100,000 views

Recently Slightly Intrepid passed 100,000 pageviews since I started blogging here in January 2007. There have been 520 posts before this one, and I've used 33 categories to divide them up. The top 10 posts according to pageviews are dominated by a silly little post that I wrote in April 2008 on a possible route for a tunnel under Cook Strait - it would appear that there's an untapped groundswell of interest in sci-fi New Zealand transport projects out there!

Top 10 blog posts by total pageviews

1. A Cook Strait tunnel? (4191 pageviews)

How about a walkway to Tasmania while you're at it?

2. The midgets of Casablanca (1279)

Cheaper to hire short people than build a big plane.

3. Obrigado Lisboa (1229)

Portuguese capital travelogue.

4. A royal garden party (1149)

Cucumber sandwiches with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

5. A great day for flying (1062)

Flying back from the South Island, incl. plenty of traffic from Theonering.net for the Hobbit set shot.

6. Sim City 4 (994)

Building the city of Cullinane in SC4, incl. neighbourhood profiles and transit map.

7. The mysterious Mr Tibbet (917)

A slice of London local history and a mythical highwayman.

8. Later with Jools Holland (903)

Seeing Adele perform live at the BBC... and R. Kelly (bleurgh!)

9. Le Bourget Air & Space Museum (590)

Cool old planes in Paris.  Concorde and rockets too.

10. My best and worst films of 2010 (437)

Any year with Inception and Scott Pilgrim vs The World has to be a good year for movies.

Top 5 search keywords

1. Cook Strait bridge

2. Cook Strait tunnel

3. Dave Arbus (violinist who famously played on The Who's Baba O'Riley)

4. Lisboa

5. Melody Gardot (mentioned in another Jools Holland post here)

Top 5 pageviews by country

1. USA 40,163

2. UK 14,600

3. NZ 7662

4. Germany 3286

5. Australia 2413

8am: Bacon & egg butty, four pints of cider

From an American reporter's anthropological perspective on attending Premiership football matches in England (including this Newcastle v Liverpool match), here's her view of the culinary side of things: 

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The food is cruddy and no one really cares about it, but the alcohol is essential.

Alcohol is allowed to be consumed in stadiums’ snack areas, but not in the stands. To temper the annoyance this causes, hard-core fans tend to drink heavily beforehand — carrying plastic bags full of beer onto the train, spending hours in nearby pubs — and at halftime. They are not supposed to arrive at the stadium obviously drunk, but many have ways of getting around this.

Meanwhile, very little eating goes on in the stands; nobody is walking around wearing a friendly hat and asking if you want to purchase yummy seat-side treats. No cotton candy; no Dippin’ Dots. Inside, the snack bar menus tend to be basic, offering things like French fries with curry sauce; chicken pie; and Bovril, a hot beef-flavored bouillon masquerading as soup.

At St. James’ Park, the Newcastle stadium, the menu in the away-fans’ snack area consisted of one type of entree — meat pies in various flavors — and eight types of alcoholic beverage. “Three-course meal: 7.80 pounds!” advertised a sign. Course one: meat pie. Course two: flavored vodka drink. Course three: Twix bar.

At the Aston Villa game in Birmingham, Steve James, 47, took time out from chanting obscene remarks at the visiting Chelsea players to observe that because the game started early in the afternoon, the fans had had less drinking time than they might have liked.

Take himself.

“I have only had 11 beers so far,” he said. “I met my mates at a bar at 8 in the morning and had a bacon and egg sandwich and four pints of cider,” cider being an alcoholic drink here. “On the train, I had a few more. Then I had six in a bar when I got here, and a couple at halftime.”

Except for his addition problems, James did not seem drunk at all. “I don’t like to be uncontrollable or not know what I’m doing,” he said. “I have my limit.”

What is that?

“I have no idea,” he said.

- Sarah Lyall, 'Game Hunting in England', New York Times, 20 May 2013

[Via Kris. If I have the right game, Newcastle lost the match at home 6-nil]

Etiquette on meeting a lady writer

If, when admitted into her study, you should find her writing-table in what appears to you like great confusion, recollect that there is really no wit in a remark too common on such occasions, - "Why, you look quite littery," - a poor play on the words literary and litter. In all probability, she knows precisely where to lay her hand on every paper on the table: having in reality placed them exactly to suit her convenience. Though their arrangement may be quite unintelligible to the uninitiated, there is no doubt method (her own method, at least) in their apparent disorder. It is not likely she may have time to put her writing table in nice-looking order every day. To have it done by servants is out of the question, as they would make "confusion worse confounded;" being of course unable to comprehend how such a table should be arranged.

If you chance to find an authoress occupied with her needle, express no astonishment, and refrain from exclaiming, "What! can you sew?" or, "I never supposed a literary lady could even hem a handkerchief!"

This is a false, and if expressed in words, an insulting idea. A large number of literary females are excellent needle-women, and good housewives; and there is no reason why they should not be. The same vigour of character and activity of intellect which renders a woman a good writer, will also enable her to acquire with a quickness, almost intuitive, a competent knowledge of household affairs, and the art of needlework. And she will find, upon making the attempt, that, with a little time and a little perseverance, she may become as notable a personage (both in theory and in practice) as if she had never read a book, or written a page.

The Dora of David Copperfield is an admirable illustration of the fact that a silly, illiterate woman may be the worst of housewives. Dickens has unquestionably painted this character exactly from life. But that he always does. He must have known a Dora. And who has not?

- Eliza Leslie, Miss Leslie's Behaviour Book, Philadelphia, 1839(?)

[Via Lapham's Quarterly. Miss Leslie's book is subtitled, 'A guide and manual for ladies as regards their conversation; manners; dress; introductions; entree to society; shopping; conduct in the street; at places of amusement; in traveling; at the table, either at home, in company or at hotels; deportment in gentlemen's society; lips; complexion; teeth; hands; the hair; etc., etc. With full instructions and advice in letter writing; receiving presents; incorrect words; borrowing; obligations to gentlemen; offences; children; decorum in church; at evening parties; and full suggestions in bad practices and habits easily contracted, which no young lady should be guilty of, etc., etc.' 

The expression 'confusion worse confounded' refers to mix-ups that have gone from bad to worse and comes from Milton's Paradise Lost (1667): 'With ruin upon ruin, rout upon rout, confusion worse confounded'.

The date of the book is unclear. The title page seems to indicate 1839, but David Copperfield, mentioned in the text, was not published until 1849-50.]

They Might Be Giants

They Might Be Giants
Bar Bodega, 101 Ghuznee St
Wellington
17 May 2013

The sound: choppy, punchy, blippy Brooklyn nerd rock. The participants: the spiritual heirs to the legacy of Devo. The clothes: Casual Architect. This was They Might Be Giants' first Wellington show, and their first visit to New Zealand since 2001. In a way, it's a small miracle that a band that makes pop music in such a pleasingly off-kilter fashion should have survived for more than three decades, but it's to our benefit because their snappy, high-pitched tracks are so enjoyable in a live venue. Bodega is a perfect venue to appreciate the band live - I was 10 metres from the stage, positioned strategically behind shorter concert-goers, and had a perfect view of the stage and the performers. It's a pleasure to see John Flansburgh and John Linnell still clearly enjoying their work, resolute in refusing to take themselves too seriously, and relishing the opportunity to play songs from their back catalogue mixed in with new material from this year's new album Nanobots.

The new material is catchy and appealing. Nanobots' premise is plenty of micro-songs, but there are also tracks of traditional length like those performed, including You're On Fire, the title track Nanobots, the dynamic Circular Karate Chop, and that TMBG specialty, a biographical ode to inventor Nikolai Tesla. The material from the back catalogue gets a very warm reception too, of course. It must be a treat to fly to the other side of the world and receive rapturous applause for your number about the obscure 11th president of the United States (James K. Polk, from their 1996 album Factory Showroom) or your cover of Why Does The Sun Shine? (The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas) from their identically-titled 1993 EP. It was also great to hear the wilfully schizophrenic Fingertips 'suite' from Apollo 18 for the first time, which consists of 21 micro-tracks totalling four and a half minutes.

Perhaps a useful illustration of TMBG's outlook is to quote from their John Linnell's Don't Let's Start from 1987, a gleaming slice of power pop sporting the potentially haunting lines: 'No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful / Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful'. This would be quite a heavy concept were it not directly followed up with: 'They want what they're not and I wish they would stop saying deputy dog dog a ding dang depadepa / Deputy dog dog a ding dang depadepa'. Well, quite.

TMBG are one of those bands I have foolishly neglected, basing my admiration on the contents of the excellent Dial-a-Song double CD compilation. There's plenty more to explore, and this concert was a reminder that I need to track down more of their albums - particularly Flood and Apollo 18, for starters. The band is to be commended for its move several years ago to diversify its recordings to include clever and catchy music for children - a field notoriously dominated by rampant cliche and po-faced infantilism. But that does raise the alarming prospect that some of the younger members of the audience actually came across the band in their nurseries!

TMBG's charm also assists matters greatly. They showed a pleasing stage presence, bantering with the audience despite a lack of coherent witticisms from the Friday night crowd, which was usually dealt with by professing not to understand a single word of the New Zealand accent. And while I know stories of celeb Twitter interaction are deathly dull to the people not involved, I would just like to point out that when I'd walked home and posted my thanks for a great gig, adding jokily 'If only we could understand your impenetrable accents', John Flansburgh replied within a few minutes 'It is difficult. We're like the Brooklyn Proclaimers'. Simple things like that earn plenty of loyalty from fans!

Here's an unofficial (but TMBG-endorsed) fan video for a track from the new album:


Earlier, floppy-fringed David Bain jumper-wearing Christchurch support Tom Lark (plus a mate) impressed with a fun collection of indie jangle-pop.

See also:
Music: TMBG - Birdhouse in Your Soul (on Leno, 1990, with Doc Severinsen)
Music: TMBG - New York City (live, Williamsburg NY, April 2013)
Music: Tom Lark - Hipsteranity

A German spy, or possibly a transvestite

From Simon Garfield's We Are At War, Glasgow war diarist Pam Ashford (a pseudonym) records a workplace conversation about the German spy threat, in her entry for Boxing Day 1939 (plus some additional gossip about two office girls and her family canary):

Mr Mitchell and Miss Crawford had a long conversation on the subject of spies. Both believe every word of the following stories:  

Mr Mitchell: 'A porter at Paisley Station saw a nun. She dropped something and when picking it up he noticed it was a man's hand. He warned the police. The nun was a spy. The porter received a letter from the War Office thanking him. That proves it is true'. 

Miss Crawford: 'No, you have the story wrong. The facts are these: my friend's friend went from Glasgow to Greenock late one night. She got into a carriage in which there were nuns. During the journey a nun dropped something and the girl noticed it was a man's hand that picked the article up. She warned the police. She has a letter from the War Office thanking her'. 

Several people drew a comparison between our two office girls. Betty (14) notices every bill in the street and can always tell you what the latest is; Margaret (18) never notices anything at all. Several people wondered if she knew there was a war on. I commented upon the fact that Margaret often says, 'Daddy says the only thing that matters is if I am happy'. 

A curious piece of natural history. For the seven years from 1932 to September 1939, Dick, our canary, fell into a somnolent position at tea-time and the family did not get much pleasure from his company thereafter. On the day that the war was declared he changed completely, and now spends the evenings singing and hopping and being as sociable as he can. 

- 'Pam Ashford', quoted in Simon Garfield, We Are At War, London, 2005, p.133.

The diary entries from Ashford and four others in the book were obtained from the remarkable social experiment, the Mass Observation project (official website, Wikipedia), which ran from 1937 until the mid-1960s, and was revived in 1981. For a revealing summary of MO's work, see Caleb Crain's excellent September 2006 summary in the New Yorker, Surveillance Society. In it Crain highlights the subversive intent of the early MO work, seeking to offer an alternative outlet for public questioning of government propaganda. This was later subsumed when it was incorporated as a market research firm in 1949. 

Chinatown, San Francisco

A walk north through Chinatown on a sunny day in April, starting at the Dragon Gate at the corner of Grant and Bush. (Click photos to enlarge).