushed and/or broken as the baggage handlers chuck your suitcase around with gay abandon and pile lots of heavy stuff on top
  • Your laptop/iPod/camera get too cold down in the cargo area of the plane and things like LED screens shatter in the cold.

*sigh* Better backup my entire laptop and leave the disks with my sister. Better check I'll be covered by my travel insurance if they get stolen or broken. Wonder if I can buy a really heavy-duty laptop case before I leave.

I know it sounds stupid to be worrying about things at a time like this - maybe I'm focusing on that instead of the much more scary thought of a bomb on the plane. My sister reassured me by saying it's probably the safest time to travel - just because of the increased level of security - and that's true - and it did make me feel better. I don't particularly like flying at the best of times, so this certainly doesn't make me feel any better.

I'm not too worried about delays - I know there will be massive delays at Heathrow - the backlog won't be sorted out by Saturday, I'm sure - but at least I have 12 hours in Hong Kong, which hopefully will cover any delay in arriving from London.

*double sigh*

I hate flying.

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Sunday, August 06, 2006

What I don't understand about Lebanon

Thousands Of Israelis Hold Anti-War Protest In Tel Aviv. Getty Images News - David Silverman. Okay - I must be really stupid or something. Perhaps those terribly wise and open-minded 'world leaders' George Dubya or Tony "I'm no US poodle" Blair could enlighten me because I really really don't get it.

Why THE F**K is it OK for Israel to bomb the crap out of Lebanon today and every day since 12 July, killing many hundreds of civilians, up to half of whom are innocent children - and for Hezbollah to do the same (although to a far lesser extent) to innocent civilians in Israel - but at some point in the future - perhaps next Tuesday or whatever day the US decide - the UN will finally be allowed to pass a ceasefire resolution and both parties will be told in no uncertain terms to lay off?


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Friday, August 04, 2006

Clay Aiken's new CD

Clay Aiken's new look - crop and photoshop by Brandilyne. The thing I find most interesting about my - er - little obsession with Clay Aiken is that his taste in music is probably about as far as I could get from my own.

I was a punk the first time around, people!

I was rubbing soap in my hair and wearing old grandad shirts, jeans so tight you had to lie down to get into them and 3 belts (and a few safety pins) and pogoing around in the mosh pit to The Stranglers, Stiff Little Fingers, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury and The Jam from 1977 onwards... I consider The Velvet Underground to be the greatest band ever, and Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Janis Joplin and Joe Cocker are amongst my favourite vocalists of all time.

And then there's Clay.

"This is an album of love songs," he [Clay] explains, "but they are about all different kinds of love. Romantic love, Friendship, Unconditional love. There are a thousand different kinds of love; a thousand different ways to tell someone you love them. And, on top of that, since so many of these songs are covers, it's realistic to say that many of them have been or could be sung a thousand different ways."

In fact, Aiken has put his own spin on some of the well-known songs he has recorded for his new album. "These are songs I heard growing up. I loved them then and I still love them today, but we decided to do them a little differently. They have new arrangements and we put our own style on some of them."

"Those who have come to expect Aiken to belt out a song won't be disappointed. The album shows off Aiken's vocals in a big way with songs like the Bad English hit When I See You Smile and Harry Nillsson's Without You. But Aiken will surprise fans by singing in a more relaxed style on some tracks than they have heard before, showing a different, sexier side."

Clay Aiken's new look - ET photoshoot exclusive. What's interesting to me is that there are some songs on this CD which I probably wouldn't be that into if anyone else but Clay were singing them - but which, by the pure power of his voice, he will make me fall in love with.

The ClayNation has discovered clips of three of the songs on Promosquad over the last couple of days - A Thousand Days, I Want To Know What Love Is and Without You.

So far I'm a bit meh on A Thousand Days, but I can definitely see the potential of I Want To Know What Love Is. I'm wildly impressed that this is a duet with Sweet Suzie McNeil from last years's Rock Star: INXS - she's FAB - the girl can rock! And she has a great voice, too. Hey! Suzie has a nose-ring. Suzie's singing a duet with Clay. I have a nose-ring. EEEEE! Clay and I have a con.nec.tion! Ha!

ET - album cover shoot. The third song, Without You has simply kilt me dead. Oh.my.god. BEAUTIFUL. This is a true singer's song. You have to have a fantastic voice just to be able to attempt it, because there's such a huge range to cover - and yet Clay sings it so effortlessly. You know the glory note when it gets to "I can't liiiiiiiive" - oh my Lordy Lord. I was practically in a heap on the floor when he sang that bit. Just fantastic. I can't wait to hear Without You in its entirety - and I can't wait to hear the rest of the album either.

There are a couple of songs I wish were on there, but aren't - Back for More was an original song that was a huge hit on Clay's Jukebox Tour last year - as was Clay's rendition of I Can't Make You Love Me - which reduced every member of the audience to a weeping mess, and is probably my favourite ClaySong ever - but you can't have everything, and I do have those fantastic live preformances to look back on instead.

One day I hope Clay releases a live album, because he is utterly compelling live (and very very funny in between songs!) - but until then I have A Thousand Different Ways to look forward to - and hopefully to hear many times in concert. The album is released on 19 September. I can't wait! Yaaay!

ClayLinks

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Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Feel the fear - and do it anyway

The Gathering logoA few years ago when I was The Gathering's publicist I was invited to enter a pitching competition at the New Zealand Film and Television Conference. Each competitor had exactly five minutes to make their pitch to the audience of film and television executives, for whatever TV show they wanted to make. The first prize was $6,000 and TV3 would consider screening your winning entry once it was made.

I had a week to prepare, and decided I would pitch to make a documentary of the Millennium Gathering. We had already made a Gathering documentary a couple of years before, so with an editor friend I made a 5-minute show-reel using the best footage from that doco. I included sound at the beginning and end, and the rest was silent. It would be shown on the big screen behind me as I made my presentation.

Still from Subterranean Homesick Blues videoI decided to use the "Bob Dylan" technique and accompany my speech with large cue cards - like in his video for Subterranean Homesick Blues. I practiced my presentation until I had it timed exactly at 5 minutes, and prepared as thoroughly as I possibly could.

The night before the conference I lay awake practically half the night, sick with nerves, absolutely terrified, wondering why the hell I had ever agreed to enter this stupid competition. If anyone had given me the option, I would have quit right then, because I truly didn't see how I could possibly go through with it.

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