Posts by Gabor Toth
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Like others, I found Sheen of Gold to be a moving experience. It was a reminder of just what an extraordinary band the Skeptics were as well as creating the profound "ache" of nostalgia; long-forgotten memories of lost friends and lost youth came flooding through my mind. I feel so privileged that I was able to see them play live.
Highlights for me was when the title track played about two-thirds of the way through the film; the tension building up in that wall-of-sound in the first 60 seconds then released in those funky off-beat loops. You could hear an audible release of breath from the audience when the track concluded. Also the closing sequence of Mamouth being played live at the Gluepot in their last-ever performance; a beautiful poignant song with David D'ath giving all he has to give, knowing that he only has weeks left to live; gosh that brought a lump to my throat.
-
Wonderful images!
What ever happened to spark-plug advertising? I remember as a young lad how spark-plug ads were everywhere; newspapers, magazines, bill-boards, sometimes murals covering the whole sides of buildings (the one of the rear of the L. T. Watkins building on the corner of Cuba and Ghuznee Streets in Wellington has only recently disappeared. It must have been at least 50 years old). Most were for Champion but I'm sure other brands were involved too. Cars still use spark-plugs and they are just as important as they have ever been but the main-stream advertising of them seems to have completely gone. -
Surely one of either Four or C4 counts. C4 2, as originally named, was only Freeview based, and it still exists as C4.
C4 was "temporarily" pulled from Freeview satellite about a year ago or so but (surprise surprise) its removal was quietly made permanent and it can now only be received on Freeview terrestrial.
-
Not so much a hack as an endorsement: Dissco "black-iron" frypans. (Dissco = Dunedin Stainless Steel Company Ltd ). These are commercial-kitchen grade, olde-school frypans made of 2mm thick cold-rolled carbon steel plate. Handles are long and made of steel tube which is rolled flat towards the end to form a taper and then arc-welded to the pan with some of the meatiest welding you will ever see. They do need to be seasoned and they do end up looking pretty manky (like a good frypan should) but are a dream to cook with. They are great on gas, not sure how they would perform on a ceramic hob. Much lighter than a cast-iron skillet and the handles never get hot to touch. They are cheap as chips (I bought a 200mm one for about $20, a 260mm for $24 and a 330mm whopper was about $28). For those in Wellington, they are easily available at Moore Wilsons who I suspect are primarily selling these to restaurants. If you are elsewhere, try commercial kitchen supplies or contact Dissco for a list of distributors. Made in New Zealand, brilliant to cook with and inexpensive...what more could you want?
-
He's just resigned as a Minister!!!
-
I've probably entered the Auckland casino about a dozen times since it opened. If I'm visiting Auckland and happen to have some spare time while in the CBD, I find it a curious and weirdly interesting place to drop into and look around. The only gambling I have ever done there was to drop a $2 coin into a five-cents-a-spin pokie (I had no idea what all the flashing lights meant and got bored very quickly). Anyway... despite visiting on different days of the week and at different times of the day and night (including what I would assume to be the peak periods of casino gambling late on Friday and Saturday nights) I can honestly say that I have never seen the casino even remotely full. Dozens upon dozens of pokie machines sit unused (whole rows of them at times) and there are always several tables not operating. I'm certainly not denying that there is a serious issue of problem gambling associated with the casino, but I'm curious as to how Sky City think they are going to fill the place with more punters with another 200+ machines and 11 more tables. Perhaps they are taking the "if we build it they will come" approach, though the place is hardly heaving at the moment. Is there perhaps some strange time like 3.15am on a Tuesday morning when everyone visits and the place looks busy?
-
Hard News: The Treasure at the End of…, in reply to Fraser Gardyne,
An excellent clip of The Yoots
You should have heard them at WOMAD last month when they teamed up with the 80-voice Aotearoa National Maori Choir who reformed for the occasion; it was sublime. That the choir have been virtually dormant for about a decade is such a shame.
-
All of this takes me back to THAT day when she was rolled by her cabinet. I was working for The Independent at the time and the excitement and tension building up in the office in the weeks leading up to the coup made this period one of the most exhilarating work experiences of my life. In the two minutes it took to walk from the tube station to my office the announcement that she was standing down was broadcast over BBC Radio 4. I walked in the door and a colleague announced to me "she's gone". We immediately rushed outside (this was in the City of London) where we witnessed an extraordinary bush-telegraph system which appeared from no where. In a pre-internet, pre-txting age, the news spread rapidly through the streets via....black cab taxi drivers. Word had been sent out over their radio network and suddenly almost every taxi stopped dead in its tracks, stopping all traffic. Some drivers were yelling out the news at the top of their lungs, I saw a couple dancing a jig together while many of the City of London-types looked shocked and stunned. It was a remarkable experience.
-
Mid-week holidays always throw my perceptions of which day it is out the window. Tuesday night felt like Friday night, yesterday morning felt like it was Saturday and by the evening I thought it was Sunday. I was coming out of the lift this morning at work and for a fraction of a second I thought it was Monday…
-
Hard News: The Next Act, in reply to Shaun Lott,
As a relative new-comer to these shores, I have always felt that I was missing or had missed something when it came to Paul Holmes - some great feat he had performed back in the day that had allowed him to subsequently have a ubiquitous platform from which to broadcast whatever crossed his mind. But for a long time, I have felt that his primary concern was to maintain his own public profile. Unfair perhaps, but for me the man (or the persona?) had long since got in the way of any message he may have been trying to impart.
Agreed. I came back from an extended OE to find everyone making a big deal about this chap called Paul Holmes and his "new" and "innovative" 7pm television show. I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about and remained ambivalent about the show for its entire run.
Funnily enough, I recall feeling something similar about Jimmy Savile who was knighted a couple of years after I arrived in the UK. Everyone was fawning over this "lovable icon" of British television. Not having been exposed to 20 years of Jim'll Fix It, Savile struck me as being a revolting little turd and I really couldn’t see what people saw in him (leaving my English friends spluttering into their cups of tea that I should even consider blackening Saint Jimmy's name). Turns out I was right...p.s. Just in case you were wondering, please don't think I'm associating the work of P.H with the deeds of J.S...completely different ball-park...