Kathleen Turner and George IV

The last song on Falco's album Emotional is called The Kiss of Kathleen Turner. It is a very odd song indeed.

The lyrical highlight must be:

Issos, Cannae, Katalaunische Felder, Mount Greek, Austerlitz, Waterloo, Verdun, Stalingrad, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Harrisburg, Brokdorf, Zwentendorf, Cattenom, Wackersdorf, Tschernobyl,

Kathleen, can you hear me babe kathleen, do you know what I'm talking about I'm just talking about Not the first kiss of my life I'm talking about ... our planet ... Kathleen!

What the hell! Shallow people shouldn't try to be deep. How is Chernobyl connected with Waterloo? Why is he talking about our planet?

People are unkind. Like me about Falco. Like people about Kathleen Turner. I found out that the reason everyone slagged her off in the 90s after a stellar career in the 80s was because she had rheumatoid arthritis. In the papers there was specualtion about drugs, food and booze, but she actually had arthritis. Nasty. Further proof that God is either a bastard or an ancient Greek (hubris).

Here's what The Times wrote about George IV when he died:

“There never was an individual less regretted by his fellow-creatures than this deceased king. What eye has wept for him? What heart has heaved one throb of unmercenary sorrow? ... If he ever had a friend — a devoted friend in any rank of life — we protest that the name of him or her never reached us”

When he came to throne he was 111kg.

"George's favorite breakfast reputedly consisted of two roast pigeons, three beefsteaks, a bottle of white wine, a glass of champagne, two glasses of port, and one of brandy."

The Times also concluded:

"he would always prefer a girl and a bottle to politics and a sermon."

He sounds like a perfectly sensible anecdote to politics, sermons and causes. I would like to think our Governor General has similar inclinations. The thin, puritanical and righteous should be in charge of nothing.

George IV is famous now as Hugh Laurie's Prince Regent in Blackadder III. When I was in England with my good friend Matt we went to see George's beach residence at Brighton. It was ridiculous and opulent. Which is how I come back to Falco.

If you compare the portraits I think the similarities are more striking than the differences.

I return to my original statement: life is absurd, unfair and ends unpleasantly.

If The Times wrote your obituary in a bad mood what would it say?

Danyl & Maggie

I don't think I have any photos of Danyl and Maggie. This will have to do. If you know them you can try and guess which is which. Actually there is no correct answer because this is a picture of soft toys.

When Cathy and I came back from Japan, Danyl and Maggie put us up in their spare room. They were very good to us. Unfortunately, some time later I melted down for awhile and

I hit a grumpy patch.

Danyl and Maggie got married a few weeks ago and they are now on holiday in India. Their wedding was very nice. I say that as a person who generally think weddings aren't nice. Their wedding was. I think everyone there enjoyed themselves. I think they are perfectly matched and maybe even an anti-conventional cumdgeon like Danyl will see (or has seen, I don't want to come off as patronising because I am absolutely clueless) that marrying is a public symbol of something private and very important. When I was younger I thought that other things were important (being cool for example), but love is really the most important thing. I mean love that is companionship and respect not pop song love. Robust respect, where you don't let people get away with shit.

Do you know why I started this? It was because I was reading through my old posts (vain?) and I saw that Danyl had actually told Richard and myself what happened to Jeremy, but Richard and I had failed to notice. If Richard really cares he could go back and look... apparently Jeremy's much saner now (unless you give him sugar) and probably doesn't throw bottles off roofs anymore.

Anyway, while Danyl and Maggie are safely overseas I think I can apologise for the grumpy patch, and wish them all the best.

Falco

When George IV died in 1830 The Times wrote:

“There never was an individual less regretted by his fellow-creatures than this deceased king. What eye has wept for him? What heart has heaved one throb of unmercenary sorrow? ... If he ever had a friend — a devoted friend in any rank of life — we protest that the name of him or her never reached us”

Somehow it is peculiarly unkind to be cruel to the dead; no matter how ridiculous they were in life.

*

Rock Me Amadeus was the number one hit in New Zealand in March and April of 1986. I was in the third form at Kapiti College. I remember walking across the field at the back of school with a guy called David (it must have been in early March) telling him that while I thought the song was awesome it was far too strange for most people and would NEVER be a number one in New Zealand. Shows how much I knew at the age of thirteen.

The song was mostly in German. It was fun to sing without knowing what it meant. Here’s what it meant:

He was a punker and he lived in the biggest city
It was in Vienna where he did everything
He had debts because he drank, but all the women loved him,
And all of them shouted "come and rock me Amadeus"
He was a superstar, he was popular,
He was so exalted, because he had flair,
He was a virtuoso, was a rock idol,
And everyone shouted "come and rock me Amadeus"

It was in 1780 and it was in Vienna
No plastic money anymore,
The banks were against him,
Where his debts came from was well-known by everyone
He was a ladies' man, ladies loved his punk,
He was a superstar, he was so popular
He was so exalted, that was exactly his flair
He was a virtuoso, was a rock idol
And everyone still shouts today "come and rock me Amadeus"

I’m so glad I found out. The composer of this song had a peculiar knack for writing novelty songs. Imagine if you had an idea of yourself as a serious musician and your real gift was writing novelty songs. Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humour?

*

This photo is why I like Falco. He could walk the line between being a totally overblown, pompous idiot and taking the piss. Of course there were times when I'm sure that Falco actually took himself seriously. Mostly this would have been when he got paid squillions of dollars. At that point it would have been hard not to believe that you were actually a "genius”. Luckily pop celebrity is so brief and the post fame ignominy so complete that this feeling is temporary.
Life is absurd, unfair and ends unpleasantly. This photo sums that up. It is absurd, and unfair that someone dressed like this was rich, and his life certainly ended unpleasantly. In fact you almost can see the precipice Falco is about to fall off in this picture.

Maybe he is dressed like this in hell.

*

I was quite upset when I heard that Falco had died. He was 40. He was avoiding tax on a Caribbean island. Unfortunately, while he was avoiding tax he drove into a bus.

Falco is buried in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna along with Beethoven, Schubert, a bevy of Strauss', Brahms, Gluck, Salieri, and Schoenburg. Actually there are a few more people buried there as well. I see that the family went for something restrained and dignified when they commissioned the headstone.
While I was finding out about how Falco died I learnt a lot about the man after his moment in the sun in 1986. Here are highlights:

• He received a Golden Bambi award


• For his 1990 comeback album: "Falco developed an artificial language corresponding to the computer age: I mine, I-me-you-I-mine. You yours so alone, to be alone. And so on. But the success Falco and especially Hans Hölzel were hoping for did not eventuate. "It was a very introverted album and I did get a bit carried away with clever word games," Falco said in retrospect."


• "In the summer of 1997 Claudia Wohlfromm, wife of the producer Torsten Börger, became Falco's manager. She wanted to develop a whole new Falco style, one she thought would fit the new millennium. And Falco didn't stop her. One day he appeared in public with dyed blonde hair and a diamond in the upper right incisor."

The last song on Falco's album Emotional is called The Kiss of Kathleen Turner. It is a very odd song indeed. The lyrical highlight must be:

Austerlitz, Waterloo, Verdun, Stalingrad, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Harrisburg, Brokdorf, Zwentendorf, Cattenom, Wackersdorf, Tschernobyl, Kathleen, can you hear me babe Kathleen, do you know what I'm talking about I'm just talking about Not the first kiss of my life I'm talking about ... our planet ... Kathleen!

What the hell! How is Chernobyl connected with Waterloo? Why is he talking about our planet? How is Kathleen Turner connected with any of this?

*

People are unkind: to themselves and to others.

After a career in the 1980s as one of the sexiest women in movies Kathleen Turner got fat in the 1990s and people mocked her. In the papers there was speculation about drugs, food and booze. Actually she had rheumatoid arthritis.

George IV is famous now as Hugh Laurie's Prince Regent in Blackadder III. When I was in England with my good friend Matt we went to see George's beach residence at Brighton. It was ridiculous and opulent. I quite liked it.

What are you supposed to do with what you are handed? If you are handed wealthy irrelevance how or why should you remain austere and serious-minded? If you are the beauty of the world and given a painful disease what should you do? Or if you studied music in Vienna but were seduced by the glamour of pop novelty hits… what then?

It’s hard to die happy if you are unhappy with what life has handed you.

Falco, I love you.

Songs About Bonking

Here is the list of the number one singles in New Zealand in 1986:
Room That Echoes; Nikita; I'm Your Man; West End Girls; Rock Me Amadeus; Harlem Shuffle; Living Doll; Sailing Away; I Wanna Be A Cowboy; Venus; Slice of Heavan, and Walk This Way.

Songs about shagging:7
Songs about other things:5

It's a draw in NZ in 1986 (because Cliff Richard's song is so lame it can't be considered to be about shagging).

Songs about other things include:

• rooms that echo (there are not enough songs about echoes)
• inner city pressure (Flight of the Conchords reference)
• Mozart
• Cliff Richard and dolls (a fetish song)
• KZ-7 (also a fetish song)
• being ironic about Westerns

Songs about shagging:

• Elton wants to shag a Russian guy called Nikita
• George wants a shag
• The Rolling Stones still want to shag
• Banarama want a shag
• Dave Dobyn talks about angels but really he wants a shag
• Aerosmith and Run DMC want a shag (but not with each other)

Of course, in Jazz they're far too sophisticated to shag:

I've got you under my skin, My funny valentine, What a little moonlight can do, All of me, etc, etc. And as we well know there is not a single opera about love...

Rock Me Amadeus

He was a punker and he lived in the biggest city

It was in Vienna where he did everything

He had debts because he drank, but all the women loved him,

And all of them shouted "come and rock me Amadeus"

He was a superstar, he was popular,

He was so exalted, because he had flair,

He was a virtuoso, was a rock idol,

And everyone shouted "come and rock me Amadeus"

It was in 1780 and it was in Vienna

No plastic money anymore,

The banks were against him,

Where his debts came from was well-known by everyone

He was a ladies' man, ladies loved his punk,

He was a superstar, he was so popular

He was so exalted, that was exactly his flair

He was a virtuoso, was a rock idol

And everyone still shouts today "come and rock me Amadeus"

I've always wondered what the lyrics to this song were. Now I wish I didn't.

Falco

Rock Me Amadeus was the number one hit in New Zealand in March and April of 1986. I was a third former at Kapiti College. I remember walking across the field at the back of school with a guy called David (it must have been in early March) telling him that while I thought the song was awesome it was far too strange for most people and would NEVER be a number one in New Zealand. You've gotta love the arrogance of youth.

As you can see I own the album. Not only that, I own his next album too. Richard will be happy.

Looking at the lists of New Zealand number ones I think I can chart the dawn of my pop music consciousness to 1984. This is the year where I could sing you a bit of every single number one. Before that, I know a lot of them, but I also have gaps.

I have a lot to say on this subject. Richard will need to prepare a whole new range of caustic comments.

I give your joke a zero

And then Richard said:

"But there are no wrong jokes... or is that notes?"

This is why I like Richard. Whatever a petard is he hoisted me on mine.

When I was at university doing a paper in Anthropology there was an insufferable little oick in my tutorial who would say things like:

"I'd rather live in a mud hut."

And "It's all relative."

The most infuriating thing about saying "It's all relative" is that while it is true in a big there-is-no-God-and-everything-is-meaningless sort of way, it is also completely untrue because people invent systems that make perfectly good sense and just saying that everything is relative is a cop out or an excuse to do something naughty/hideously evil.

Then again, breaking rules is ok too. It's like students refusing to race in a race but walking around the track holding hands. Not for everyone ("That's why we won't win any Olympic medals"), but some people can see the point.

The point of my previous story was this: I know what it's like to go to something that everyone raves about and think it's rubbish. As long as you make your own mind up, informed by your own tastes and stick to them regardless of whether they happen to be with the majority or the minority then it's ok to stand up or to sit down at the end of a concert. I have stayed seated when everyone stood up; I have stood up when everyone stayed seated.

(While that's a good ending I would also like to add: I stood up when everyone stood up and stayed seated when everyone stayed seated, and stayed seated when quite a few people but definitely not everyone stood up... etc. You know what I mean. It's a metaphor damn it!)

Musical Genius

When Cathy and I started dating a movie came out called Shine about the Australian pianist David Helfgott. It was a very good movie and Geoffrey Rush gained a lot of praise for his performance. As a result of the success of the movie David Helfgott did a tour of the world. His tour of the world included the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington. Knowing that Cathy had done a music degree and was at that time working in Parsons I bought her a ticket to see David as a special treat. It was very expensive and the event was sold out. Cathy said later that when she saw the tickets her heart sank for me, because she had heard through the grapevine that Helfgott was not up to it.

The performance was utterly awful. It was awful because he was obviously not well and couldn't play. Throughout the performance he would do a sort of moaning accompaniment that was flat and droning. The worst thing about the performance though was that he got a standing ovation from the entire house (minus myself and Cathy) that lasted for at least ten minutes. I was outraged. In the end I was angrier at the audience than I was at Helfgott.

Two weeks later Cathy and I went to see another pianist. The tickets were a third of the price of the Helfgott concert, the Michael Fowler Centre was about one-tenth full, and the pianist was not very well known (I can't even remember his name). It was a wonderful concert. He played a piece by Ravel, I think, for the left hand. Fantastic. Although the audience really enjoyed his performance he did not receive a standing ovation.

Time, gentlemen, time.

There is a wonderful moment early in the film Hiroshima, Mon Amour when the woman looks down on her lover in bed. He is lying with his back to us with one hand stretched out across the sheets. Seeing the hand on the bed the woman flashes back and we see a few frames of another man's hand in the same position but lying outstretched across cobbles.

When Ornette Coleman played Lonely Woman I wondered if he connected with that time in 1959 when he was young man playing it in a studio. I wondered if he remembered the day, the heat of the day outside, the way whoever he loved then moved around a room.

When he was playing best last night he played wild, rushing music over a roar of drums and bass. There was only sound, chaotic and endless and it was exciting to be lost inside it, to forget yourself.

Time

There is an old lady who lives around the corner from me. She wears an old grey coat and sensible shoes. Whenever I pass her she says: "Sorry to trouble you, but you couldn't tell me the time could you?" She has a very educated sounding tone to her voice. She throws bird seed to the sparrows on the pavement. She lives in a garage.

It took me awhile to realise that she lived in a garage, but one day I saw her coat hanging in the side door to the garage, and heard music coming from inside. Sometimes I see her counting her change in the dairy, or standing on the corner of two streets looking as if she is thinking about going somewhere quite grand.

I think she asks me the time so that she can talk to someone. Is it possible that she really needs to know the time when time has forgotten her?

Powley-Prowse Face Pain Scale

I broke my collar bone on Thursday. This was quite painful. The guy in the ambulance kept asking me to rate my pain on a scale, but I couldn't decide if I was a three or a four. I didn't want to say four because I was present at Eleanor's birth and I would say Cathy spent a lot of time on four and five so I felt I knew what a four looked like.

Personally I think guys should carry this chart around with them at all times. Women and managers always want to know how we're feeling and guys don't like talking about that sort of stuff. We could just pull this out of our pockets and point to the right picture. For example, if we were asked how we felt about receiving a "you didn't do your duty" slip I could pull out the diagram and point to one, while Richard could point to a zero.

Like Richard I went to see Ornette Coleman last night. I think Richard is giving Ornette a four, I don't think he would go as far as a five because I think if he were asked to make a choice between a seventeen hour labour and a 90 minute Ornette Coleman concert he would choose the concert. I give Ornette a zero.

Clarence

A couple of my seventh form students last year decided that I looked like Clarence Boddicker. Not Clarence as he looks now in that piece of crap called That 70s Show, but Clarence as he was in that piece of crap called Robocop. At the end of the year all the seventh formers and the staff had the chance to buy a school sweatshirt and have something printed on the back. They wanted mine to say Clarence. I declined to buy a sweatshirt.

While my students are mocking my male pattern baldness, glasses, pastiness and resemblance to grumpy old men on TV shows I think two things: (1) it's pretty funny, and (2) who knows what genes and time have in store for you. I once thought I would look like Alexander the Great or Jim Morrison. This clearly has not panned out very well.

When I bump into some of these students on the street in twenty years and they have lost all their hair and put on weight I wonder if they will mind when I call them chrome dome?

Circle vs. Square

Last year I was fascinated by the battle of circle vs square in our staff room. Neither were conscious of the battle but it existed and represented something more universal.

There are those who will always seek to drive us to a perfect order, and have even in the course of history submitted to evil to see that this order is attained. These are the squares. They are relentless. They cannot make jokes. There are also those who understand that order is important but also imaginary, and should never become inhuman or completely inflexible. They are often funny. Sometimes the squares wonder why the circles are laughing; sometimes the circles wonder why the squares aren't.

Our chief square has left. He made a speech. It was a serious speech, but the circles laughed. The chief circle even laughed out loud (and felt bad about it later). That battle is over, but the war will go on.

I am a circle with the perfect exterior of a square.

Further highlights of Auckland

This man seems very upset by the death of his goat. So upset he has taken off all his clothes. It's hard to say why. There is no explanation at the base of the statue and there are no goat farms in the vicinity. Presumably a very famous early goat of Auckland died on this spot and the owner was moved to commemorate his grief (and the goat) with this marble tribute.

The statue of the goat is outside the Winter Garden in the Auckland Domain.

The male nude in the statue also brings to mind the old Arabic saying about women, men and goats, but perhaps I won't explore that here.

Music - Masters of Metal

I was so cool when I was a kid that my mother bought this for me. She bought it for me in the record store in Coastlands off a woman who also looked like she was a forty-something mum. While I tried to be invisible over by the metal section my mother and the woman behind the counter laughed at the cover of this record and then cast disbelieving looks at me. It was extraodinarily embarrassing.

It reminds me of a piece in a book by the guy who wrote High Fidelity. He was describing that moment when your mother walks into the room when you are a teenager listening to music in your room and the lyrics are particularly ridiculous:

Bang a gong? Get it on?

This is a very fraught moment because you (1) wish your mother would go away because she's not cool and she doesn't "get it", and (2) sort of realise that she's right and the lyric or hairdo or outfit of your favourite star is completely idiotic.

As I look at the band photos on the back of this album I wonder what it must be like to still be in the heavy metal band you started when you were eighteen at the age of fifty. Still trying to fit leather pants, still trying to back brush your hair, still trying to think of metaphors for penis. Each of us has a cross to bear.

Passport - Six Years in Japan

I've been wondering for awhile how to get through six years in Japan on this thread without boring myself rigid. I think this might be the way (see right). It's a clear, zip-lock bag with a series of fairly random mementoes of the time. If I pull them out one at a time I might just be able to cope with six years in Japan.











Item One: Mug shots
Don't we look happy corporate drones? Both of us are wearing corporate lapel badges and our serious faces go with our serious suits.

At the end of our time in Japan I was working in the Head Office for Nova (an English language instruction company that has since folded) answering the phone (oh the glamour). I caught the subway to work at 7.00am. Every teacher who was sick in Western Japan (3-400 schools) called me and said they weren't coming, and then I had to call every teacher in Western Japan who was having a day off and ask them if they would like to do some overtime. Sometimes people said yes, but mostly they laughed and sometimes they were rude to me. It sucked.

My first rule when I took the sick calls in Japan was to be polite and sympathetic. Other people answering the phone went for cold and rude. There were two reasons for this rudeness. Firstly, a lot of people calling in sick were just slackers and caused us a lot of work, and secondly, it was a big no no in Japan not to go to work. You were expected to drag yourself in under any circumstances. As a consequence there was no sick pay. Even if someone in your family died you were allowed leave only a strictly determined quota (a week off for a spouse, one day for an uncle, that kind of thing). While I was in Japan I had no sick days in five of the six years we were there.

Cuteness

She's so cute she even gets away with farting on Richard's knee. Imagine if I climbed on Richard and farted on his knee at a dinner party. He wouldn't be impressed. He would think:

Christ! What's he doing?

Bloody hell, he's quite heavy for a small guy.

Should I say anything?

F**king hell! He just farted on my leg.

With Eleanor on the other hand Richard reads her a story. What could I get away with if I was this cute? I could definitely get a reserved carpark at school.

Joy

When do we lose our capacity for joy in the sun on our face, the feel of cool water on our bodies in summer, the wind shifting through the trees? What do we gain with age? Wisdom is something I suppose but wouldn't we all trade it in an instant for: joy in the sun on our face, happiness with the feel of cool water on our bodies in summer, fascination with the wind shifting through the trees?

I think of The Smiths: "You're older now, and you're a clever swine..."

I have been an arse most of my life. Overly romantic, overly idealistic, prone to bouts of depression, a lover of booze, opera and language. Eleanor is teaching me. I am a willing pupil.