Form 1, Form 2

In Form 1, my teacher seemed to regard me as a writing genius. If you think this blog doesn't match up to such high praise, well, consider the fact that I haven't actually improved or progressed linguistically since Form 1. Quite impressive then, less so now. 

I remember receiving praise for every story I wrote, having my work read to the class, and a note on my picture book project that said "please keep this for your grandchildren". My school speech was received rapturously and I consequently had the confidence to read it to the school. People laughed. None of it get like a bad idea. My teacher and I knew it was good and funny and fluent and so I read it without shame. Looking back, this was probably the first encouragement I received from school as a writer. Since I seem to recall it all so vividly I suspect it's had a lasting impression. I could even say that I'm still operating on the fumes generated from those compliments, two decades ago. 

The following year (Form 2, if you can believe it), I had a different teacher and my talents were appraised in a completely different direction. Sure, I had my work read to the class, but I also had the weird punishment of being made to read a hastily written poem in front of the entire school. This was nothing like the speech situation of the year before. We, my new teacher and I, both new it was garbage. I had left it until the last minute and was sighted writing it before school -- it was, obviously, awful. But despite that it was somehow considered as good as or better than the majority and I was told it had been selected for presentation at the school assembly. I had to read this fucking thing. In front of people. It was about a cat, hunting a mouse. One line was simply: "darkness". It blew ass. Three words into the recital I pretended that I forgot the words and sat down again. In hindsight that probably just made the event stick out in people's minds more - you can zone out during a performance but as soon as silence hits your ear you snap awake. The absence of student drone breaks the spell. Someone out there probably still remembers it. I know I remember it more than the successful speech of Form 1 -- in fact I only remembered the speech when I started thinking about the poem. The success of that speech is completely overshadowed by the enormous failure of the poem. 

Two teachers, two different approaches. But was it me? Had I changed significantly in between those years that the only way to deal with me was the approach the new teacher took? Or was what was an appealing trait in a 1st Former actually quite horrible in a 2nd former? Was it me? Or them? There had to have been some way of dealing with me that was more positive than the one I received. I guess we'll never know. 

Elizabeth Day's How To Fail with Elizabeth Day, presented by Elizabeth Day, with your host, Elizabeth Day

One of my favourite bits about How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, presented by Elizabeth Day, is that her name appears in the title. 

It's as if we're actively failing with her, alongside her. I'm sure it doesn't really mean that and it's actually just a kind of branding exercise so that the podcast name is linked with her name in your mind. But it did get me wondering why it's written like that, and why she introduces it as such: "welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, with your host, Elizabeth Day". 

You might wonder why I'm not curious about the titles of The Adam Buxton Show and Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast -- the difference, besides my obvious failure to examine my own gender biases, is that they have no format. The pitch is: a man, talking with (or at) another person. With How to Fail, with its rigid three-failures-per-guest format, the format is as important as the host, like a regular Radio 4 programme. Presumably, like those, you can swap out the host--but in this instance I don't think that's possible.

Take how she often says "thrilled", "so lovely", and "beautiful". It's that slightly posh (as in, person who went to university in the 1990s, not actually old-money-posh) way that sounds sincere and insincere all at once. I suppose the insincerity comes from my own perception -- no one could possibly be that thrilled. Or even thrilled at all. I spend my life either impotently enraged or aggressively disinterested. Hearing someone who is actively thrilled by anything is lovely to hear. Imagine tuning into my podcast, a series of half-finished mutterances about what's pissed me off in the news today but I've blocked out most of the really enraging details of the story in order to continue to function without constantly shitting with rage. 

It's a good podcast. There's no real snark. It's somehow one of those "celebs have thoughts!?" podcasts but without being one of those. It's part of the endless ring round of comedians going on each other's podcasts but at the same time it's different because of the structure and because Day doesn't really riff with the guest like Adam Buxton or Richard Herring. In fact maybe the key difference is that those two podcasts are as much about their hosts (which is why they are so good) as they are about the guest. I deliberately put on the Jack Whitehall episode of RHLSTP purely to hear Herring boil over with unrestrained resentment at his massively successful young guest (if you're wondering--he does not disappoint. It's fantastic).

All of this suggest Elizabeth Day is a mere sounding board for her guests. She's not. That genuine sense of being thrilled and of caring about her guests pathetic little failures (or their massive life changing ones) isn't really apparent in any one I can think of. The closest comparison to How to Fail is Desert Island Discs, and yet the hosts of that, or at least the best hosts, have been fairly arms length. My favourite was Sue Lawley, who seems deeply suspicious of everyone placed in front of her. It's now a bit different, a bit more of a therapy session, which is fine -- after so long on air the show has inevitably become This Is Your Life with music. And yet I don't think any of the post-Lawley DDD hosts could replace Day on How to Fail. Trying to imagine the podcast without her would render it a completely different podcast. You can't have How to Fail without Elizabeth Day. Format and host are inextricably bound together, and I hope they're stuck together for years to come.

A short and unfinished analysis of the personality types that create the humour maelstrom of How Did This Get Made?

 I could listen to any episode of How Did This Get Made. It used to be dependent on having seen the film, or heard about it a bit, or knew of the lead actor. But none of this is a requirement anymore. The strength of the three presenters -- Jason, June, Paul -- is such that they can riff on absolutely anything and it's entertaining. There's a dynamic there that is rock solid. The stereotype of each host is Jason = chaotic, Paul = straightman, June = confused. Or at least, that's how I first approached it. But what's become clear is that those initial personality traits are really just masks for a deeper one. 

Jason Mantzoukas often comes across as widely read, or widely watched, and has knowledge of things you wouldn't assume he has (women's clothing, women's health, women in general, perhaps). This might seem like a weird thing to point out, a pointless bit of info about him, but it so often plays up against Paul's fellow "secret" personality trait. 

Paul appears to have had one of the strangest childhoods imaginable, which has lead to some strange ideas (or at least a willingness to reveal the strange ideas he used to have) about relationships. Jason is often the one to pop in with "what?" when Paul gets going with a bizarre anecdote about trying to french someone he really should not have been trying to kiss. 

June comes off as confused but she's not confused. More often than not, she's angry. Not in a campaigning sort of way (although she obviously has done this also), but in a defiant, I-will-not-watch-multiple-Marvel-films-just-to-have-the-adequate-amount-of-back-story-required-to-watch-the-latest-one kind of way. "I will not pander to those people" she said recently, when asked if she had explored the backstory of Super Girl within the wider DC universe. Absolutely not.

What this ultimately gives us is a wildman who is actually very reserved and sane, a straightman who is deeply unhinged on a subterranean level, and a confused woman who is actually razor-sharp in her focus. Somehow these are not contradictory traits, it's as if they all choose to be the initial personality in order to function with the second. The second is perhaps their true personality. Maybe the pain of being intelligent and knowing the world is full of bonkers nonsense causes Mantzoukas to lash out and embrace the chaos. Maybe the pain of growing up utterly abnormal causes Scheer to act as Normal as possible. Maybe the righteous fury within Diane Raphael causes her to use confusion as a shield, a way to keep her simmering rage-brain under control, to shield it from yet more bullshit and nerds. You could argue that's a common trait for almost all women. 

Video rental stores and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Before Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+, there were video stores. I'd like to say it seems weird now but it doesn't. I could imagine video stores coming back, even now. It seems like movies are more popular than ever and if someone somehow came up with a way to make physical video tapes a profit making business, people would go get them. Eventually the streaming services will merge and de-merge and monetise and throw adverts on what is already a pay-service, to a point where you find yourself locked out once again and marveling at the concept of being able to rent a single movie without signing up for a year's worth of streaming. 

In some places, though, video rental shops never really went away. Where I grew up, in Hamilton, NZ, you could map the city by video stores alone. There was Hillcrest Video Ezy, Hamilton East United Video, The Source just over the bridge in town, the big United Video on the way out of town and into Frankton, The Source in Frankton. That's three competing chains in one small town alone. A fourth, Civic Video, inexplicably joined them in the mid-2000s.  

Each store required its own membership, even within a chain, so you'd end up with multiple Video Ezy accounts if you found yourself stranded in a zone of Hamilton without a video store less than 300 metres from you. It could happen! 

We usually went to the United Video in Hamilton East, once a week, one video for a week's rental. It was on the way home from the central city, and probably had the best parking which was obviously a deciding factor for my dad. United Video also had a pretty large range, although they seemed to lose interest in having actual categories of films and instead opted to just bung everything in an ever-growing 'Highly Recommended' section that soon took up 3/4s of the shop. 

For some reason, we once branched out and went to The Source in Frankton. The Source was weird. There were fewer of them, they had a weird name, and they had the most constantly played TV ads despite having fewer stores. After years of United Video, The Source was a strange new world with strange new videos. An unfamiliar children's section located perilously close to the horror section, with a few adult cartoons like Heavy Metal randomly thrown in there by either some mischievous teenage employee, or someone who had no idea that they did cartoons for adults. 

Usually we would only sign up for a membership to a new video store if they had something we couldn't find anywhere else. This time, that something, was a previously unknown Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film. I'd seen the first one, and Secrets of the Ooze, and even TMNT 3: Turtles in Time. But here, at The Source Frankton, was apparently a fourth TMNT film. I couldn't believe it. 

My dad duly registered for an account at The Source and I rented out this incredible new film, got home, and popped it in the VCR.

The first hint that something was amiss was the box art. I can only assume I was overcome with a kind of delirium upon sighting a new TMNT film and didn't sober up until I'd got home. As I looked at the box, I noticed the turtles themselves looked a bit cheap, a bit weird, and Shredder was wearing possibly the most revealing crotchwear since David Bowie in Labyrinth. It was, essentially, Shredder's junk pushing out of the box art at the viewer. 

We hit play and the red flags continued. The film opened with an introduction sequence, featuring Russell the Rooster, a poorly designed and assembled puppet from a New Zealand children's show. That's weird, I thought. I didn't think TMNT had any connection to New Zealand. Maybe this was just a NZ-only bit tacked onto the start? Something for the local audience. Yeah. Despite this self-assurance, a wave of dread washed over me as the tape rolled. 

There were crowd noises. An audience seemed to be in this movie somehow. OK. Maybe it started with a crowd number. Vanilla Ice was in one of the other films. It's not completely out of the ordinary. Except this time it was a static shot. Even as a child, I could feel the difference between a movie camera angle and whatever this was. Lights came on. A curtain went up. More crowd cheering, noises. An announcer whooped, and the turtles bounded out onto the stage to perform an excruciating rock-rap number. 

My sister and I stared at the screen as this madness unfolded, at first laughing at it, and then cowering in embarrassment by association (we made the choice to rent this after all), before the sheer sadness set in as we realised this was the film we'd wasted this week's rental on. We had this thing for a week. 

I stared at Shredder's freaky mound one more time before silently placing the tape by the front door for Dad to return on his next drive past the video shop. 

a giant pile of shame

"I used to write it and hide it in a shoebox under my bed. Even back then, I knew it was a giant pile of shame." - Someone, whose name I cannot remember, posting on SomethingAwful's forums.

And it's true. It is a giant pile of shame that must stay hidden under the bed. Except now, you can make a small amount of cash out of it, too.

My first experience with fan fiction dates back to about 1996. The internet, at least in New Zealand, barely existed and the world was probably better for it. At the time I was a big fan of Sonic the hedgehog in all his money-spinning guises, and regularly bought the comics.

At some point the comic started featuring a dubious "Tales From Cyberspace" section. This would usually involve some guy writing about the month's Sonic-related "events" on the "web", or something, and I would read it, and could do nothing but sit and wonder.

And then one month it mentioned "extra" Sonic stories that could be found on the internet. So I fired up this internet, and had a look. Or rather, my parents had a look with me -- this being 1996, and the internet being an expensive, long-winded affair that required hours of dialling up and navigating vast empty stretches of cyberspace with nary a Jeeves to assist you.

This was also back when website addresses featured loads of ~'s and always had an .edu domain name, because only the universities could host websites (or, apparently, reams of fan fiction). I had to ask, and then watch, as they tapped in the address into the address bar and waited patiently while a giant pile of shame loaded up on the screen.

It was dutifully printed out and I found myself with 10 double-sided pages of what appeared to be some kind of Sonic the hedgehog novella. It was very boring. The thing opened with a lengthy description of some character named Bookshire, who I'd never heard of. He turned out to be a mole; a mole who was also a wizard, all shambling, stuttering urgency and enormous spectacles slipping down his face as he consulted the runes and talked mystical bollocks while I stared aghast at the page.

Sonic turned up a few paragraphs in, and I was elated, until he almost immediately fucked off and left me stranded with this Bookshire thing again.

Even then, as a 9 year old, I couldn't understand it. Why would someone write this? Why would someone think the only thing missing from Sonic the Hedgehog's comic book is a fucking magical mole-creature who shuffles around boring everybody to death? And why was I holding ten flippin' pages of this stuff in my hands?

"Tales From Cyberspace" couldn't explain it to me -- because you can't explain fan fiction. It's a giant pile of shame that should be kept hidden under the bed, and never shown to anyone, ever -- never mind selling the fucking stuff on Amazon.

So my adventures with fan fiction began and ended in 1996. I was told that, after I finish the first one, we could print another story out. Another ten pages of Bookshire. Faffing about in his hobbithole. Unspooling his tales of incomprehensible tedium. With Sonic only popping up near the start to write himself out the story altogether and abandon me to this madman.

I didn't go near the internet again until 1999.

a hideous, gnarled-up goblin of stress.

Being a penniless bastard has it's drawbacks. Aside from the obvious, it also involves a tremendous amount of stressing out.

Stressing out is probably not that good for one's health, especially since, even though I've managed to divert near-doom for another few months, I still occasionally like to have a bit of a mid-afternoon panic attack. Possibly just for old time's sake, but more likely because my body has become accustomed to a near constant state of stomach-churning fear. I tend to walk around with a perpetual half-grimace, ready at a moments notice to slip into a full-on scowl, just in case I remember some debt or payment that's still looming over my head. I figure it's only a matter of time (and worry) before I eventually morph into a hideous gnarled-up stress-goblin.

Being a bottom-rung scumbag who is (vaguely) on the climb has also shown me how quickly I am able to graduate from one worry zone to another. Got no job? Freaking out about no money. Find a job? Freaking out about having a small amount of money. I can only assume that by the time I'm a billionaire (not long now) I'll be worried about owning only one Greek island instead of two.

I've also become almost hysterically jealous of anyone I come across who looks likely to be richer than me. Due to being quite definitely Un-Rich, I cast a wide net; essentially anyone who isn't wearing readily identifiable Primark trousers, or has a pair of water-tight looking shoes is fair game for some scowling and muttering.

All of this has brought me to one final conclusion: should've studied economics. Oh well.

earning more than a fart in a sack

You're in London. You're talking to someone with a vaguely antipodean accent. You decide to start jabbering about Flight of the Conchords, when you're suddenly hit with a problem. Or maybe you just want to talk about how Paul Hogan's turn in "Flipper" redefined what it means to play support to a fish -- regardless, the moment has arrived: you've no idea if you're talking to an Australian or a New Zealander. 

Fortunately, there's a really easy way to find out, without causing offence:

"Are you making more money in London than you were at home?"

If the answer is yes, you've got a New Zealander on your hands. A grateful, begging, bottom-feeding New Zealander, clinging for dear life onto the big wide world of earning more than a fart in a sack.

If no, you've got an Australian, here for travel, here for the experience, but also dying to get back home to the land of $20 an hour at the most lowly retail jobs, of $25 an hour putting crap on shelves at Countdown.

Yesterday while temping I discovered I was alone in thinking that 8 pounds an hour for some filing and standing about was pretty good. Very good, in fact. So good that it was actually the most I've ever been paid (during a day-shift) in my life, and it was just as much as my partner's job as a reporter back in NZ.

The Australians thought we were mad. Their earning power back home is so high that all of them were planning to bugger off back long before their visas even ran out. Compare this attitude to the posts on the Facebook group Kiwis In London: every few weeks someone pops up asking how they can overstay, or how can they get back in as a tourist after their visa expires, or how can they get married to a British-born roll of carpet so they can stay in this wonderful little country for just a few years longer. 

When registering at a recruitment agency, they asked me what my salary expectations were. I suggested the "London Living Wage", expecting it to be about £6.83 -- a rough equivalent of the NZ minimum wage..

"Do you actually know how much that is?" 

"Er, well, no."

They then told me it was £8.50, and I fell off my chair.