THE PROBLEM WITH NZGT

I blame the judges - not icecream

I can tell you straight off; it's the judges.

There, that was a short glog this week wasn't it?

Alright, I'll elaborate. Clearly, New Zealand does indeed have some talent, particularly in the areas of dance and singer-songwritery cafe rockers. There are also a few really wacky jugglers out there, but once you've been to Cirque du Soleil, wacky doesn't quite cut it anymore. When it comes to circus acts these days, unless you can actually stick your elbow up your own bum, while playing the accordian and setting yourself on fire, we've seen it all before.

So how did we end up with so many no-talent losers and misfits in the so-called grand final of New Zealand's Got Talent?

I blame the judges... and their litany of lies. Ali Campbell, Rachel Hunter and Jason Kerrison sat there in our tellies week after week and lied to our faces. On a Sunday too. Pretty naughty. We trust Rachel, we've trusted her for years. After all, she was so right about Trumpets. You really can't beat them. Watch Rachel's Old Ad to see a real, live supermodel actually eating icecream. If she says the entire country has fallen in love with 91 year-old Olivia Turner (even though she's been singing progressively worse and worse each week) maybe she heard something we didn't.

For almost 30 years, Ali Campbell's been giving us such good advice about consuming red wine in moderation. When he then goes on to predict Logan Walker's original song could be the country's next big single, obviously that's sound advice too. Kind of suspicious he's told that to at least two other acts as well - or could we be headed for an all NZGT top 5?

If Jason Kerrison, 20 year veteren of the kiwi music industry tells us 11 year-old Fletcher's going to be a big star, surely he's going to be, right? We wouldn't want to miss out on that action. Don't let the fact he can't find his own cat fool you, this tweenie's got the goods.

Sadly, it's lies. All lies. It's almost as if the judges were just saying these things to keep us interested in their programme. Sadly, for this viewer anyway, they completely missed the boat. I've watch many hours of this kind of bollocks TV over the years and in my view, the only singing shows that work are the ones where at least one of the judges is prepared to be brutally honest. Simon Cowell is the master of course, with Ian "Dicko" Dickson and the notorious Kyle Sandilands close behind.

All too often throughout this series, we've seen people singing terrible songs badly in horrendous outfits, only to be told they had genuine star potential and had connected with every member of the audience. I'm no Jason Kerrison, but I've sung and played a little over the years and I can hear when someone's off the note. "Big" Dane never got near the notes on Sunday, but I don't think that's what Rachel meant when she told him/her, "How unbelievable was that? Your voice is just so powerful!" I think she actually meant it as a compliment.

I don't want to put any of the contestants down (except maybe Zane and Degge - Dudes! Why would you try to juggle on unicycles when one of you can't seem to ride a unicycle?) because it's not the contestants' fault they were put through. In fact, some contestants seemed to make every effort to NOT be put through. Tawaroa Kawana for example - he starts out as a hip SBW look-alike serenading Rachel with his acoustic guitar, then the next time we see him he's crooning cruise-ship style in a shiny suit. I mean, what is that about?

It's the judges. It's the judges. It's all the judges. Sure we voted, but we voted the way the judges told us to and if we didn't, they put the 3rd-best act through anyway. What kind of idiot system is that? I'll tell what kind - it's a wrought. 99 cents a vote? Please. Oh, of course you can download the free app - but even then you have to buy voting credits. Someone's creaming it - and it ain't the contestants. (In spite of so many of them having "New Zealand's next hit single") Okay, one of them WILL take home $100k in their brand new ride - I just hope that it's Clara or Evan. JGeeks are great too - but they'll have to take turns driving.

Fire the judges and put somebody honest in there. They don't have to be mean, just don't be mean with the facts. At least they're right about one thing; Corollas ARE really cool cars.

Please ignore the abysmal parallel parking and appreciate the coolness of the car

THE GENERATION GAP GETS WIDER

Perhaps the most eagerly anticipated album of the year. Perhaps not.

This is not a CD review. For starters, who even buys CDs anymore? I could have used the word "album" but that means different things to different people these days too.

No, this is simply my reaction to my 11 year-old daughter's reaction to some music I was playing in my car on Monday.

It's a long way to piano lessons. The teacher moved 20 minutes further away which is pain in terms of fuel consumption, but a bonus when it comes to music appreciation. On Monday, we appreciated the latest offering from Led Zeppelin; Celebration Day - a double disc recording of their one-off O2 concert in 2007.

I say, WE appreciated it. That's not strictly accurate. I tried to appreciate it while daughter completely ignored it, chatted nonstop about her day and even (and this was pretty annoying actually) TURNED IT DOWN at one point.

I used to like her. Now I'm not so sure.

Admittedly, the 63 year-old Jimmy Page playing on this recording isn't quite the performer you hear on 2003's "How the West Was Won" - a compilation of live performances from 1972 - but come on! Jimmy Page! The original guitar hero! Am I starting to sound like a desperate old man here?

I can remember when I first discovered Led Zep like it was yesterday. I was a teenager and I'd heard of them, but I thought they were just some annoying metal band like Black Sabbath or Deep Purple. This wasn't based on anything I'd heard, it was based on what the greasy, long-haired guitar try-hards at had written all over their schoolbags.

Obviously everybody knows "Stairway To Heaven" - quite a good song. I had to wonder if there were more quite good songs to go with it. Almost as I was wondering this, "Remasters" was released and here's the disturbing part kids - I bought it on LP! You know, LPs? Records? To go on a turntable? You've got no idea what I'm talking about, have you? Anyway, on LP, it was a 3-disc set.

Here's a bit of nerdy Led Zep back-story. Basically, when CD's started catching on, someone at a record company somewhere dubbed all their albums off, and released them like that. No re-mixing. No involvement with the band. A pretty rough job. 1990 rolls around and Jimmy Page decides to fix it all up, digitally remastering everything and releasing all the best songs in one package.

I took "Remasters" home, went straight up to my room and listened to the whole thing, all 6 sides, back to back. I was spellbound. "Oh my god," I thought. "This is the greatest band in the history of rock." Of course, by 1990, I wasn't the first teenager to have had this epiphany. In fact, given the band formed in the late 60's, I was joining at least the 2nd, if not the 3rd generation of Led Zep groupies.

So it was with some excitement I pushed play on my Corolla's CD player the other day and waited for my daughter's reaction. She'd got in the car halfway through "No Quarter." This was going to be good.

But no. Nothing. Not even a flicker. Maybe there's something wrong with her. Can Zeppelin appreciation skip a generation? She's a really good musician - better than I ever was. How could she not be impressed by John Paul Jones' sweeping bass lines? By the sheer poetry of the lyrics? By Robert Plant's essential hairiness?

She's just too young, that's the problem. How's an 11 year-old supposed to interpret lyrics like, "Shake for me girl. I wanna be your back-door man." As for the Lemon Song, I'm not even sure I'M mature enough to handle that content. (Google the words. They're dirty, but funny) I'm sure she'll get it eventually. If I just keep playing it to her, she'll come round. Or at least she'll develop the good manners to feign interest, for her old dad's sake. Oh and next time, hands off the volume knob, kiddo.

Hey, that guy on the right doesn't look so old. Oh, he's the son. Of course.

THE BATTLE BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND GOOD MANNERS

What do you mean this isn't responsible parenting? It's Diet.

Of the many challenges parenting presents, perhaps the curliest is trying to stay cool. It's a flawed argument of course, your kids will never think you're cool and the older everyone gets - you, them - the more uncooler you'll become. That won't stop you trying of course, especially if you're a dad.

No dad wants to be the bad guy. We're the ones who say, "Yes."

As in, "Can I have Coke on my Weetbix this morning, dad?"

"What would your mother say?"

"I've never asked her."

"Well, I s'pose so then. But make sure you screw the lid back on properly."

See? Dads don't get any cooler than that, right?

Or how about this classic?... "Dad, look at these awesomely sharp sticks we found! Can we hit each other with them?"

"I s'pose there's no harm in that. As long as you don't draw blood. Try to avoid the eyes please."

This weekend though, I discovered I was even less cool than I thought. We'd been invited to a dinner party, and when I say "we" I mean me, the Domestic Manager and both monsters. The great fear of all kids in these situations is the threat of extreme boredom. Specifically, what if there are no other kids there? Will I have to listen to adults talking about boring shit all night? Will there be a TV there so I can watch whichever reality singing competition is playing tonight?

As it happens, there's been a recent development in the glennzb household my kids thought might combat the looming boredom threat; the mighty iPad. And when I call it mighty, obviously I mean, ALmighty. Somehow, and I really don't understand how, although it might have something to do with Orewa College's progressive policy towards one-to-one devices, we've gone from being a no iPad family to a 2-iPad family in the space of about 10 days. This now takes the number of mind-sucking, personal electronic devices in our house to around 20 or so. It's hard to nail down an exact figure.

The point is, the kids wanted to know if they could take their iPads out to dinner with them. No matter how cool a dad you're desperate to be, you've got to draw the line somewhere. I said no, and they took it well I thought, considering telling a kid they can't use their iPad is a bit like telling a crack addict he can't have his fix, or someone who works in breakfast radio the coffee machine's broken. (I've actually been faced with this last nightmare scenario a number of times and lived to tell the tale... somehow)

"You can't turn up at the door with your iPads under your arms," I explained. "It's one thing worrying you'll be bored, but if you B.Y.O. iPads, you're effectively picketing their house with placards that read, "YOU'RE BORING!"

(I'm sure there probably IS an app to actually turn your iPad into a placard. If not, remember who had the idea first, striking activists)

So we arrived brandishing 2 nibble platters, a bottle of wine and no iPads. The good news was, there were plenty of other kids there to keep mine occupied, not to mention a dog and some cats. The bad news was, they had all brought their iPads. Including the dog I think, although he could have been sharing one with the cats.

Boy did I feel like an old fuddy-duddy then. How Dickensian of me to keep my precious kiddies offline for a WHOLE EVENING. I was lucky I wasn't had up for child abuse, forcing them to suffer under such an oppressive, 3rd-world regime.

Really? Has it really come to this? Are we really going to let our progeny plug themselves into cyberspace and just leave them there indefinitely?

Don't get me wrong, I loves me a gadget. In fact, I loves me gadgets more than just about anything. But geez they can be antisocial. I certainly can't claim any kind of innocence or immunity from their brain-numbing influence either; after all, there's no point in listing something on TradeMe if you can't check how many views you've had every 3 minutes via your smart phone.

Remember when YOUR parents would tell you to stop watching so much TV and that you should go out and do something useful? Oh, how times have changed. If only I could get my kids to pay attention to the telly - the X-Factor is on, but one of them's too busy Viber-ing her mates to notice, while her sister is creating her own personal fiefdom on Minecraft. As I've already admitted, Mum and Dad aren't exactly setting a sterling example, given I'm just clearing a few work emails on my awesome Nokia Lumia and the Domestic Manager has at least 2 separate Facebook accounts to maintain.

Are we just getting smarter, is that it? Have our brains become so much larger over the eons, we now require more stimulation to fill up our attention spans? Or is it an evil inter-planetary takeover plot, masterminded by body-snatching aliens using video games and the interweb to lull us into submission? It'd certainly save on starships and plasma bombs.

We need to get rid of these devices. All of them. The phones. The iPads. The laptops. The lot. Gone. Surely we can just replace them with a WiFi router hardwired directly into our brains. That'd make it a lot easier to pretend we're listening to the dinner conversation when we're ACTUALLY updating our profile pic.

I left some of our computers out of this photo so it wouldn't look too excessive

PERHAPS THE STRANGEST GIG IN HISTORY

Take note of the time. What could possibly go wrong?

As I write this, you're dealing with a desperate man.

Desperate for answers, for explanations. Desperate for clarity. Desperate for guidance. Possibly in need of a hug. Most definitely, and most desperately of all, badly in need of sleep.

If you're a regular reader of these humble glogs, you'll be well aware I spend much, if not most of my life in a state of confusion. But today I take the definition of confusion to new heights. Everest-like heights. Fearless Felix Baumgartner jumping-from-a-balloon-on-the-edge-of-space heights. I think you'll agree, those are pretty high heights.

The sheer altitude of my confusion stems from 2 things; a severe lack of sleep and the ultimate cause of that lack.

No need to be confused about the lack of sleep. 3 hours is not enough. For anyone. Not even for an old person. Nearly 39 isn't really old - although after just 3 hours kip, it FEELS very old indeed.

So that's straight-forward then; not enough sleep causes confusion (and possibly oldness) but the real question is the OTHER thing. Why? Why so little sleep? Here I have few answers.

I know it has something to do with Ben Harper though. 

It seemed like a simple proposition at the inception; An Acoustic Evening With Ben Harper, 7:30 Monday night, Aotea Centre - at least, that's what the ticket promised anyway. An acoustic evening, an early start... What could be more civilised? What could possibly go wrong?

Firstly, just because the ticket clearly says 7:30PM, there's no real way of knowing when Ben will take the stage. Oh, the doors opened shortly after 7:30, but obviously that would've been a crazy time for Mr. Harper to start playing. He's much more of an 8 o'clock guy, right? Nope. 8:30? Guess again. At 8:45 I'm starting to think this is one of the longest concerts I've never been to. Apparently, 75 minutes is pretty much the optimum time to make your audience sit around with nothing else to do before you finally take the stage.

Oh, did I say NOTHING else to do? Well that's wildly inaccurate because clearly you have 2 excellent alternatives while waiting for the lights to go down. 1: With the help of your smart-phone, you can ignore who you came with, hard out. Or 2: You can get steadily pissed.

The great thing about option 1: is, you can keep it up all night. Start off slow... maybe a few texts... one or two sneaky emails, the mandatory Facebook update. The important thing here is to avoid verbal communication with your date in any form whatsoever - in fact, if you can avoid eye-contact, even better. Obviously you can still Direct Message them, as long as you don't look like you arrived together, or that you even know each other. After the show actually begins, (IF it begins) you can really ramp things up. Keep texting, obviously. That's the best way to annoy that idiot to the other side of you who seems to be trying to actually ENJOY THE SHOW. What a loser. I bet he only "friends" people he knows. In person. Weirdo.

Oh, and don't forget to video EVERYTHING. How else are you supposed to remember what happened? Don't worry about those other nerds behind you who might find it a bit distracting having to view what's on stage through the screen of your phone, they're probably clicking off a quick "selfy" to prove they were actually there anyway. It doesn't matter that you'll never actually end up showing anyone your videos, at least you can post them on Youtube so someone on the other side of the world can criticise your camera skills in a foreign language. The important thing is to be using your phone in some way for at least 95% of the evening - make sure it's all charged before you leave the house.

Option 2: Drinking. Sadly, at most events I've been to at most theatres, you can only get stuck into the booze pre-show and at half-time. Luckily Ben Harper gives you a good hour and a half's drinking time to really take the edge off. This may mean a few extra trips to the loo during the first half, but who cares, right? And when I say trips, I do mean physically tripping over everybody in your row, there and back.

But here's the totally awesome thing...

At An Acoustic Evening With Ben Harper, the bars stayed open THE WHOLE TIME BABY! This meant you could get genuinely munted, all night long. Although obviously you'd require many, MANY more "trips" ALL NIGHT LONG. But who cares, right?

I myself must have been out of my head because I could swear there were at least 12 different guitars on stage, not mention the beat-up piano and what appeared to be an actual vibraphone. Here's the really weird thing about being as drunk as I must have been (I was probably as drunk as the other audience members who kept shouting things like, "Love you, Ben!" and hooting, "CHER-HOO!" Samoan slap-dancing style) being that drunk caused me to believe Harper actually PLAYED most of those guitars, a lot of the time with them just sitting on his lap.

The piano definitely got beat up again, and as for the vibraphone, (or was it a marimba? No, I'm really hoping it was a vibraphone) in my delirium, Harper appeared to be playing the blues on it. While singing. No, that couldn't really have happened, could it?

Reality really just wafted away as the show continued, kind of the same way dozens of patrons WANDERED away - only to get more beers though. They mostly came back, usually clasping about 2 more plastic cups than a sober person would attempt, sloshing much of the contents over the rest of the people in the row. But who cares, right? 

What a night. A night to remember. (As long as you videoed it, of course) Sadly, it all came to an end too soon, a mere 2 hours and 45 minutes after it hadn't started.

Except, it didn't. Sure 10:15 rolled round and Ben waved everyone goodnight and left the stage - but this was just that massively out-of-it guy in the front row's cue to rark everyone into a frenzied demand for an encore, which he managed to sustain for an amazingly long time given how out of focus he was appearing to himself.

Yay! Eventually Ben was back, beating that poor, unsuspecting piano once more. Half an hour later he was still back and things began to feel more like a second half than an encore. But that couldn't be right - if the break had been a genuine interval, the lights would have come up so we could find our way to the... bar... ah, now the "We Never Close" policy REALLY started making sense. My suspicions of a surprise second half were confirmed around 11, when Ben gave those with babysitters permission to head home as we were only, "Just into the 3rd quarter."

What a legend. What a night. What the hell? I went home.

I've never left a concert before the end. As far as I know, he's still playing. As far as I know, the "CHER-HOO!"ers are still drinking. Not bad for a Monday night. You can see how a bloke could get confused though. So tired.

You can never have too many of these at the theatre. Right? RIGHT?