It can now be told: Jeremy "Newsboy" Wells, Damian Christie and I will be presenting an alternative commentary on 95bFM for the All Blacks' World Cup quarter-final against South Africa on Saturday.
The programme will commence at 8.00pm and the kick-off is at 8.30pm. The idea is that you, the punters, watch the television with the sound down, and listen to our witty and perceptive call on the game, with appropriate sound effects. More details will be forthcoming later in the week.
I ought to make it clear that we're not knocking the official TV One commentary, just offering an alternative for the bFM audience. You'll be able to hear it in Auckland by setting your FM receiver to 95 in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions, and elsewhere by pointing your web browser to the 95bFM Internet streams - in MP3 form from Ihug and Windows Media via Xtra.
The tricky bit, of course, is that the All Blacks' inexorable roll towards the RWC final was stymied somewhat by the team's shabby performance against Wales at the weekend. The possibility that the ABs could go out at quarter-final stage - representing their worst-ever World Cup performance - arises.
It will be an injustice to whichever team goes out on Saturday - and an indictment of the IRB's hapless effort at seeding for the tournament. But that's what will happen. Scary.
Tracey Nelson has supplemented her customary All Black game stats on Haka! with a one-off column looking at exactly how Wales scored those tries. The birds-eye view indicates that set pieces were fine, and players got to the breakdown in their usual numbers - but key defensive lapses (not just in close, but out wide, where Howlett's wing wasn't covered when he was caught out of position) and a failure to protect the ball at the tackle let Wales into the game.
What we can expect to see against South Africa, I think, is a little of what the All Blacks have been saving for the later rounds. They've unveiled a minimum of set moves in the competition so far, preferring to mostly shovel the ball wide and trust in the pace on the outside - a bit like the traditional Wellington game plan.
It was an indictment of how far they got in a hole against Wales that the move that led to Spencer's try had to be hauled out on Saturday. The plan, I suspect, has been to pretend that Spencer doesn't have a running game until at least the semi-final.
Now, this is amazing: Simon Waldman, a staff member at The Guardian discovered a 1938 copy of Homes and Gardens which included a feature on Adolf Hitler's mountain home ("There is nothing pretentious about the Fuhrer's little estate … as host he is a droll raconteur"). He scanned the pages and posted them to his blog, correctly reasoning that Home and Gardens' gush provided an interesting angle on history. Somewhat inevitably, he was accused of being a Nazi sympathiser …
Memory of some more recent history: back in April, a senior US official promised that the Iraq reconstruction bill for the American taxpayer would not exceed $US1.7 billion. This week, the White House gained congressional approval for $US87 billion to rebuild the country. Surely some mistake here?
Most interesting perspective on the Iraq war lately: this Washington Post interview with former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, who has been helping coalition forces with their inquiries. By his telling, Saddam completely misread the strategic situation and blew whatever chance he might have had of putting up a fight. Aziz confirmed the view that there were no chemical or biological weapons.
A somewhat overlooked facet of the nation-building effort in Iraq: Paul Bremer has decreed that Iraq's new tax system will consist of a single income and corporate tax at a flat rate of 15%. It's tempting to regard this is a kind of scary economic science experiment, but a similar tack in Russia does seem to have shown some merit in applying a low, flat tax in countries where people have generally taken the path of avoiding tax altogether.
Jane Clifton's Listener column on Don Brash's clumsy coup seems to be the best-informed and most perceptive account this week of what went down and how - but it's not available online, so you'll have to buy the magazine (another bottle of the Schlumberger, thanks Finlay). You can, however, read my column this week on the free, fringe world of game emulators. Lots of fun to be had there …
You should also pop on over to the revamped Mediawatch site, where we have multiple transcripts from the programme, including the recent Louise Chunn interview, Colin Peacock on trouble at the ABC, the interview with Professor Gay Hawkins about trans-Tasman media relations, and Tom Frewen unpicking TVNZ's first charter-compliant annual report.
Wary as I am of statutory minimum sentences and other forms of gimmick justice, I think there's a case, as suggested in this story, for making the endangerment of children an aggravating factor in prosecutions for methamphetamine manufacture. It's one thing for some crazies to try and cash in on the boom, quite another for innocent children to be exposed to chemicals that could permanently damage their health.
Anyway, some more thanks from last week in Welly: thanks to Renaissance for the loan of the 12" G4 PowerBook (really sweet little machine - but I'd have 500MB of memory in it if it was mine; MacOS X will take all the RAM you can throw at it and love you for it), Andrew at Spikefin for the mouse, Julie at Tuanz for the patience and Simon for the fresh rainbow trout - that was nice.