Hermits but no Herman
Hermits but no Herman
Good grief. Herman's Hermits are playing at the Oamaru Opera House.
Roy Colbert
So - what is wrong with the dash?
So - what is wrong with the dash?
A sub-editor and blogger of enviable note at this newspaper - let's not name names, a life spent in quiet privacy is a life cherished - wrote recently of her loathing of the dash.
Hunting for doozies under Southern skies
Hunting for doozies under Southern skies
Jono, or JC as they knew him as a photographer on this newspaper, was back in town last week, down from New Plymouth. Jono was my partner in early 1990s literary larceny when we combed the lower South Island for characters we came to call doozies.
Easing the pressure with magic
Easing the pressure with magic
The grandchildren arrive from Chicago forever in 44 days. I am being slowly crushed from the pressure like a potato chip beneath a big man's boot.
Suzanne's Facebook friend likes Baby Jack
Suzanne's Facebook friend likes Baby Jack
I think it was Oscar Wilde who said Facebook Friends only count as friends if they write back. This is a very sad thing for all those people out there who claim to be friends with Michelle Williams, the Prince of Tonga and Usain Bolt just because a software programme automatically added them to a colossal unfeeling database.
In a fit with sheets that won't
In a fit with sheets that won't
I doubt if any rational thinker would dispute that the reason many men flinch from housework is because of the design faults in vacuum cleaners and oval-shaped fitted bedsheets.
Time smooths the wrinkles
Time smooths the wrinkles
Whenever French existentialist philosophers gather in Octagon cafes, and July is a particularly luxuriant month for them, you will invariably hear talk of the Cher song If I Could Turn Back Time. The warship setting for the song's video, huge gun barrels thrusting at Cher's supplicatory body, is clearly compelling for existentialists, but if you have been eavesdropping on them, as I have, you will have heard their particular fixation this year has been - CAN we turn back time and SHOULD we turn back time.
Portcullis goes up on me and my man cave
Portcullis goes up on me and my man cave
For years I thought a man cave was a floating thing, a space where a man could be his inane onanistic self.
The best 35th birthday so far
The best 35th birthday so far
Another birthday gone. A few who thought they were close personal friends, and until last Thursday they assuredly were that, mentioned how old they thought I was, which is hardly something you say to someone on their birthday, is it?
Hints for perfect wives never date
Hints for perfect wives never date
"Art is a hard mistress, and there is no art quite so hard as that of being a wife." Ah, you will be saying, is there a new Leonard Cohen album out?
Nothing like feeling safe in the middle of the road
Nothing like feeling safe in the middle of the road
Apparently, we turn to entertainment when times are tough. Like now.
The Hayley trap: a lifetime enchantment
The Hayley trap: a lifetime enchantment
Natasha's departure from Coronation Street a month ago remains the finest thing shown on television so far this year.
Sabrina, the best of the blonde bombshells
Sabrina, the best of the blonde bombshells
Howls of protest greeted my recent Jayne Mansfield column. It is only now I have plucked up the courage to come out from behind the sofa and leave the house.
Cat pee can bring down the house
Cat pee can bring down the house
In the mansion-construction one-upmanship that swept through Beverly Hills in the early 20th century, each famous actor trying to appear the richest and best, there was arguably none finer, none more outrageous, than Buster Keaton's 10,000sq ft Mediterranean palazzo.
Head under water hard to fathom
Head under water hard to fathom
A firend texted last week, Wednesday, in a state of pure epiphany.
Women's stores maketh the man
Women's stores maketh the man
The feature in this paper last week on the Sisyphean nature of women's fashion retail in Dunedin was a good read, but it incomprehensibly missed the one enormous contribution these stores make, that of assisting the maturity of a man. Every year, the World Health Organisation figures paint the same picture - the extent to which idiot man has grown up can only be measured by how he handles himself in a women's fashion store.
Intelligence unnecessary to appreciate true grit
Intelligence unnecessary to appreciate true grit
Most rational thinkers are fully aware of the Mendelian Laws of Heredity, the once (1865) controversial but now accepted theory of how powerfully we are controlled by inherited genes. Far fewer are aware of a side-dabble the great man toyed with back then (1861), Mendel's Law of Complementary Intelligence.
A tremendous winter in Whittaker's good hands
A tremendous winter in Whittaker's good hands
Most rational thinkers would agree the four most significant inventions of the past 500 years have been Paul Crowther's Hot Cake guitar effects box, the thing, probably a lever, that keeps planes in the air so they won't fall on the ground, chocolate, and peanut butter.
Having a cake and eating it
Having a cake and eating it
Columns are not the easiest things to name.
Dazed and Confused: Stumbling across Jayne Mansfield
Dazed and Confused: Stumbling across Jayne Mansfield
There has been loose talk around the town in recent years that South Dunedin is no longer a retail hub, that something needs to be done to bring it back to the halcyon 1970s.