Weighty issues irrelevant in face of tragedy

There's something weird about seeing yourself on television that makes you want to change channels quicker than a Parramatta Eels supporter, or a Shane Cameron supporter when he went from contender to pretender on Saturday night.
Sure there's the extra 10 kilos television graciously gives you when you stare down its barrel and parade your puku in front of the nation. But I can deal with negative comments. It comes with the territory of having an outspoken opinion.
Just ask Michael Laws, who certainly calls it like he sees it and now his audience are starting to stare at him a little sideways. Puts a whole new slant on the meaning of racy relations doesn't it? And some American audiences are saying David Letterman has got too big for his opinion, and racy relationships are making his award-winning wheels wobble.
Mind you, in my casting case I could have worn corsets from top to bottom - with stretched bicycle tubes for bras, and still warranted wide eyed lenses to fit me all in. And with a set of JuJu lips that looked like they had been smacked around by a boxer, or super sized by a visit to the Botox clinic, It certainly saves me from ever becoming an applause junkie fed by an adoring audience.
But besides looking like a freshly boxed Puff Daddy my appearance on the TV1 Marae programme yesterday looked and felt almost as weird as the trifecta of tragedies we have been hit with over the past week.
And  it feels like Papatuanuku our Mother Earth and her helpers Tangaroa the Seagod and Tawhirimatea the God of Wind still have a few rounds to go with the Pacific Rim yet.
Maybe it was weird watching myself on television because I was coupled up with comedian Mike King who is also celebrating a sober life without drugs and alcohol, or maybe it was because in a past life Mike and I used to be pretty good mates.
But then again the whole week was a bit weird with Sir Howard and Samoa saying goodbye to a legion of loved ones.
And the message from Anaru Grant, Sir Howard's son-in-law at the poroporoaki (final farewell) and those left behind up in the hills and down on the beaches in Samoa, was the same.
"You never know when you're going to go so make sure you tell your whanau and family you love them every day."
And there was no love lost on fight night between the KO'd Cameron and his opponent The Tuaman, at Hamilton's Mystery Creek.
In fact the only mystery was how the glass jaw of Cameron was talked into talking it up against a world class thunder thighs boxer, who let his dukes do all the talking.
In hindsight the ring side announcer should have bellowed out to Cameron "Let's get ready to be humbled!"
With his lethal left hook that packed a punch like an Iranian missile, the Man from Mangere put the boy from Gisborne on his bum quicker than it takes to cook a packet of two-minute noodles.
She was all over faster than you could say someone sold me a lemon. And someone somewhere made an outrageous fortune selling a lemon of a mismatch that did no one any favours - especially Shane Cameron, as far as future fights go.
It also proves a point that world class winning athletes such as heavyweight boxers can carry a lethal sting, but still be humble bees from humble beginnings (Tua started his working life as a dishwasher).
But for my two bobs worth of boxing above their weight, Sir Howard and his Samoan mate David were cut from the same lava-lava loin cloth.
And had he made it to Mystery Creek to sing the National Anthem as he was scheduled to do, Sir Doy would have sung his soul to both the Samoan people and to Shane Cameron.
Who both lost so much so quickly.
Pai marire
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