KEY POINTS:
The end of the year is nigh. We're in that zone where it is okay to be slothful and gluttonous - yay! But it is also, I feel, the time of the year where we should be thankful.
Thankful for the good stuff and the stuff that
makes us smile. (As an aside, how come shopping malls don't have Santa back after Christmas so all the kids can line up to thank him for all the presents? The threat of many angry children bollocking him for giving them the wrong stuff, could be the answer to this.)
So, with an eye to being thankful at this time of the year and as it's my last column for the year, here is some of the good stuff from 2008, as chosen personally by me, James Griffin.
First up, a big thanks to Room 9 at Maraetai Beach School for the best letter I got all year. Some time ago I maundered on in this column about Auckland rain.
In return, Room 9 at Maraetai Beach School sent me an awesome selection of very funny poems they'd written about Auckland rain. These poems brilliantly and elegantly captured the universal angst and confusion of the paradox that is Auckland rain - in that you can get both sunburned and drenched at the same time. They also named two new types of Auckland rain: lunchtime rain and Saturday soccer rain. Thank you Room 9, Maraetai Beach School, have great school holidays with only occasional showers.
To the folks at Gucci for Gucci by Gucci. I fully understand that it is both slightly odd and a little unmanly to thank a men's fragrance, but I really like it, so why shouldn't I show my appreciation? Yes, it has a stupid name - I mean, if anyone other than Gucci made something called by Gucci, then there would be lawyers and hitmen all over their asses, wouldn't there? But it still smells nice, okay, so back off and leave me alone.
The Headless Chickens, for getting back together just so I could see them one last time. Even with the tall, smelly hippie guy in the Santana T-shirt dancing strange hippie dances in front of me, I had a great time. Thank you, Chooks. Honorable thank yous in the concert section also go to Don McGlashan and The Sami Sisters at the PumpHouse; and Billy Bragg at Leigh Sawmill.
If you see any of these people, please pass on the message for me. Bear Grylls, host of Man vs Wild. Very rarely does TV get any better than watching a man drink his own pee and eat insecty things that no human should ever eat, while reassuring us that they are "a great source of protein".
Thank you Bear, you strange individual with an equally strange name. Thank you to Teza Mango & Ginger iced tea. Look, I'm not a product placement kind of guy and my opinion cannot be bought with corporate gifts and favours.
Okay, that may just be because no one has ever tried, but that is neither here nor there right now. What is important here is that I want to thank the makers of Teza Mango & Ginger iced tea because it is yummy - and I don't even drink tea. So there. If it helps my incorruptible image, I'm not so keen on any of their other flavours, just the mango and ginger. There are so many people, entities, objects, land masses and food groups I would like to thank.
The Peking duck from Love-a-Duck and the nice people who deliver it to my door; my Quicksilver jandals that I love; the cast of Tape at the Basement Theatre; the staff of Richmond Road Primary; the pad thai at the food hall on Ponsonby Rd; Paul Smith for his shirts and my excellent wallet; Waiheke Island; Kung Fu Panda; the list, while not endless, is far too long for the scant few hundred words I have here.
So I guess what I want to say, in conclusion, without getting all movie-of-the-week soppy on it, is that if you feel you should be on my thank you list, consider yourself on it. Be you a person, a corporation, an item of clothing, an idea or concept, or any random collection of molecules who thinks I owe you the big thumbs-up, then I'm thankful to you.
Thank you for whatever it is you've done for me. (The only exceptions to this are the food in the ASB stand at Eden Park and the bar service at the Vector Arena.
Oh, and whoever the actual bastard at Cadbury's was who made the decision to kill Snifters, then said it was all our fault for not buying them.) So thanks everyone and everything. People bang on a bit about what a crap world it is but me, I tend to disagree. You just have to look hard to find the good sometimes.