Steve Braunias: Inside the Dotcom hearing - day one

Big car, big chair, big black outfit means a grand entrance at court for America's target.

There were several hints that the big black Mercedes G55 V8 Kompressor parked outside the Chorus building in downtown Federal St this morning belonged to Kim Dotcom.

The licence plate read KIM.COM. It was surrounded by passersby taking photographs of it with their phones, and enthusing, "It's Kim Dotcom's car!"

But the giveaway was the great size of the Fritzmobile. Not only was its vastness required to accommodate the enormous German - it was also needed to transport an incredible big black custom-made leather swivel throne, which was taken up the escalator and into a courtroom for Dotcom to park himself during his long-awaited extradition hearing.

His outfit - that familiar uniform of black tunics and vests and various fleeces, interrupted with a long zip - swaddled him like a baby.

He sat at the end of a row, next to his American lawyer, the phlegmatic Ira P. Rothken.

Then there were the co-defendants, two prime specimens of Euro-geek, the computer programmers Bram van der Kolk and Mathias Ortmann.

The fourth man who the US want to extradite to their territories so they can try to bust his ass on money laundering and copyright violation charges, Finn Batato, is defending himself. He sat in another row, marooned.

Today's proceedings were devoted to the niceties of legal wrangling. In common parlance, they were devoted to bitching and moaning.

Crown lawyer Christine Gordon QC, a picture of grave authority in her pin-striped pant suit, moaned about the defence applications for a stay of proceedings. She told Judge Nevin Dawson they lacked an "air of reality".

The air, filled with her voice, was too much for one character who sat in the public gallery. He fell asleep, and was turfed out by a security guard who had a tattoo reading RIP DAZ on his massive forearm.

Grant Illingworth QC, acting for van der Kolk and Ortmann, addressed the court after Gordon finished her soliloquy. His suit was grey, his hair was grey, his bitching was consistent.

"I submit we have to adjourn ... Paragraph four ... Impossible task ... Natural justice ... Frustrating ... Paragraph seven", etc.

Almost inevitably, serial campaigner Penny Bright turned up. She wore her trademark beret, overcoat, and disbelieving smirk.

The public gallery also included the splendidly whiskered Pene Hape, who travelled from Gisborne to witness the hearing.

"I put the pots out in the weekend," he said, "and got 12 crayfish to bring up for the whanau."

Richard, a 62-year-old man with hair as white as Pene Hape's beard, was let in after security ejected the sleeper. He viewed Dotcom as the victim of a conspiracy.

"It's like the whole Bain thing," he said.

What?

"That's a cover-up of something else. I've thought about it and thought about it, and none of it makes sense."

Back inside the airless courtroom, Dotcom's counsel, Ron Mansfield, was loud and pugnacious: "The US has tied our hands behind our backs!"

Day one dragged on; rest in peace, Daz; fresh crayfish; Penny bloody Bright; and at the centre of it, America's target, that wanted man, a baby in black.