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Nacreous

By Asides and Blogging

Tee-hee. Hamish Macdouall just used the word “nacreous” in his Googlies & Grass Stains blog on Stuff. I ven­ture it is the first time that word has appeared on Stuff ever, and that it would­n’t have sneaked past a Dom-Post sub if it was going in the dead-tree edi­tion. It’s rare that any­one these days uses a word with which I am unfa­mil­i­ar but this was one I had to check. And the first defin­i­tion offered by Google (via Merriam-Webster) is spec­tac­u­larly unhelpful:

: pos­sess­ing the qual­it­ies of, con­sist­ing of, or abound­ing in nacre ;

Well, yes, obviously.

The best laid plans ...

By Asides

So I decided to MySky the Obama Inauguration rather than get up at 5am – just like a foot­ball game, as long as nobody tells me the res­ult I can pre­tend it’s live – and I settled in to watch the CNN cov­er­age at about 7.30am.

And at 7.45am (in Newtown at least) a power cut inter­vened and even killed the pro­gramme I had been watch­ing. Ten minutes later, with power restored, the My Sky star­ted record­ing again auto­mat­ic­ally but did­n’t have any of the pre­vi­ous foot­age and by 7.55am it was all talk­ing heads and motor­cades. So I missed it. I ima­gine it was historic.

Back

By Asides, Family and meta

I got back a couple of hours ago from a fam­ily hol­i­day, three gen­er­a­tions of Slevins hav­ing a very relaxed time of things in sunny Hawkes Bay. I man­aged to go almost cold tur­key on the the Internet apart from one breof peri­od where I updated the Academy Cinemas web site for the new week. By Saturday how­ever I found myself try­ing to read the tiny type on the Nokia 6120 web browser. It’s instruct­ive that the two sites I chose to look at were Public Address and Daring Fireball. Perhaps I should purge everything else from my RSS feeds and spend more time in the sun in 2009?

Anyway, apo­lo­gies for not hav­ing the Summer Film Review pos­ted yet – it went to print in the Capital Times last Wednesday – nor have I updated the cap­sule reviews to the right. This is obvi­ously sub-optimal per­form­ance and will be remedied over the next few days.

More Ebert

By Asides, Dinner for One and Wellington

Roger Ebert on the per­son­al, private places he loves (and the joys of being alone with them, as well as the occa­sion­al pleas­ures to be found in shar­ing them):

I first vis­ited the Moscow Arms near Pembridge Square in 1970, when the room fee at the hotel now named the Blue Bells was £4 a night. I have nev­er met any­body in that pub. I always sit in the same corner booth. There is a man who comes in every lunch­time, tat­tooed, bald, and wear­ing a motor­cycle jack­et. He is nearly 40 years older now, but he is still there, and it looks like it’s still the same jack­et. Has he noticed me cross­ing his field of vis­ion 50 or 75 times in his life­time? Certainly not. But if he still comes at lunch­time every day, it is my duty to bear wit­ness, because by now I have become the only per­son in the Moscow Arms who knows how long he has been doing this, or cares. I believe this includes him.

I too enjoy sit­ting alone in cafés, res­taur­ants and bars. Indeed this very morn­ing I took brunch at The Cheeky Pipi in Island Bay and, des­pite the average-ness of the cof­fee and the meal, I enjoyed the sit­ting, the read­ing and the watching.

Some Frank Langella trivia

By Asides, Humour, NZ and Theatre

Here’s a New York Times pro­file of Frost/Nixon star, and great char­ac­ter act­or, Frank Langella. Langella once bought the Broadway rights to the hit kiwi “com­edy” Ladies’ Night and author Anthony McCarten told me once of sit­ting in Langella’s trail­er in Hollywood col­lab­or­at­ing on the American-ization of the play that may or may not have even­tu­ally become The Full Monty. Periodically, Langella would have to excuse him­self and vis­it the set: “Excuse me, I have to go and make love to Ellen Barkin.”