Posts by dyan campbell
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Oh, I did want to join Brownies. There was even one day every year that they got to wear their UNIFORMS to SCHOOL and SALUTE while the headmaster raised the FLAG, which my little inner fascist seems to have considered the height of awesome. (Aside: what day would that have even been? Important enough to raise a flag, not important enough to have the day off?)
My mother said no, I was too young (a filthy lie, if ever there was one). As the years passed this was replaced by mutterings about paramilitary organizations (rendered both more and less convincing by the fact that she had been a Guide and my father a Scout). Eventually she confessed that she just hadn't wanted to be roped into being Brown Owl.
Heh, it was my Mum's aversion to fascist trappings that she claimed to object to. For a time I wanted to join Brownies when I was six or seven and several of my schoolfriends had joined and led me to believe that we'd be making Rice Crispy squares and batches of fudge. My Mum's response, which did put me off enough to keep me from joining was "well personally I've never been comfortable with organisations where all the children wear brown shirts and say the same thing, but I won't stand in your way if you want to join..." which was really her style. When my sister Shirley had expressed a desire to change her name to Roxanne (she was seven) my Mum said "Well, we'll go the whole hog and have it legally changed by deed poll, but only on the condition that your father and I can call you Foxy Roxy". Shirl changed her mind too.
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queens having moments of Audrey worship and scaring off the paying trade. :)
Well you don't have to be a dizzy queen for that. Having stayed in New York on E71st St next door to the doorway that Audrey exits at the start of 'BaT', we also had our own little starstruck moment and had to have the ubiquitous photos taken. The guy that owned the place was an Italian lawyer but was very understanding about our need to capture the moment.
Audrey Hepburn really made that role work, but it would have been such a different film if Holly Golightly had been played by Marilyn Monroe, as Truman Capote had intended. I love Audrey Hepburn but it's hard to believe AH in the role if you remember the actual story is about a hilbilly white trash girl who runs away from her generations-older husband to NYC to be a prostitute and forget her past.
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It's very sad news about Finn Higgins, I'm so sorry for his parner and family this must be terrible times for them, wish there was something I could do.
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In urban design, there's a well established principle that there is a maximum distance or time beyond which most people can't be arsed walking. I think it's about 10 minutes.
I think the real obstacle to bike use and pedestrian use - for me anyway - is traffic, not hills, not time constraints, not the weather. I like hills, especially if you have gears - and I ilke hills when running too, the chewier the better. The effort is a real pleasure, it's dodging traffic that is harrowing.
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I remember reading an interview with a NZer who has become a big star on US TV
Alan Dale?
No, it was that Amazing Race guy, with the spiky hair. Phil Keogan (sp?) I think. His point was it can be a little... exhausting when he comes to NZ, they were talking about whether there really was a tall poppy syndrome, in the Listener about 5 years ago I think.
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As I've said before. Haley Westenra certainly does seen to have nicer manners and a sweeter disposition than Dame K - that is evident in their demeanour even in photographs - but the invective and malice that is heaped on Dame K at every turn seems out of proportion to the behavioiur that has been recounted.
It's true that poor treatment of employees and those in menial stations in life is pretty ugly - it would be nice if there were more people like Lillie Langtry, the late 19thC actress who paid her staff so handsomely and was so kind to them that when she lost her fortune her whole household of servants chose to stay and work for her, without pay. Or Elvis Presley, whose kindness and generousity was legendary. Even Elvis, in his dark days, threw tantrums and once shot his television, though that last act seems to me more a symptom of wealth and access to firearms than bad behaviour.
Then there is the dreadful telephone-hurlers of the acting and supermodelling world, they inflice genuine injuries. One supermodel is alleged to have hurled a jar of mayonnaise at the 5 year old daughter of her maid. And there is the very funny example of Elton John, running around in a towering rage at his staff, incensed at the weather outside.
And then there are the heartening examples - a maid who'd worked for many wealthy actresses and models and had fleeced them of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewellery, when finally being prosecuted told the court that while working for Isabella Rossellini she had never taken a single thing, as IR was "such a good, kind gentle person" she couldn't bring herself to steal from her. Or eccentric pianist Glenn Gould who adored his elderly housekeeper, making her the beneficiary of his will (despite being a generation younger he died before her).
But mostly divas and stars - and toddlers - whose every whim is satisfied often wind up terribly unhappy and badly behaved.
As long as the don't commit fraud, mistreat animals, drive drunk, rape or beat someone up, It doesn't seem fair to judge them on the 2nd or 3rd hand account of someone's quibble over their behavour or tone of voice.
I once saw Barry Humphfries have a HUGE tantrum at the airport because the flavour of icecream he desired was not available, and he was taking out his rage on his unhappy PA at the time. I was tempted to yell "HEY BARRY" because, quite by coincidence, he was standing next to someone I knew named Barry I'd just taken to the airport, but I didn't as I was afraid I would get his PA fired... or killed. I don't think this necessarily defines Barry Humphries as a person, but it was very funny.
Dane K offered a terse, tactless, and no doubt honest opinion to a question she was asked, and is called a "monster" a "bitch" a "cow" and "an old bag". This seems out of proportion to her comment.
I would agree she does not seem to have the excellent manners and sweet disposition of other performers, and most I've met do
seem to have better manners than the average joe. Perphaps not Dame K, I've never met her. Though my mother in law used to babysit her many, many years ago. She said she was a sweet, insecure and slightly clingly little thing, anxious to please.As for the utterly pointless and innane comparison of a boxer with an opera singer well for a start there is a very big difference in the relationship between a boxer and their trainer...there is likely to be a long standing relationship of MUTUAL RESPECT and ongoing familiarity between those two people...wheras in the relationship between a pompous cow like kiri and her dresser (usually a junior memeber of staff at a place such as the aotea or other such venue) there is no ongoing professional relationship
Going into a ring to fight and going on stage to perform are not so vastly different. Each requires physical and mental preparation, concentration and a host of behind the scene-ers to get them there, both require huge mental and physical effort.
If I was the dresser, I'd have to restrain myself a great deal not to smile and rub the gum into her hair.
We don't know what went on here, as only Dame K and her dresser will really know what happened. Everything else is 2nd and 3rd hand accounts, and our own projections and assumptions.
If the dresser stuck out a hand to receive the gum, this would suggest to me they were a willing participant in this - I will agree - unhygenic exchange. The dresser should probably 1) not stick out their hand 2) have a piece of paper ready to dispose of the gum 3)quit in a huff, depending on their own actual reaction to the event.
But this does not strike me a nearly as offensive or as unhygenic as the actor who licked drunkenly licked a woman's face, with sour wine-and sushi smelling saliva breath, or a prominent (female) athlete I once observed in a Air NZ washroom changing her baby and leaving a filthy, soiled nappy beside the sink. Pretty unhygenic, pretty thoughtless.
What does go on between a performer/actor/famous person and their staff is only known the the individuals involved. The rest is just gossip.
But my original point is that whenever anyone famous - as in having made some success overseas - visits NZ they are greeted with endless challenges and often malicious gossip.
Sometimes the crap they get is funny, even if I do sympathise. I remember reading an interview with a NZer who has become a big star on US TV who was out for a drink at the Viaduct and was drunkenly accosted by a guy who accused him of staring at his date. "I wasn't staring at your girl, mate" the TV star protested.
The drunk was incensed and beat him up,yelling "WHATSAMATTER? SHE'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU!! YOU ARROGANT PRICK!!!" -
Dyan, I don't mean to sound bitchy but have you ever taken a dance class in your life? I think Douglas Wright and Michael Parmenter would have a small mountain of bones to pick with the notion that the works they've choreographed for their own companies require dancers any less dedicated than those they've worked with when creating work for the Royal New Zealand Ballet.
I don't mean one discipline has more dedication than another - in singing or in dance, just that the art they teach them is in a different league.
Classical ballet forces a dancer to train their joints to take horrifying levels of force while the limbs are in profoundly unnatural poses much as the rule in netball where they stop when they catch the ball, or in gymnastics when you land - the rule forbidding a bounce or a hop causes horrrible injuries, two other examples or arbitrary rules than contradict the natural biomechanics of movement... and similarly cause horrendous injuries.
Similarly in ballet, the practice of holding thighs/knees at right angles to the hips while exerting force is insane and very, very difficult to learn, and must be undertaken (like bound feet) at an early age. Likewise the type of operatic singing that Dame K does requires a feat of strength that must be painstakingly learned by someone with an already huge voice, and is a different thing than simply singing loud.
I am no dancer - I have feet like a duck (flat, triangular) and you need "feet like exclaimation points" as Balanchine put it - high arcj, narrow and very straight. My feet barely make the grade for everyday life, they are so deformed, I could never have danced classical ballet.
But I have known quite a few dancers - and took enough lessons to improve a few other pursuits, especially skateboarding and soccer. And my dancer friends all devoted ridiculous amounts of their childhood to become... part of the corps de ballet, no hope of ever being an actual principal dancer.
One, like Audrey Hepburn, had a promising career ruined by simply growing too big, and of the other two - one male, Aaron went logging for one summer and became too bulky to put his limbs through the required paces at speed, and lost his place in the company he danced for, the other one I knew danced pretty successfully for about 5 seasons, always in the corps.
She did make a ton of money during Gold Rush Days in the Northwest Territories as one of the Can-Can dancers in a Klondike show. Now that's a strenuous dance, she taught it to me. But skinned knees, pulled hamstrings - the whole dance, like modern dance, only requires stength and agility, while classical ballet requires strength and agility while your hips are pointing in one direction and your knees and thighs are pointing in another. That's hard to do while standing still. And you can't really do that in full flight without being trained from an early age.
But to get back to the original point about Dame K and her behaviour - gee, isn't there an awfully high standard set for women? Cricket players can be abusive to emergency room staff, iconic writers can shoot their own dog to intimidate their family, athletes can crush their own children to death with their bare hands, politicians can drunkenly whip out their dicks and urinate on the floor in front of horrified hotel staff and everyone will make excuses for them, but if KTK ventures an opinion - an opinion she was asked to state - she's a monster.
I'll agree HW seems to have better manners and a sweeter disposition, from what I've seen in interviews, but I don't think the bile that is heaped on someone like KTK is accurate or fair.
And what's the problem with her spitting her gum into a dresser's hand before she takes the stage? Do we criticise a prize fighter for not removing his mouthpiece and locking eyes with his trainer and saying "gee, I know it's gross, and I'm sorry to ask you while you're busy watching me, but do you suppose you could hold this for a little while while a have a drink and rinse my mouth? Thanks so much for that". From what I've seen they just spit it into a waiting hand, their gaze fixed in the middle distance.
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Please tell me you didn't just say that any old amateur hoofer can dance like my Fred if they put their minds to it. Because... I really disagree.
If they devoted 2 or 2 years of full time training - 5 or 6 hours a day - they could approach a reasonable copy of the Fred 'N Ginger style. But even if you tried to do that with classical ballet, you would still look really, really bad. It is a discipline that you really have to be reared in from a very early age. It can't be copied by someone learning it in less than a decade. And you could find an actor who could pretend - adequately enough - to be Fred or Ginger, but you couldn't even train an athlete to pretend to be Margo Fonteyn or Misha Baryshnikov, it would take way too many years, and even a male couldn't start much past 11 or 12, and a female dancer would really have to start around 4 or 5 at the oldest, though I have heard of some Russian and Chinese dancers (female) starting as late 8 or 9 but that is unusual.
The kind of singing required by professional opera singers can't be undertaken by amateurs, and can't be learned quickly enough to be mastered in adulthood, even if you give it a couple years. The physical requirements are in a different league. You can do some serious physical damage trying to make your voice do something it has not been trained to do.
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BTW, a friend of mine who works as a field audio engineer was working on a show at the Aotea Centre years ago and happened to be near Kiri while she was rehearsing. He found it distinctly uncomfortable -- she just made too much sound.
This is the real difference between opera and popular song - of any form. It's like the difference between classical ballet and Fred 'N Ginger. One requires a lifetime of physical discipline and dedication and the other could be mastered by an amateur, with a few scrapes and bruises, to a reasonably competent facsimile. The other would simply be an impossibility, and even with two or three years of dedicated practice, if started in adulthood, the amateur attempting to dance would still look... really bad.
The same is true with the two types of singing - and while I don't dispute the interviewer's perception (probably correct) of Dame K as kind of... peremptory, dismissive and rude, I kind of get what she is saying about the singing. They aren't in the same categories.
The training required to sing professional opera, like Russell's friend who was too close to Dame K found - is very loud, and very, very hard to master, even if you're born with the raw instrument. As with classical ballet, it takes years of strenuous training, and an amateur could seriously injure themselves trying to copy what they do. You are not going to seriously injure yourself trying to do what any popular singer does.
Which is not to say Dame K doesn't absolutely butcher a song like Summertime with it's over pronounced vowels and soaring volume, and why Janis Joplin's cigarettes and booze steeped croak of the same song is sooo much better and more powerful. It isn't all about volume, there are so many nuances in the music besides the size of the voice. A song like Summertime which is about slave life in the southern USA (isn't it?) so it sounds quite silly and affected when it's sung with impeccable enunciation and a powerbase of sound instead of a kind of langour.
But the context mattered... I knew a hairdresser in Vancouver who was horrified to see himself quoted in the newspaper as saying (of Margaret Thatcher hairstyling, whilie she was attending a meeting in Vancouver) "I was the only hairdresser in Vancouver who could do it" which he and indeed said, but they cut off the part where he said "because mine is the only shop open past 7:00pm in the downtown area on a Tuesday". Which really changes the meaning of what he said. He was horrified partly because it made him sound like a boastful loser, but mainly because it made it sound like he was responsible for her horrible hairstyle, which he'd been under strict instructions not to alter, only to style.
But I wasn't there at the interview, and I can imagine Dame K being quite... imperious. But there is a "collective mean streak" in the national character, to quote James Belich (in Paradise Reforged) and NZers do like to turn or someone and persecute them for their inability or unwillingness to conform to some particular style.
One of the gossip magazines - No Idea some weekly - unearthed Dame K's birth mother (she was adopted) and got her to say she hated her as a baby and she had a particularly horrible cry which made it easy to give her up for adoption. Or something. I remember thinking that was a cruel and unsavory thing to publish, and how they induced the old woman to say such a thing. And I wondered why anyone would want to publish anything so sordid and sad-making.
Anyhow, this reminds me of that. It is a particular drum this country's media likes too bang when someone successful comes home for a visit. It's like that headline that confronted Bic Runga when she came back to NZ - "BIC RUNGA SAYS NZ IS RACIST". Sheesh, welcome home.
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Trudeau also once wore a cape to a football game ... and gave some protesting farmers (is there any other sort?) the finger out of a train window. Top bloke.
He was certainly unusual. He arranged for the RCMP to score his young wife's pot for her, during their brief marriage. Brief, unhappy marriage. She left him at one point to go with Keith and Mick to Toronto to party. Moral of the story: never marry a man in his 50s if you are a teenager.
Interesting and related footnote: the thing that broke up Maggie and Pierre was a fight over the hypothetical fates of their children: she asked him what he would do if one of their children were kidnapped and the choice was Canada's securty or the life of their child, he answered Canada's security, there can be no question if you are leader of a country. Not the answer she wanted to hear.