The Wars Awaken (Prequel posting)

Tomorrow I'm going to see Star Wars The Force Awakens. I'm keen to see it - I won't lie, but, you know, my days of being a super huge Star Wars fan are still nearly forty years in my past.

I've posted on that thing before, so I won't rehash it here, but inevitably, this road towards the first original post-Lucas instalment in the Star Wars saga has involved me watching the original trilogy with Jet Jr.

It's been a really interesting exercise; although I own the DVDs (special editions) of the original trilogy, I haven't watched them that much, and never realy watched the moies uch outside their cinema screenings. I remember the surprise and bewilderment I felt when I missed a video night at some friends' place and they reported they'd watched the 'entire' trilogy on VHS in one sitting. Why? What could be so interesting in that? It was that far off my radar.

Jet Jr is currently Star Wars mad, the phenomenon having elbowed superheroes firmly aside, it no jostles shoulders with Thunderbirds. But like a lot of kids his age and a little older, his reading of the series is different - it's definitely for him the story of Anakin and Luke, and the Anakin/Vader connection - once encountered - is just second nature. On the other hand, me watching it with him made me watch The Empire Strikes Back in particular in a way I hadn't properly since maybe 1981 or so. And even then I was convinced Vader had to be lying. It's been... educational. Whereas Darth Vader was the definite (ultimate?) bogeyman of my childhood, to Jr he's the most interesing character in the series, bar the two main Droids of course. Of course, he's not seen ALL of the movies yet...

So, tomorrow the new chapter opens and I'm seeing it with my brother in law under the guise of 'due diligence' for our kids' sake. One reason Jr and I haven't seen the prequel trilogy is because I'm not sure he'd react that well to its darkness, so if the new movie is aimed more at mature fans (and the front page of the local paper somewhat depressingly illustrated this in photos of last week's local premieres)  then The Force Awakens might wait awhile before the young man gets to see it. It won't change things, and it won't change his love for the movies he has seen, I'm quite sure of that.

As for me? We'll see...

Red Pique

So then, we have a contender for a new flag for New Zealand, though many of us did not ask for one, and many of us who would like a new one did not pick this particular choice. Still, that's STV voting for you, and as Cardinal Borusa said, there is only truth in numbers (and Jamas breaks down the whole fatal exercise with statistological swagger here!)


NZ Herald's Rod Emmerson provides his take on the process.

For what it was worth, I was a Red Peak man. Aaron Dustin's Red Peak, or 'First To the Light' to give it its formal title, completely passed me by in the top forty line-up, and like a few others I'd say, it completely won me over during its social media campaign to at first get on the ballet at the eleventh hour, then into the running for the final vote. Ah, but we Peakers lost and the tea towel / clip art / T20 cricket uniform one of Kyle Lockwood's two submissions (TWO! Two colour options of the same flag account for fifty per cent of the final four? I'm still astounded at this) was the winner on the day.

Boo.

A popular image, flipped for continuity's sake. 

The final vote, it seemed, was always going to be about the fern - that problematic emblem that the Prime Minister repeatedly said he preferred, featured on all of the original four finalists, apparently immediately identifies us and makes other countries think we like feathers. Oh, honestly, don't get me started. I had a favourite for the first time, and it lost. I may take some time to get over it.

But when Red Peak emerged via a concerted social media campaign, it seemed at the time that the closest thing to a public nomination from the forty finalists as opposed to the Panel's four picks) had materialised - and when I read its story, I pretty much fell in love with the whole thing. But one mans treasure is another man's 'Lefty anti-Key rag' or similar, and it seemed that amidst the criticism of the final four, even a new pretender couldn't get a break. The lesson here, as a sage on Twitter remarked, is that social media is no replacement for mass engagement.

Essentially I liked Red Peak for many of the same reasons other did. It didn't opt for lazy Kiwiana symbols, it didn't kowtow to cringing concerns about identity or history, and it actually is a great design that sufficiently fulfils the criteria set by the Flag Review Panel: it was simple, versatile, timeless, had elements of symmetry, reduced well, looked great at rest and flying, and unlike the Lockwood flags, it didn't look like a make-do collision between the past and the future. I short, it looked like it had actually been thought through and designed afresh (Lockwood's is ten years old in its three iterations), and - yes, it tells a story. The creation story woven into (but not intrinsic to) Red Peak evokes Rangi and Papa, and may not be to everyone's tastes, but I like it. Maybe now we can have the flag for Paparangi?

Moving on, the final vote, between Lockwood's fern flag and the existing ensign takes place in March. I'm dreading it as a believer in public engagement, someone who is at best ambivalent about the existing design, a fan of a losing flag, and a detractor of the new alternative. I think I'll hold my nose either way, and fear I'll vote for the existing standard out of equal parts spite and good design.

Let's try this again in 25 years, for the bicentennial, shall we?

New Plymouth

November is a month for new places - New Plymouth!

New work gets me out an about a bit more these days, so here are some pictures of New Plymouth. 

I really like this place, having never seen it or touched it before having to go there for work. The locals are friendly, hard-working, and ever so cynical about the beauty of their surroundings, from the black oily coastline with its tumbling surf, shoot-green lowlands, and the spectacular maunga Taranaki - ancestor, adopted name of the region and its people. There's money and dealing done here, mainly in energy and farming. The local beauty is just a side hustle.

The city is also arty - home of the Govett Brewster and rippling-chrome Len Lye galleries, and whalebone/tree fern Te Rewa Rewa Bridge. It's rather photogenic; don't think I've used my camera phone so much in one day

And like smaller places it has quirks. Intriguing second-hand shops, old architecture, and curios. I haven't even mentioned the Bowl of Brookland (because of work I haven't had the time to visit it!)

I will return - soon, of course, for work. But hopefully not too long before I can bring the family.

May the Fork Be With You.

Jet Jr's birthday cake this year, taken in the quiet moments before some unspeakable scenes of disassembly and consumption.
Few Bothans died to bring him this, but there was a lot of blistering language from his parents as they put it together on a very hot day. Cutting Artoo was even more of a logistical exercise than 2010's Dalek cake.

Four Squares 4: A Bad Dream Primer

It's Halloween in the Monkeyhouse, and as a family we'e surrendered to its American Victorian trappings and just gone with it. I can pimp up a doorway with fake spiderweb like the best of 'em, and having family around with kids of Jet Jr's age gave us an opportunity to use his birthday party decorations from an abandoned attempt last year. So, on that note of ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties, here's a book review.

Like a lot of followers of Hypnogoria I am of course in great envy of Mr Jim Moon's Great Library of Dreams, and as a sometime librarian I would have to admit that I too would love to have my own collection of ephemera and weird literature.  I don't, however, hence the intact marriage among other things like being able to move around inside the Monkeyhouse. I do own this, though, and it forms part of my very very small gentleman's collection of dark folklorey literature.

Time Life's mid-1980s Enchanted World series was a surprisingly vast and thorough collection of around twenty volumes about myth, folklore, superstition, legends and such. While I cut my teeth on Usborne's triple threat of its Mysterious World books, as a child and teen I never found anything to equal it in content and look, until I canched upon this volume in the Dunedin Public Library. Oh my youth, my young adulthood - the notion that I'd spentd up to three hours perusing the folklore section of a public library for Dungeons and Dragons ideas seems at once both quaint and alarming, but reader, I did. My Uni days were very dry days in roleplaying (for which I am actually quite grateful), but discovering this text, literally set alongside great works by Katherine M Briggs and Jorge Luis Borges, rekindled my interest in simple storytelling and creepy social psychology, untrapped from the stats and To Hit charts of the D&D manuals.

Nadilla, Persian vampire or ghoul?

Night Creatures, like other titles in The Enchanted World, is a long-form work, separated into chapters, but otherwise moving fluidly between imaginative storytelling (Beowulf, the Croglin Vampire et al) and scholarly interpretation. It's a surprisingly mature read, and contains some of the most atmospehric and in places downright grim illustrations I've ever seen in such a text - which, to be honest, is part of its apeal. It takes things seriously; its universal trinity of vampires, werecreatures and hags are all depicted as murky, shadowy and bestial shapes, among its roster of artists (including Tolkien great John Howe)  one Marshall Arisman, who uses a kinetic Francis Bacon-like brush in his pieces, adding to the overall memorable effect. This book stuck in my head for years, and whenn it recently appeared in a local secondhand book shop, I snapped it up on the spot.

Not seen: Annis' collection of child pelts. Yikes.

This work actually did what I hoped it would back in the day, rebooting my interest in traditional ghost stories and weird tales, and introducing me to previously-unheard of horros, like Black Annis, Rawhead and Bloodybones and their kin. It strove to be fairly international, in its coverage, although understandably sticks close to Europe, by way of Japan and Persia; plus it's a damned-fine looking book. I've been tempted to pick up other volumes in the series, but for the moment this is the daddy, and occupies pride of place in the upper shelves of the Simian Collection

Four Squares 3: Heigh-Ho!

The Chills Silver Bullets

Nineteen years is a long time between drinks.  The last full-length album from Martin Phillipp's band was 1996's Sunburnt, which came out long after my own interest in the band had diminished. There have been releases since then - some compilations of singles and song-doodles (Secret Box, a three-disc example of the latter is a rare find and worth the effort hunting it down), even an EP - but this is the real deal. And to be honest, something of a surprise.

2015 has been a boon of a music year for me, with Dad Rock literally coming out of the walls with not only re-releases of older acts' music (most recently Jean Paul Sartre Experience's own thriple-disc set I Like Rain), but in many cases surprising new releases from vintage acts. More on them in other posts, though. Suffice it to say, that when the past comes knocking, my curiosity is piqued, and when it comes knocking as strongly as this album does, with very little to show for how the years have genuinely condemned Phillipps and his ever-changing (but more recently solidified) roster, then I get excited.


The history of The Chills, like many Flying Nun acts, is one beset with calamity, and after the heights of their early Nineties triumphs there may be no act from the label more befitting an Icarus-like biography than Martin Phillipp's group. I'd pretty much written this mythical album - its title hinted at as far back as a Listener article in 1990, well and truly off - not to mention its creator. Phillipp's liquidity, and later descent into drug addiction and the resulting toll on his health did nothing to dampen my pessimism. A return to form for a leader now being chased by his fifties, I thought, would be nothing short of a miracle.

This is one, though. The sound of this album is as though the years between Silver Bullets and 1990's Submarine Bells never happened. It's an assured return, with gentle, melodic compositions that recall The Chills at their height, pre-Gruge, pre-recording contract collapse, pre-addiction and illness - pre-Soft Bomb and Sunburnt. It's not perfect, but for a Chills album it's damned near close.

There are some real highlights here - 'America Says Hello' is one of the better outward-loking songs Phillipps chooses, amidst a suite that I don't really think are a strong one for him. Social comment floundered on Soft Bomb, and there are echoes of that album's 'Background Affair' in this and Silver Bullets' ambitious, Wilson-esque 'Pyramid/When The Poor Can Reach The Moon'. Similarly, 'Aurora Corona''s prayer to Gaia is more heavy-handed than the earlier 'Underwater Wasteland' - in fact, the album's first half is its srongest; but that said, 'Warm Waveform' is a splendid opener, with some great guitar work and whispered vocals, and I have a soft spot for 'Liquid Situation', near-monumental, but tantalisingly over too soon. The closing couplet of sing-song 'Tomboy' and 2014's upbeat anniversary release 'Molten Gold' round things out well, and point towards a sound future, and I'll be there this time. Nothing much may change, but be grateful that nothing much has, because in a music career this interrupted, miracles are worth celebrating.

Four Squares 2: Golden Years

I'm back watching The Flash, and still really enjoying it. This year the particle accelerator which made our hero's metahuman enemies is gone, replaced by a wormhole singularity which is now feeding him bad guys from a parallel Earth - Earth 2. And, of course, it has also brought in this guy:

 Yeah! Jay Garrick, baby!

The version of the Flash from Earth 2 or, as we might otherwise know him, 'old 1940s Flash' or thereabouts. It's one of the many cool things about the show that it has actually been this series which has ushered in the established comics model of multiple worlds. It was a concept that originated in the Flash comics, and it's given the show a boost that it didn't yet need, but which in an expanded DC TV universe, needs no futher explanation.

I also love the look of Jay Garrick, with his slight Dieselpunk look and the Mercury kettle helmet. Hell, I like mostly all of the old school hero costumes with only a few exceptions, and their heroes' grouping, the Justice Society of America is a territory that I also think is rich for mining.

One of the other things I did leading up to season 2 was re-connect with the Golden Age of [DC] super heroes. The sole comic I own representing that era is a revisionist story The Untold Origin of the Justice Society collected into a tidy A5-ish pocket comic book, which I picked up from a local dairy years ago on the way to an intermediate school camp. Though I never reconnected with the story or the characters, I do still really like them. In their best stories there's a simple honesty to them that genuinely evokes a Wartime, pre-Marvel era, where many of the Justice Society's members nod more to their detective comics origins - millionaires and scientists sworn to thwart crime with gadgets, physical superiority and very limited superpowers.

I also picked up a few JSA collections from the local library, the best example being The Justice Society Returns!, which owes more than a debt to the aforementioned origin story, but builds other characters into the mix and heightens the profile of some more enduring, second-tier heroes; so out go Superman and Batman, but the likes of Hourman and Johnny Thunder get a much-deserved promotion. It's a pretty good, serialised story all told, with all the major players essentially getting a chapter of their own, and if there's a deluxe reprint - well, I'd be tempted to get it.

But as I say above, I think this is an era still ripe for use in today's comic book entertainment world. There are examples already of period-era heroes - Marvel's Captain America and its spin-off Agent Carter are obvious examples, and of course DC's Earth 2, the home of its Golden Age heroes, is now a Flash/Arrow-verse reality - and of course before he was making Man of Steel and Batman v Superman, director Zack Snyder cut his superhero teetch with the Minute Men of the Watchmen cinematic adaptation. 2017 will see a Wonder Woman movie which will tell a story spread over several decades, including the Second World War - perhaps it's not unreasonable to expect a few cameos there?

For me, though, the appeal of the Golden Age superhero is one of relatability. I will never have super powers or wield fantastic gas guns, magic rings or rods of power, but the vulnerability and human frailty of many of these early year super heroes is something I find more and more interesting as time goes by.