Posts by Craig Ranapia
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FGS - have we forgotten already what a divisive, confrontational bully Banks is (was and IS still)?
Mark: If that's the basis you want to cast your vote on, that's entirely your affair. (And I suspect I've seen just want a prick Banks can be at closer range than most PA readers, so don't think I'm a fan of the guy.) But, to be blunt, I'm still gob-smacked at how Hubbard managed to squander what I don't think it's OTT to call a remarkable amount of good-will from across the political spectrum so quickly. There might not be a malicious bone in the man's body, but you've got to wonder if he's just politically naive and never really got his head around the difference between local body politics and being CEO of a closely held private company, or whether he's a dangerous flake who makes policy on the hoof, and whose values are determined by the last person he talked to.
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LOL. By the time I was asked to not only FIND seven Health Board candidates I could bring myself to vote for, but then rank them in order of preference, I gave up.
In all seriousness, Emma, I felt like shit about it. This is the first time in my life I've declined to exercise my right (and my responsibility as a citizen, IMO) to vote, but really... I just couldn't bring myself to vote for the least of far too many evils. The incumbents rarely reach the dizzying heights of competence, and the challengers... oh God, I've wiped my butt on 1-ply toilet paper with more substance.
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Actually, Hubbard delievered a mea culpa at the GABA meeting, and essentially said he was ignorant and didn't really know any gay people when he signed that silly letter about gay parents. I'm more inclined to believe him than I am Banks, and it sounds like the crowd at the meeting was too.
Jesus-fucking-Christ, with friends like this who needs enemies? Sorry, Russell, you can believe Hubbard if you like, but I wonder if you'd be quite so forgiving if he signed a "silly letter" endorsing the notion that you and Fiona were unfit to raise your own sons? And then three years later all the prick has to say is 'whoopsie'?
Perhaps it's his responsibility to be informed on issues - and that doesn't involve "really knowing" gay people (whatever that means) - and showing the basic decency to be genuinely accountable for his actions. There's nothing wrong with changing your mind, but trying to worm your way out of getting it wrong in the first place?
I don't know what's more disturbing - Hubbard utter political and moral vacuity, or the prospect of this arse getting a pass again.
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North of the bridge - I'll come out of the closet and admit that ten minutes with the candidate information booklet brought me to the conclusion that the most responsible act was to rip my ballot paper into very, very small pieces and burn it.
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So when you've done everything you can (at great expense to ratepayers/taxpayers) to encourage people onto public transport and yet still they won't budge from their cars, what options are left?
I thought it was quite obvious - put a whacking great 'sin tax' on petrol and imported cars, just as the Government currently does with tobacco. I have to travel from the North Shore to Newmarket every Thursday to record my PA Radio piece, and public transport isn't as convenient as taking the car because unfortunately the timetables don't magically realign with my convenience. But it's sure cheaper and marginally kinder on my blood pressure.
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Can we at least concur that Tamaki is a scary so and so?
Yes, but he doesn't scare me as much as the brown-neck bigots (both with and without dog collars) who actually have real influence - and waching theuniversal post-mortem whitewash applied to Whakahuihui Vercoe's often vile bigotry was just depressing.
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I'm not blaming her at all, Craig, nor her children. I'm blaming him for not informing her at some stage in the twenty odd years they were together that this eventuality may occur.
Jackie, well I'd like to apologise too - it was really unfair to say you were somehow being callous or insensitive to Denise Clarke or her children, and am sure we can both agree it's a damn horrible situation we wouldn't wish on anyone. Seriously, how many of us sit down and plan out our funerals - let alone a watchlist of the folks you've had little to do with for years but might turn up with a hired van to jack your corpse? I did in the wake of a cancer scare a few years back (the first part anyway), and that was not a very comfortable conversation, to put it mildly.
I don't want to put into the public domain some things I've heard through the flaxroots, but there's a lot more going on than the 'culture clash' narrative that's been in the media. I'm sure we've all seen funerals where a lot of bad blood and emotional toxic waste gets vented, but this is really, really extreme.
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Brilliant. I liked the way they built up the tension around the thing that burst out of Ray, only for George to completely destroy it by "reaping" it
Iif Dead Like Me had gone to a third season, apparently that was going to have some serious consequences for everyone. In this show, the afterlife may well be a ramshackle bureaucracy but there are some things you don't do - and Reapers creating then wiping out Gravelings isn't among them. Oh, and remember that weird kid who reaps household pets? Apparently he was going to be around more - and making life interesting for the whole Lass clan.
Any how, will be interesting to see if __Pushing Dasies__ will finally change DLM creator Bryan Fuller from a death cult to a major religion. The Barry Sonnenfeld pilot has been garnering some serious buzz (even the promos are eye-poppingly luscious), but it also apparently went seriously over-schedule and over-budget.
and loved the way that Ray Winstone portrayed Henry VIII,
Henry the Football Hooligan? Love it too, and probably a wee bit closer to the reality. And Helena Bonham Carter was a hoot as Anne Boleyn - when you and your sister are (virtually) being pimped by your own father to a rampant man-slut you can't blame a woman for being a teeny bit high-strung.
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The wahine ataahua that I do my mahi with every day think that the bloke who died needed to tell his family early on that the family of his birth were very likely to take his tinana back to their turangawaewae. And then all of this hooha would have been avoided.
Sorry? I've had some experience of such 'hooha' (as you put it), and I respectfully suggest the only way it would have been 'avoided' was if Denise Clarke had knocked back a fistful of No-Doze and sat by her partner's coffin with a softball bat until he was buried where he wanted to be.
Hey, perhaps Clarke was a hopelessly naive bitch for thinking her partner's wishes were actually worth spit. But I actually find it pretty offensive that the blame for a distressing and traumatic situation to her and her children is being put on her.
Not cool, Jackie. Oh, and before I'm called a racist don't think the same b.s. doesn't go down with the honkies. One of the most horrible grieving processes I've ever been through is when a friend died of cancer, and the family who didn't want a damn thing to do with the camp queen when he was alive had a lot to say about the funeral arrangements. And needless to say, the partner of twenty-five years and the people who'd actually been part of his life were not welcome.
Legal - yes. (And thankfully, we're legally moved on a little since then.) But can you even begin to understand what a violation that petty and vindictive power trip (almost literally) over an open coffin was?
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Oh, slightly off-topic: I saw The Real Thing at the Silo theatre last week, and Claire Chitham was brilliant, totally stole the show.
Good on her - Tom Stopard is the kind of playwright where the actors really have to be playing attention. As we're unlikely to ever see
The Coast of Utopia staged professionally in New Zealand (three long plays, huge cast, technically elaborate and not exactly bums-on-seat subject matter), it's nice to see one of his more accessible plays getting done, and done well from the sound of it.
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