Basement Life

I was going to post something about how I went to purchase some wine the other day at the supermarket and the cashier asked if I was drunk, but I’m really not up to that right now. I feel so angry and shaken up about the incident that I’ve decided to post a few unrelated photographs instead.

You see, the whole thing was a misunderstanding. I wasn’t drunk. (Oh, yeah, the picture above was taken at the historic homestead of John Logan Campbell, a Scottish adventurer who outlived all his contemporaries with his flowing white locks and beard known finally as “The Father of Auckland,” according to the Auckland Parks Website, which does not make it clear if it was the man’s beard and white locks that were known as the “Father of Auckland,” or if it was the man himself, nor does it explain how his white locks and beard helped him outlive all his contemporaries, but therein lay his tremendous prestige and courage. Note the original Christmas tree, preserved in the condition it was in the day John Logan Campbell fell off his ladder while trying to place the Star of Bethlehem high above his head on top of it (the tree, that is, not his head)) At least I don’t remember being drunk.

What happened was this: early last Saturday afternoon, I had to do some shopping. I’d been writing all day, which I do not deny always makes me appear drunk to other people, as I usually imbibe in two or three glasses of whatever’s at hand while I’m working. But no more than that. I mean, let’s be reasonable, it wasn’t even 2 p.m. by the time I left the house to go to the supermarket in my more or less sober state.

I put a few of the day’s necessities in my cart, including a loaf of bread, a bottle of club soda, a roll of toilet paper and 12 bottles of chardonnay. (The above was the first piece of graffiti to appear on an Auckland wall since the time of John Logan Campbell, who died in 1912. His Worship the Mayor John Banks has promised to nip this graffiti epidemic in the bud. It’s curious to note that the above image is based on the last night in the life of John Logan Campbell, who died in a tragic accident while attempting to place the Star of Bethlehem on top of his Christmas tree after drinking one too many bottles from his wife’s back-woods still, uttering his famous last-words, “Merry F!#k?*g Xmas” as he fell to his doom.  The graffitist here has paid especially loving attention to the accurate depiction of John Logan Cambell’s flowing white locks and beard, the Father of Auckland). My shopping complete, I pushed my heavily laden cart of daily necessities toward the cashiers.

The express line was very long and everyone was growing impatient.

Except for me. I’m always happy to stand anywhere for hours on end doing absolutely nothing. (A poster advertising a costume shop for people who like to dress up for Guy Fawkes Day, named for one of the mercenaries in a failed attempt to kill King James I and install a Catholic king in 1605. As the poster indicates, New Zealanders love to dress up as John Logan Campbell in the various stages of his multifaceted career. Campbell was, in turn, a roller skating disco clown, Superman, the fourth member of ZZ Top, a rabbi and a pre-teen girl in a cat costume.)

I was displeased by her question. Who was she to presume I’d been drinking? (I can’t believe people live in this building designed by John Logan Campbell in 1911).

“No, I haven’t been drinking,” I insisted.

I made sure she understood how peeved I was by her question. I rolled my eyes and clucked my tongue three times (The first time because I was angry and the second two times to emphasize my anger, sort of like the way I put three exclamation points at the end of a sentence to make sure everyone knows that I really really mean what I’m saying!!!) (Above: the Parnell Library, designed, constructed and financed by John Logan Campbell, who not only donated the entire volume of 16,000 books, but wrote every single one of them as well. In long hand!!!)

“OK, OK,” the cashier said. “I was just asking.”

(Or did she say, “I was just joking?” I don’t know. I was a little drunk.)

“You want me to recite the alphabet backwards now too?” I said. (The Shangri La flats).

“No, that really isn’t necessary,” the cashier said.

“No, it’s my pleasure,” I said. (Malibu Flats)

So I started to recite the alphabet backwards. “Z, Y, X, W, S, no wait…”

The person behind me said, “No, listen: it’s Z, Y, X, W, V, U, T, S, R, P…”

“No, no, that isn’t it,” somebody else said. “Does anyone have a piece of paper?”

Pretty soon, there were four or five of us gathered around the cash register trying to figure out how to recite the alphabet backwards. It took us about five minutes, but we got it down pat eventually, which just goes to show you there’s nothing you can’t do if your name is John Logan Campbell.

For Christmas this year, Jacquie and I got a dent in the rear bumper of our used car. Thanks New Zealand! It’s what we always wanted. We’re not sure who exactly gave us this gift because our particular Kris Kringle didn’t leave his contact information in the windshield. An understandable oversight, I’m sure, as it was his busy time of year and there were many more cars to destroy.

The good news is the bumper was easily repaired, as it is made of cardboard. A few more swatches of duct tape and you could hardly tell the difference.

The bad news is that the drivers in New Zealand are the worst in the world.

That isn’t just my opinion. Everybody here says so. The funny thing is none of them will admit to being a bad driver. I’ve been in a car with a driver who was tailgating the car in front of us while decrying that very same irritating habit.

In the interest  of full disclosure, I got caught speeding by a hidden camera my first week in Auckland because I wasn’t paying attention to the signs (such as they are, but that’s another story.)

But unlike the Kiwis, I have a legitimate excuse for my bad driving. I got my New York State license back in September after having let it expire in 2003 due to lack of interest in driving. To prepare for the test, I took a bunch of refresher lessons. My instructor spent the entire time on his blackberry. He looked up at the road only if he saw a pedestrian that interested him. Once he saw two men going down the street on roller skates. “Homosexual,” he said. It was the first thing he’d said in ten minutes of driving. A couple blocks later at a stop sign, a woman in tight jeans crossed in front of us. “Oh, thank you God,” the instructor said. He made some kissing sounds and as we crossed the intersection, I could see from the corner of my eye that he was still watching the woman. “I love America,” he said.

So, at least in my case, there’s no such thing as a bad driver, just a bad driving instructor.

But seriously, New Zealand does have a high “road toll,” as the Kiwis refer to traffic fatalities. The official total number of traffic fatalities in 2009 stood at 384 on New Year’s Day, with three fatalities on December 31 alone. That seems like a small number, but its 19 more than the previous year, and proportionately speaking, the rate is high.

New York in 2008 had 1,160 traffic fatalities statewide, which for a population of 19 million means that there were 6.28 traffic fatalities per 100,000 population. In New Zealand that same year, the rate was 8.8 per 100,000 population (365 fatalities out of a population of 4.4 million).

So at least from a statistical standpoint, New Zealand is a more dangerous place to drive than New York.

Last week I called my mother who lives 14,198 kilometers away (or .0473 light seconds) in the far-off wintry latitudes of the New York State Thruway. It was Christmas morning there, and the snow fell gently upon the quiet world outside.

Dear mum sat by the fireplace, quietly darning her work sock in the warm glow of the Yule log. The light on her face seemed to brighten when she heard the telephone ring. She had a premonition that her son would be on the line.

My sister was there with my brother in-law and their three children, and when my mother told them it was me, they all gathered around the hearth with fresh cups of hot cocoa in their hands.

“Oh, son,” my mother said. “It is fitting for you to call us on this, the most family-oriented-holiday-greeting-card-friendly holiday known to humanity. We have not heard from you these many months and there’s so much we desire to learn about your new country. It’s hard even to know where to begin. Tell us, what medium-budget science fiction television series does the Auckland skyline most evoke in your imagination?”

I couldn’t believe the question because that was exactly the thing that had been weighing on my mind, and the reason for my call. I just had to tell my mother, after being out of touch for so long, that ever since the first time I saw the Auckland cityscape, I’d been thinking, “Any respectable low- to medium-budget science fiction television series from Canada would be proud to use Auckland as the model for its establishing exterior shots of extraterrestrial locales.”

A tear rolled down my cheek that Christmas morning and I began to choke up so much, it was hard for me to get the words out that my mother so longed to hear.

“Auckland,” I whispered. “Auckland reminds me of Atlantis from the television series Stargate Atlantis.”

Soon that part of the conversation ended and it was my mother’s turn to tell me what was going on in her life, so I hung up as quickly as I could. But then I felt bad. It seemed after some reflection that Auckland didn’t really look that much like Atlantis from Stargate Atlantis. Then I thought, so what? With a little computer magic, Auckland could certainly be the grand capital city of some alien planet. Or at least a sprawling truck stop where a guy could grab a steak, down some amphetamines and enjoy the services of a prostitute, except in outer space.

I thought, hey, I’m unemployed. Why don’t I see what Auckland would look like after a little tender loving care from my computer, just like they’d do for a medium-budget science fiction television series for Canadians. After developing a graphic algorithm and plugging in the data, the computer rendered this:

Wait until the Canadians see that.

∞