Oaken's Twelve: Meet the Candidates!

Just in case anyone (you know who you are) was wondering, my attempts to realise the Dwarves of The Hobbit in 25mm plastic haven't been entirely abandoned! In fact, likely candidates were identified and plans made. They just need to be executed...

But in the interests of science, here's the earlier mugshot of Games Workshops' "Dwarf Rangers" and how they panned out as the future Company of Thorin Oakenshield:
And just to explain things further, the notes I made for each character are below. I made these whilst re-reading the book for key character points and identifiers, the Lord of the Rings appendices, and consulting a few reference guide along the way, observing the work of others (the "Lee" mentioned is Alan Lee, Hobbit illustrator and movie designer)


Right. That's done, now to find the time to put it all into action!

Duntroon - Rocks!

Time for a brief stop on our trip south. Elephant Rocks, about five kilometres west of Duntroon is one of North Otago’s best kept secrets. It is, however, also a recognisable location for The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Next door is a still standing, but surely crumbling, set for the seemingly-doomed Kingdome Come. It’s an incongruity, sitting as it is among sheep-tracked hillocks, and with a sealed road metres from its boundaries; but utterly vacant and telling a sad tale of bankruptcy, is threatening no-one and impressing few. Much more interesting are the rocks themselves. Limestone shapes erupting from the ground, formed by the movement of earth and water and shaped over thousands of years by wind into grey and cream clouds of calcium carbonate. This far from the Highway 56 they’re wonderfully silent sentinels in some still green pastureland, and an instant reminds of climbing games with friends from years back.

Jet Junior took great delight clambering over the smaller ones, and it was encouraging to see on a late afternoon that the tourists passing through on the Vanishing World fossil trail were content to leave things as they were, to take photos and sit happily atop the giants, becoming part of the landscape for a spell. There’s something restful about being enclosed by so many soft, organic curves of hill and stone face, with only the open air above and quietly grazing sheep nearby. I’ll return here again as soon as I can, I reckon.

Don’t be Afraid of the Dark(ness)

Before I launch into my 'Manic Phases' thread of too-earnest political Welsh rock, a brief word about:



The Darkness. A band I enjoy.

When I was seventeen I knew everything. I was confident in the beliefs I’d held for the majority of my teenage years, my world view was broadening and my knowledge increasing. I took to school debating with aplomb; and I knew what I liked when it came to music. I liked Alternative Music, whatever that was. The irony wasn’t lost on me at the time, but the sheer exclusivity of my musical tastes were. I’d scoffed at a school mate who once answered my question of what music he liked with “everything”. No, Malcolm, I insisted. What genre of music do you like? His answer was the same. Years later I finally caught up. My tastes have also broadened. I may not like “everything”, but I’m sure I can find something in most modern forms, a few old forms, and, well, so long as there’s a good beat to tap my foot to, I can probably accommodate the rest. Music is supposed to be universal, isn’t it? It’s supposed to find a common ear?

It’s also supposed to entertain. No, really. It was another couple of years and well into my University age that I discovered for myself what really bugged me about the NMEs, Melody Makers and Rip It Ups I’d fussily collected and studiously pored over. Even the Rolling Stones, which, after a brief period of adoration were swiftly consigned to that great Malcolm-styled pile of ‘pointless’ in my still-developing adult brain. What I realised was that every one of these titles were to a man JOYLESS. Indexed and categorised with fickle detail like the Top Gear Wall of Cool, and just as useless. The UK music press was the worst, trapped in a routine of hype-and-destroy with a new indie band the front cover darlings for up to five months before they were met with the indignity of relegation to the sarcastic humour page, buried under the gormless faces of the next indie front page darlings. It was, I found, a depressing cycle to which I had no desire to subscribe or contribute. And I returned to buying comics.

The best thing about all of this, and liking bands like Iron Maiden and The Darkness is that I no longer feel I have to justify my liking them. There’s no cool-sheet to follow when you reach middle age (God help you if you actually find one. Run away!), and the older I get, the more that derisive label Dad Rock(tm) allows me the freedom to exercise that right. It's a win-win for me, and it appeals strongly because the alternative is the inevitable: free jazz. Shoot me if I ever go there, somebody.

I love The Darkness because they eschew those rules, that music can only be of value if it's earnest, boundary-pushing or somehow 'worthy'. Music shouldn't always challenge, and along with moving the heart, the feet and the mind, dammit, it should also move the corners of your mouth from time to time. Their self-funded debut is an absolute cracker. Their follow-up is disappointing, suggesting they'd instead bought into the arguments of their critics and actually produced a novelty album of silly juvenile songs. Their break-up produced two different but also alike bands, Hot Leg and Stone Gods. And - if this is important to some - they've walked a difficult road of overnight success without major label backing, critical scorn (accused a novelty act) sibling fallout, break-up, drug rehab and osteonecrosis (yikes). And now they've re-formed with their original lineup and are touring and recording. It makes me happy.

All music fans owe it to themselves to follow at least one act or artist who isn't there to validate some self (or worse) appointed notion of 'cool'; and remind them why they got into music in the first place. The Darkness are mine. Who's yours?

A Merry Ed-Mas to all of you at home...

After last year's hard-rockin' yuletide song choice, regular reader/s may well ask: "What of this year?", and "Are there other choices for heavier holiday hymns?"

To which the answer to both questions can only be: Yes, they did.

The Last of the Stuff I Have Dug Out of My Garden

As far as my Urban Archaeology series goes, this is the unexpected third installment, and will without doubt be the last. Folks, I think my sweep of the section is now done!

Below are the spoils of a last dredge below layers of greywacke and our back deck (recently re-stained). I've officially gone beyond casual finds! But there are some intriguingdiscoveries to be had yet: a plastic cow, an LED, something like a toy car graveyard, and it appears that somebody not only had a plastic flower fetish, but they also had a kitty cat...













Believe it or not, I think there's possibly some useful stuff in here for the Bitz Box. Not the clothes peg bits, obviously, but maybe something... vehicular...

Scots Wahey!

As far as I’m aware I’m pretty much Scots on both sides, ancestor-wise, with some suspected German thrown in with some distant relations and if you delve back far enough the ‘son’ bit at the end of my surname suggests something Danish, maybe brought over during a Viking invasion. But without either documented (and both families are pretty well covered post-landfall in New Zealand), then Scotland’s my default ‘ancestral home’. Nice culturally, not so great for international Rugby tournaments.

I am observing St Andrew’s Day, a concession I make partly for the above, and partly in defiance at the enduring saturation coverage St Patrick’s Day gets – a festival of a figure of the church perpetually observed by all-day drinking and questionable boasts about one’s ancestry. I’m no hypocrite, so that’s not for me thanks. I am a little sad the holiday isn’t observed as greatly over here or outside Scotland – it’s not as though both countries haven’t had similar stories to tell over the years with internal warfare, repeat invasions, clearances and extreme disenfranchisement leading to great diasporae and desperate journeys abroad to new opportunities, diving families utterly (it's only been in the last fifteen years my Dad has reconnected with relatives in Aberdeen). I do wonder whether culturally the Irish have it over the Scots in the US, and like Halloween we here in the Antipodes defer to the big countries in these observances. The other influence may be the most telling of them all; early last century St Patrick’s Day was made an official public holiday in Ireland, while as recently as the turn of this century my dour brethren back ‘home’ voted to acknowledge their day, but not as a holiday as that would necessitate the removal of an existing day off in its place. Something about national stereotypes plays in my mind here…

Anyway, there was a brief flowering of Scots identity in the Nineties with a spate of celebrated movies based on Scottish stories old and new. Braveheart kicked things off, and Trainspotting brought modern Scotland to the big screen, followed by Rob Roy, Plunkett and Maclean and lesser projects which inspired author Irvine Welsh to lament the trend and dub the movement “Jocksploitation.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly comics got a look in as well, when in the pages of the Judge Dredd Megazine new script droid Jim Alexander created his own spin on Mega City One's lawman with Judge Ed MacBrayne in Calhab Justice, a tongue-in-cheek exploration of Scottish identity in a future Caledonia that has become a dumping ground for nuclear waste, its best and brightest lawmen are snapped up by Brit-Cit, and the remaining population have reverted to savage clan-based feuding, while behind the scenes a civil war with CalHab's southern neighbours is formenting. The series is not fondly remembered, and Dredd's 'father' and fellow Scot John Wagner has elected to ignore the whole thing, as did latter writer (and fellow Scot ) Gordon Rennie. Well I liked it - not all of it, but there was a lot more to the story than the wayward tale it wove in its short life. They were fractious times for the Megazine though, and though a trade is still nowhere to be seen, I have the feeling a more flattering collection might change a few minds.

For what it's worth, here's my interpretation from a while's back. Now I'm off fer a wee dram.

A Prologue to History

Shortly after completing the main run of Talkin' Eds I began looking around my music collection for a follow-up. I was looking for something different this time - something... alternative?

In the end there were about three or four contenders - some local, some from overseas, and of the three Manic Street Preachers made the final cut. Job half done, I set about planning my journey through their discography - and that's where I came unstuck.

Unlike Iron Maiden, I don't have a long history with the Manics. And unlike the Chills I don't have what you could call a local affinity with them - I've never even been to Wales. Or outside London, for that matter. As a band they are still something of an unknown to me, although I first started properly listening to them around fifteen years ago (ouch). They struck me then as they still do now as a little difficult, particularly their early material. Serious - earnestly political lyrics, soaked in intellectual references that are far beyond my pretty mundane arts degree background, and to top it off, blatantly from a different background. They may be my age, but their political and cultural references are in many ways quite a different beast, and so attempting an objective overview of their material output - especially when there are some formidable and scholarly versions of this online elsewhere, seemed like a hiding to nothing.

And yet, at the final hurdle I took a step back and thought about my place as a listener, of the challenge to hear the meaning behind the music, and my reaction to the big events of their long history (the band is 21 years old now.) No matter how much of a challenge it might set, the history of the Manic takes in a lot of my interests over the same time - literature, history, UK culture, popular culture. Taken as a reactionary journal, how hard could it be?

I'm going to find out, anyway. The Manic Street Preachers released their second singles collection earlier this month, signalling an intended hiatus - perhaps a retirement of the group. Right now seems as good a time as any to begin their story (and mine) from the start.